The most amusing part of having Milo Yiannopoulos visiting Australia for me hasn’t been the shows themselves, the Communists rioting outside, or the hysterical screeching from pearl clutching Greens politicians behaving like elderly Victorian era matrons who have just seen a mouse.
The funnest part has been watching certain smug lefty journalists’ heads explode.
When the outrageous Brit stepped off the plane in his exquisitely tailored shoes, the people who normally have the power to control the narrative here in sleepy old Australia realised just how out of their league they were, and it’s fair to say this fact displeased them.
Some of them seem to have gone quite unhinged.
While there is a veritable cornucopia to choose from, here are four of the best:
Chris Zappone
It seems unfair to pick on Chris; we have after all talked about him here at XYZ before. He was the fellow who wrote an entire article declaring Cultural Marxism to be a fantasy and then used as his only source to back up this claim quotes from an actual Marxist.
Chris is on a roll however. You see, the same sharp mind who managed to declare Marxism non-existent while talking to a Marxist has also discovered that people who declare themselves in favour of free speech are really trying to destroy democracy.
Yes, seriously.
According to Chris, for democracy to survive, certain ideas (like an end to Islamic immigration) must be banned as they are so divisive that they undermine democracy itself. Clearly a good democracy in Chris’ mind is one where no-one is so “divisive” as to disagree with Chris.
To support this position he quotes American philosopher Sidney Hook, a man who began his political life as a Communist but eventually turned against his old Comrades.
Hook stated that some ideas such as Communism are explicitly beyond the realms of free speech because the entire purpose of such ideas is to overthrow the system that makes free speech possible.
Now while many would disagree, that’s certainly an argument that can be made. But it’s strange that Chris would make it against Milo [a fairly middle of the road, John Howard tier Classical Liberal], and not the protesters trying to attack him, gang bash his supporters, shut down his venues and throw rocks and streets signs at police.
Those protesters as we at XYZ pointed out the other day, are almost exclusively the very Communists Hook was denouncing in the first place. Yet Chris seems to be trying to use Hook’s arguments to support them.
Poor Mr Zappone may need a lie down.
Jeff Sparrow
Jeff is also a little upset at Milo.
For those who don’t know of him Mr Sparrow is a balding, taxpayer-funded academic leech whose only private sector income seems to be a very occasional Guardian Australia opinion column. As reported here at XYZ, in his last two such columns Jeff has fulminated against the evil that is Milo Yiannopoulos.
Milo is in Jeff’s words an “ersatz rebel” peddling a consumer product of “dystopia” who’s not a “brave iconoclast” at all but rather just a “corporate brand” who receives far too easy a ride by the Australian media outlets like Fairfax, who should instead take their cue from more respectable critics like Buzzfeed [haha].
The media in fact gives Milo such a big platform [despite the fact that “the guy doesn’t have anything to say”] that “ordinary Australians…have to take to the streets to make themselves heard”.
These “Ordinary Australians” Jeff is referring to are the Communists of the Socialist Alternative who have been attempting to shut down Milo speeches in every city in the country through violence, harassment and intimidation. Why would Mr Sparrow have such a positive view of such people?
Well in 1995 he did help found the Socialist Alternative, the biggest, most violent and most radical political extremist group in Australia today. Jeff has also never disavowed their views, which include using violence against political opponents and police in order to further their aim of a Marxist totalitarian state.
But I don’t think his creations making fools of themselves in Melbourne’s streets is what peeves Mr Sparrow. I think it’s jealousy.
You see, many moons ago when Jeff had long and luxurious hair in the early nineties, it was he that was the iconoclastic rebel, at least in his own eyes. He went to protests, founded violent Communist groups and stood up to the evil establishment. Of course in his case this rebellion was then rewarded by that same establishment with taxpayer-funded academic posts and editorial positions on taxpayer-funded literary magazines, but Jeff still saw himself as a rebel.
When he writes about Milo you can almost hear the plaintive cry in his voice squeaking “He’s not the rebel! I am!”
Sure you are Jeff, sure you are.
Michael Brull
Michael Brull works for New Matilda. Yes, New Matilda writers do count as journalists (sort of).
If you thought Michael had gone as crazy as he could when he openly endorsed a terrorist group to attack Milo and his supporters and campaigned to give that same group more favourable media coverage, you’d be mistaken.
Much like Jeff Sparrow, Mr Brull seems outraged by the idea that anyone could see Milo as a rebel. After all he’s right wing, and right wingers are always the establishment.
In his article Michael renews his complaint that visiting left wing activists never get invited on any nice shows or get given any publicity (aside of course for Lateline, QnA, The Drum, Compass, the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Sydney Writers Festival, Melbourne Writers Festival, speeches at prestigious universities, the Project and anywhere else on the ABC or SBS they can get squeezed in, either in radio, TV or online format).
Michael never seems to realise that the reason people who agree with him (even up to and including his support of leftist terrorist groups) don’t make as much of a splash as Milo, is because everyone in the media establishment already agrees with them.
