Boys Will Be Boys

by Clementine Ford

  The shabby crowd was there to see Milo Yiannopoulos, a man who has come to symbolise in many ways the toxic nature of online discourse. Hailed as a hero by his followers and derided as a bigoted fool by his critics, Yiannopoulos represents the chasm that exists between actual dialogue and something far more chaotic and lawless. He has built a career on saying things that are not only deliberately ‘shocking’ (for example, he ‘jokes’ that lesbians aren’t real) but also purposefully cruel and offensive (like his repeated claim that transgenderism is a mental disorder). Although he positions himself as a thinker and influencer, he really acts as little more than a microphone for the repulsive views of his fans, most of whom appear to be young white men who fancy themselves somehow oppressed by the successes of the feminist movement.

  Adam Morgan, the editor-in-chief of the Chicago Review of Books, once described him as ‘a clickbait grifter who has made a name for himself spewing hate speech’. It’s an apt summary, but it’s not the whole story. Yes, he spews hatred in exchange for fame and money, but he also has the relative advantage of being able to do that from a place of extreme nihilism. He appeals to his target demographic not just because they’re angry and entitled, but because they want to be excused from having to prosecute their arguments. This is what makes him and what he represents so dangerous. It isn’t his bigotry, although that mustn’t be downplayed. It’s the way he revels in laziness and in turn gives permission to his followers to revel in their own. It’s in how he uses words like ‘snowflake’ and ‘triggered’ to deride the opposition while sending the message to his fans that it’s actually them who deserve special consideration. It’s in how his own intersection of identity (he is a gay man married to a black man and he claims without real evidence to have Jewish heritage, though he grew up a practising Catholic) is used as the ultimate identity politics card by people who otherwise spit on the invocation of identity as any kind of defence. He can’t be homophobic! He’s gay! He can’t be racist! He’s married to a black man! He can’t be a Nazi apologist! He’s Jewish!

  Anyone who challenges or disagrees with him can be dismissed as one or more of the following: libtard, leftard, white knight, cuck, snowflake, feminazi, fake news. Yiannopoulos didn’t invent these terms, but he uses them with such bombast and swagger that he emboldens his followers to do the same. Cuck! they yell at the men who dare to challenge their sexist views. Feminazi! they screech at the woman whose Facebook page they’ve found so they can try to mock her into silence. So successful has Yiannopoulos been at mobilising childish young boys and men (and some girls and women) to behave this way that he’s basically ceased to be a real person and has instead become a cheap cardboard cut-out sent out as part of the sad promotional kit of a low-budget movie. If his fans could buy an action figure, they probably would.

  My photo appeared in Yiannopoulos’s set on the opening night of a five-city Australian tour for this self-described ‘internet supervillain’. I’m sure the main reason he singled me out for scorn was because I’m a relatively well-known feminist in the places he was visiting and, seeing as his audience undoubtedly loathes all us scary man-haters, he knew it would play well. It’s a bit like a bad comedian changing the locations and landmarks of all their stories because they think it will resonate more with the punters. But the other reason Yiannopoulos singled me out that night (and the ones following) was because I had refused his demands for a ‘debate’ in the lead up to his tour, correctly describing him online as someone who has been captured on video cavorting with neo-Nazis and white supremacists while also being revealed only a few months earlier to have made comments that appeared to support sexual relationships between adult men and adolescent boys. I questioned why numerous (male) journalists had reached out to me on his behalf, wanting to set up this absurd meeting. Why were they acting as publicists for a man with hateful views on some of the world’s most marginalised people, and why were they downplaying these views as merely ‘controversial’? Why were the same newspapers that dredged up nonsense to write defamatory and, in some cases, wholly made-up articles about me and my ‘shocking’ behaviour describing this Islamophobic misogynist and Nazi supporter as a ‘provocateur’? Why were prominent talking heads and one-time prime ministerial candidates hosting this garbage fire on his nationwide tour, practically licking his butthole all around the country in their rush to welcome him to our shores?

  Free speech, apparently: the most important of all the speeches. When women refuse to let men force their free speech on us, what we’re doing is silencing them. It’s because we’re afraid. It’s because we know we’ll be destroyed. So instead, we just get to be punished for denying them.

