Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Democrats are back in array!

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

It could be worse. Vance could have said “post-menopausal sows.” Waiting for that audiotape to surface.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about it’s history.”

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

The US Supreme Court is on the ballot in november.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.

I did not have this on my fuck 2024 bingo card.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

The choice is between normal and crazy.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night Open Thread: Furries Prove Themselves Braver / More Ethical Than the ‘Mainstream’ GOP

Late Night Open Thread: Furries Prove Themselves Braver / More Ethical Than the ‘Mainstream’ GOP

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Bravo for the furries!

Didn’t take months of ‘but free speech’ equivocation for the Fur-Folk to reject blatant fascism:

… Yiannopoulos posted an email screenshot to one of the few platforms he has left—his Telegram messaging channel—on Saturday and claimed he registered for Midwest FurFest, a convention “to celebrate the furry fandom” hosted in the suburbs on Chicago this December…

Yiannopoulos also claimed on Telegram that he had submitted a form to suggest he host a panel called “The Politics of Fur.” He asked his followers who plan to attend Midwest FurFest to message him to arrange “dinner, drinks, photos or anything else.”…

In a statement later provided to Right Wing Watch, organizers wrote that they had rescinded Yiannopoulos’ registration for the event and that he would not be welcome to attend Midwest FurFest or any future event.

“Hate is not welcome at Midwest FurFest. We are dedicated to providing a safe, harassment-free convention experience for all, regardless of age, race, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, or personal beliefs,” organizers wrote. “Midwest FurFest can confirm that Mr. Yiannopoulos has registered for the event this year. While the convention generally does not comment on anyone’s registration status, Mr. Yiannopoulos has already stated as much publicly.”

Organizers continued, “The board of Midwest Furry Fandom, consistent with our posted code of conduct, has rescinded Mr. Yiannopoulos’s registration. He is not welcome to attend this or any future Midwest FurFest event.”

In 2017, The Daily Beast reported that another convention, Rocky Mountain Fur Con, had canceled its events after a controversy involving far-right participants in the furry community stirred discord. At the time, a flash of far-right activity in the furry community had reared its head, but other members of the subculture worked to dampen its reach…

ETA:

Reader Interactions

64Comments

  3. 3.

    sm*t cl*de

    Milo has no[w] stated he intends to come and bring “friends” so needless to say this is without a doubt a threat on the con and its attendees

    Siri, show me how you make a pheromone.

  4. 4.

    NotMax

    @sm*t cl*de

    Are the gods of irony on the ball enough for them to be outfitted in such a way that the folks at the entrance can say “We don’t need no es-stinking badgers!”

    :)

  6. 6.

    RandomMonster

    People who just want to pursue their unusual interest don’t want their fun ruined by an obnoxious media-whoring a$$hole. Imagine that.

  10. 10.

    Ruckus

    I don’t get the whole furries thing, it’s weird to me but, I can certainly understand no one wanting milo anywhere within a couple hundred miles of themselves.

  12. 12.

    SectionH

    @RandomMonster: Gee, who’d have thought? I’m definitely not a furry fan, but a long time ago, most of the early guys who started the first furry cons were in general SF fandom. They didn’t try to make existing cons cater to them; they had plenty of examples of how to start their own conventions, so they did. They seem to have made a go of several. Good for them.

    “Media-whoring a$$hole” – good description

    Didn’t Milo get banned from Australia – the entire country- a while back?

  15. 15.

    Yarrow

    Last week someone had some whining posts or DMs or something from Milo about how Telegram totally sucks and he can’t monetize it well enough and none of the other second and third tier Twitter imitators are any better. It’s pretty funny how being deplatformed has worked. Now he’s just trying to get attention by crashing various conventions. Sad!

  17. 17.

    Barbara

    On the one hand we have citizens who spend scads of their free time fantasizing about being a member of another, furrier species. OTOH, Donald Trump is president. It’s like an adventure in national psychosis. I hope we survive but it’s harder and harder for me to follow the plot closely.

  20. 20.

    Yarrow

    I decided to check Wikipedia to see how old Milo is. He’s 34 years old. He’ll be 35 in October. It’s one thing to be a real life troll for a living when you’re 25 but at this point it just seems sad. I also saw there’s an entire section on his Wikipedia page titled Debt:

    In December 2018, The Guardian reported that documents assembled by his former Australian tour promoters, Australian Events Management, showed Yiannopoulos had accrued more than $2 million in unpaid debt. Yiannopoulos reportedly owed $1.6 million to his own company, $400,000 to the Mercer Family Foundation, $153,215 to his former lawyers, $76,574 to former collaborator and Breitbart writer Allum Bokhari, and $20,000 to the luxury brand Cartier.[94]

    The guy is broke and doing whatever he can to get attention in hopes of making money off it. Pathetic.

    There was also this tidbit further up the page:

    In January 2016, Yiannopoulos set up his Privilege Grant for white men to balance scholarships for women and minorities. He participated in an online telethon to raise money for the grant and in August 2016, reported that approximately $100,000 had been received in donations and a further $250,000 had been pledged.