There is no exciting ratings-grabbing clash like the one you saw on Studio 10 between Milo and Jessica Rowe, because to have a clash someone actually has to disagree with someone else. Inviting a leftist onto a leftist program to talk leftishly about leftism is what happens every day on Australian TV, so having one of the leftists be from Islington rather than Brunswick isn’t exactly news.
To prove his point about Milo just being a tool of the mythical racist, sexist, homophobic establishment, Michael regurgitates about half an undergraduate sociology course. Seriously, he spends almost two-thousand words bitching about Milo and trying to explain why critical theory means that evil right wing racist sexist white males are always in charge, even when they clearly aren’t.
The same theme repeats. “Milo isn’t a rebel; Milo can’t be a rebel, because I’m a rebel”.
Humanities faculties in this country have a lot to answer for; they’re the ones primarily responsible for people like Michael wandering around dazed and confused, muttering to themselves about privilege when everything he was ever taught to believe turns out to be bullshit.
Jenny Noyes
Jenny doesn’t like Milo.
According to her article she even tried to avoid writing about him. But somehow her hands took on a life of their own, pulled her across the room and forced her to turn on her computer and type out a thousand words calling him a Nazi sympathiser, misogynist, fake news generator and [hilariously] an “inciter of violence”.
I guess that means a woman walking down the street in a short skirt is just an “Inciter of rape” to old Jenny.
Jenny, like many on the left seemed particularly miffed that in news reports Milo:
“Was described in flattering terms like “controversial alt-right commentator” and “provocateur” while those who tried to protest his appearances were damned as violent troublemakers.”
So according to Ms Noyes the media didn’t call Milo an evil-Nazi-paedophile enough, but should have used nicer language to describe the violent Communist extremists attacking the police who were stopping them from attempting to gang bash innocent people on the street.
This lady may need to calm down; hopefully there is space on the couch next to Mr Zappone.
Jenny is very, very, very upset that people are using the argument of freedom of speech to say things she doesn’t like:
“It’s become extraordinarily difficult to oppose people on the far-right who have successfully convinced the masses that freedom of (their) speech is an appropriate excuse for spreading the most vile hatred.”
I understand, Jenny; it is so frustrating when people are allowed to disagree with you.
But Ms Noyes knows who to blame for the surfeit of free speech and the lack of sufficiently biased coverage against the blonde British beast in human form that is the evil Yiannopoulos:
“The individuals and organisations in Australian politics and the media who have not only tolerated him but supported him and the spread of his evil views, refused to condemn his evil views, and invited him in to defecate on the floor of Parliament House with his evil views, should not be able to do that free of consequences.”
What consequences does she have in mind? Is there a set consequence for the defecation of evil? Presumably Jenny means the sort of consequences that leave people who “abuse” free speech by disagreeing with her bleeding on the ground after being stomped on by her “peaceful” protester friends.
“The people setting the agenda, who have a vested interest in having him heard by as many people as possible, who are using him as a mouthpiece to spread ideas that they’re unwilling – for now – to openly admit harbouring themselves. The people who are pleased to see vulnerable minority groups provoked into anger or violence, so they can be demonised further by the mainstream”.
Ah I see, the young African lads in Melbourne throwing street signs at the police were all tools of a secret evil right wing conspiracy to make vibrant and diverse “vulnerable” minority groups look bad. Of course! How could we have been so blind?
Jenny, if your hands are acting independently of your body to make you write articles that sound as though you’re angrily plotting the deaths of anyone who disagrees with you, while alleging a violent shadowy conspiracy of mind control, I think it may be time to see a doctor of some sort. Don’t use any heavy machinery. Please.
So… these people are nuts right?
When you read these articles and many others from our fabulous fourth estate on similar themes, the three emotions that stand out amongst their words are fear, anger and confusion. And the last is the strongest.
These people are normally in charge of the narrative, they are a part of the class which is normally in charge of how people are allowed to view certain issues and how they arnot. They justify this control with an ideology pumped into them from their earliest university days that explains that they are rebels fighting a shadowy oppressive empire.
To fight this empire they can break any rule, breach any code, tell any lie and crush those weaker than themselves who dare to disagree. Because the weak aren’t truly weak you see, it’s all a trick.
In their world the people who have to fear going to a political meeting because of mobs of violent thugs aren’t the victims, they’re the secret oppressive rulers of everything. So any means to shut them up, demoralise them and keep them quiet are justified.
And when any facts enter their universe that disturb this peculiar cosmology, it frightens them. When they can no longer control what opinions are acceptable it makes some of them question their certainties deep down.
“Am I really a rebel?”
“What if we’re the bad guys?”
Nobody likes it when you poke holes in their reality. So they get angry. Oh boy do they get angry.
It’s important for people on the right to read left wing journalists like these. It’s important to see how divorced from reality they are. It helps those of us on the sane side of politics to understand what we’re up against.
Because these people aren’t going to stop. No matter how much control they have it only ever justifies the next witch hunt, the next purge, the next gulag. The left never stops until it has destroyed everything, including itself.
But for now as Milo finishes up his tour, take a few minutes to scan the opinion sections of the establishment press, rejoice in the confused squealing of the piglets who thought they were lions, and be thankful we got this chance to laugh at them.
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Photo by LeWeb14