  Debate me, bitch! Or get ready to take your medicine.

  If you haven’t heard of Milo Yiannopoulos until now, congratulations—you’ve so far managed to avoid being infected by any of the steaming pile of pig shit that is his entire personality and existence on this earth. Please accept my sincerest apologies, because I’m about to ruin that for you right now.

  Yiannopoulos has been sliming around the media landscape for at least a decade. For a time, he worked as the tech editor at the right-wing jizz factory known as Breitbart News. There, he wrote articles with such delightful headlines as TRANNIES ARE GAY (in which he argues against transgender people being able to access public bathrooms that accord with their gender), THE LEFT’S BLOODY WAR ON WOMEN: SENDING CHICKS INTO COMBAT BETRAYS MEN, WOMEN AND CIVILIZATION (which sounds fairly hysterical to me, but okay) and NO, JC PENNEY, FAT PEOPLE SHOULD ABSOLUTELY HATE THEMSELVES (in which he confirms, not for the first time, that he’s a massive cunt). He popularised the phrase ‘feminism is cancer’, a deeply average joke that is rivalled in tragic weeniness only by the numerous man-babies who throw it around as if it’s the height of sophisticated comedy. We get it, guys—women scare you.

  Make no mistake, although Yiannopoulos exploits the bigoted views of his fan base to further his fame and weirdly superficial popularity, there’s only one thing the two-time university dropout actually believes in—himself. He courts the slavish devotion of his fan base not by creating anything of substance to earn their political allegiance, but by exploiting their own hate and insecurity, and feeding it back to them in colourful sound bites that give them unprecedented freedom to say whatever they like and have it affirmed. Yiannopoulos’s fans (mostly young men under twenty-three and David Leyonhjelm) praise his intelligence and bravery, but what they really mean is: This man makes me feel intelligent and brave. Who doesn’t want to be given licence to not only say what they like, but to have every thought that swirls around in their brain validated? You might hear fans say of Yiannopoulos that ‘he really makes you think’, but what they actually mean is, ‘he gives me permission not to have to think too deeply at all’. Or, as Vox writer Aja Romano put it in 2016, ‘[Yiannopoulos] has essentially played commander to a veritable army of mostly male extremists hailing from Reddit, 4chan, and Twitter.’

  If it didn’t have such dangerous implications for people’s safety, it would be easy to dismiss his existence as little more than a juvenile fandom. But over the years, Yiannopoulos has targeted women, Muslims, people of colour, trans and gender-diverse communities, gay people and fat people among countless others, directing toxic pile-ons their way in a desperate attempt to mask the deep insecurity he so clearly feels about his own place in the world by threatening the stability others have found in theirs.

  He began his rise to what I guess you could call international prominence and/or infamy proper when he became one of only a few people in the short history of Twitter to be permanently banned from the platform after inciting a racist mob to attack the actress Leslie Jones, who had recently starred in the 2016 reboot of Ghostbusters (which, as we saw in chapter three, made a whole bunch of whiny man-babies lose their shit). Much like the way he piggybacked on the fetid stench of the GamerGate movement (after initially mocking it, he quickly switched his allegiance once he realised that morals can be exchange
d for treasure in the land of fragile masculinity), the man who would later laugh off accusations of racism because of his marriage to a black man stoked the bigotry and supreme sensitivity of his followers by claiming Ghostbusters was doing so poorly that Jones had been deployed to ‘play the victim’ on Twitter; that she was ‘barely literate’; and, as he wrote on more than one occasion, that she was a ‘black dude’. Because disparaging a woman’s appearance is how you show people you’re not only smart but also really funny.

  What stoked Yiannopoulos’s braying mockery? It was Jones having the audacity to share some of the abuse she’d received after appearing in a movie millions of men loudly pledged they would never watch. This abuse included tweets likening her to a gorilla, images of men’s naked bodies, and an image of her face onto which someone had ejaculated.

