If Mariah Carey had sex with Patrick Bateman and their progeny picked up a copy of On Liberty and developed a taste for gutting sacred cows, that would be very close to me.
I’m a fire-starter and troublemaker who started out as an obscure British tech blogger and rose to infamy as one of America’s most in demand speakers on college campuses. The appearance of my expensive shoes and frosted tips and the sound of my laughter ringing across university quads has forced professors, journalists, directors, activists and musicians to realize something no liberal in America has understood for a long time: emotions do not trump facts.
My critics hate me because they can’t beat me. They say I am responsible for the actions of others. When some anonymous reprobate goes after a celebrity on Twitter, I get the blame.
My supporters see me for what I am: a critical voice in the pushback against political correctness, and a free-speech fundamentalist defending the public’s right to express themselves however they please. Young conservatives and libertarians respond to me because I say the things they wish they could.
Mischief-makers love me, but often only in private, because they fear reprisals. I’m down with the DL so I get it. The names in my inbox, which include Hollywood A-listers, rappers, reality TV stars, authors, producers and investors, would make your head explode. Here’s a neat trick: if you want to work out if your favorite celebrity is a Republican, just Google them and see if they talk about politics. If the answer is no, then yes: they’re a Republican.10
In my mind, I play the role gays were always meant to in polite society: I test the absolute limits of acceptability. The social and religious convictions I represent do not map onto the norms of nihilism and self-esteem peddled by social-justice warriors (SJWs) and progressives since the 1960s. But they have set me, and my army of fans, free.
I am a threat because I don’t belong to anyone. I’m unaffiliated.
They hate that.
I look and dress and behave as though I should have safe, MTV-friendly feminist opinions. But I don’t.
I am the Ken doll from the underworld.
Social taboos for the past fifteen years have all come from the progressive left. They’re a hideously ugly army of scolds who want to tell you how to behave. Libertarians and conservatives are the new counter-culture.
Liberals hate that too.
The tremendous outcry among social, online, and print media to this book being announced is the entire reason I’m writing it. Despite being announced between Christmas and New Year’s, when most of the world was on vacation, the firestorm was immediate. I’m used to the heat. My former publisher, Simon & Schuster, was paralyzed by it. A lot of what came at me after the announcement were the typical lies I’ve dealt with. But even I was surprised by the scale of the onslaught. The Chicago Review of Books announced to great fanfare that they would not review another book published by Simon & Schuster, in response to Dangerous.
I don’t think there’s anything particularly outrageous in this book. But to believe the press coverage, you’d think this was the most offensive thing published since OJ Simpson’s If I Did It.
What are they all so afraid of?
It isn’t my outrageous behavior, my mockery of ideologies considered sacrosanct in America today, or even my addiction to uncomfortable truths. The establishment’s real fear is that this book will deeply affect readers, especially young people. In particular, they fear that the young people at the epicenter of political correctness in America’s universities will begin to question the ideologies foisted upon them, thanks to the book you hold in your hands.
My views are nowhere near as radical or “hateful” as my opponents pretend to think they are. I believe in free speech, freedom of lifestyle—for hedonistic liberals and traditional conservatives both—and in putting facts before feelings. If you want white nationalism, go listen to Richard Spencer. I’m the conservative Lenny Bruce, finding boundaries and raping them in front of you. (Lenny Bruce would overdose all over again if he saw what stuffy prudes we consider controversial comedians today.)
Political correctness used to be a particular way to think and speak in order to demonstrate to everyone around just how good of a person you are. Fellow liberals might not know anything about you, but they’d know you are a virtuous person based on your use of the term “undocumented American” instead of “illegal alien.”
The new brand of political correctness, popular on college campuses and social media, is the idea that no speech should exist that directly challenges politically correct ideas. To campus crybabies, and the professors who have been breastfeeding them, it is incomprehensible that I should be permitted to speak on their campus.
Liberals label all speech they don’t like as “hate speech.” That term has been stretched so broadly it has lost all meaning. Simon & Schuster’s CEO, Carolyn Reidy, put out a laughably vague announcement that my book would not include any “hate speech.” I asked for a set of guidelines as to how hate speech would be defined, but that doesn’t exist. It’s an “I’ll know it when I see it” kind of situation.
Adam Morgan, the editor of The Chicago Review of Books, wrote in The Guardian that my book could inspire people to commit acts of terrorism, specifically naming Omar Mateen and Dylann Roof as examples.
This is a very particular kind of insanity on Morgan’s part—I gave a speech about the dangers of Islam mere steps from the site of Mateen’s massacre. And Dylann Roof, along with any other actual Nazis, hates me just as much as that piece of shit Mateen would if he weren’t too busy burning in Hell. I’m a Jewish faggot who loves black guys, for God’s sake! What kind of half-witted logic is that, especially coming from a man who writes about books for a living?
The practitioners of the new political correctness are not equipped for a world in which individuals can disagree with what is deemed appropriate thought. They rely on silencing the opposition with hysterics, instead of winning with superior ideas. If there isn’t a piece in a leading media source comparing this book to Mein Kampf by the time you read this, don’t worry, it’s coming soon. And that’s precisely why this book is so necessary. Purposefully or unwittingly, a generation of Americans now exists that is terrified of critical thinking.
Freedom of speech is America’s most cherished right, and implicit in freedom of speech is the freedom to disagree. I’m not your typical conservative commentator. For one thing, my process is a little different. If I haven’t spent at least $5,000 at Neiman Marcus then I find it very difficult to write more than 500 words. I’m like the Zsa Zsa Gabor of political discourse.