Milo Yiannopoulos: The Good and the Bad

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Few stars are rising faster at the moment than that of conservative writer/broadcaster Milo Yiannopoulos. Virtually unknown just three years ago, the Greco-British journalist, 32, is now fast approaching the kind of iconoclastic status attained by such writers as Gore Vidal and HL Mencken (both of whom expended considerably more time and effort to achieve it).

What can explain this success?

Well – for one thing, Yiannopoulos is a quite formidable debater, and it is for this talent that he is primarily known. Type in ‘Milo Yiannopolous’ into YouTube and many of the videos returned to you will have titles containing words like ‘destroys’, ‘eviscerates’, ‘owns’ and so on… These are not exaggerations. Yiannopoulos has a unique way of making the people he engages seem naive, foolish and weak-minded. He is even – I have found – able to achieve this effect when the other person is in the right; and there is surely no greater testament to a debater’s skill than that.

Yiannopoulos is not merely good with words, he is good with emotions, presenting his side of any argument in a relaxed, self-assured and matter-of-fact style that naturally makes the arguments of the other side seem less certain, more bizarre and fundamentally weaker. In this sense he reminds me in speech of Mark Steyn in print. Both put to use the same rhetorical trick – the insinuation – quite deliberate – that they know they are right. Both treat contrary points of view as amusing, forgivable, even charming eccentricities. Yiannopoulos and Steyn are not trying to make the other side look stupid, so they have us believe, they are trying are help them understand reality – and by arguing this way, they do make them look stupid. There is surely no better way of wounding an intellectual’s reputation than to sympathise with his failures and politely excuse his errors.

Yiannopoulos’s writing, though less spectacular than his debating, still passes with ease any quality test for the journalistic mainstream. Here is a representative excerpt from an article taking down the goodwill-bloated ‘astrophysicist’ Neil Degrasse Tyson:

“Neil deGrasse Tyson is a philistine with no love of learning except for popularisations and oversimplifications that serve his political purposes… (He) constantly situates himself in the big brain league, but he has done nothing in his life to demonstrate that he belongs there — and a lot to suggest he doesn’t…. (He) claims to have been “mentored” by Carl Sagan, for instance. Yet it appears this “mentorship” boils down to little more than a couple of traded letters. If Tyson thinks that qualifies as mentorship, I wonder what he’d call my nocturnal liaisons with other men who share his skin colour. Adoption?… As dumb as Tyson is, his fans are even more preposterously thick, which is probably to be expected given that they’re all liberals. But the extent to which they hoover up and retweet his contradictory and brainless provocations is matched only by the hilarity of the occasional social justice car crash, in which the politics of grievance that Tyson likes to encourage comes back to bite him.”

But neither Yiannopoulos’s skill in writing or debating can fully explain his meteoric ascent. Beyond the mechanics of his profession, Yiannopoulos is himself remarkable. For one thing, he is gay. Indeed, if homosexuality can be graded, he is very gay; audaciously, flamboyantly so. He is also Greek, Jewish and Catholic. This exotic quality, brim-full of apparent contradiction (Gay, Jewish, Catholic, Conservative – are not words used to being in each other’s company), has combined with Yiannopoulos’s oratorical (and occasionally bitchy) style to produce a ready-made object of media fascination. Yiannopoulos gets ratings up in a way no other public commentator has since the death of Christopher Hitchens, a person with whom the journalist bears many important similarities.

Like Hitchens, Yiannopoulos expresses with intelligence arguments traditionally expressed with stupidity. Though I do sympathise with many right-wing concepts, it is nevertheless a fact of politics that the conservative side of the political spectrum attracts more dullards than the liberal side. Many – perhaps the majority – of those inclined to oppose Islam, for example, do so in a crude, yobbish style that puts off the discerning classes and fails to excite anyone else.

Yiannopoulos is successful precisely because he refines gut-sentiments into intelligent arguments. People watch Yiannopoulos debate Islam on television and scream ‘That’s what I think!” or “That’s what I’ve always said!”. He articulates feelings many desperately want to – but cannot – put into words.

So, that’s the good. Now for the bad.

