A chummy affair
I do wish journalists would learn to stop portraying Milo Yiannopoulos as some sort of legit commentator or thinker or even forsooth fellow journalist. He’s a Twitter troll. That’s it. That’s all he is, that’s his only claim to fame, and it’s not something anyone should be taking seriously.
Despite a brief flare-up of controversy that preceded it, a conversation between Milo Yiannopoulos, the incendiary right-wing author and lecturer, and Bill Maher, the comedian and host of HBO’s “Real Time,” on that program Friday night was a largely docile, chummy affair. There was little conflict or cross-examination, as both men chided the political left for avoiding or drowning out Mr. Yiannopoulos’s views rather than engaging with them.
He’s not an author and lecturer. He’s a troll. He’s a verbal sadist who makes a career of bullying women. He is not any kind of substantive thinker. He doesn’t have “views”; he has a taste for bullying.
Introducing Mr. Yiannopoulos, 32, an openly gay editor at Breitbart News, Mr. Maher said: “I think you’re colossally wrong on a number of things. But if I banned everyone from my show who I thought was colossally wrong, I would be talking to myself.”
Blah blah blah they laughed when Beethoven sat down to play. Yes it would be foolish for Bill Maher to decide to talk only to people he thinks are right about everything, no it does not follow that he should talk to people whose only claim to fame is bullying women off the internet. That’s another thing I wish people would stop being so dense about. It’s generally good to interact with a wide range of ideas and people; that does not mean it’s generally good to seek out the worst, meanest, shallowest bullies on Twitter and interact with them.
Mr. Yiannopoulos began the interview by cracking jokes about gay people (whom he said he did not hire because they did not show up to work on time) and women, and telling Mr. Maher’s audience that they were “very easily triggered.”
“All I care about is free speech and free expression,” Mr. Yiannopoulos explained. “I want people to be able to be, do and say anything. These days, you’re right, that’s a conservative issue.”
Bullshit. Milo Yiannopoulos is not another Voltaire or Tom Paine or John Stuart Mill. Milo Yiannopoulos is another random shithead who gets his jollies from bullying women in public.
Describing himself as “a virtuous troll,” Mr. Yiannopolous said, “I hurt people for a reason.”
He said people “want to police humor” because “they can’t control it.”
“Because the one thing that authoritarians hate is the sound of laughter,” Mr. Yiannopolous said.
Milo Yiannopoulos is not Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator. Milo Yiannopoulos is a court jester for authoritarians.
I never saw Religulous, back when it was a Big Thing in the atheosphere. Just as glad now that I didn’t waste time on the output of a shallow pundit-wannabe.
So did Hitler.
So did Stalin.
So did Mao.
So did…every tyrant who ever lived.
The only people who hurt people for no reason are so sociopathic that they don’t have a purpose. Yes, Milo has a reason. His reason is that he hates people, and that he hates women, and that he hates gay people (in spite of being gay himself), and he hates…well, anyone who doesn’t hate the same people he does. His reason is solely that of a sociopath.
In fact, if you need to hurt people to get your point across, you are doing it wrong. If he really believes the things he thinks, then he should do the hard work to get a serious debate going, rather than shouting and raging and calling names.
I have disagreed with many people in my life. I have sometimes even told them so, and engaged in conversation with them, and it might not have been fruitful (i.e., I might not have gotten my own way, which is how Milo defines fruitful, I imagine). I never felt the need to hurt them, and the only conversations that have left me thinking seriously about what my opposition had to say were those where they didn’t feel the need to hurt me.
Bullies bully because they are unable to make their points, because they have no solid argument, because they are wrong and misguided and hateful, and they can’t get people to listen to them. So they shout louder, and they call names, and then people listen. And these days, people give them very big platforms to shout from, and often shake their heads and tut tut at those people who say their views are misguided, wrong, and hateful.
I think I’ve lived too long.
@iknklast – so did… every marginalised person who ever punched up to power.
Bringing down bullies hurts them, but it’s something that needs to be done.
Maher has been hosting Ann Coulter for years, and imo she’s even worse. Milo does express an honest opinion now and then; Coulter never does. Her success led directly to Milo’s. I was asking 20 years ago why pundits kept inviting her on their shows: a person who is fundamentally dishonest, and just there to spread propaganda, should not be newsworthy.
A local women’s group here is planning to participate in a ‘debate’ next week with antifeminists at the university (I don’t exactly know how or why this was set up, but I think there’s an antifeminist in the debate society who managed to construct this event). The women who are going seem really enthusiastic about it. A couple of them asked me if I’d come along for moral support, and I said absolutely not–what is there to debate? I can’t figure out why they’re so eager to engage with these people.
I do recommend the internet only ‘overtime’ segment in which Milo is better exposed for what he is and the panel tell him to fuck off and go fuck himself. This doesn’t mean they should have had him on thr show but it is worth watching. Just google milo maher overtime.
The people who responded to 9/11 with hand-wringing concern for the Poor Opwessed killers, seem to be doing the same thing with Trumpism.
NO, you don’t deal with murderous psychopaths by singing Kumbaya.