Still, ain’t that peculiar?
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I agree that society sometimes misinterprets in the way you describe, but it doesn’t change my contention (and, on a close reading of the article, Penny’s) that a lot of this rotten and immature behaviour is driven by sexual frustration.
It’s a vicious cycle that begins in high school for these losers.
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Absolutely. I was thinking of including a sarcastic bit about google’s algorithm getting confused, but thinking about it now and how most of what’s early in search results is because of what users click on and label it seems not at all surprising that the few non-white images that show up early are the pictures that can be easily mistaken for white families.
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Several things
If from the beginning he just gave his talk and then had to participate in a debate [ see James Baldwin vs William f Buckley for a great example ] which he claims over and over hes willing to do, i don’t think we would have heard much of this guy, He seems to be a pendulum swing reaction to what was happening on campuses for the last five years and could have been ignored. Hes also trying to making politics “exciting” for both sides when in reality its town meetings in Flint MI were budgets for water works are voted on that really matter. If your politics are super exciting something has gone horribly wrong.
I’m betting most people here haven’t watch his full events just clips. Watch one, you don’t have to agree with it but you should see what it is hes saying if for no other reason then to form a better counter argument. If you remove the outrage hes said truths, lies, half truths etc but nothing that couldn’t be debated.
Next time there will be a protection squad with him of “volunteers” and the inevitable upgrade. I’ve seen several interviews since to that effect, And sadly if you are threatened with death for giving a campus lecture you should have that option, If your only response to these events is too attack well then, good luck.Would any one here be surprised if anita sarkeesian showed up with bodyguards for a planned event?
Her article makes no sense of this, so there weird dudes who fallow him doing video etc were they supposed to be ready to fight off the protesters at a speaking tour? Because the next group will.
the next group wont run and even outnumbered will fight like demons, so what happens when this small group don’t care if you call them a Nazi and are willing to fight 3000 people and have trained for that?
You could just as easily do this tone on a article about the protesters who thought it a good idea to randomly pepper spray a women in the face for wearing make bitcoin great again hats etc do i think the average black bloc person is having a good lived experience? I’ve meet lots of them here in Vancouver and have lost a friend last year over this very topic and the answer is no, Most live in a Alex Jones style world view, heck they hate the same people for opposite reasons. I’m feeling the push from the extremes it in my camp and can see it happening in other camps and i find it terrifying all round.
There s great article on medium about 4Chan and its the same sort of guys, There slowly coming out of there digital enclave and entering the real world adding events like this to the Guy Fawkes mask protests against Scientologist church.
To me a lot of this seems tied to the crisis of males which has two solutions, continue to belittle it and ignore it and see where that goes or we try to untangle the issue with education, compassion and experimenting with different way to over come this.
I’ve written on other threads about carrying union battle flags etc forming colour guards to show whats what, but not to engage in any action in fact to stand with discipline. That’s wayyyyyy scarier then kicking screeching etc blasting any one with pepper spray which legitimizes the counter response.
The Brownshirt analogy is tragic for this reason that yes, they were purged but they were replaced by the men in the black uniforms with the snazzy hair cuts and their abilities to kill are the nightmare of the western world to this day.
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Same as it ever was.
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After reading. . .
It’s a really well written piece, perhaps a few paragraphs too long (perhaps) but I imagine most of those “lost boys” don’t have the will to make it all the way through, a soon as they find themselves being criticized, or even pitied, they will get uncomfortable and start squirming, then either start dismissing everything she says or give up and stop reading.
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I take it that the emphasis on those shirts is YOUR feelings specifically, rather than feelings in general. The wearer’s feelings remain the only completely valid and acceptable basis for policy decisions.
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Lots of angry young people find causes to make themselves feel important or valuable. Right vs left, it doesn’t really matter. In a different place these would be people convinced to become suicide bombers. I think this is what you are talking about when you say, “the crisis of males”? Young men with little sense of purpose, little hope for the future, no jobs, etc., are a very dangerous group of people because they are so unpredictable, they are so easily exploitable.
So there’s nothing really surprising about the protrait that Laurie Penny paints of these young men except that someone who is making millions doing speaking gigs would choose to surround themself almost exclusively with this crowd. It’s like when I walk by an abortion protest (this will vary by geography, obviously) on the street I see one or two adults and the rest are all kids (for context, I’m old enough I think 25-year-olds look like kids). Why is this movement so propped up by exploitation of young people? It’s because you can’t get sensible grown-ups to come along.
By contrast, I’ve seen pictures of anti-Trump rallies (and actual pro-Trump rallies, not internet trolley fanboys) and you see people of various ages there, men and women. At the anti-Trump ones you see a wide spectrum in terms of race too. People whose lives are actually grounded in something (jobs, raiding kids, whatever) come out to these things because they care about the movement.
So I can feel a lot of sympathy for these young men whose lives took this path. I feel sympathy for young people who become terrorists, after all. But it makes their leader come across as a predator.
And as the article says, they didn’t look like they’d fit in at a Trump rally. They are being discarded. Don’t feel too bad, though, they probably mostly have lots of opportunity to move forward from this, whether they continue along the right-wing lunatic fringe or go in a totally different direction.
But as for hiring people who are ready to fight off protesters? I don’t think so. For one thing it increasingly looks like there won’t be a next time. For another, it’s not by accident that these were the followers attracted to this cause. Sure, you can hire some real security, but they are going to be doing is watching your back as you flee down those corridors, not going out and cracking heads.