Despite the considerable talents I have described, Yiannopoulos is not without his faults. He has, for one thing, consistently demonstrated a worrying lack of intellectual discipline; a tendency to seek controversy (for its own sake) over positive political impact. On twitter the writer has repeatedly engaged in pointless arguments with entirely apolitical pop-cultural figures, most recently Leslie Jones, the simple-minded comedienne and star of the much-maligned 2016 Ghostbusters remake. After a brief back and forth over various trifles, Milo made a joke implying that Jones (who is admittedly unfeminine looking) is actually a man. This comment then led to Yiannopoulos’s twitter account being deleted by the administrators of the site – (he is still banned).

Was this necessary? Did it serve a purpose? I don’t think so.

Like this author, Yiannopoulos is an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump’s 2016 bid for the US Presidency and has written countless articles explaining this support, most of which have been reasoned and compelling. But on this matter, too, he has a tendency to drift into inexplicable weirdness. Yiannopoulos often refers to Mr Trump in a sexualised voice as ‘Daddy’ and once stated that the “trashier” the Republican nominee becomes the more he loves him.

Now, I have no moral objection to any of this, but surely such unseriousness runs the risk of undoing the good work the journalist has done elsewhere. Once again I ask, is it necessary? Does it serve a purpose? Does Milo wish to be a neo-Orwellian truth-teller or a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother? Christopher Hitchens or Pete Burns? One cannot combine the two aspirations indefinitely.

The atheist Voltaire once remarked that the only prayer he had ever offered was ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous’. I can well imagine Islamists and Leftists offering this same plea to the Almighty in view of current political circumstances. On the issue of Islam – as on many others – we are so far in the right that a misstep on our part is probably the best the opposition can hope for. Milo and others would do well to bear this in mind.

On balance, I am of the opinion that Milo Yiannopoulos can be a very effective soldier for the anti-Islamist cause. His oratorical skill, humour and minority-status make him a very difficult target for the Left to hit with their favoured weaponry. They cannot possibly call Milo, a gay man of partially Jewish descent, irrational or paranoid for worrying about the advance of ISIS. They cannot possibly accuse him of being a Nazi, a White nationalist, or a possessor of ‘privilege’ (the Left’s favourite buzzword of the moment). Milo’s exotic qualities form a wall of confusion around his arguments, giving them a better chance of being considered for what they mean rather than as an extension of who formed them.

And while there are those who will object outright to the inclusion of an actively gay man in the conservative movement, one must strive to remember that the threat of Islam is so broad that it will necessarily require an equally broad coalition to prevent its success.

If you find the right’s embrace of Yiannopoulos strange, you’ll be even more surprised by what the future holds.

D, LDN.

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Conservatives have won the Islam-in-Europe debate…..But the young are already in a different world.

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We are almost 12 years on from the September the 11th attacks in America, and we are at last approaching the point where we can say the right has triumphed in the debate over Islamism in Europe.

This might sound a bit too optimistic to some, but I see the evidence all around. There are no serious, mainstream conservatives or liberals still arguing for the unconditional appeasement of Islam in Europe. A huge wave of European conservative and liberal intellectuals have converted almost wholesale to neo-conservative ideas, or at least those which involve the defence of Western culture. They still don’t want to be American of course, but at last they’re realising that it wouldn’t be a ball to be Iranian, Algerian or Turkish either. The ‘either-or’ fallacy has collapsed and while America bolts leftward, Europe has never been so united in ‘right-wing’ sentiment.

If you cast your mind back just a few years ago, you can appreciate the magnitude and speed of this shift. Think back as late as 2006 when the world was first mesmerised by the oratorical skills of Barack Obama, and consider the then fashionable opinions in Europe regarding the War on Terror. It was still broadly regarded as an idiotic cowboy initiative, and the reasons for it – the threat of radical Islam – was deemed to consist mostly of hype, bloated and promoted by arms manufacturers and straw-chewing Christian fundamentalists. George W. Bush, the great dumb American caricature, was still beloved by comedians and political cartoonists in London, Paris and Berlin. You could still get a laugh by pointing to the verbal errors of the out-going President, or by linking the uneducated twang of his accent to the foreign policy he initiated. The threat of Jihad was not just a lie, but an American lie, and it was patriotic not to believe it.

