Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
The United States is a very large place, in terms of geography and population as well as in cultural and regional diversity. The United States is also seriously messed up at present. Given the size and diverse nature of the nation and how comprehensively screwed it is, it was actually quite amazing to see almost everything that is wrong with America concentrated into one place at one time – in and around the student union center on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley on Wednesday night.
There, 150 or so black clad, masked (of course) agitators smashed windows, started fires, threw rocks and Molotov cocktails and even fired “commercial grade fireworks” at police, according to CNN. Why? Because a flamboyantly gay Jew was coming to speak on campus. Of course, said gay Jew is Breitbart Editor Milo Yiannopoulos, and such is the Left’s typical reaction to free speech they disagree with. Making matters worse, the President of the United States deemed this idiotic fray between two camps of butthurt millennials worthy of his attention – so, he threatened to cut off UC Berkley’s federal funding. Via Twitter, no less. Seriously, just kill me now.
For those fortunate enough to not know, Milo Yiannopoulos a popular figure in the alt-right, known for his YouTube videos, articles and most recently his “Dangerous Faggot Tour” where he occasionally gets to actually speak at a college without it catching fire first. The topics upon which he passionately gives his speech-and-slide-show performances range from the inconsequential to the trivial, and facts aren’t always that important.
Much like the Left at which he rails, Milo is obsessed with identity politics – of course, he approaches his identity politics from the opposite direction as the Left, and this why they try to immolate him whenever given a chance.
Having been long vaguely aware of his work and dutifully ignoring it as more noise about the genuinely immaterial – identity politics – I am more than a bit irked at Berkley’s antifa population and the president for forcing my hand here to write about him; which necessitated my actually reading some transcripts of his talks. I’m assuming people pay to attend these things, and had I been dim enough to do so, I might have considered throwing a rock afterward too, but only if I couldn’t get a refund.
Milo, like the movement he represents, believes the best way to react to the Left’s lame and destructive focus on identity politics is to have an even more lame and more destructive focus on identity politics; that the answer to the make-believe “institutional, systemic racism” the Left cries about is to inject real, actual racism into the system.
“Systemic racism and ’white privilege’ are bullshit, unfalsifiable and bonkers pseudoscientific concepts designed to disempower white men in the societies and civilization they’re primarily responsible for creating,” Milo said at a talk in Houston on Sept. 19 of last year, right after he said: “No more immigration, especially from Muslim countries,” as one of his 13 bullet-pointed means of “destroying the alt-right.” Like that one (number four on the list), the other dozen demands amount to society and government giving the alt-right everything it wants, which would theoretically negate the need for its existence and make it go away, somehow. They include dumb ideas like “build the fucking wall!” (number 12), “Criminalize Black Lives Matter” (number 11), “purge the anime nerds,” (number seven) and “An end to pointless and expensive foreign wars, (number ten and the only actual good idea on the list).
His first demand also treaded close to lucidity.
“Decide whether we want identity politics for everyone, or for no-one. There’s an Anti-Defamation League and an SPLC, but where are their equivalents for white males? No more anti-white racism in universities, the media, and politics. If racism is unacceptable, it must be unacceptable for everyone.”
This would be a far more noble sentiment if it came from someone who didn’t think racial pride and nationalism were great ideas. I’ve a sneaking suspicion he’d prefer the creation of an official organization to “protect” the rights of white males rather than to see the ADL and SPLC go away as being needless because we all grew up and quit pretending differences in dermal melanin concentration were any more than just that; and realized that all religions are matters of individual faith and no one needs to die over it.
And, that is of course the problem. Identity politics are a cancer, and like cancer, it’s spreading. The problem is that unlike real cancer, which is an actual physical thing that can be attacked via surgery or other treatments; the cancer that is identity politics is just an idea, it’s intangible, it cannot be physically confronted. In fact, it will only go away if we all just stop talking about it and thinking in such terms.
As such, I’m not sure going around calling one’s self a “dangerous faggot” and making a living off of skewering people for practicing identity politics while suggesting some fairly evil actions be taken based on identity politics is going to actually help make our nation’s obsession with identity politics go away – that’s trying to cure cancer with more cancer.
