Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/07/22/laurie-penny-on-hanging-out-wi.html
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I haven’t read the article yet, but just for that pun…
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Wilders was there as a guest of the Tennessee Republican Party. The racism runs deep here.
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Milo is like someone who gets dragged from McDonalds PlayLand for shitting on slide, but requests a job application
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The best I could muster was to skim the article because I don’t understand Milo and his hangers-on, and I like to keep my Fridays as pissed-off free as possible.
What I can’t resolve: Is he awful simply because he’s an awful person…and an embarrassment to the gay community (or, uh, the human race)? Or is he awful because he’s an opportunist / narcissist, and this is the only schtick (i.e., his only “talent”) that keeps him “famous” and affords him attention?
In either case: World, please ignore him, and he’ll eventually dry up and blow away.
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From what’s stated in the article, I’d say it’s some of column A and a lot of column B.
I don’t feel like looking up the speech he gave any time soon, but it seems he’s really playing this twitter ban as a major win 'cause it means a whole lot more attention for him.
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The last paragraph of the article is really something:
What’s happening to this country has happened before, in other nations, in other anxious, violent times when all the old certainties peeled away and maniacs took the wheel. It’s what happens when weaponised insincerity is applied to structured ignorance. Donald Trump is the Gordon Gekko of the attention economy, but even he is no longer in control. This culture war is being run in bad faith by bad actors who are running way off-script, and it’s barely begun, and there are going to be a lot of refugees.
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For those who won’t read the article, this is her portrait of him:
Wilders is the most obviously disturbed member of the neo-right suicide squad in attendance. He cannot finish a sentence. His voice drifts, and he trails away, already out of the room. There is a dustbin fire behind the blank eyes of his human suit.
Wilders is a less polished, wholly charmless rendition of the neo-right demagogue character creation sheet that gave us Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. These people do not have personalities, they have haircuts. Ugly ones. And we have fallen through the looking glass in which they see themselves reflected as small gods.
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This woman’s pretty amazing.
And about that authenticity
The article suggests he’s mostly a narcissist and opportunist, who gives zero shits about the damage he causes because of the things he says, which also makes him an awful person. This is in contrast to the “true believers” present, who mostly just come across as sad.
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The latter implies the former, imo. Where’s the adorable little girl suggesting we can have both?
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I’m not the only person who thought of The Corinthian at the “Cereal Convention” am I?
I mean… even right down to the hair and the tank top and the sunglasses…
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Superb article, chilling overview.
There is a paragraph in there that makes me worried for the result in november…
I have never understood this game. That’s why I’ve always refused to debate Milo in public. Not because I’m frightened I’ll lose, but because I know I’ll lose, because I care and he doesn’t—and that means he’s already won. Help and forgive me, but I actually believe human beings can be better than this.
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Slightly OT question for Team Mutant (cuz I’ve yet to see a source I trust mention this) but did Leslie make “racist” tweets of her own or not? (Barring the whole “she can’t be racist” angle)??
I was just about to post that same quote. There’s something profoundly disturbing about that which makes me feel like it applies to a much wider range of circumstances.
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Yes. The comparisons to Hunter S. Thompson are appropriate, except she’s more grounded in reality.
Another quote about Milo:
“It doesn’t matter that somewhere in the rhinestone-rimmed hamster wheel of his mind is a conscience. It doesn’t matter because the harm he does is real.”
I thought immediately of Kurt Vonnegut:
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
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CThis article is all over my feeds! I came home last night and read it via Audrey Watters on Twitter and this morning I see Panti linking, various people on my Twitter, and here.
It’s a fantastic piece of writing, a depressing slice of reality.
From Panti’s Arsebook “As a friend of mine described him, “he’s just a typical Uncle Tom faggot prancing for heterosexual approval on the edge of a precipice of mental instability and despair”, which made me lol.
And BTW, he’s a posh-accenteded English boy, not American, so no doubt he seems super gay and exotic to his adoring and awful US fans.”
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Like the cutters who say they cut themselves so they feel something; these people do these things because they are compelled to, because they need the rush that they get either from saying the thing or from having people pay attention to them.
The content isn’t important, it can be whatever it needs to be in order to fuel the presentation. They have sacrificed their morals and ethics on the altar of their unmet emotional needs.
Perhaps we could all do well to examine our own souls in this regard. Did I post this because I wanted to share something I thought the rest of you might have missed, because I thought there would be a chance of a positive outcome from providing my own point of view, or was I really just whoring for likes because my mother never liked me best? Do I post to demonstrate some kind of superiority of thought, a “winning” argument to bolster my sagging ego, or do I want to trade information with others in the hope of mutual enlightenment?
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Are you talking about the “screencap” .jpgs that milo et al retweeted that are were supposedly from her?
Cuz I’m pretty sure they have access to photoshop like the rest of us… and I’m always suspect when its a .jpg of a tweet instead of actually the tweet…
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@Medievalist: Well, I hope you want to trade information with others in hopes of mutual enlightenment. I find it hard to see how posting with an avatar, instead of as one’s IRL self, can bolster a person’s sagging ego, but maybe that’s just IRL me.
I mostly agree, but in the political arena, I think it’s much more true of people like this who position themselves on the right. By which I mean, in the U.S. at least, it’s hard for me to think of soul-less blowhards who go all out like this on the left. I mean, I’ve heard Chomsky accused of being a blithering egomaniac, but only from people who don’t listen to what he’s actually saying, and can thus his lifelong commitment (it’s not an act). I suppose money-lust is a factor here. There’s a LOT more money to be had in selling your soul for right-wing causes.
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I’ve seen those on other sites & via Google, but I’ve also seen ppl talking about it outside of that context.
The “truth of things” is even harder to find on the Internet at times.
…but no, my inquiry did not originate from that context but that does add to “untrustworthy sources” OT.
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