Journalist and provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, recently banned from speaking at Manchester University because of fears he might incite hatred, has long been embroiled in the Gamergate controversy, and has now appeared in a brief breakdown of the scandal.
Whatever one’s view of the situation, Yiannopoulos draws some interesting parallels between the progressive attempt to censor video games on charges they make you sexist and the work of the American religious right in the 90s, who claimed that video games make you violent.
“People were doing this in the 90s and the games press did a great job of defending video games against those charges. They’ve done a much less good job – in fact they’ve done no job at all – of defending it against feminists who are just as whacky and just as crazy as the old religious right. And in fact the feminists say all the same things, they hate the same things, they hate nudity and violence – all the same stuff.”
In the video Yiannopoulos references to disgraced American attorney and Christian crank Jack Thompson, who attempted to censor violent video games and was later disbarred by the Florida Bar due to misconduct.
The Breitbart columnist also went on to discuss how the Internet has led to a realignment of the culture wars, pitting authoritarians against libertarians.
“The Internet has dumped politics. It’s very interesting. It’s turned every major culture war and every major discussion into a row between authoritarians, who want to control how other people live, and libertarians who either want to escape whatever is going on in their lives or classical liberals, like me, who believe in freedom of expression, freedom of thought, and liberty of ideas, and believe it is essential – for the good of our species if you like, if you want to get serious about it – that we can talk about everything openly and honestly and there are no no-go areas.”
His later comments about the rise of anti-establishment politics do not entirely wring true, partly because many of those backing populists like Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, the Democrats’ Bernie Sanders, the Republicans’ Donald Trump and Ukip’s Nigel Farage are themselves authoritarians.
But even so one should keep an eye on the trend of how the Internet is reshaping politics as we know it.
Image Credit – Super Blast Mario, July 2012 by JD Hancock
