laurie penny on the downfall of milo, live from the scene.
Yiannopoulos
followed the path of least resistance until, suddenly, it resisted. Now
he knows just what it is to have the Internet turn on you and take away
your control of the narrative. Now the entire alt-right is realizing,
in full view of a few million popcorn-munching online leftists, that
they were never the new punk. They were never the suave and seductive
blackshirts of the new American authoritarianism. They are, at best, the
brownshirts, and they are becoming less useful to their benefactors by
the day. Where they were once “underground,” they are now are an
ankle-biting embarrassment to the movement they made mainstream — and
they have no clue what to do next.also: how berkeley felt from the inside:
As the
evacuation gets going, the young men in Yiannopoulos’ gang seem scared.
They’re right to be — these protesters aren’t playing, and there has
already been real violence at these events. One week earlier, in
Seattle, a Yiannopoulos fan shot an anti-fascist protester in the
stomach. The victim is expected to survive. The impression that this is
all an exciting adventure in pranking the left, a giddy game of harmless
offense where nobody actually gets hurt, is not holding up so well.
Over the next few hours, I get to watch Yiannopoulos’ teenage entourage
wrestle with the fact that this game is, in fast, deadly earnest, and
the win conditions are changing, and they are not players, but pieces on
the board.this is the best thing you will read today. read all of it.
This is not new either. Fascism drops its street fighters the moment it gets real state power. If these shits had looked at their own history they’d have seen it coming.
