Milo Yiannopolous has written a book. And the fix is in.
Former Breitbart tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos is scheduled to publish his book Dangerous next Tuesday, on Independence Day. Ahead of that release Gizmodo has obtained a copy of the finished book, as well as the January draft previously leaked to Buzzfeed. Maybe “the most controversial book of the decade” was intended as a career comeback, but it reads like an epitaph.
Ugly as his beliefs may be, it’s inarguable that Milo’s built his career by knowing how to captivate an audience. By contrast, Dangerous is dreadfully dull. Beneath the regurgitated propaganda arguing against a fair, multicultural, egalitarian society is a portrait of an e-celebrity without an audience, a blogger without a publisher, and, above all, an attention-seeking troll whose playbook of goads no longer elicits any emotion whatsoever. To the detriment of the book, self-reflection is utterly absent.
Same old Milo, practicing a brand of free speech that’s a license to offend and demean. #Sad, even if one agrees that today’s babyfied, “safe space” campuses are just as loony and dangerous on the opposite extreme.
If there’s a bright spot here, it’s Yiannopoulos’ adoration for fellow Internet troll (his words) Trump. The English expat is hilarious on the subject of the American president he worships and calls “Daddy.”
Trump, Yiannopoulos writes, is a “fabulously camp cultural figure. He’s the drag queen president! It’s easy to see why so may gays I know secretly adore him. All that pizzazz and bluster!”
Now, 288 pages on that amusing topic might even land him a legit publisher and a callback from Bill Maher. He could title it: My Big ‘Daddy’ Issues.
Well, I’m reading it, and it is not boring. Yes, the camp jokes are tedious. Yes, he makes some mistakes. The Alt Right is not Richard Spenser, he does not know about Social Matter and Thermidor. Or the older, Christian reactionaries… he thinks Vox Day is a conservative SF firebrand when in fact that Arian wrote the 16 points.
He underestimates the health consequences of being overweight, and (as he is young) the struggle the middle aged have in getting the weight off. He shows much compassion for blacks in America: having loved and lost with them many times. And he is a bit of a wuss, not understanding that the times of conversation will end as night falls.
But he is standing for the light, in all is degenerate glory. And the Amazon reviewers are positive.
Looks like the first printing sold out.
As Edward R Murrow’s “See it Now” was to McCarthyism, so is Milo’s book “Dangerous” to the modern left; hence the title.
I found the summary of how our culture got to its present state (via Gramsci, The Frankfurt School, and the evolution of the working class Democratic Party) in Chapter One the best I’ve read anywhere, and consistent with other, far more bulkier writings.
While there were a few points I did not agree with (Milo argues against abortion and contraception), those arguments were still well made. I could not really get into Chapter Seven (Why Establishment Gays Hate Me), and I had heard of but had trouble following the events of Chapter 10 (Why Gamers Don’t Hate Me). I found a few of his rationalizations toward the end of the book (like he’s doing it all to push limits) just that – rationalizations.
Other than that, the book was incredibly honest (especially when Milo describes how one realistically promotes themselves in modern politics), and Milo is very up front describing his ego and what drives him.
Age and sexual preference-wise, Milo and Trump are two different people. Yet if you voted for Trump – then this book is for you.
And if you respect the mainstream media and/or hold Trump in contempt, then chances are you won’t like this book either.
The days when a reviewer could call a pamphlet — for this, like all political books, is a pamphlet — bad and it would kill a book is over. Most books are sold electronically: bibliophiles run out of shelf space quickly and your kobo (bigger and better than a kindle) allows you to keep on reading.
By the time the reviews are out, the books are sold.
The critics are no longer the gatekeepers. Their reviews are considered noise. Another pamphlet for free speech is a good thing, and its success is to be welcomed.
But Milo, you need to keep the sins you confess out of your books, and accept your celibate calling. Join the dark forces of righteousness. We have salvation and cookies.