Vice, a liberal digital media site, published a piece that spoke glowingly of throwing milkshakes at right-wing politicians, calling the deed “pure poetry.”
“Of course, there’s nothing wasteful about fighting fascism,” Kim Kelly, a writer and leftist organizer, said Tuesday about the usefulness of throwing milkshakes at right-wing politicians.
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At the top of the article titled “How to Make the Perfect Milkshake for Throwing at Fascists,” Vice included this editor’s note: “For legal reasons, we must mention that throwing milkshakes qualifies as assault in some jurisdictions.”
Kelly defined “milkshaking” as “chucking milkshakes at and, ideally, on famous far-right figures when they slither into public places.” Kelly mentioned politician Carl Benjamin, of the euroskeptic UKIP Party, Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, the former head of the anti-Islam English Defense League, as examples of people who had and should be “milkshaked.”
“Milkshaking’s power lies in the sheer ridiculousness of the situation. Someone’s thrown a milkshake at you! A milkshake! That’s silly as hell!” Kelly said. “As a direct action — an instance in which political activists or regular-ass people who are fed up with the state of things takes matters into their own hands, through either violent or nonviolent means — milkshaking is both effective and sophisticated, robbing its target of any dignity while emphasizing the illegitimacy of their noxious views. No one’s getting injured.”
“[T]here should be no debate over the importance of eradicating fascism, and of confronting its agents when they poke their ugly heads out into the commons. That the latest means of doing so involves both the public humiliation of racists and one of nature’s most delicious frosty treats is pure poetry in motion,” Kelly said before closing the piece with milkshake recipe for readers to make and “throw” at political opponents if “legal in your jurisdiction.”
The British government refused to give Farage bodyguards in the run-up to the European parliamentary elections Sunday, as is typical for high-level British politicians. Farage and other right-wing politicians had milkshakes thrown at them while on the campaign trail.
Kelly is a writer and an anarchist organizer with the Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council.
