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Why I Recommended Against Milo
As discussed on the main page, Milo Yiannopoulos has been invited to address CPAC this year in the major Saturday night address — the one that gets the television. About this I have mixed feelings, as I have mixed feelings about Milo in general. However, at my university, the College Republicans I sponsor discovered that they could get Milo to come speak for basically a song. Breitbart appears to pay a sizable chunk of the cost of his speeches. They asked my opinion.
I recommended against.
Now this decision was made in the space of a day, so my reasons were not as well formed then as they are now. What I told them is that Milo is a blunt object, as likely to hurt as to help, and that such a blunt object is not necessary at our school. Should the day come that we need a blunt object, having already used Milo, we won’t have anything in reserve. Furthermore, our campus is already fairly conservative -even Trump friendly -so bring a provocateur to campus to generate protesting seems counterproductive.
We can, ultimately, catch more converts with honey than with vinegar.
But if they wanted provocative, I offered to look into SABO, who is in a league of his own.
The lure of Milo is that he kills every sacred cow. He is a walking scandal. A talking desecration. He is, by his own admission, transgressive as a personality trait. The id made flesh. But he’s also indiscriminate. He is, in his way, the Right’s Madonna -who spent her youth talking about the greatness of the sexual revolution -and then discovered in middle age that her money made the revolution great, but that for everyone else it was a much more mixed bag. That for her, effective single parenting just meant hiring a nanny, while for the teenagers listening to her, it meant a much harder life.
My students want to see Milo say all the things you can’t say, without any recognition that there is a reason tact and manners exist. Or if they do recognize the importance of manners (they are generally decent people) they don’t see the threat Milo represents to their tact and manners. They can point to no general oppression of conservative views on campus except for a few professors here and there (as opposed to the more general oppression of a place like Berkeley where it is both professors and students). They just want to watch Milo play with matches.
The day the administration threatened to keep him off campus, I would convert to my students’ desire. But that is because the day the administration threatened to keep him off campus we would actually have a threat to free speech worthy of blasting apart, and I would consider the collateral damage that is Milo to be worth the risk. I cannot abide, for my own security, a system in which speech is formally controlled by one side. I will take my chances in the world without restraint.
SABO, for all he is just as transgressive is much more solidly aimed at the Left. His style is to parody the left’s attacks. “This is what you do all the time! Why is it only wrong when I respond in kind!?” His is a shaped charge to Milo’s bomb throwing. His is, in its way, a call for proper civilized constraints — constraints on both sides that exist in order to keep the peace, and not to ensure one party’s domination over the other. He wants a fair fight, whatever the rules. Milo wants a fight without rules. SABO is a rebel. Milo is a revolutionary.
So how does this play to CPAC? In many ways, CPAC is now filled with people who feel greatly constrained by the left. Josh Barro commented that the social conservatives must be alarmed by CPAC’s invitation of Milo. Speaking only for myself, were it a couple years ago, I might well have. But today, I can understand what a wit called “The Boromir Option.” If electing Trump and setting of Milo is the only way to break the left’s monopoly on the nationwide culture, then I understand. If the guillotine is falling, there’s not much reason to complain about the collateral damage of the bomb — so long as it throws the blade out of its track.
But on the other hand, CPAC is the base of the people — and why would you set the bomb off in your own headquarters?
It was for this reason I recommended against Milo at my campus, and why I would recommend against at CPAC. But it is also why I will not stand in their way, either.
Published in Culture
Morton Downey Jr.
Not Robert Downey Jr.
Very, very, very different guys.
The first I heard of him he was affiliated with a loose coalition of White Nationalists. I have no idea what their fidelity to the ideological principles stated above — if they were freelance or teamster.
Late, I was tired. Mort the Mouth was a SoCal legend as well.
Thanks for the link to SABO, I didn’t know much about him. I liked Milo a lot more before he referred to Trump as “Daddy”. Weird. Watched a few SABO videos, and think he reminds me more of Andrew Briebart. SABO doesn’t seem to be as self promoting as Milo.
Our country is the opposite of that – it is easy to label, but creating issues because you want illegal immigrants to just observe the law is not being racist. No one wants a more “white” country. Good grief…..I thought race relations were much improved until the BLM movement and all the division we’ve seen over the last few years. If anything, things have gotten worse in the actual lives of minorities, not better. Getting drugs, crime, borders and illegal activity under control is not a bad thing, yet being twisted and made to appear those in favor of it don’t want or care about our multi-cultural society.
I agree with Sabr. Milo is useful as a provocateur for a stuffy, conformist and repressive campus. Otherwise, not so much. He’s basically a troll who reminds me of David Brock 20 years ago. Conservatives loved Brock back then for his attacks on Anita Hill and the Clintons but he was clearly as unstable and weird then, as he is now when he is the Clinton’s attack dog. In ten years, Milo may be Brock politically. It’s a show for Milo.
This is why picking allies by noticing a man has all of the right enemies is such a huge mistake.
http://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/02/19/video-surfaces-of-milo-yiannopoulos-defending-pedophilia-acu-board-reportedly-not-consulted-on-cpac-invite/
Much prefer SABO to Milo. Met him last year in Phoenix and definitely reminded me of Breitbart.
