Berkeley Blowback: Milo Book Sales Soar 12,740% Overnight
Sales of Milo's book have increased 12,740% overnight sending it rocketing from 642nd to 5th ranked best-seller on Amazon. Pretty impressive considering the book is not even released until March 14th 2017.
That was posted early this morning. And as I type this, the book has moved up from #5:
Look, I'm not going to get into debates about the morality of violent protest, Nazi-punching, or anything related. But get this straight: Yiannopoulos is not out there to talk about issues. Yiannopoulos is out there to sell books. He's on a pre-release book tour, and even though it's certain that his publisher, Simon & Schuster, has already assigned him a publicist, the Black Bloc is doing the publicity work for free.
Want to really do harm to YIannopoulos? Ignore him. I don't mean we shouldn't monitor his nasty activities -- I'm sure he'll see to it that they're all retransmitted through his many media channels -- and I'm not saying we shouldn't call him out when he says or does something particularly noxious and harmful to people.
But if he wants to go to some university and talk to an audience of campus wingnuts who already agree with him, let him. Let them try to fill the hall. Don't help him try to attract attention by cranking the outrage up to 11. And weigh the publicity value to him when you destroy stuff that has nothing to do with him.
Yiannopoulos's book was not expected to be a huge success. You can tell by the size of his advance and the lack of industry interest, as Slate's Katy Waldman explained last month:
For one thing, as an editor at a different house explained, $250,000 is not a lot of cash for a celebrity memoir, nor did there seem to be “an auction or anyone fighting over Milo.” ... it appears that Yiannopoulos was actively shopping his proposal to various right-wing imprints, with minimal success. Multiple publishing houses specifically told me that they had turned down his book.Simon & Schuster gave it a relatively modest advance. (By comparison, Barack Obama might get $20 million for a forthcoming memoir.) And even most right-wing publishers didn't want the book. It was not expected to be a blockbuster.
And now it's #1. Thanks a lot, Black Bloc.
7 comments:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/cnn-guest-berkeley-rioters-were-actually-secret-right-wingers-affiliated-with-breitbart/
In my youth I was, on multiple occasions, tear gassed, fire hosed, bean bagged, horse herded, billy clubbed, jailed, fined, fee-d and run out of town. There’s a reason why I haven’t been to a “protest” since nineteen seventy-two.
Yeah, that’s me in the picture. No stranger to violence. Don’t have to be a Peace Freak to be Against War.
Against Government When Against Government Wasn’t Cool.
Anarchists burning trash cans are a joke.
And Exactly What The Man Wants
He should send Black Bloc a thank-you note, assuming he can get an address, or, failing that, take out a full page ad in the local paper.
Green Eagle: It wouldn't surprise anyone; my assumption was law enforcement.
Just in case there's confusion, I'm not talking about black protesters or Black Lives Matter. When I say "Black Bloc," I'm referring to protesters -- usually white -- who believe in violence and property damage as the correct response to conservative outrages. See this Washington Post story. I think these tactics do harm to innocent people and don't do any good for the cause. But you're free to disagree.
Agent Provocateurs
Whether they are infiltrators or not, BLACKBLOCKERS MUST ALWAYS BE REGARDED AS INFILTRATORS. Sorry about the all-caps, but I can't stress that enough. No legitimate protest against Trump can afford to tolerate the presence of these nit-wits. Rip their masks of if you have to.
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