    In August 2016, it was revealed that over a quarter of a million dollars had gone missing from the Yiannopoulos Privilege Grant. Yiannopoulos apologised for mismanaging the grant and denied speculation he had spent the money. In March 2018, Yiannopoulos confirmed that the fund had been closed down.[62]

    He’s a grifter and a thief. Anyone who has anything to do with this guy is an idiot. He’ll steal your money and put your life in danger.

  21. 21.

    cain

    In further news, the titular head of the Free Software movement, Richard Stallman was forced off the Board of Directors and as President. This is a huge deal for our community. He was caught defending the folks who supported Epstein on an MIT mailing list. The backlash got him, see here

  22. 22.

    Anne Laurie

    @Ruckus:

    I don’t get the whole furries thing, it’s weird to me

    I was proto-furry-adjacent 30 years ago, when I was an sf fanzine fan (and so were some of the people who are now out’n’proud Furries).* I do admire their working ethics (rather more so than I did than some of the old-school sf fans’ at the time). If I were now as young as I was then, and if I didn’t already have too many expensive hobbies, I could see myself ending up as a furry, TBH!

    *Still have my commissioned Taral Wayne name badge, if any Youngs are dubious about my bona fides. Although, TBF, I don’t think Taral intended it to be flattering.

  23. 23.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Yarrow:

    He’s a grifter and a thief. Anyone who has anything to do with this guy is an idiot. He’ll steal your money and put your life in danger.

    I’d chip in to buy him a bus ticket to CPAC. But they probably wouldn’t let him in.

  24. 24.

    Chetan Murthy

    @cain: I’ve been a part of that world (computer science research & researchers) since the mid-80s. And a woman I know and trust from the relevant social circle in Cambridge was once quite clear that he was a creep and that no woman should ever be alone with him.

  25. 25.

    NotMax

    @Yarrow

    35? Expect the unleashing of “Send money for my presidential exploratory committee” e-mails to be sent the next day.

    “Why is the address in the Cayman Islands?”

    //

  27. 27.

    Yarrow

    @NotMax: Since his birth in the UK is well documented I don’t think he’d try to run for president. But perhaps Senate? Or maybe Governor.

  29. 29.

    Ruckus

    @Yarrow:

    It’s one thing to be a real life troll for a living when you’re 25 but at this point it just seems sad.

    milo is sad. And he’s been sad for a very long time. I’d bet that he was this sad when he was 25. It’s one thing to have a warped political view but he’s taken it to new lows.

  31. 31.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    So the Kayfabe worshiping idiot thought he could go to a fur con, grift as a punching bag for the furries then go back to the right and gift as a victim of the gay agenda. To bad for Milo gay bashing isn’t theater.

  32. 32.

    Ruckus

    @Anne Laurie:
    Didn’t say there is anything wrong with it. If it’s fun for you, go for it. I realize that for most it’s probably just a fun time, but that doesn’t make it less weird to me. But what the hell do I know, I used to roadrace motorcycles. And I’ve been told that’s insane. Which of course I couldn’t argue with.

  33. 33.

    oatler.

    I remember the “equesticles'” from Bob’s Burgers. If anything they’re less skeevy than the Milo/furry conflagration.

  35. 35.

    opiejeanne

    @Ruckus: I’ve said it before: my son is a furry.
    He doesn’t own a fur suit (yet) because what he wants is going to cost some serious bucks. There’s a lot of work that goes into a good one, and some are really works of art. I think he said he has a set of ears and a tail, and that’s ok for now. I think he said he wants a fennec fox costume. There’s a lot of overlap between sf fans, Monty Python, Dr Who, etc. His friends host a monthly party that involves a game of D & D, strange and hilarious video clips from the 80s, table-top games, etc.

    He told me that the Nazi furries disrupted some of the smaller cons so badly that they shut themselves down permanently. The house party kicked some out and banned them permanently, but most don’t attend the parties in costume.
    Most of the Nazi-display furries wear canine costumes, like huskies, or red foxes, or wolves. They’ve shown up wearing SS insignia, a swastika armband or an armband that resembles it but with a black paw print, German officers’ hats, dark shirts, etc. He said it was very intimidating for some of the attendees.

  36. 36.

    Chetan Murthy

    @opiejeanne:

    He said it was very intimidating for some of the attendees.

    It must be noted, that the furries have done a better job at pushing back on this shit, than the MSM courtier press. A better job by far.

  38. 38.

    Amir Khalid

    @NotMax:
    As much as I would love for my country to take credit for this tasty and nutritious beverage, it’s actually Australian Ovaltine.

  39. 39.

    cain

    @Chetan Murthy:

    @cain: I’ve been a part of that world (computer science research & researchers) since the mid-80s. And a woman I know and trust from the relevant social circle in Cambridge was once quite clear that he was a creep and that no woman should ever be alone with him.

    A lot of people are relieved that he is no longer holding any leadership positions. The bros are all having a sad and think it was all some mis understanding. He’s not really a nice person, having met him once. He’s definitely on the austism scale though. He started a great thing, but his opinions and actions are not mainstream and for Free Software to continue to be relevant he can no longer be its spokesman.

