Joel Stein has written a profile of Milo Yiannopoulos in Bloomberg Businessweek naming him “a new force in electoral politics.”
“Milo is the person who propelled the alt-right movement into the mainstream,” says Heidi Beirich, who directs the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups and describes the term “alt-right” as “a conscious rebranding by white nationalists that doesn’t automatically repel the mainstream.” Beirich says she’s not even sure if Yiannopoulos believes in the alt-right’s tenets or just found a juvenile way to mix internet culture and extreme ideology to get attention. “It’s like he’s joking: ‘Ha ha, let me popularize the worst ideas that ever existed,’ ” she says. “That’s new, and that’s scary.”
…
In this Kafkaesque troll war for America’s soul, Yiannopoulos believes that all offense is performed rather than truly felt. “I have never been offended. I don’t know what it means. It’s not that I disagree with it. I don’t understand it. I’ve never had that feeling,” he says. “I don’t let feelings control my life. I’m more disciplined than other people. I have a dark, ADD, Asp-y [Asperger’s syndrome] brain. I’m totally autistic or sociopathic. I guess I’m both.”
…
“I think my legacy might be longer than Trump’s,” he says. “I’m attacking the disease, not the symptoms. Also, he doesn’t read. But I still love him. And he’s still my daddy. Nobody’s perfect.”
…
For his shopping trip to Gieves & Hawkes, Yiannopoulos calls for an Uber. The driver is a man, possibly because Uber’s algorithm has learned that Yiannopoulos rejects female drivers. Women, he says, have been scientifically proven to be worse at spatial relations, as have Asians. “It’s the only thing Saudia Arabia gets right,” he says about the country’s ban on female drivers.
…
Yiannopoulos puts on a whole show to provoke students. He says his tour will cost $1 million, only some of which is going to his wardrobe. While on the road, he’s giving a women-in-tech talk at Stanford about female biological inferiority in science. He’s going to Yale shortly before Halloween, where, dressed in traditional Native American garb, he’ll address last year’s campus protests about mocking other cultures via culturally insensitive costumes. “I’m a perpetual 14-year-old,” he says. “Maybe not 14. I’m 7. It’s my USP [unique selling point].”
…
Halfway through her speech about the conspiracy-pandering and racism of Trump and the alt-right, Clinton reads four Breitbart headlines. Two of them are from Yiannopoulos articles.
“Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy”
“Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?”
He stands up, claps, and spins around. Yiannopoulos has hit the troll jackpot: He wrote outrageous headlines trying to provoke liberals, and the world’s top liberal read them with head-shaking seriousness, falling for the prank. He directs Bokhari, sitting 5 feet away, to quickly write an article for Breitbart about this. They give it the headline “Milo to Hillary: You Did This.” As crazy as that sounds, once you understand troll logic, it’s pretty much true.
…
Although he works for a news network, Yiannopoulos considers himself to be a pop star. “Milo is much closer to Jon Stewart,” says Alexander Marlow, the 30-year-old editor-in-chief of Breitbart. “He uses entertainment to put out the news. Only he’s much more fabulous and better-looking.”
Read the rest of the story at Bloomberg.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.