I think a public outcry at the prospect of a book by Milo is a sign of a healthy society. As Slavoj Zizek has said, I don't want to have to live in a society that allows open debate about the rightness/wrongness of rape. There are surely certain things that you WANT the public to lash out at.
Though judging by Zizek's recent output, he would also disagree strongly with people trying to silence views like those Milo holds, especially since he himself holds some similar ones regarding the refugee crisis/Islam, political correctness etc.
Well yeah, this much is clear. What happens when people DON'T openly oppose people like this spouting bullshit, however, is they get invited into debates in order to be 'open' and 'balanced', giving them exposure far greater than their unpleasant views deserve. Needless to say, it's the far-right who seem to be doing a whole fucksight better out of 'cultural relativism' than the SJWs they rail against. Far better for them to carry on bitching about a conspiracy of silence and there ACTUALLY BE AN EFFORT TO SILENCE THEM, than them to fucking groan on about it while being on Sky News and writing their bile for reputable publishers.
Okay, but you understand that simply "silencing" them doesn't make them go away. Half or more of the country, if not multiple continents, seem to agree with their ideas on some things, and they agreed with them before Milo went peroxide. And not all of these people are far-right maniacs - in fact, I'd wager that a significant number of them aren't. The problem for them, I think, is equating someone like Milo and all his followers with far-right neo-Nazi white nationalists or whatever when really he isn't - either that or you have a
very loose definition of those terms.[nb]Unless there's anything else he's said outside of the two three-hour Joe Rogan podcasts, his right-wing views aren't even
particularly extreme and would previously have been aligned with classical liberalism for the most part.[/nb]
This doesn't solve anything, and both vindicates his positions and strengthens his own resolve among both his followers and people who maybe didn't care either way previously. If there's one surefire way to create radicalisation among a group of people, it's to give them the idea that they're somehow oppressed - and whether they actually are or not, it's not hard to see how some recent efforts can give that impression. It's fine to deny that and point to counterexamples, and I'd agree with that sentiment for the most part, but sadly that's simply not the way it's perceived by the people in question and this has to be acknowledged and understood. This recent surge of "alt-right" sentiment didn't come from nowhere, it came from people becoming increasingly suspicious of attempts to suppress certain viewpoints - even ones they don't necessarily hold. Whether they're right to think that or not is almost irrelevant when actually looking at the situation as it stands - it's here now, and I do think it could've been avoided.
It's also worth looking at it as a tide which is flowing one way at the moment, but used to flow another way. It wasn't that long ago that there were public efforts to silence pro-communist sentiments in the US, or efforts to silence the publication of scientific or philosophical theory in more religious eras. So aside from the ramifications of suppressing or not suppressing the kind of shite alt-righters are coming out with, it becomes important to separate yourself from the individual issue and look at it as a whole. If you believe it is right to suppress the ideas of one group, you are ultimately a person who believes it is right to suppress ideas. I'm someone who thinks it isn't, and that it's manifestly ineffective in the long-run. In this case specifically, it's proven entirely counterintuitive - I wonder how many more people know Milo's name now as a result of this "furore"?
EDIT: Oh Christ, not a new page for THIS.