And look at things now.

With veiled faces multiplying, darkening the romance of Parisian streets, Pakistani paedophiles pimping orphan girls in Oxfordshire, kebab houses degentrifying great swathes of Birmingham, and terror alerts issued in Stockholm, Belgium and Denmark – no European can any longer think it patriotic to deny that this is a problem. One could call it fashionable, one could call it bold, and provocative, but no longer is it patriotism.

The right has won the debate….but only among people of a certain generation.

For the young, the debate is ongoing, and the anti-Islamist side has its work cut out.

One of the reasons it is still a challenge is the ongoing demographic shift among European youth. Not only are Muslims growing in number and influence with each new generation, but they are managing to integrate ‘sideways’ with other immigrant communities; in particular those of Christian black Africans. Islam is becoming respected on the street even by Christians, as a natural part of third-world identity. Islam, and even Islamism, is increasingly viewed as being as much a victim of ‘the system’ (and a cool enough means of rebelling against it) as hip-hop and gangsterism.

This is a cause for concern for anyone who understands where the real cultural power lies these days.

When a Counter-Jihad activist watches a good Mark Steyn or Pamela Geller video on YouTube, they might well feel a sense of relief that the “the message is getting out there.”, and that “People are waking up…”

But such a feeling can’t survive a glance at the view count for these clips. The figures are usually at best around the 10-15,000 mark.

Even videos of the late Christopher Hitchens, one of the most popular and media-friendly intellectuals of recent memory, rarely score views over 100,000. Pat Condell, the atheist commentator maxed out on less than 4 million views with a video that was uploaded more than 3 years ago. This is nowhere near sufficient.

Notice also that the ‘video demographics’ reveal a majority of viewers to be over the age of forty.

None of that data bodes well for the future.

Elsewhere on the cultural map, if Lil Wayne or Rihanna release a new music video, views can head toward 100,000,000 within weeks.

Who’s to say that in the future, there won’t be a Rihanna in a headscarf, or a Lil Wayne with a prayer-cap? Were that to occur, the number of people educated by the Counter-Jihad community over the last ten years, would be cancelled out by the number of younger citizens gained over period of hours. And then the offices at the Daily Telegraph could go as crazy as they like; it wouldn’t matter one jot to the younger generation. They would accept a Muslim Rihanna as perfectly natural – as well as historically and culturally consistent. The third-world in the White man’s world is one-world after all – all distinctions or divisions fall away, disappear…..

And who is to blame for this?

I, as a young person, would nominate the ethno-nationalists; people who maintain that there is no qualitative difference between foreign cultures, and that all are equally undesirable. Only European, White culture is acceptable. All else is an invasion or a surrender.

We cannot win against Islamism if we surrender to this kind of catch-all racism.

We should be glad that groups like the EDL and SION have made a start at unifying world cultures in a defensive phalanx, rather than, as the BNP would do, scattering us all like birdseed to be eaten separately.

D, LDN.

The Heroism of Pamela Geller.

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America 911, Bravery, Christianity, Christianity and Islam, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, Defend the modern world, EDL, Feminism, homosexuality, Islam, Islam and the West, Islamism, Judaism, Muslims, No to Turkey in the EU, Pamela Geller, War, Zionism

The community of people threatened by Islam contains many colors and creeds. The intellectual luminaries of its activist community reflect this, in so far as they are as diverse as the swathe of humanity they represent. There are ex-Muslims (Ayaan Hirsi-Ali, Ibn Warraq), Hindus (VS Naipaul), Leftists (the late Christopher Hitchens, Nick Cohen, Paul Berman), homosexuals (Douglas Murray), feminists (Lionel Shriver, Fay Weldon) all grouped among that number, each bringing with them their own reasons for standing up to this nefarious global bully and their unique insights into how best to do it in the future. Homosexual defiance of Islam is roundly applauded even by sections of the left. Non-white ex-Muslim females, having escaped confinement in the third world, such as Ms. Hirsi Ali, are also – though they are sometimes controversial – accepted as having naturally come to their opinions. The same with feminists, atheist Marxists and Christian conservatives. Whether or not, people disagree with what these people have to say or with the way in which they say it, they are ‘trusted’ to have arrived at their views via an organic, understandable process; one that we can all relate to. Even the most doctrinaire leftist still has enough insight within him to imagine what it must be like to be gay in Pakistan, or a woman in Saudi Arabia, or a feminist locked in an abusive marriage in the West. The leftist would rather we don’t dwell on these things too much, but he is happy enough to allow these things to be opposed.

