CPAC’s Milo Disgrace

For those of you thinking “Milo who?”

Yiannopoulos — who has himself hurled anti-Semitic slurs (he recently described a Jewish BuzzFeed reporter as “a typical example of a sort of thick-as-pig s**t media Jew”), and who helped to popularize the term “cuckservative” — defends himself against charges of bigotry by reminding everyone that he has Jewish ancestry and is gay. The latter is part of his excuse for defending pederasty on a podcast in September 2015, then again during an interview in January 2016.

With the nomination of Trump, many “conservatives” seem to have decided to just go ahead and stop pretending to care about anything conservatives care about. That is, they’ve decided they can get away with pursing their agenda openly and no longer pretending to be conservative… the wolves are throwing off the sheep’s clothing. (It was always really thin anyway!)

What a clown show the Republican Party has become.

Yes Milo is pathetic but Milo is not the real issue.

The real issue is why CPAC which represents mainstream (not fringe) conservatism invited him to speak in the first place? (Note previous speakers here) Frankly, that would be like the FBFI inviting the pope.

As a secondary item of note, Milo is a senior editor with Breitbart which is enormously popular among conservatives (not just the so called ‘alt-right”). Steve Bannon was part of the leadership at Breitbart until he went to the Trump Whitehouse.

It is interesting to note that Trump is speaking at CPAC so thus would have been “sharing a platform” with Milo had CPAC not finally uninvited him. Where is the outrage on that?

When the republicans sold their soul and got behind Trump, this is what they now have: a party taken over by alt-right nuts that is even more despicable than what you see on the left with a leader who used those people to get elected and now gets advice from them.

I would love to see how Christian Republicans are going to claim the moral high ground going forward after they sold out their values in this election.

It is interesting to note that Trump is speaking at CPAC so thus would have been “sharing a platform” with Milo had CPAC not finally uninvited him. Where is the outrage on that?

The outrage over something that isn’t happening? Dealing in counter-factuals doesn’t seem legitimate in a case like this. We will never know what they would have done because it will never happen. The outrage seems to be why they disinvited him. What else would you like?

I would love to see how Christian Republicans are going to claim the moral high ground going forward after they sold out their values in this election.

My guess is that it won’t be that hard because I imagine a lot of Christians and/or evangelicals (I am not accusing the latter of being the former) voted for Trump as an anti-Clinton vote. In other words, they never sold out their values. They were simply left with two bad options and they chose the one they considered less bad.

[Larry]

It is interesting to note that Trump is speaking at CPAC so thus would have been “sharing a platform” with Milo had CPAC not finally uninvited him. Where is the outrage on that?

The outrage over something that isn’t happening? Dealing in counter-factuals doesn’t seem legitimate in a case like this. We will never know what they would have done because it will never happen. The outrage seems to be why they disinvited him. What else would you like?

I would like for them not to have considered it appropriate to invite that clown (speaking of Milo) in the first place. In case you don’t know, the litany of his whacked out beliefs is quite long. If CPAC is indeed mainstream conservatism, why would they feel comfortable inviting him? And why would mainstream conservatism not already be throwing a fit even before these new videos?

[Larry]

I would love to see how Christian Republicans are going to claim the moral high ground going forward after they sold out their values in this election.

My guess is that it won’t be that hard because I imagine a lot of Christians and/or evangelicals (I am not accusing the latter of being the former) voted for Trump as an anti-Clinton vote. In other words, they never sold out their values. They were simply left with two bad options and they chose the one they considered less bad.

For the record, Christians that voted for Trump on the lesser of two evils principle are just fine with me. I do however take offense to the Christians who jumped on his bandwagon early, ignored his glaring character issues, still defend the indefensible and in general, drink the Kool-Aid. Those that could watch for example his press conference last week and not see problems with the rhetoric and lies? I don’t get that.

on the whole Milo discussion. It was linked to on Instapundit last night:

CPAC is now in the strange position of having invited someone precisely because he was not permitted to speak on college campuses due to his controversial statements, and yet now having banned him from speaking there due to his controversial statements…

I doubt that, but who knows. The way this works is that the Outrage Mob gins up its hatred quickly, giving no one a chance to actually think slowly and carefully about these things — and they should be thought slowly and carefully about, because what’s being engineered here is possibly an irrevocable negative hit on someone — and then people feel pressure to react instantly precisely the way the mob wants because God Forbid we stand up to the mob and say, “Stop your baying, and give adult men and women of rational mind and good spirit a chance to actually think,” then maybe they’ll turn on us next.

Proud anger travels twice around the world before cool reflection has even slipped on its first sock.

FWIW, Milo offers a written statement in defense of himself here, and, it seems, a more chastened, more frightened video response here, perhaps as he realized how serious the mob was about collecting this week’s scalp from his head.

I’m not a fan of Milo’s and have rarely cited him. I won’t get into the “why” of that here, for similar reasons that I didn’t get into why I wasn’t a fan of Pam Gellar’s after the shooting at her Draw Mohammad event, when the Social Justice Warriors of the left and the right saw fit to mob up on her hours after she’d been shot upon by a jihadi.

