Posted on 02/23/2017 5:23:12 AM PST by Kaslin
I don’t know Milo Yiannopoulos, and I don’t really want to know him. I know he worked for Breitbart News and is a provocateur. I don’t know if Andrew Breitbart ever met him, but neither I nor any other of Andrew’s friends I know remember him mentioning Milo.
When I heard Yiannopoulos was speaking at CPAC, the annual Washington conference for the conservative movement, I wasn’t surprised. I was surprised he had been selected as the keynote speaker.
CPAC has problems in non-election years attracting big names in quantity. This year’s event was scheduled during a congressional recess, so even fewer members of Congress will attend. That leaves large holes in the agenda of a three-day conference. Not to make a double entendre here, but those holes have to be filled.
Simple math dictated this year’s speakers list would lack the star power of last year’s. Last year, there were more than a dozen Republicans running for president. This year, there is President Trump, who will speak, as well as Vice-President Mike Pence and a great many administration officials. That’s a dozen or so out of roughly 100 speaking spots, and none will deliver the keynote speech or closing remarks.
With arguably the two biggest stars on the political right out for those two important slots, a scramble was almost assured.
CPAC disputes he was to be the keynote speaker, but all the stories announcing his participation reported he was – and there was no pushback from the organization to those stories.
Whatever was going to be Yiannopoulos’ role, he did not deserve either of those slots. It’s a “conservative” conference, and Yiannopoulos himself says he’s not a conservative; he’s more of a libertarian, which is a meaningless label now thanks to a rudderless libertarian movement.
Milo seems to be someone who enjoys pushing liberals’ buttons. I’m all for that. But there’s more to politics than simply making people mad. Anyone can make people mad. The skill comes in when you do it for a reason – to expose hypocrisy or advance a larger agenda.
Andrew Breitbart probably was the best at getting a reaction from leftists and exposing their hypocrisy. He didn’t do it by simply saying things he knew would set them off. He did it by setting traps and patiently waiting for liberals to walk right into them.
The ACORN videos were the perfect example of this. The release was slow-walked masterfully. They had a plan – I was told of it a month before the first video saw the light of day – and they executed it to maximum effect.
Before I’d even seen the videos, they were described to me by Andrew and then-Big Government editor Mike Flynn. I figured they’d all be dumped at once, overwhelming the left with disgusting proof of ACORN’s condoning of underage prostitution. That would have destroyed ACORN, but it would not have had the lasting impact the videos ended up having.
Andrew knew as soon as one was released the left would declare it an anomaly, an “isolated incident.” Democrats and media would follow suit. Then, another video would appear, and the pattern would repeat. Andrew knew liberals would hang themselves if he dripped them out one at a time. They’d have to eventually condemn ACORN, but they’d be exposed as frauds willing to excuse the inexcusable if they can get away with it for a few weeks. That’s exactly what happened.
It may not always have seemed like it, but there was a method to Andrew’s madness. The same can’t be said for Yiannopoulos.
Aside from being British, part Jewish, and a gay man who loves black men, I don’t know who Milo is. And I have no idea what he wants to accomplish beyond getting more people angry, making money and selling more books (which has now been canceled).
Anyone can make people angry, but that anger should be a means, not an end. With Yiannopoulos, that appears to be his brand. CPAC should have known this. A simple Internet search would have told anyone that. But they couldn’t be bothered.
CPAC’s leadership came off as the square old guy at the club who wants to appear cool so he speaks in hashtags to impress the young people. Their goal should have been to advance conservative principles; the only “hip” they should worry about is not breaking theirs.
CPAC has a brand to protect, and its mission is supposed to do just that. Instead its leaders opted for what they saw as easy pickings; a way to glom onto someone else’s popularity without understanding why he is popular. After 24 hours, they learned the hard way and uninvited Yiannopoulos. Like so many other aspects of the conservative movement, it was a self-inflicted wound.
Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union Chairman and the head of CPAC, announced Milo as a speaker saying, “We think free speech includes hearing Milo’s important perspective.” Without knowing Milo’s perspective, he pronounced it “important.” That was dumb.
I have no problem with the concept of Milo speaking at CPAC as one of dozens of speakers. It’s not a safe space. A wide variety of opinions should be expressed there. But for someone to be elevated to “important,” he needs to actually be important. Or at least known and vetted. It was dumb not to.
That’s was CPAC’s biggest mistake – you don’t associate with someone you haven’t vetted. No matter what you think of Milo, if you’re running an organization bigger than any one individual, you’d better make damn sure you check out the people you imbue with the reputation of that organization.
Milo had to be dropped as much for the failure of CPAC’s leadership to look into what he says as for the failure to prepare for the backlash having him would create. If they had thought three moves ahead like Andrew Breitbart, rather than just about buzz and ticket sales, they could have avoided this embarrassment. They didn’t, and the damage done to the CPAC brand is their fault.
I’ve said this too many times, but conservatives are still horrible at messaging. It’s hard to advance your message when the biggest problems you face are of your own doing. Perhaps it’s time CPAC and the ACU got new leadership that not only understands this, but acts accordingly as well.
The groupthink of CPAC is entrenched loosership. Importance given to CPAC ended the day it was taken over by the Glenn Beck/Erik Ericson crowd. I would far rather hear an interesting and intelligent speech from Milo than whining from the Becktards about how they were abandoned by the unprincipled majority.
