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Milo to be Keynote Speaker at CPAC
CPAC has announced that this year’s keynote speaker will be Milo Yiannopoulos, the controversial Breitbart editor whose talk was shut down earlier this month through violence at the University of California at Berkeley.
Yiannopoulos told The Hollywood Reporter that he will discuss his “experiences in America battling feminists, Black Lives Matter, the media, professors and the entertainment industry.”
…According to The Hollywood Reporter, those protests are part of the reason CPAC Chairman Matt Schlapp decided to host Yiannopoulos as the meeting’s keynote speaker.
“An epidemic of speech suppression has taken over college campuses,” Schlapp said. “Milo has exposed their liberal thuggery and we think free speech includes hearing Milo’s important perspective.”
Yiannopoulos appeared on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Friday, where he sparred with the show’s liberal host and took aim at high-profile female celebrities, including Lena Dunham and Amy Schumer.
The Conservative Political Action Conference will be held February 22-25, just outside of Washington at National Harbor, MD.
The first CPAC in 1974 featured Ronald Reagan as the keynote speaker. Gay conservative groups were banned from having a booth at the conference until last year.
Exit question: What do you think it says about the state of the conservative movement that CPAC has chosen as its keynote speaker an openly gay free speech activist with alt-right leanings? A good move, bad move, or somewhere in between?
Published in Politics
Good move. Yiannopoulos is quite an effective spokesman for the right. Wish I could be there.
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2017/02/heres-bill-maher-interviewing-milo.html
This is the video referred to in the post (link goes to Ann Althouse’s interesting post, in which the video is embedded).
I still don’t fully understand what the definition of the alt-right actually is. I know I’m supposed to hate this guy, but I just don’t know all that much about the fellow. He seems to have the right enemies…
As Klavan said the other day on his podcast the “alt-right”, all 74 of them, have disappeared.
Let’s ditch that moniker.
Ballsy move by CPAC.
A good move if for no other reason to continue to show the intolerance of the left. Also, Milo says some pretty interesting stuff. And, at the very least, he can be the comic relief :) .
Also, I agree with those above who say that this whole alt-right thing is ridiculous. Even I would closer to the alt-right than Milo. Milo is actually hated by the racist/neonazi/white supremacist alt right. On the other hand, he is not a traditional conservative. This of course means that Milo has an alternate political view to right while still being more right than left. But really, alt just means different. It was only those who wanted to paint all differing views as terrible that used the alt-right name to slander everyone.
It will make CPAC fun. (Finally!!!! Right?)
I hope Milo kicks it up a notch.
And it’s a very astute PR move to keep the press focused on CPAC – because even if they aren’t interested in the ideas (they’re probably not) they’ll be interested in the inevitable protesters (boy you’d think these people would eventually realise that the best way to lower Milo’s profile would be to stop protesting him…)
Re: gay conservative groups. Milo is not a group.
The bad move is labeling Milo as leaning alt-right, a pejorative now in common understanding. I’m not even sure exactly what alt means; it’s even being used for leftist factions now. Given the common media-driven understanding of alt-right, the reference in the post is a slur, thus the following question is reduced to a rhetorical device. Must be at least a somewhat bad idea if he’s an alt fellow traveler, right? Most who have discounted the flamboyance of Milo, and who have watched him and read him understand that he’s strongly conservative and has a gift for explaining why, and for shredding his knee-jerk competition. Sexuality aside –and why not? — Milo and Trump share the characteristic of having correct intuitions about politics and stand ready to fight over the issues conservatives care about, and both of them know how to have fun. Great move by CPAC.
I’ve seen a couple of Milo intrrviews. Yes, he’s a rabble rouser but he’s also a thinker. I disagree that the audience would not be interested in his ideas; I certainly was.
Well, if alt-right means someone with conservative political and cultural aims who dismisses democratic and republican values and seeks to impose his political agenda with the help of sympathetic elements amongst the state political, military and intelligence elites, then the poster boy for the alt-right would be Bill Kristol.
I meant the press, not the audience.
Milo describes the alt-right and his role in it:
Our own Jim Pethokoukis says “Odious.” With no amplifying comment. To which I say, “What is, Milo? The CPAC invitation? What?! Great argument, Jim! You convinced me!” Tongue firmly in cheek.
I was going to add Jim Pethokoukis (@jamespethokoukis) to the comment I posted above (because I was being kind of critical in an oblique way), so I did a search for him. The result listed his activity status as “never active.” Does that mean he’s another diode (one way flow – transmit only) who does not engage on Ricochet?
http://ricochet.com/members/jamespethokoukis/
Correct. I’ve never seen him respond in the comments. Some contributors do, some don’t. Mr. Pethokoukis is among the latter, which is why I never bother to respond to his posts. Pretty-much stopped reading them too.
Speaking of which, wasn’t this supposed to be a selling point of Ricochet? Interaction with the contributors? Many of them just do drive-by posts of columns and disappear.
I think the key is to keep building the Ricochet brand. If Jim, and other contributors don’t think they need to pay their respects by engaging, it’s probably because we (the plebian Ricocheti) aren’t numerous, or influential enough — even for Jim, who kind of struggles to build his own amusing name. Sad!
Milo’s principal strength is and always has been promoting Milo. There is no reason to anticipate that changing.
The great Michael Martin Murphey said it best: “If you want to make a living, you’ve gotta put on a good show.”
He also said: “Jack Daniel’s never lets you lose your place.”
Can confirm. ?
Politics today is about entertainment. Milo is a good entertainer, so it all makes sense.
He’s just but one of the Permanent Republican Resistance. No matter what Trump does, no matter what he gets done, these guys are going to spend his tenure in DC stewing about it.
What’s truly galling is that many of the same people that told the rank and file to suck it up and cheer when GOProud was invited are stomping their feet over the Milo invite.
By the way… that Pethokoukis jab above? He’s agreeing with David Frum and his slew of liberal commenters.
The gulf between the common plebes and conventional conservative leadership is still very, very big.
Trump and Milo are making the Right fun again.
Neither is a conventional conservative, it need hardly be said, but both can hold an audience better than Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney ever could. That counts for something.
Whatever happens, @davesussman will be there, asking questions on behalf of Ricochet. Look for him, and the tall lady producing the video on Friday or Saturday. We’ll spend most of the time at or near Broadcast Row.
The Right was never fun, in fact none of this is actually supposed to be fun. It is supposed to be serious and goal oriented. Our level of public discourse has devolved to the level of insipid high school debate. Which is fine for teenagers and internet websites but is utterly detrimental for the purposes of governing, and building public consensus.
I don’t think we should underestimate how important Milo is for young conservative students in high school and college. Conservativism is the counter-culture, which makes it difficult for young conservatives to speak out. Milo is fearless and he has given many young conservatives the strength to speak up and fight back. I think this is a good and bold choice.
You should read Rules for Radicals and pay attention to #6:
Apparently “conservative” has degraded to the point of tribal allegiances rather than ideas. Standing behind someone just because they pick on people you don’t like.
Only John would drop a diode Haiku.
I stand behind Milo because of his ideas and his arguments. His presentation is theatrical and over the top, but his speeches aren’t just picking on people. He is hated by the left because of his ideas, which are usually rooted in facts.