Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos joined columnist Cathy Young on the BBC’s The Briefing Room to discuss the rising Trump-loving task force known as the alt-right.
Host David Aaronovitch began the segment by describing alt-righters as people who share “grossly offensive pictures” on Twitter and Facebook but gave the movement slightly more credit, adding that if trolling was all they did, they wouldn’t be where they are now. There is no doubt the Alt Right is unlike any political uprising ever witnessed before throughout history, in the sense that we’ve never seen something of this magnitude from internet culture affect a presidential election so heavily. The Alt Right is better portrayed as the breaking away from traditional GOP conservatism. The group calls this strain of establishment politicians “cuckservatives,” a subsection of right wingers who refuse to adopt the new age of Republican ideals.
Wendling pointed out that this is a movement with few leaders, and a number of problematic stances, mostly based in traditional values that some consider racist.
Milo steps into the segment soon after, responding when asked if the alt-right is a thing:
It’s interesting cause it’s the first example, I think, in politics of something that’s happened in culture for quite some time.
What these people do represent however is a very, very large section of the population. In America, I would say that the pro-Trump and anti-Trump people in the Republican base is probably 50/50. Maybe even now spreading over to 60 or 70 percent Trump. There’s a huge overlap in the Venn diagrams between the Alt Right and Trump supporters. This is a very significant sea change in conservatism in the West.
When asked about the alt-right’s impact, Milo explained:
The electoral impact is quite clear. In the UK, the Brexit vote was opposed by pretty much the entire establishment here. Yet despite all of that hectoring, the naturally sort-of libertarian mischievous, dissident, defiant attitude of people who I suppose would be described as the Alt Right, (not completely persuaded that there is such a thing in the UK yet), but they are people who maybe be in the Alt Right one day.
The segment continued, still discussing alt-right motives and beliefs:
People like to have fun, and they like to talk about politics in the same terms they talk about things that actually matter to them like love, sex, death, and money. They like to talk about politics in real terms. Journalists and politicians have forgotten how to do that.
A lot of these guys are 17 years old. When they see the right banging on about anti-Semitism, they see no distinction whatsoever between that and feminists banging on about sexism or Black Lives Matter banging on about racism.
There are racists on every end of the political spectrum, more racists on the left actually. Black Lives Matter wants the same thing the KKK does, segregated dorms at colleges, all that kind of stuff.
David Aaronovitch added, “At least [Black Lives Matter] doesn’t burn crosses on people’s lawns,” to which Milo responded:
Black Lives Matter is far worse; they go after their own people. They leave black cities in flames because they are so self-destructive.
In the present day, the KKK is an irrelevance.
Shifting to the recent attacks on straight white males, Milo stated:
You’re constantly telling us white people are the source of all evil, that white people have all this stuff to apologize for. Well you know what? We’re not that bad. We did some pretty good stuff. We did Mozart, and Rembrandt, and Descartes, and Beethoven, and Wagner, and we went to the stars, we explored the oceans, we built Western civilization.
Can’t white people be proud of what white people have done?
America is the best country there has ever been. And there are a lot of Americans who would quite like it to stay that way.
Listen to the full segment below:
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