What cannot be tolerated however, is the opposition of an ordinary civilian; that is, someone who did not need to fight Islamism but chose to do so. This is a problem because choosing to fight for justice when one could have had an easy life is a heroic myth jealously guarded by the left. As such, it simply cannot happen on the right. There must always be another explanation. Nobody can come to right-wing views except by an unromantic or devious process. This belief is well represented by the case of Pamela Geller.

Ms. Geller is what we might call an extraordinary ordinary person. Brought up in the West rather than in the Middle East, Ms. Geller had no obvious reason to stand up for the millions of Muslim women whose path she never needed to cross. Educated in the relatively plush surrounds of American colleges, she had no obvious reason to stand up for those denied the right to learn to read. She chooses to do this. She stands up for her sex, her society and her civilization (and allows herself to be hated for it) simply because it is the right thing to do as a Woman, a Jew, and an American.

This kind of explanation, the Left simply will not stand for. It tramples over so much of what they hold dear. The presumptions which undergird their rationale – the imagined world of selfish, cigar-smoking bankers, facing off against a righteous world of hungry brown people, is at odds with the Geller story. In this story, one has a Jew (which as an innuendo is almost interchangeable with both ‘banker’ and ‘capitalist’), who is also an American (once again =’capitalist’), and a defender of Israel (interchangeable with both ‘Zionist’ and ‘racist’) – in other words, a racist, Zionist American Banker.

Even one of these charges is deemed sufficient for the Left to scream ‘evil!’, but having them ganged together in the same person is enough to make a liberal choke up Bran Flakes. And yet in the Geller story, this Zionist banker is working everyday not on behalf of Goldman Sachs, but on behalf of ravaged women in Afghan villages, acid-scarred schoolgirls in Pakistan, and illiterate Egyptian, Tunisian, and Iranian women – all of whom have been trained to see her as the enemy.

Not for the first time, the Left is here wholly wrong. Geller is not a monster but an icon of bravery, and a much underappreciated and abused one. Her heroic blog Atlasshrugs has done more to raise awareness of the  Islamist issue than any national newspaper. She goes further than most but never over-steps the line separating truth from falsehood. She is rarely sued (or at any rate successfully) despite being vehemently despised by many powerful (and wealthy) sections of society. In a more honest age she would be setting the standard for feminist activism and courage. In this age, she is ‘sowing hate’ and ‘division’, or she is a ‘Zionist’ aiming to launch an offensive alliance against Islam by manipulating evidence.

And there are various other theories.

But as with so many cases, the simplest answer here is the correct one. Ms. Geller is Jewish. Islamists have declared a war of annihilation against the Jewish State and on the Jews who live outside of it. Ms. Geller is offended by this and has decided to fight back.

Why should it be more conspiratorial or complicated than that?

Why is the left less keen to accuse homosexuals or atheists of self-interested conspiracy when they oppose Islamism. The answer should surprise no-one. There is a typical racist tendency to imagine that a Jew cannot react with natural, universally-understood instincts, but only with a devious slowness of forethought; a slowness suited to conspiracy and cunning.

But imagine for a moment if this was not the case, and that Ms. Geller was merely a ‘normal’ woman, belonging to an unexceptional social group marked out unjustifiably for destruction by one-in-five human beings…. What is such a woman to do then? How is she to talk of those who, were they ever victorious, would kill her family and loved ones, and then enslave her fellow women? If Geller’s is the unreasonable reaction, then the left must inform us of the reasonable one.

D, LDN.