Lord Miles Flees Taliban, Publishes Memoir at White Nationalist Press, Gets Captured by Taliban

The Taliban has detained three British nationals in Afghanistan, including infamous edgelord shitposter “Lord” Miles Routledge. With this news comes a good time to revisit Routledge's story since he burst onto the scene as a "war-tourist" who barely escaped Afghanistan during the fall of Kabul in 2021. After fleeing the country, Routledge has largely become a Twitter shitposter who has compared Brooklyn to Afghanistan and has also published a book about his time in Afghanistan with Antelope Hill, a company that also publishes fascist and white supremacist literature.

Routledge was detained by officers of the Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) on January 11. Along with Routledge, the GDI arrested volunteer medic Kevin Cornwell and another unidentified hotel manager. All three are U.K. citizens. “We are working hard to secure consular contact with British nationals detained in Afghanistan and we are supporting families,” a spokesperson for Britain's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) told Reuters.

Routledge is not the world’s most sympathetic figure. He has been posting about his experiences on 4chan, YouTube, and Twitter for years. Going into a country, acting like an asshole, and getting harassed by the local authorities is his entire brand. He has published videos about being arrested in Kenya, sneaking across the EU border, and cosplaying as a homeless person by living on the streets of New York City for a whopping 48 hours.

Six months ago Routledge posted a video purporting to show him buying a gun in a market in Afghanistan and shooting it with members of the Taliban. In another video, he joined a Taliban parade on the anniversary of the Fall of Kabul.

Routledge claimed to be the last person to enter Afghanistan on a tourist visa before the fall in 2021. He turned the experience into a 169-page book that’s filled with memes and 4Chan shibboleths. He said his visa required a personal statement explaining why he was entering the country. “My response was simply an A4 sheet of paper with only the word ‘fun’ written on it. It was accepted without question,” he said in his book. “I was ready for my very own White boy summer.” 

The book, called Lord Miles in Afghanistan, was published by Antelope Hill Publishing, which has also published neo-fascist and white nationalist books. The Southern Poverty Law Center published an investigation into the publisher in 2022, laying out its connection to neo-fascist and white nationalist movements.

In addition to Routledge’s memoir, Antelope Hill has also published a collection of Hitler speeches, a pro-Nazi account of the Brown Shirt’s street-fighting days in 1930s Berlin, and a book by convicted war criminal and Nazi-collabotor Leon Degrelle. In its children’s section, Antelope Hill is selling a book about a happy colony of bees whose hive is destroyed when a fly comes to live with them. 

“For all our perfect children, whose future we must secure,” reads the dedication of the children’s book. That’s a reference to the infamous 14 words, a catchphrase deployed by Nazis and white supremacists.

In his book, Routledge leaves no doubt that he is not a sympathetic character (in case there was any question). Routledege recounted rewatching American Psycho, something he described as a “sacred male experience.” While waiting at the airport for his plane into Afghanistan, Routledge ordered food from a fast food restaurant at the terminal but made a point of not eating it. “The fast food was likely a greater danger to my health than any place I might be heading to—at least in Afghanistan everything didn't have soy in it,” he said, a reference to a 2018-era online conservative meme.

In his video of hanging out with the Taliban and shooting a rifle, Routledge tells his driver that the United Nations is the antichrist. “In England, we joke that the UN are the devils, the antichrist,” he said before turning to the camera to grin. “If you say that you hate the antichrist they will hunt you down somewhere.”