Episode 157 [PATREON EXCLUSIVE] -- Milo Yiannopoulos with Matt Bernstein
For this episode, Moira and Adrian are joined by Matt Bernstein of A Bit Fruity to talk about the resistible rise and precipitous fall of Milo Yiannopoulos. We trace Milo's origins living parasitically off of fan cultures, the culture war-politics of Breitbart, and explore both the power and very real limits of right wing politics of outrageousness. What happens to the provocateur when provocation becomes a tool of governance?
CONTENT NOTE: Yes, Adrian knows that it was national treasure Jennifer Connelly, not Jennifer Garner hanging with the goblins in Labyrinth! He will not be taking questions on this matter at this time.
CONTENT NOTE: Also, there's discussions of a lot of hateful ideas, actions, terms in this episode. All the content warnings that come naturally with discussing Milo Yiannopoulos apply to this episode.
Comments (25)
Who is the German right-wing writer Adrian is referring to at around 58 minutes?
Moira I think got it exactly right: these guys were turned off by his homosexuality and not by pedophilia.
The podcast that milo talked about the pedo stuff was the amazing atheist old podcast the drunken peasants. It was a very wierd conversation if I correctly remember. He was basically arguing aggressively and blathering for the part he participated. It was basically a show about internet lolcows, but they brought on a bunch of old internet personalities to watch stuff with them. Both left leaning and right leaning people were guests, from the needle drop to Sargon of Akkad. However it tended to lean to the right quite often.
Y'all this one was so so good. Your chemistry as hosts with Matt is impeccable
I would LOVE a set of scifi recs from Adrian. As well as any gender in scifi thoughts (more interestingly in recent scifi
I was around 11 years old when gamer gate hit. I did not have much of a politician consciousness obviously. I remember mainly just YouTubers and Redditors telling me about how the feminists are looking down on us and they want to take our hobby away. I was pretty upset about that idea (I liked my games) but thankfully I was a bit too young for it to develop into a political stance. By the time Trump 1 campaign rolled around, I was developing an interest in socialism and so I already thought Milo was a fuckass fashie. I shudder to think how it might've been different if I was old enough during gamergate for it to affect my political coming of age. Thank you for the wonderful conversation as always!
I have a parasocial relationship with Matt so I appreciate your comment Moira! 🥰
Maybe sometime Kat Tennarge could come back on the pod for a deep dive on Gamergate?
I’ll now spend the rest of my evening wondering which German journalist Adrian was alluding to in comparison to Milo… was it Birgit Kelle by any chance? 🤔
What a lovely episode. Despite the grim subject matter this was almost a comfort listen for me. My two favourite podcasts come together to discuss something dramatic but relatively low stakes! A real glimmer in my day✨️
Love that y’all have adopted Matt as your little brother slash Zoomer correspondent.
If you were there, an all-time day on Twitter was Leslie Jones’s livetweeting of herself watching Avengers Endgame at home and bemoaning the loss of Chris Evans’s beard
Great synopsis of that day. Yes, this is how I remember it. I was in San Diego and had friends who worked at UC Berkeley and went to the protest. Nobody I knew could figure out why Milo was even invited. He is an opportunist with no ideology, except hating women. Bannon hired him for the chaos factor and that he could control Milo. He disposed of Milo when he became toxic to Breitbart
The Berkeley College Republicans invited him to speak.
It honestly feels wild that you guys haven't done an episode on Gamergate itself yet--it feels like such a turning point in the new antifeminist wave.
It would have to be a series, there's so much to unpack. I bet they already have a google doc of research notes that's fifty pages long.
Awesome topic and discussion as always! I did want to share my take on the "Berkeley riots." I work at UC Berkeley, and my very first day was the day Milo was supposed to come speak on campus. It was interesting - my supervisor at the time even sent us home early to be safe, as there were police and media choppers circling a few hours before the alleged speech was going to happen. Great first day! However, I do want to reframe the idea of Berkeley students rioting - this narrative has been used against students peacefully protesting, when in fact, I've always been so proud of our students being respectful in their demonstrations. There are always exceptions, but they're very rare. Time and time again, outside members of the public have been the ones instigating any violence, or of course... it's been the police. This goes back to the original Free Speech Movement (which, let's be honest, Cal did not support at the time) when the National Guard was set upon the students. I also have the additional Berkeley-ism of being born and raised in Berkeley, and as a high school student my classmates and I regularly joined the Cal students in protests, and we wouldn't have if these turned into a riot. All of this said, I love and appreciate you guys and really enjoyed this episode, sorry for the essay!
The weary sound that Adrian made when Moira asked him to “briefly gloss gamergate”…I felt that in my SOUL
Oh my god, I spent a solid 20 minutes this morning scrolling between IBWTR and ABF catalogs trying to decide which episodes to replay (again). This is scratching the itch in my brain sooooo good while I haul boxes to my new apartment, I am truly blessed thank you
I saw “Milo Yiannopoulos” and knew it had to be Matt!
What timing! Just finished the episode Moira featured in on Matt's pod about Lindsey Graham.
Thanks for this comment, I'm definitely queuing that episode to listen to next
Omg it’s like Christmas morning! Love Matt!!
Definitely pulled all the stops to listen to this one right away. I know it’ll be a doozy. In this increasingly bleak and anti intellectual world, thank you both for all that you do. ♥️
This is a "run don't walk" episode for me.