The popular is political: Milo Yiannopoulos and the new politics of trolling

Abstract

Self-declared journalist and notorious internet troll Milo Yiannopoulos has appeared on dozens of college campuses over the past year on his “Dangerous F*ggot” speaking tour. To call Yiannopoulos a novel figure in American politics would be an understatement; he is an uber-conservative, racist, xenophobic, queer- and trans-hating gay British man with unprecedented access to the presidential administration. The controversy caused by his appearances (internal debates among faculty and students; publicized discussions of whether his talks constitute hate speech or harassment; protests that have turned violent) has received significant attention in the press across the ideological spectrum.

Yiannopoulos is waging what Joel Stein (2016) calls a “Kafkaesque troll war for America’s soul,” one that is more about performance than substantive action. With a former reality television star in the White House, the line between politics and popular culture has never been thinner. Yiannopoulos is a new sort of political actor: he is undeniably a political and politicized figure, but considers himself a popular culture icon. Rather than making substantive suggestions about policy changes, his primary concern is causing controversy and dismantling identity politics using social media as a pulpit. Furthermore, he has successfully branded himself as an edgy millennial populist, strategically commodifying his identity (a strategy which has propelled his recently-released book to the top of Amazon’s best-seller list).

While Yiannopoulos denies any connection to the “alt-right” political movement, the ideological overlap is too considerable to ignore. This movement relies on new media, having grown out of several online communities – and the 2013 Gamergate controversy – and is sustained by discussion in those venues as well as orchestrated social media campaigns and outright attacks (for example, the Twitter-based harassment of actress Leslie Jones, which resulted in Yiannopoulos being banned from Twitter). Aggressive, misogynist, and racist trolling is a common tactic of the group; this trend represents a new territory in political discourse: a dismantling of the boundary between online antagonism and serious political speech. Uncritical analysis of new media glorifies interactivity as empowering and potentially representative of a new Habermasian public sphere. Critical reflection reveals a different truth: in a “post-factual” era, interactivity has cultivated spaces where old systems of domination based on gender, ethnicity, and religion are thriving.

This paper employs critical discourse analysis to look closely at news articles written about Yiannopoulos, along with those written by Yiannopoulos himself, during 2016. Differences in representation (to the point of outright contradiction) between liberal and conservative media outlets highlight the fact that political communication is now characterized by a proliferation of discourses rather than adherence to facts or truth (Andrejevic, 2009). Yiannopoulos has publicly celebrated the arrival of this post-factual era, enthusiastically embracing the idea that we no longer live in a world where audiences expect journalists to be concerned with truth-seeking. For this reason, he is a figure that demands critical examination and this textual analysis of media coverage reveals a cultural transformation that has created spaces for new and troubling forms of political participation cloaked as pop culture spectacle.