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The 'elites' will be fine, the merely competent will suffer » « I probably shouldn't send this to my daughter
Michelle Malkin still has a fanbase? And it's enhanced by including Milo?
Milo Yawannapissoff and Michelle Malkin have been collaborating, and the results are even more awful than you can probably imagine. They decided to work together to create an "America First" reading list for their followers. Just from their choice of subject you can tell it's going to be a collection of racists' greatest hits.
Milo (fresh off of changing his profile pic to blackface) & Michelle "Nazi Mom" Malkin decided to throw together an "America First" reading list for the groypers to read during quarantine. It ranges from Dinesh D'Souza and Ann Coulter to Adolf Hitler and William Luther Pierce. pic.twitter.com/BJdClZNPv8
— Berkeley Collective Safety (@safetyberkeley) May 5, 2020
So what's on it? Lots of Ann Coulter and Dinesh D'Souza, obscure racist tracts and not so obscure racist fiction, like The Turner Diaries, Jared Taylor and Charles Murray and Vox Day, and categorized as "U.S. politics, Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. The cherry on top? They include The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. They also toss in a scattering of genuine Western classics like The Odyssey and The Divine Comedy, but really, they're only there to put a shiny sugary glaze on the pile of shit they think are valuable contributions to the canon. It's also rather demeaning to lump A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man with In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome.
They provide summary blurbs to go with the books. The Iliad is "What it's like to be around an unstoppable killing machine." Mein Kampf is "History's most demented autodidact sets out his political vision." Kevin MacDonald's deeply racist and anti-semitic book, The Culture of Critique, is a "Highly controversial historical survey of the roots of anti-semitism".
Say what you will about the classic Western canon of literature — it is full of Old Dead White Men — but I don't think that a compilation of recent racist propaganda and fleeting pop culture nonsense is an improvement, especially when it's driven by a blatant far-right conservative agenda, and written by a pair of not-very-bright boobs.
Race, Society, and Social Justice
bcwebb says
6 May 2020 at 9:11 am
It's Kevin MAcDonald, not Kevin McDonald, the comedian from Kid's in the Hall….
Marcus Ranum says
I wonder if they have Madison Grant's The Passing of The Great Race in that steaming pile of bullshit.
David Gerard says
6 May 2020 at 10:08 am
Michelle Malkin is also the subject of the most recent episode of I Don't Speak German, an anti-Nazi podcast:
http://idontspeakgerman.libsyn.com/50-michelle-malkin
leerudolph says
In case PZ hasn't seen this himself yet, Dawkins is Just Asking Questions again. To be fair, his Twitter profile does say in so many words that "RTs don't imply endorsement, nor exhaustive research of tweeter's CV"! (Via Leonid Schneider.)
Matt Cramp says
The thing about Mein Kampf is that Hitler got a lot of his most terrible ideas from how America treated its marginalised population.
Ray Ceeya says
So it's just OK to go around quoting Mein Kampf and bragging that you read it now? WHAT THE ACTUAL SHIT? I never have, but I imagine Hitler was about as good a writer as he was a painter so why bother?
Mark The Snark says
I like the conceit that their fanbase actually reads books.
daved says
Bragging that one has read Mein Kampf is just perverse. However, I will point out that at least technically, Hitler wasn't a bad painter. Not inspired, perhaps. And if the art school had just admitted him, think of the effect on world history.
robertlfoster says
@ Matt Cramp
Correct. Hitler looked at how the U.S. had killed or expelled most of its indigenous peoples to the other side of the Mississippi River and said that he wanted the Volga to be Germany's Mississippi. Hitler was a big fan of how white America treated its non-white inhabitants.
cartomancer says
6 May 2020 at 12:01 pm
This would be the same Iliad which explores the fundamental emptiness and danger of a vendetta-driven macho-heroic lifestyle, and concludes with a recognition of the common humanity of victor and victim and the tragedy of war and slaughter, would it?
I would ask whether any of these people have actually read Homer (even in translation), but I know the answer is going to be "no".
If I was feeling especially unkind I would point out that Mr. Yiannopoulos isn't "an English Major" so much as "someone who dropped out of University because he couldn't hack it". So I'll do that.
Rich Woods says
They provide summary blurbs to go with the books. The Iliad is "What it's like to be around an unstoppable killing machine."
Wouldn't that be the unstoppable killing machine who was stopped?
(Plus what Cartomancer said. It's like they didn't even watch the film.)
M Manu Rere says
They included James Joyce on their list. James Joyce, an anarchist-leaning socialist who helped (a few) Jewish people escape from Nazi-controlled territory.
Sure, I knew that Michelle Malkin and Milo Y aren't exactly the most careful thinkers in the world, but really?
