"I Helped Create the Milo Trolling Playbook. You Should Stop Playing Right Into It." - Ryan Holliday
Interesting. And infuriating! I had hoped that no one but the crickets would show up for Milo’s speech but people can’t resist true outrage and the results are predictable (with or without willful anarchists showing up). I’m sure Milo loved it all and is basking in the high ground.
Everything needs to tone down a bit these days.
No surprise. It’s not a new playbook, just using technology/social media to help fuel it.
Milo reminds me a bit of a minute few oblivious folks who used “fighting words” or insulting behaviors back in the 18th and 19th century in the US…especially the southern US and then disingenuously act surprised when he provokes angry or sometimes even violent responses*.
- One account from the Civil War was the case of General Earl Van Dorn who was found by a local doctor to be having an affair with his wife and consequently shot him dead in his HQ.
In another case, a Confederate Major General called a Colonel a “liar” when addressing him. The Colonel shot the major general dead without uttering a response.
In both cases, neither of the shooters were held legally accountable as prevailing attitudes back then even among judges was that the shootings “were justified” due to the “insult” from the behavior/“fighting words”/“provocation” sustained by the shooters.
These cases not only illustrate how “free speech” was actually respected far less in practice in past US history, but also the fact the entitlement to ignore free speech considerations by resorting to duels/summary shootings of those who subjected one to insulting behavior/words was exclusively reserved for upper-class White elites…especially those in the antebellum/Civil War south.
Must not work for me as I never heard of Tucker Max or Milo (until the Berkeley protest.) I still have zero idea what Milo is espousing.
Milo is a provocateur who if he said a tiny percentage of the things he normally does on CC would likely be banned. I tend to agree that the greatest thing anyone can do with someone like him is to not show up to where he shows up, don’t respond to him and let him wither away into crank space. For someone like him, Oscar Wilde comes to mind, where he said the only thing worse then people talking about you is people not talking about you.
As far as fighting words and such, there is still the concept in law of fighting words (I recall one of the last precedents was in the late 1940’s, might have been SCOTUS, this goes back to a history course I took a long time ago, so my memory is hazy), where there are situations where if something someone says to you is so vile, harassing, threatening, etc, that it can be a defense against assault and battery charges (not to mention that some DA’s might be inclined not to press charges, knowing a Jury would likely at best hang on the charges).
Not really related, but people mentioning the case about the doctor shooting the general for having an affair with the doctor’s wife reminds me of something funny from my past. Years ago when my wife and I still lived in NYC, we did a horseback tour of the Gettysburg battlefield with a guide, and when he found out we were from NY delighted in telling the tale of General Dan Sickles (of the famous Peach Orchard fame and losing his leg and having it preserved), who just before the civil war was a major muckety muck in Tammany Hall circles in NYC and then in Washington. He became infamous for finding his wife in bed with her lover and killing him (the lover was the son of Francis Scott Key, and was the DA of Washington DC at the time), he was defended by Edwin Stanton (Lincoln’s secretary of War later on), and pled temporary insanity, and was the first person in US history to win on this defense. The guide loved telling about that, and then that Sickle’s militarily was not exactly a genius (of all the corps commanders at Gettyburgh, he is the only one not commemorated by a statue)
At least Sickles was subjected to a trial where he had to enter a defense. In both of the cases I mentioned and many similar incidents in the Civil War/antebellum south, the DAs/judges usually didn’t even bother to prosecute or even order the arrest of the shooters because they felt the shooters were completely justified in their conduct.
Milo is a professional fictional creature who is occasionally loose in the dungeon. He says vile provocative things, strictly to get a reaction. I mostly ignore him, because angrily tweeting about him is exactly what he wants.
Where I believe he goes over the line is when he eggs his followers on to harass specific people. That is wrong.
Two issues with this (just to maintain fairness here, not to get political):
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Milo doesn’t just say provocative things to stir anger. That’s the simplistic explanation for why he does what he does, but more accurately, he exploits the hypocrisy from his political opponents. He tries to point out logical fallacies and get people to think rather than act based solely on emotion/sensationalism. Case in point, he is an openly gay immigrant supporting a supposed anti-gay/anti-immigrant administration.
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The other side of that coin is that people are being egged on and influenced to protest against/harass the current administration via social media/boycotting, etc. Both sides are guilty egging on/harassing.
The “logical fallacy” IS HIM being openly gay and an immigrant but supporting a “supposedly” anti-gay and anti-immigrant administration.
That’s separate from him being a scandal maker.
Worse, it dances on the line between protected free speech and behaviors closer to the criminal “inciting a riot” type behavior when he incited/encouraged harassment/death threats/posting of personal info for malicious purposes(doxxing) of individuals such as the case when he incited his followers into harassing actress Leslie Jones:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-mn-twitter-milo-yiannopoulos-20160719-snap-story.html
An act which got him banned from twitter for “targeted abuse online”.
He also played a key role in the gamergate harassment which caused the targeted individual to be subjected to death threats and having her home address/info posted online(doxxing):
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-milo-yiannopoulos-gamergate-feminists-20151028-story.html
False equivalence as the nature of protests against presidential administrations and the degree/tone is very different.
Not to mention conservative protesters had no issues vehemently protesting the Obama administration not only on the basis of policies, but also on the basis of his race…going so far as to even start the “birther movement” to question whether he was legitimately born on American soil despite producing a birth certificate.
An act which some have argued is racist in its intent…especially considering no previous president who all happened to be White was ever subjected to this type of question or the degree of scrutinization of one’s birth records.