Necessary disclaimers here: I don't agree that people like Milo, i.e. those who court controversy or are self-professed 'trolls', should be silenced. I don't hate Milo; I feel fairly ambivalently towards him. I have mixed feelings about issues such as no-platforming. My main problem with Milo's book is not that he's right-wing; it's that he doesn't seem to genuinely believe anything he says, and does not make logical arguments backed up with fact. He purports to favour 'fact, not feelings', and

Necessary disclaimers here: I don't agree that people like Milo, i.e. those who court controversy or are self-professed 'trolls', should be silenced. I don't hate Milo; I feel fairly ambivalently towards him. I have mixed feelings about issues such as no-platforming. My main problem with Milo's book is not that he's right-wing; it's that he doesn't seem to genuinely believe anything he says, and does not make logical arguments backed up with fact. He purports to favour 'fact, not feelings', and yet attacks people's appearances and does not cite many of his claims. I would look upon Milo much more fondly if I thought he were authentic. I have read, and will continue to read, books by people with differing viewpoints to me, as I believe it's important to expose yourself to different ideas, even if the end result is just to reiterate why you disagree with them. As it is, I think he's hoodwinked people, and I find it very hard to respect that.



There's two things I agree with Milo on. The first is that we should listen to those with whom we disagree; I don't think we can argue against people who have opposing viewpoints to our own if we don't listen to them, which is why I put myself through reading Milo's entire book. I would rather know what he has to say than not; how else can I be sure that it's all tripe? (Spoiler: it is.) The second thing that we agree on is that respiration is necessary for life. At least, I assume that we agree on that. I have no idea. Maybe we don't. Maybe that's fake news.



This book is not a manifesto. It is a twatifesto. It is page after page of nonsense claims, either unverified and lacking any kind of citation or backed up with citations to his own website or other right wing thinkpieces. It can be summed up fairly succinctly as follows: 'I'm really hot', 'here is an unverified fact', 'here is a citation from my own website', 'feminists are ugly', 'I'm gay and promiscuous', and 'I say things just to be controversial'. Yes, in one chapter Milo admits that he doesn't actually believe most of what he says, but enjoys being 'taboo'. Great. Good. Tip top, Milo. No-one's ever been taboo before. Truly transgressive.



Some of the great philosophical questions tackled in this magnum opus include:

- are feminists lying about rape statistics and inflating them to demonise men, or are rape statistics truly incredibly high because of Muslim migration? Well, both, according to Milo. Feminists lie about rape statistics and rape culture doesn't exist, because feminists are all ugly lesbians with cats and they hate men and want them to suffer. Mass migration of Muslims to the West is causing enormous levels of rape, sometimes organised and planned in advance by groups of Muslim men.

- is online harassment acceptable under the umbrella of 'trolling', i.e. free speech, or is it an example of people attempting to silence others under the umbrella of hate mobs? Well, both, according to Milo. When people on the Left bombard figures who they believe to be racist / sexist etc with tweets or post their personal information online, it's a case of the Left trying to shut down that person's freedom of speech. When Milo's followers send pictures of gorillas to black actresses and post the addresses of prominent feminists online, it's fine, because they have the right to do it, and it's not like it's serious.

- is fake news a tool of the Left or the Right? Well, both, according to Milo. It's the Left who accuse the Right of fake news, because they can't stand the truth that the Right media writes, like how Trump didn't mean that locker room talk video, and so they dub it 'fake news' to try and discredit it. But also, when the Right call the Left's output 'fake news', that's accurate because the Left writes about Trump in a bad way and that makes it fake. But when the Left say 'fake news', it's wrong, and they made up the term. But the Right can use it.

- is the alt-right a hate movement full of Nazis, or is it a movement of misunderstood people who are tired of being lectured to by the morality policing Left? Well, both, according to Milo. When they send pictures of Nazis to Jewish people, they're just trolling, and it's an expression of their anger at the status quo, which makes them feel ignored and downtrodden. But also, the movement has been ambushed by Nazis. But they're not all Nazis, except for the ones who are. Who're the Nazis? Who knows. They're there, somewhere, except for when they're not, except for when they are, which they're not. Unless they are, of course.



Milo has marketed this book as being too dangerous for commercial publication. It's just too degenerate for the masses, he says. He tells truths that people don't want to hear, he says. The dull truth is that this book is dangerous on only two levels, and it's not for the reasons Milo claims. Firstly, the entire reason it was dropped and ultimately self published cannot be limited to 'Milo said things about young boys which was too controversial'. There are clearly other factors at play here, which become clear when you read the text. Which I did. All of it. Every single awful page. Publishing it would open Simon & Schuster up to multiple lawsuits from the people who Milo explicitly slanders. Many claims he makes here about individuals, several of whom are named, are either patently inaccurate or open to dispute, and unverified. That is not going to fly in a book with the weight of Simon & Schuster behind it. Secondly, the worldwide supply of anti-nausea drugs could never meet the demand. There's really only so many times one can read a variation on 'I'm hot and like to fuck... transgressively' before needing some anti-emetics.



And listen, I don't think that Milo is evil. I really, genuinely don't. I think he's a narcissistic showoff who craves attention and validation, and I don't think he'd disagree with me on that; I think he'd probably take it as a compliment. The validation that Milo seeks, however, is not validation that he is right, or even that he makes sense - he seeks assurance that yes, he is controversial, and yes, he's taboo, and yes, he makes people angry. He takes people's rage at his poorly researched, inflammatory statements, and he turns it into his armour. It protects him, because if people attack what he says, which by his own admission is not a reflection of his own thought, then they are not attacking him. His ostentatiousness, his courting of controversy, his polemicist rants - these protect him. He craves attention because it is diverting. Look at Milo the persona, the public figure, and not at the man behind it all. There is probably a truly hideous self-portrait in his attic which is feeding off his soul as we speak.



This book is disingenuous to the extreme. It reads more as a man trying to convince himself of the arguments that he's making than anything else. It purports to favour facts, but 'facts' are not always cited, and when they are cited, the source is often biased (e.g. a right wing news site, or a limited scientific study). I support freedom of speech. I'm glad that people have a platform to say what they believe, even if I don't always like hearing it; removing platforms from certain individuals and not others is dangerous and I think it sets a worrying precedent. That said, I support freedom of speech primarily when people have something to say, and honestly, I'm less and less sure that Milo does.