I heard him referred to as keynote
Which I too found unlikely
This was a set up
That interview was 13 months old
CPAC knew what they were doing
Breitbart most disappointed me
Just to be clear for future reference Erik Fatass Ericson is his full name.
“”Never heard of this guy.””
Which guy - Derek Hunter or Milo? There are FR threads just about every day of the week of Derek Hunter’s - he’s been around for a very long time and does excellent work.
Yup. Here, here. My kids know who he is too and they are now rock-ribbed conservative, and VERY pissed off at the prospect of going to college only to be reprogrammed.
They are now actively looking, on their own, for alternatives.
Most of the people on this forum have:
1. Never listened to a single thing this man has ever produced.
2. Didn’t listen to the full recording of what has produced this mess. In the full recording, he recounts the effects of pedophilia ON HIM, and why pedophilia is so easy to carry off, and then he goes on to DENOUNCE IT AS EVIL AND A SICKNESS.
This was a GOPE hit job. Full stop.
Milo is really pushing Pizzagate, almost when everyone else has dropped it. Milo, having been a victim of pedophilia, won’t drop it.
Result - people are scared of him, and they are trying to take him down.
If you haven’t listened to his 13 Things I Hate About Islam, or Islam and Feminism, I’d ask you not reveal your stunning ignorance and refrain from comment (last comment here not directed at you nhwingut).
For your information the conference was founded in 1973 by the American Conservative Union and Young Americans for Freedom as a small gathering of dedicated conservatives. I doubt that anyone at that time heard of Eric Ericson and Glenn Beck
Gee, I have been posting op-eds by Derek Hunter for years. Where have you been?
Derek Hunter is full of chit on this one. Milo’s whole schtik is exposing the hypocracy of the left and pushing the conservative agenda to young people.
Whether Milo should have been invited to speak at CPAC or not is an arguable question.
Derek Hunter’s weekly articles have been posted mostly by me since November 2011, probably earlier than that but that was how far back I was able to go.
And I for one appreciate you posting them. I always enjoy reading his articles... Thank you.
Derek Hunter should know this. I challenge anyone to show me anyone else who has been as effective as he has been regarding this topic.
While Andrew Breitbart had his methods, it does not mean every method has to be fashioned along that same model. That truly becomes ineffective very quickly. In fact that has become the problem with the message coming from the left. Their message has become all too predictable. When that happens, their effectiveness become marginalized.
In fact the only reason that the left has owned the conservatives is because they were unafraid to take off the gloves and battle it out. The conservatives in the meantime were clueless as to how to counter that. Their method was to use politeness and dignity. We saw how that had worked for us.
So lets continue to bash Milo and enjoy the brief victory, because we are not really interested in winning the war after all. Whether we want to accept it or not, Milo played a role in getting Trump elected as our President. So let's just revert back to being polite and dignified.
Sometimes it really is necessary to fight fire with fire. While I'm sure the majority of us prefer our old method, in reality it was a losing method. I prefer to deal with Milo through prayer that God deliver him from the clutches of the homosexual lifestyle and become a true blue conservative.
But in the meantime I fully understand Milo's message. We can no longer sit politely on the sidelines if we want to win this war between good and evil. It cannot be a passive fight, because evil doesn't fight passively. Good must be just as committed to winning as evil is.
We certainly hailed him as a hero as he took shots from the left. Fail to accept the fact that Milo was a victim who has become a product of that victimization (I don't even think he understands that fact). Fail to accept that we must stand with him, even though his view on homosexuality is not a view we share. Instead we need to work with him to show him why he is wrong. For when we can show him he is wrong he becomes an even more important ally.
But don't cry when you start losing the battles from now on. The left is overjoyed, no longer do they have someone in the protected class that stood up against them. That voice is being silenced as they had wanted. For now they again are owning the narrative because they know we are afraid of being called hypocrites.
They truly are grateful for the righteous right who are now eating someone they feared and did not know how to effectively deal with. Their only comeback was to incite fear, intimidation, and violence which in case you failed to recognized was actually hurting their cause and driving more people in our direction.
That will come to an end now because people tend to side with whom they think will be the eventual winner, for self preservation. It won't be our ideals that rule the day, because too many conservatives are too short-sided to figure out how to rein in Milo yet still keep him within our ranks, and work on making him a greater value for our cause.
Demanding a mea culpa would have been a much better course of action. Then even Milo himself becomes more humble, and more importantly receptive to the change we would like to see within him.
I leave you with this: MILO
BAM. That is the point of Milo. Too many "conservatives" have their heads where the sun don't shine.
Another lousy pick.
Which guy - Derek Hunter or Milo? There are FR threads just about every day of the week of Derek Hunter’s - he’s been around for a very long time and does excellent work.
But if you asked anyone under 35, which would they recognize? What would they be more likely to do, view a funny/serious Milo video or read a Derek Hunter essay?
Yes! And America is just as its Founders intended! And no one in the U.S. is denouncing dead white men, or trying to have their names removed from buildings or their statues removed or calling them racists, either!
I heard his name a lot but I only bothered to find who he was about a month ago. I was a bit surprised, a bleach blonde fruit who’s not even American?
Article #40,233 this week from someone claiming not to no who Milo is.
Liars.
We heard this same band of homophiles defend queer marriage ad nauseum. Same-Sex-Attraction-Disorder (SSAD) has many defenders on this site which has a heading titled homosexual agenda as a top priority. We have a homo from the UK an,Ed Milo, a NAMBLA defender, pretend to be a conservative and the homophiles going nuts defending him/her/it.
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