Yeah I’ve got a few problems with him — but let’s leave that for another day. I haven’t seen it necessary to have one opinion or another about Milo so far, so I don’t know if I have to suddenly burst forth with a lot of Strongly Held Opinions I Just Formed Six Minutes Ago today.

Another day when, you know, he’s not in the eye of the Social Media Scalp-Hunting Hurricane.

I just think that when the whole world sets its sights on one lonely target, it’s not really terribly useful or moral of me to join in the collective attack.

I don’t think the world will end if a couple of voices here or there caution, “Maybe we shouldn’t rush to extirpate him from the face of the earth with just these three seconds of contemplation.”

I have no bias in favor of Milo, and that indeed my bias tends to run the other way. (To the extent I have any bias — I’m not really a follower or fan. I can’t render much of an opinion on Milo because, in all honesty, I am not familiar with his writing, except through the occasional quotation provided by his enemies.)

It would be one thing if we were talking about Paul Ryan maybe, a guy with controversial views on government who is respected and thoughtful. If social media attacked him for something he said, perhaps pulling it out of context and refusing to consider his entire body of work, that would be probably unfair.

That is not what is going on here. You have a guy that is alt-right with extreme bigoted views, a guy that should scare the mainstream right enormously because they should not want to be considered on the same team. Yet the “mainstream” CPAC invites him to speak. That should make conservatives pause and think about who they really are. Or, in fact, has the alt-right taken over “conservatism”?

It is not appropriate to defend Milo simply because he is on the same side against the “biased” media that you are. It is not enough that you stand against political correctness and he is drawing fire from the politically correct crowd. The enemy of my enemy is not always my friend. That seems to be where conservatives are today: willing to side with a lot of riffraff (such as Trump and Milo) because they are willing to take fire from the enemy.

If they want to make pacts with the devil, so be it, but I am not on board with that even if I lean more toward conservative ideas in government.

Count me as a person who pulled the lever for Trump because he felt Hilliary was worse—Trump’s affairs are icky, but on the flip side, I was to vote for the wife of Bill Clinton? The lady who headed his “bimbo eruption” teams? What a great choice….

And Milo….never listened to him at all (or read his work) until I wanted to “be fair” to him about his statements. Don’t listen if you’ve got a weak stomach! More or less, he indicated his acceptance of pederasty (sex with a postpubescent child) but not pedophilia (sex with a prepubescent child). It’s a pattern as old as the ancient Greek tradition of the eromenos, really. I could be proven wrong, but my gut is to stick a fork in him. He’s done. The only way out for him is for people to forget that pederasty is also against the law, and for good reason.

I would like for them not to have considered it appropriate to invite that clown (speaking of Milo) in the first place.

I get it. Me too. But that ship has sailed. The question was What else would you like them to do? That is present tense, as in now. I don’t know why they invited him but I don’t know (or care) much about CPAC so it makes no difference to me. They did what they could do now. I don’t know what else they could do.

[Jay]

CPAC is now in the strange position of having invited someone precisely because he was not permitted to speak on college campuses due to his controversial statements, and yet now having banned him from speaking there due to his controversial statements…

No. Milo’s comments that got him kicked off of the CPAC invite were advocating illegal behavior, ie promoting pedophilia. That is quite different from speech you simply disagree with or abhor.

No. Milo’s comments that got him kicked off of the CPAC invite were advocating illegal behavior, ie promoting pedophilia. That is quite different from speech you simply disagree with or abhor.

Milo has explicitly said that he wasn’t talking about pedophilia. He was talking about younger gay men ‘coming out’ and pairing up with older gay men. I read his comments and can see that he was trying to make a different point, but I think that anyone reading it would assume pedophilia, as I originally did. If people just want to make assumptions, freak out, and react hastily, then I have no interest in discussing it further.

It’s also worth noting that Milo is himself a victim of sexual abuse, so I find it hard to believe that he would explicitly condone something he was a victim of, much less in public.

I’m not excusing either behavior; I’m just noting that he tried to clarify what he said, and did so twice. I think that’s a pertinent thing to mention.

[Jay]

No. Milo’s comments that got him kicked off of the CPAC invite were advocating illegal behavior, ie promoting pedophilia. That is quite different from speech you simply disagree with or abhor.

Milo has explicitly said that he wasn’t talking about pedophilia. He was talking about younger gay men ‘coming out’ and pairing up with older gay men. I read his comments and can see that he was trying to make a different point, but I think that anyone reading it would assume pedophilia, as I originally did. If people just want to make assumptions, freak out, and react hastily, then I have no interest in discussing it further.

It’s also worth noting that Milo is himself a victim of sexual abuse, so I find it hard to believe that he would explicitly condone something he was a victim of, much less in public.

I’m not excusing either behavior; I’m just noting that he tried to clarify what he said, and did so twice. I think that’s a pertinent thing to mention.

For me, Milo is beyond unacceptable regardless of what he meant or did not mean in these statements. Even if he is innocent as a lamb in what he said/meant, I want nothing to do with any political movement that would invite him to speak.

I want nothing to do with any political movement that would invite him to speak.

Yup, I totally agree with this. :)