  40. 40.

    opiejeanne

    @Chetan Murthy: They really have. The media does a lousy job of covering the alt-right by not calling it what it is. , they wave away the Nazis as “Neo-Nazis” or alt-right. Alt-furries is what the group of idiots call themselves.

    One announcer just snickered when more than a dozen furries were hospitalized after a chlorine gas attack at one of their conventions. Mika. She had to excuse herself from the set.

  41. 41.

    Martin

    Ok, CNN is garbage, but this is their top headline right now:

    White House abandons reality after Saudi attack

  44. 44.

    NotMax

    @opiejeanne

    Rolling Stone article, 2017.

    And not just at conventions.

    If there’s perversion to be done, it’ll happen in Second Life. The long-lived virtual world lets users act out all kinds of fantasies, and that includes being a Nazi furry. In 2007, a group called “Furzi” was organized on the service.

    Out of their headquarters, “Das Waffenamt,” the group sold a wide variety of virtual Nazi items, including anti-Semitic propaganda posters and uniforms for virtual avatars to wear. This quickly brought them to the attention of the Zionist Association of Second Life, and later the Second Life Jewish Defense League. The Jewish groups protested the furries responded with “free speech” and things quickly got ugly.

    The Furzis ran a script to permanently ban any Jewish Second Life user from their property. The Jews retaliated by composing a massive report on Furzi activity and submitting it to Linden Labs, the company that runs the virtual world. Eventually, Furzi leader “Spotz Spork” was permanently banned from the service, Das Waffenamnt was destroyed, and the group was scattered to the winds. Source

  50. 50.

    LesGS

    The Furries I have known through the Firefly fandom were amazingly decent folk. Personally, as a transguy, I would feel much safer being “out” around Furries than the general population. That’s knowing, just like interacting with the Pagan community, I will run up against white supremacists. Dang, those guys are insidious.

  54. 54.

    hervevillechaizelounge

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    I don’t believe Milo is really gay; no one in London has ever seen him in the clubs or matched with him on Grindr. It’s just a marketing technique.

    Plus I know it’s ignorant to generalize but no self-respecting gay man would sport that heinous faux-drag he favors. It’s like a form of minstrelsy, for fuck’s sake.

  55. 55.

    Chetan Murthy

    @hervevillechaizelounge:

    I don’t believe Milo is really gay

    I’ve never tried to look into it, b/c “don’t care, doesn’t make any difference; he’s still a bucket of shit”. But supposedly he has a husband, and has been very public about it. I’d think these things are very easy to verify, and that if he were prevaricating, there’d be a nice payday in it for some enterprising reporter.

  56. 56.

    JWR

    @montanareddog:

    … Ms Messing tweeted that the attendees at his Beverley Hills fundraiser should be publicized.

    Yeah, this was the event. And then Whoopi Goldberg said something about it being like the Hollywood Blacklist and cautioned Messing not to go that route and I dunno but having this Trump “thing” as president is no fun at all. Hell, I’m even having a hard time watching Colbert’s show for all the Trump news I missed elsewhere.

  59. 59.

    Anne Laurie

    @hervevillechaizelounge:

    I don’t believe Milo is really gay; no one in London has ever seen him in the clubs or matched with him on Grindr. It’s just a marketing technique.

    Milo can be gay and *also* using his gayness as a marketing technique — like Diamond & Silk playing ‘Trump’s biggest African-American boosters’. There’s a lot more money/attention in grifting American MAGAts than in promoting his gig around British conservatives (who already have all those upper-class boarding-school ‘so transgressive, but absolutely not GAY’ politicians dressing up in drag & acting out their homophobic fantasies at private events).

  60. 60.

    Shalimar

    @montanareddog: I think that was the last trip a few weeks ago. This is the first of 4 more in Cali over the next few months. Attendees aren’t being told where it is, to avoid protests and spies. They will be shuttled to the location.

  61. 61.

    Booger

    @Amir Khalid: Boy, if THAT doesn’t sound like a euphemism for…something! “Oi! he’s hadda a big cuppa ‘Australian Ovaltine, ain’t ‘e! (wink wink!)”

  62. 62.

    opiejeanne

    @NotMax: Google: Furry Triple Murder. Read the Rolling Stone’s version.

    Then read the two comments under the article in the Rolling Stone.

    My son’s friends get death threats periodically.

  63. 63.

    Patrick Linnen

    It’s been a couple of decades since I’ve been to a fur-con. I still have issues from then

    Remember;
    Genus?
    Albedo?
    Critters?
    Sabrina?
    Tank Vixens?
    Omaha the Cat Dancer?
    Blacksad is still on-going strong.
    Usagi Yojimbo?
    Fisson Chicken?
    Furrlough?
    Cutey Bunny?
    Shanda the Panda?
    Havoc Inc.?
    Oh! there was also the series with the psychotic squirrel vigilante!

    So, Yiff to all!

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