(They chose Joyce's least ambitious and most self-important-teenagery book, too.)
daverytier says
pfft … mein kampf. try gaddafi's 'the green book' … comparably evil, just an order of magnitude dumber.
Owlmirror says
So it's just OK to go around quoting Mein Kampf and bragging that you read it now?
There is a fad among creationists and other religious fundamentalists ¹ to claim that Hitler was an atheist and a "Darwinist". It is useful to be able to actually quote Hitler's actual words to show that:
(a) Hitler was a creationist who explicitly invokes fixity of species and other anti-evolutionist ideas
(b) Hitler repeatedly invokes the will of God in wanting races to remain separate and forever unmixed
(c) Hitler repeatedly appeals to God as inspiring him.
And in fact PZ has posted lists of such quotes.
Here's a magisterial examination of the points:
https://coelsblog.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/nazi-racial-ideology-was-religious-creationist-and-opposed-to-darwinism/
=_________________________________________________________________________
1: Technically, they are all creationists, but some focus explicitly on origins propaganda, and others are more focused on other aspects of religious domination and sociopolitical manipulation.
mnb0 says
As nobody has commented on it yet I will: "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion".
Me thinks "a blatant far-right conservative agenda" quite an euphemism.
He also has Ted "Unabomber" Kaczynski's manifesto on the list. As high priority(?) WTF?
microraptor says
robertlfoster @9: He also based the Nazi eugenics programs on America's eugenics ideas, like the forced sterilization of "deviants" (which included homosexuals, people with learning disabilities, poor people, and children who were deemed "disobedient"), a practice that some states continued performing until the 70s.
Well, it seems to be the "worst monstrosities our civilization spawned, with a few token other works added to provide 'plausible' deniality" list, so the unabomber fits right in.
komarov says
Iliad. So how does "10+ years of war going nowhere" mesh with "unstoppable killing machine"? It's already been mentioned, so I won't point out how the same unstoppable killing machine was so famously killed that he now lends his name to a metaphor for a critical and often fatal weakness. Oh, there I go.
To be honest, the most vividly remebered part for me is about people coming and going from the battlefield as they please to stash their loot – over which there was endless skirmishing. This included a lengthy conversation among the lines of, "oh no, I lost my spear" – "No worries, just pick one from the loot in my tent". I could immediately see why the war dragged on.
The Vicar (via Freethoughtblogs) says
@#20, komarov:
Also, the "unstoppable killing machine" was at least bisexual if not gay, not unlike Alexander the Great. Then again, this is Milo Yappypupulous, the token gay guy conservatives let hang around to "prove" their movement isn't homophobic, so maybe that's not so surprising.
nomdeplume says
"Enhanced" I guess in the way that cyanide enhances a dose of arsenic.
sparks says
These assholes are attention whores. Let's do Humanity a favor and not give them any.
Stuart Smith says
I feel like these cancel each other out. Like, yeah, if anyone is still a fan of Michelle Malkin, it's completely plausible that they are also excited at the idea of a Milo collaboration. It's like, if someone fucks horses, I'm not going to be that surprised by the fact that they are pretty happy to add some zebras to the mix.
John Morales says
Well, clearly they are worth discussing. So they must have some relevance.
(See this very thread)
chrislawson says
For accuracy's sake, Achilles does not die in the Iliad. It ends with him still alive, mourning over Patroklos, and deciding (as cartomancer points out) that his vengeance is not as important as letting the Trojans hold a proper funeral, so he returns Hektor's body to Troy even though he swore to Hektor in battle that he would destroy his body after defeating him.
He doesn't die in the Odyssey either, but he turns up already dead as a shade in Hades, which is where Odysseus learns the story of Achilles' death (Odysseus had set sail with Achilles still alive and well).
Also worth pointing out the first two lines of the Iliad: "Sing, Goddess, of the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, / the accursed rage that brought great suffering to the Achaeans." The Acheans, it should be noted, were on Achilles' side.
KG says
However, I will point out that at least technically, Hitler wasn't a bad painter. Not inspired, perhaps. And if the art school had just admitted him, think of the effect on world history. – daved@8
Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream is presented as if it is a postumously published novel by Hitler, who emigrated to the USA, made a living as a comics illustrator, then turned to writing SF. Unfortunately, the story is almost badly written enough to convince.
Vicar, #21,
Well, technically there is no evidence of any same-sex desires or connections for Achilles in the Iliad. That side of his character is found in other, later, Greek works, especially the fragmentary Myrmidons of Aeschylus. In Homer's version it is the bonds of kinship and warrior brotherhood that account for Achilles' rage at the death of Patroclus, rather than the sexual love they have in other works.