Right-wing infighting! Openly gay right-wing troll Milo Yiannopoulos has jumped on the hottest alt-right meme of the moment “It’s Okay to Be White”, by selling T-shirts printed with the phrase on his website. “Don’t let Racist SJW Cultural Marxists dehumanize you because of the color of your skin,” reads Milo’s description of the shirt.
Despite the phrase being created by an anonymous poster on 4chan, several prominent alt-right figures took issue with shirt. Richard Spencer tweeted, “Milo attempts to fleece the Alt-Right. Not gona[sic] work, ‘dangerous faggot.’ #MerchantRight”
“Merchant” is a reference to the anti-Semitic “Happy Merchant” meme popular in alt-right circles and Milo’s Jewish ancestry. Several other alt-right figures echoed Spencer’s sentiments. Eli Mosley, current leader of Identity Europa, tweeted “If anyone buy this shirt they must be permanently bullied. The days of them profiting off our authentic movement are over.”
Nicholas Fuentes and James Allsup, hosts of the popular alt-right podcast Nationalist Review, also criticized Milo, with Fuentes tweeting, “Milo only had an aversion to white identity politics until he could use it to get attention and make money. Imagine my shock.”
Alt-right YouTuber Tara McCarthy had a different take, tweeting “Meh, who cares if he’s making shekels [a Jewish form of currency] off it? It’s helping to mainstream our message. That’s good. I’m actually glad he’s doing this.”
Users on the 8chan /pol/ board were less diplomatic with their criticism. “Faggots ruin everything. If you're reading this milo, I hope you get aids,” wrote one. “Imagine my shock. A jew making money pretending to be white,” wrote another.
One /pol/ user criticized the alt-right use of the phrase, writing “now the alt-right retards are appropriating this IOTBW slogan while throwing anti-jew memes all over… these idiot will link this faceless very redpilling move to their retarded unlikable face and will allow others to say see its from them, therefore its shit. never miss an opportunity to get some e-buck… its supposed to be incremental and these retards have no tact and will just press on the gas.”