Inevitable. Trump’s victory starkly exposed the Republican Party’s refusal to do what its punditocracy wanted, plus now that Trump is President, there’s access to power to fight over.
Sabr,
I agree with your advice to your students.
I am not so sure CPAC made the wrong decision (even despite the pedo links above). There is a unique moment right now to make Conservatism counter-cultural and “cool” to the generation following the Millennial. The Millennial generation is all-in on PC enforcement and nonjudgementalism. Milo is a bridge from the Millennial’s “You must be nice … or else!” to a society where social norms are reinforced by religious and social communities that will serve more people (particularly those on the lower income scales) better. However, that bridge must go through a social libertarian stage where nobody (the PC left, or the traditional right) is allowed to enforce social norms.
Well, when I say “support” it’s not the same thing as “become allies with”, necessarily. Some on the left believe that they are justified in becoming violent with anyone they disagree with; some carry around signs saying “Punch a Nazi”. I find that very alarming, especially because as far as they are concerned, anyone who disagrees with them is a Nazi. This is America; “I may disagree with what a man says, but I will fight to the death his right to say it”.
There has to be a way to defend the free speech rights of those we disagree with, while also making it clear that we disagree with them. Inviting such a person to be a speaker at CPAC probably isn’t the way, but we must find another way. Too many young people just do not seem to understand the importance of defending free speech-even, especially, the speech of those we find loathsome.
I think the word you’re looking for is “tolerate”, not “support”. AFAIC, “support” does indeed imply alliance.
It’s sorta kinda like in WWII when the US claimed neutrality but at the same time was providing material support to Great Britain.
Few people are.
Here’s a link to Milo’s response to the video.
Kathy Shaidle nails it.
Read her whole piece.
Addendum:
Michael Brendan Dougherty asks the question: what happened that turned Milo, Catholic homosexual journalist for the Catholic Herald, into MILO, naughty-boy? He hints that he knows, so I rather wonder why he isn’t more specific.
Scroll down to the video debate between him and Boy George. That is a totally different person.
I am not sure his comments actually rise to “defending pedophilia” except by consequence (see, “indiscriminate”). But this is equivocation, and should be called such. He isn’t talking about Romeo and Juliet relationships of an 18 year old and 17 year old. The age he gave was 14. He says 13 is too young, but the age he accepted was 14. In the context of the discussion, his actual point of contention is that a 14 year old is adult enough to give consent, so what’s the big deal?
I have answers to that (involving parental authority and the development of healthy and productive sexual lives). His critics need to come up with a better answer than squawking “pervert.”
But he is still equivocating.
And also relevant (the whole thread) as regards Josh Baro’s comments quoted in the OP:
And also, someone please shock me off twitter!
Sure. It’s no accident that liberty and libertine have the same root. Milo likes being a shocking queen, it’s just that the bluenoses he mostly goes after are on the Left – which hates liberty and favors libertines.
Kathy Shaidle:
Someone at CPAC wants the buzz of having Milo on stage. Maybe somebody wants to tweak the SoCons; Milo would do that. He really gets the One Big Thing about freedom of speech. But he’s not clean, and he’s not safe.
The thing about Canadian conservatives (e.g. Kath Shaidle, Mark Steyn, Ezra Levant, Gavin McInnes, Steven Crowder) is that they are about 10 years ahead of the PC fight we are having now. They had to beat back the state to keep their free speech rights and so are much more in the forefront on speech and anti-PC issues.
Drudge links to an article stating that he’s been disinvited.
Every time I hear about that, I think of this:
Too late. You are hooked, friend.
The answer is the vast majority of adults who engage in lewd acts with children of that age do so by force or manipulation. I’m sure just as many homosexual men as heterosexual women can testify to that. Just because his turned into an appeasing, formative event doesn’t mean statutory rape laws are in place for no reason. Conservatives may be new to this area of heroic rule-breaker — they will push boundaries of areas you’re not familiar with. This is one avenue where you must not assume their knowledge is plenary.
A keynote speech by a professional troll would seem to indicate the popularity of a vengeful mindset on the right.
Technically, pedophilia is defined as sexual attraction to pre-pubescent minors. Milo is referring to sexual attraction to post-pubescent minors, which is ephebophilia.
It still amounts to defense of illegal acts, namely statutory rape, but it’s not defense of pedophilia.
Why even make this argument honestly
Pedant’s gonna pedant.
Well said JLocked, as usual. As a lover of free speech, I recognize the validity of all sides of the argument. Also I would like to add my sole objection to Trump: dude is American and getting rich off making a ruckus in my country. Say what you will about the White Nationalists, they’re British and I’m bound to them by nationality even if they may hate my guts solely based on my skin color. I don’t owe Trump a damn thing.
Oh wait…
Because words matter. If someone or something is really that bad, there should be no reason to lie about them.
Liars gotta lie.
Nonsense. No one is lying. Pointing to the dictionary definition when there is a different broadly understood definition is just you being difficult, not making any useful point. The point you have raised changes nothing about the conversation. It is a demand for precision with no discrete benefit. Pedantry.