  This is classic Yiannopoulos: he’ll accuse a woman of colour of ‘playing the victim’ when she shares the dismay and deep hurt she feels after being subjected to cruel and vicious racism, misogynoir and straight-up whiny baby-boy tantrums simply because she worked on a movie by which they felt personally victimised, but he’ll cry foul when he’s forced to suffer consequences for it. When Yiannopoulos had the blue tick on his Twitter account officially removed at the start of 2016 (which basically just means he became ‘unverified’ in the user system of the Twitterverse), both he and his army of mouth-breathing twonks threw a huge tantrum about it. One outraged soul tried to start a petition (and listen, I have to say that for a group of people so deeply committed to online anarchy and libertarianism, they are very fond of gathering signatures to protest all the pointless shit that makes them mad), demanding then president Barack Obama ‘issue a statement demanding the restoration of Milo Yiannopoulos’s Twitter verification badge’. This petition was retweeted by Yiannopoulos, alongside a flurry of tweets making light of the death of David Bowie. When his account was suspended a few months prior to the bullying of Jones and then cancelled in response to it, the hashtag #FreeMilo trended worldwide.

  So it ever was and so it ever shall be—misogynists, racists and homophobes want to be empowered to say whatever they like without vilification or accusation, both of which will result in them crying about being bullied or hard done by. After the permanent suspension of his account, Yiannopoulos told CNBC, ‘There’s certainly no suggestion whatsoever that I was involved in any kind of racist or sexist harassment of Leslie Jones.’ Incorrect. ‘What I did was dislike her movie, and write a very critical review that she didn’t like.’ Also incorrect. ‘After that, I teased her a little on Twitter.’ Incorrect. ‘If a journalist can’t tease a Hollywood blockbuster actress, I don’t know what this platform is about.’

  He reiterated this faux astonishment on Breitbart, the ultra-conservative site for which he was then working as the tech editor. ‘Honestly, this is why I say feminism is cancer. She used to be funny but being involved in a social dumpster fire like Ghostbusters has reduced her to the status of just another frothing loon on Twitter.’

  On ABC News Nightline, he tried to joke, ‘Trolling is very important. I like to think of myself as a virtuous troll, you know? I’m doing God’s work.’

  I’m loathe to spend this much time discussing an adult man who behaves like an overgrown child, but the fact is that he legitimises hatred and ignorance to an increasing number of young men who are unable or unwilling to critically examine the snake oil he’s selling them. This is what it looks like when decidedly non-oppressed people are empowered to ‘fight back’ against a system they falsely believe is in the process of disempowering and emasculating them—they become internet ‘edgelords’ who consider it a personal success to force people into a meltdown while claiming they had nothing to do with it, that it’s actually the inherent weakness of their victim that’s to blame. Everyone gets bullied online, and they should grow up and get over it. If they can’t handle the heat, they should get out of the kitchen (but also get back into it and make me a damn sandwich).

  You might be wondering why, if all this is happening primarily in the online space, the women affected don’t just get off the internet. Why not just ignore men like Yiannopoulos and all those he encourages to behave like petulant, bullying children?

  It’s a common question, one that’s asked by journalists, members of the public and the police officers who are called on to take down reports of online harassment and abuse filed on occasion by the women subjected to it. I mean, no one’s forcing you to turn your computer on. If you choose to wade into these scenarios, aren’t you sort of partly to blame?

  Yeah, nah. The internet has been accessible to the general public for more than twenty years and has been considered an essential tool for communication, business and employment for at least the last ten. To suggest that the people most likely to be victimised by online misogynists and bullies should just ‘remove themselves’ isn’t only unfair and unreasonable, it’s also cavalierly dismissive of the realities of the world today.

  The fact is, Milo Yiannopoulos is not so much a disease as he is a symptom. A pus-ridden boil of a symptom, yes, but a symptom all the same. As much as he might fancy himself indispensable to the shitlord movement, in reality almost anyone could perform the role he’s created for himself were they to share a similar level of narcissism, moral bankruptcy and love of making mischief. It isn’t the demon they are drawn to—it’s the chaos the demon unleashes.

  In the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, player characters, non-player characters and creatures are all categorised according to a cross-reference of ethical and moral perspectives that’s referred to as ‘alignment’. The alignment is decided by players choosing what their character’s position would be on ‘law versus chaos’ (ethical) and whether they act for good or evil (moral). There are nine possible alignments: lawful good, neutral good, chaotic good, lawful neutral, true neutral, chaotic neutral, lawful evil, neutral evil and chaotic evil.