The insidious thing about his way of thinking and alt-right “philosophy” in general is that a lot of what makes it attractive is that its most ridiculous tenets are often based on a grain of objective truth.
At a different talk in Delaware on October 24 of last year, he shot holes in the entire transgender movement.
“The bathrooms of North Carolina are one of the last meritocracies left in America. Isn’t that a bit sad? A tranny that can pass as a woman can walk into any women’s bathroom in the state. It isn’t like men or women are keeping vigil searching for trannies. Those that can’t make the cut, can’t pass as female – which is the vast majority of transsexuals– aren’t able to hang out with the girls. This is how it used to be everywhere, until the federal government decided to tell all Americans that men can go into the women’s bathroom. More states are now fighting against that law, but North Carolina was the first to stand up and point out that whatever new clothes the emperor has, mutilating his genitals doesn’t make him an empress,” Milo said.
That he’s got most of the material facts wrong aside, his sentiment that transsexuality is most likely a mental disorder and not an actual gender is likely not wrong. The appropriate solution is to urge the medical community to remain objective and divorced from cultural dictates while the rest of us try to be sympathetic, or at least empathetic toward people who identify as transsexual.
“I will close with this advice. Never feel bad for mocking a transgender person. It is our job to point out their absurdity, to not make the problem worse by pretending they are normal. Much like fat-shaming, if our mockery drives them to get the help they need, we may save their life,” Milo said, referring back to statistics he quoted that indicate post-operative transsexuals have a very high suicide rate. So, clearly if they’re properly and thoroughly ridiculed enough pre-op, they might somehow see the error of their ways and seek help. Just like if you make fun of an obese person enough, they always join a gym and change their diet.
The correct approach for the rest of us when it comes to dealing with morbidly obese people or with transsexuals, or gays or practicing Muslims, or anyone else who is different than you, is to remember they’re people, that their individual life choices don’t affect you in any way and are therefore none of your concern, let alone business. Up until the moment they aggress against you, you’ve no right to attack them; and mockery and harassment are just childish and unhelpful, however much fun Milo proclaims them to be.
The worst thing about identity politics is that it is almost misnamed; it should be called “identity group politics.” Once one is part of a group, their individual identity is diminished and they come to be viewed as part of a monolithic whole. Just like the Left encourages snowflakes to see cis-gendered white males as a single cohesive identity bent on destroying everything; Milo and the alt-right encourages us to forget about “Samir, the Muslim guy I work with, who’s a good guy,” and think of “Muslim Culture.”
“I am of course referring to the fact of Muslim culture, which as it stands today is utterly incompatible with western liberal values. It amazes me that so many otherwise-sound libertarians and conservatives fail to grasp this simple fact, or brand it racist. If you want to preserve capitalism, it’s probably unwise to let a million hardline Bolsheviks into your communities. Likewise, if you want to preserve what the Left claims are the best things about western culture — tolerance, women’s rights, gay rights, religious freedom — it’s time to close the door on Muslim immigration. There is no gray area,” Milo said at that same talk in Delaware.
Muslims aren’t a giant, monolithic hive-mind controlled by a terrorist kingpin any more than every Catholic agrees with the current Pope on every matter of faith. I know Muslims who order pepperoni, bacon and Italian sausage on their pizza, and Muslims who won’t take a sip of water during Ramadan until the alarm on their phone, set to the exact moment of sundown, goes off. Point is, within any large group, (3.3 million in the USA, or .9% of the population as of 2010), there’s going to be a lot of variations in the characters of each individual member of the group. Some people are good, some are assholes. This goes for all people.
The problem with the social justice movement and its counterpart the alt-right is that they rationalize asshole behavior. Rationalizing asshole behavior leads to increases in both the frequency and intensity of said behavior, which in turn leads to displays of destructive imbecility like we saw Wednesday night. After causing about $100,000 worth of damage to the campus, police dispersed the assholes, whom then went downtown and smashed the windows out of several banks. No arrests were made.
Milo’s tongue-in-cheek recipe for destroying the alt-right was, of course, all wrong. The only way to destroy the alt-right is to destroy the social justice movement and it at the exact same time. The only way to do that is for everyone in both camps to agree to quit being an asshole and mind their own shit.
So, as I said earlier, just kill me now.
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