The author seems to think he's just working it--but is NOT an innocent
Milo peddles a pageant of insincerity that is immediately legible to fellow Brits. Americans understand irony differently, and sometimes not at all. The crowd of excitable young and young-ish people gathered to hear him pontificate believe what hes saying, even if he doesnt. Which he doesnt. And it doesnt matter.
It doesnt matter that he doesnt mean it. It doesnt matter that hes secretly quite a sweet, vulnerable person who is gracious to those he considers friends. It doesnt matter that somewhere in the rhinestone-rimmed hamster wheel of his mind is a conscience. It doesnt matter because the harm he does is real.
He is leading a yammering army of trolls to victory on terms they barely understand. This is how we got to a place where headline speakers at the Republican conventionone of the most significant political events in the national narrative of worlds greatest superpowerare now actively calling for the slaughter and deportation of foreigners, declaring that Hillary Clinton is an agent of Satan, and hearing only cheers from the floor.
They ventriloquise the fear of millions into a scream of fire in the crowded theatre of modernity where all the doors are locked, and then they watch the stampede, and they smile for the cameras.