  The alignment chart itself has become a popular internet meme, with everything from Star Wars to Harry Potter and even US legislators being categorised according to where they fit in the grid. For example, Han Solo is considered to be ‘chaotic neutral’; his ethical framework embodies chaos (he rejects authority, shuns the law and has no respect for convention) and his moral framework is guided by neither good nor evil, but preservation of the self. Harry Potter is neutral good (as is Luke Skywalker) because he holds no unwavering respect for the rules but he acts in the service of good. Hermione Granger, on the other hand, is lawful good, because she is both morally and ethically drawn to goodness that accords with the observation of protocol. Dolores Umbridge is lawful evil because she operates maliciously within the authoritarian framework of the wizarding world to inflict sadistic harm on others, including children. She’s more terrifying than Voldemort, in my opinion.

  Yiannopoulos is what I would characterise as chaotic evil. In the D&D universe, this is known as the Destroyer, an entity that thrives on blood lust, greed and self-interest. Holland Farkas at Geek & Sundry said of the Destroyer, ‘If you find yourself identifying with chaotic evil, not to judge or anything, but . . . I’m scared. But hey, some men just want to watch the world burn.’ Well, Yiannopoulos did name his twitter account @Nero after all. How’s that for hubris?

  The Joker is considered to be chaotic evil on the alignment charts, which might appeal to Yiannopoulos’s hyper-inflated sense of self. But, then, so is Joffrey Baratheon, the petulant, sadistic pissbaby who ruled Westeros until he was poisoned at his own wedding. Chaotic evil might sound appealing to people who lack the maturity to aspire to anything better, but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. The easydamus.com website (where you can take an extremely comprehensive test to tell you what your character type is) describes the typical chaotic evil character as doing ‘whatever his greed, hatred and lust for destruction drive him to do. He is hot-tempered, vicious, arbitrarily violent, and unpredictable. If he is simply out for whatever he can get, he is ruthless and brutal. If he is comm
itted to the spread of evil and chaos, he is even worse.’

  This sounds a lot like Yiannopoulos, but don’t worry too much. Chaotic evil is undone by the ultimate ineffectiveness of its character types: ‘Thankfully, his plans are haphazard, and any groups he joins or forms are poorly organised.

  ‘Typically, chaotic evil people can be made to work together only by force, and their leader lasts only as long as he can thwart attempts to topple or assassinate him.’

  Sure, it’s a bit of silliness to place a human with demonstrably awful politics and terrifying sway over uncritical minds in a chart for a fantasy role-playing game, but truth can be found in the strangest places. (By the way, I took the test and I’m a ‘neutral good’. So I am basically a Jedi or a wizard. Probably both, to be honest.)

  It’s easy to dismiss the behaviour of Yiannopoulos and his acolytes as just sheer, unbridled entitlement, but it’s important to recognise the elements of chaotic evil in there. The desire to watch the world burn is not a good one, but it’s definitely becoming attractive to more and more young men who feel themselves forced to watch as the world they thought they had been promised steadily slips away—a world where men have dominion over women, where white people have dominion over people of colour, heterosexuals over queer people, and so on and so forth. History has celebrated and elevated men and masculinity for as long as we’ve had a collective cultural memory, but this celebration has been of a superficial veneer that doesn’t actually dig beneath the surface. If it turns out they don’t have the power they have grown up believing their masculinity entitles them to, what do they have?

  They have an internet connection and a giant chip on their shoulder. It’s a recipe for disaster, and it’s blowing up in all of our faces.

  Contrary to claims that it’s their ideological opponents who suffer from being ‘snowflakes’, these men are defined not by iron-clad fortitude but by extreme fragility, and this is what bonds them together beneath the leadership of men like Yiannopoulos (and Jordan Peterson, and Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O’Reilly, and Alex Jones). It’s obvious from their reaction to simple politics. Conservative (some might even say fascist) governments are being installed worldwide, but there’s also a healthy resistance to them. The people who have historically been forced to remain silent on pain of punishment or death are rising up and fighting back in new ways that are increasingly hard to ignore. The Black Lives Matter movement, the recognition and embrace of trans and gender-diverse identities, the people fighting for rights and dignity for the disabled, women oppressed by domineering and abusive men—these voices will no longer be quelled.