Dangerous

by Milo Yiannopoulos
Dangerous Books, 2017, 285 pages

Reviewed by T. Nelson

First let me get this out of my system: this book is faaaabulous. It might not be an example of deep political thinking, it may not be radical, and it may not be funny, but Milo is that rarest of beasts: a conservative who is not only flamboyant, optimistic, and good at inspiring young people, but also well-coiffed and a very snappy dresser.

Everybody called the boomers the Me Generation when they were kids, but it was unfair: all kids go through the Me phase. There were just more of them then. Milo Yiannopoulos is a perfect spokesman for reaching the ones we have today—the ones who routinely walk into telephone poles and sit in conference rooms reading their cell phones instead of talking to each other.

For one thing, every single chapter has ‘Me’ in the title, except the last one, which uses the word ‘My’. And he's gay. So he's transgressive, fashionable, and self-absorbed. And sure enough, they seem to be listening, or at least reading his Tweets (or they were before Twitter blacklisted him). Despite his age (he is 33) they relate to him.

Milo became famous for his Breitbart articles, including two criticizing feminism and a spectacularly well-publicized one that brought the alt-right to the world's attention. But, he says, he's not a member, and certainly not their leader, and anyway the alt-right was destroyed by the media and the old-school conservatives, who dishonestly labeled them racists, which caused real racists and neo-Nazis to flock to the alt-right, driving out the original honest dissident conservatives.

But I'm not so sure the alt-right is really dead. For one thing, the left calls everything racist, and young people just ignore the media. If it wasn't tweeted, then as far as they're concerned it didn't happen. The alt-right is a harbinger of the future the left is creating through identity politics. As Milo says:

I'd prefer we judged people according to reason, logic and evidence instead of barmy left-wing theories about “oppression.” But if you are going to divide everyone up, you have to accept that straight white men are going to want their own special party too. If we are to have identity politics, we must have identity politics for all.

Also, did I mention he's gay? Milo reminds us on almost every page how flamboyantly, fabulously gay he is. That gayness, along with his impeccable fashion sense, is what insulates him from being pegged as a homophobic, stodgy, get-off-my-lawn right-winger. It's remarkable how much mileage he gets out of it.

Conservatives don't hate gays, he says. They just hate being told what to think. But hatred, says Milo, has engulfed the Left. Socialists hate the rich, LGBT activists hate Christians, and, he says, fat people hate skinny people like him and Ann Coulter. Feminists hate him because he's a male and because he's got nicer hair. Plus, in case you forgot, he's gay.

Leftists hate their opponents because they're scared. They suppress free speech because they have no arguments. Milo's book is about two things: political correctness and Milo. Imagine being afraid of a well-coiffed, light in his loafers guy with Louis Vuitton accessories who wears a cravat and $300 sunglasses and calls himself a dangerous ******. That tells you how scared they are.

jul 22, 2017