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You’ve got to realise that there is an element of agents provacateurs instantiating violence at these events. Of course, there is unnecessary violence being perpetrated by both sides, but you may have also noticed that people are making the argument that there should be no protest if there is any chance of it becoming violent.
This is total bullshit, and is surely an evolution of the provocateurs agenda in attempting to silence people who feel the need to protest.
I’m all for minimising violence, it always engenders an arms race of escalation.
BUT
You are wrong about engaging Milo in a civilised debate. It legitimises him and he has no legitimacy. He is a self-avowed troll, who cannot ultimately back up anything he says with any kind of philosophy or politics and has repeatedly berated his opponents for not recognising that he is merely attempting to get a rise out of them and that he considers any response whatsoever to his inflammatory bullshit as a win for him.
Protesting Milo is the only sane response.
Violence should be combated within this context, not used as an excuse to silence dissent.
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It is a good day to dye!
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I don’t think he was paid for those speaking engagements.
butt that’s not the point.
I fallow you right to the end but i have a problem with that. First off there not hired i fucked that up i think with the quotes.I more ment it like there’s a guy wearing armour and weapons carrying a box of wires cause hes “helping” with the set up.
And its not over, this was a speed bump, by the end of next year the protester are going to wish they were at one of these current events compared to whats to come…
Horrific grammatical errors aside, that sounds like an implied threat.
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Well, this was never about an individual, so even if one individual fades away there will just be another to fill the vaccuum, the war isn’t over even if a particular person disappears from it.
But I don’t think someone who is really a bullshit performance artist preying on people for their money is going to surround themselves with hard-as-nails bastards who are looking to stir up physical altercations.
Using violence to try to hold of 3,000 people is monumentally stupid. Sure, probably a gunshot or two sends them all fleeing. On the other hand, if it doesn’t, you are literally going to die. Penny paints a picture of the 18-year-olds on tour as essentially cowards. Their leader is far, far more cowardly.
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how does it legitimizes him?? Did William Buckley world view get legitimized in that debate or the famous Gore Videl one? No. the opposite and we live in a world were when you watch those debates its puzzling how any one thought that was a good position.that is the point of it. and by formalize it you remove the heat from it, if its just a boring two hour talk you can see the cracks.
i watched the corey lewandowski oxford lecture for this very reason, it didn’t legitimize him to me quite the opposite.
You need to show me counter proof.
if Hitler was alive today and wanted to give a speech at NYU he should so we can hear what hes planing. When your enemy speaks you learn more about them then do about you every time.
In fact i argued the opposite that by over riding these events was the catalyst that did that job.
and lastly we can police our own violence or we can let it happen there is no third option.
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Your living in a dream world. they are already getting up to steam and will show up this year in force.
You can do that far easier then you think, sorry. With a little training and a upgrade to street war weapons no problem.
When i was in cadets we had two days on what i years later realized in hind sight was crowd control and with that equipment and training you could have.
Think the zoma police at the end of the communist period in Poland. those guys had a few days training given some armour and sent off and fucked people up.
the next ones wont be cowardly and maybe these guys will double down. to be honest i don’t know how much or little courage then had. What would you do if 3000 people wanted to kill you? retreat seems the practical option at this point.
sorry no its prophecy and a a warning.
I’m not in that camp and obliviously you haven’t read anything i’ve posted
If i had said ot you last year in feb that trump was going to win and laid out the reasons does that automatically make me a trump supporter or some one who trying to find the truth of the matter?
please shot more messengers telling you the real threat is coming
Flame war…Flame war never changes…(cue inkspots)
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Sorry, it’s a bit hard to parse anything you’ve posted; as it’s almost physically painful to read.
Thanks anyway for the head’s up, tho’.
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Exactly, if you are 20(?) people, and a 3,000 person anti-you riot is heading your way, you run the hell away. I don’t care what weapons you have, any other option is extremely dangerous.
That was the point I was trying to make, but you said I was living in a dream world, so I feel like we just aren’t communicating effectively. Enjoy your day.
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If I told you that everything I had previously written to you in my OP was merely an attempt to get you to respond to me as if I was being serious and that now I am laughing at your childish attempts to treat me as a good faith participant in what has become an extended insult at your expense, would you still feel the need to treat me as a good faith participant in any kind of dialogue?
It is impossible to prove someone wrong that has no position. It is impossible to properly engage with someone in anything resembling dialogue if their only intent is to promote themselves whilst undermining good faith dialogue with any participants.
You cannot win against Milo because to walk into a ‘debate’ with him is to walk into his own carefully constructed fantasy world where nothing he says matters and he always wins regardless of what transpires. The more you prove him wrong the more fuel you provide him with to create the appearance of hotly contested attacks on the enemy for his base.
It is theatre, produced and directed by him and nothing you can say to him in that context will interrupt that narrative for even an instant. All you can do is play the part of the antagonist against his hero-of-the-right fantasy.
What I would like to see is an organised protest at one of Milo’s events that peacefully sits and listens to what he has to say, and then when it comes to questions, refuses to acknowledge him and instead just talks about why he is such a trollsome arsehole who doesn’t deserve any direct engagement.
Sit in his space. Take it back. Ignore him otherwise.
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