“Talibros.” That’s how self-styled British adventurer and incel pinup Miles Routledge refers to the Taliban gunmen who held him hostage for eight months in a filthy Kabul guesthouse. They are not psychopaths, kidnappers, or extortionists; they are his brothers and “best mates.” He can’t wait to get back to Afghanistan for a reunion.
The baby-faced man-child who calls himself “Lord” Miles Routledge—though he is not a British aristocrat—was freed on October 10, in a deal that was finalized as Hamas terrorists were killing approximately 1,400 Israeli people and taking hundreds more hostage.
Styling himself as a latter-day T. E. Lawrence, “Lord Miles,” at 24 years old, is the newest subprime aspiring superstar in the firmament of social-media subculture popularized by the former reality-TV personality Andrew Tate, who is now facing human-trafficking and rape charges in Romania.
A “Gonzo for the Internet Age,” as one associate described him, or “a cross between Vice magazine and Hunter S. Thompson,” Routledge is the embodiment of a parallel culture in which existence is validated by social-media followings. Across multiple platforms, including YouTube, Instagram, X, and TikTok, he has learned that the adrenaline generated by risk-taking can be metastasized into dollars.
And as he plans his return to the Taliban in Afghanistan, he won’t say a word against them.
Styling himself as a latter-day T. E. Lawrence, “Lord Miles,” at 24 years old, is the newest subprime aspiring superstar in the firmament of social-media subculture.
He denies that the trauma of his captivity is clouding his judgment, reverting instead to his carefully cultivated public image as a brave, if foolhardy, adventurer going to the most dangerous places in the world. Christmas in Chernobyl. Brazil’s Snake Island in a suit of armor. Rebuffing offers of a wife in South Sudan. Sneaking across militarized Central Asian borders. Hunkering down with Ukrainian soldiers during the Russian invasion.
Like Tate, he admires Tucker Carlson as “one of my favorite men in the world.” And like his two hero-bros, there is nothing Routledge doesn’t know. He claims to tailor his act to suit his audience, parodying Tate’s bluff misogyny and machismo. He says the buffoonery is clickbait for selling “Taliban merch” online. Yet he is the same in person as he is on social media.
Full of bravado, braggadocio, and bullshit, delivered in an almost whisper and peppered with f-bombs and faux politesse (all men are “gentlemen”), Routledge appeals to people who know nothing about Afghanistan, or the Taliban, or history, or war, or politics, or pain, or depravity; a self-obsessed generation failed by institutionalized politics, education, and media, told they have nothing to look forward to.
He is talking to people who, like him, are so misled that they would rather glamorize violent Islamists as “bros” who rightly keep their women indoors, barefoot and pregnant, than look too closely at the atrocities they live by. It’s cool, man. And as long as it makes him money, Routledge doesn’t care.
He doesn’t care, either, that in the real world, he is reviled as a reckless attention seeker who’s been repeatedly bailed out of trouble at the expense of the British taxpayer.
The first time was in August 2021, when the British Army squeezed him onto a flight out of Kabul during the calamitous evacuation after the Taliban’s return. He’d been there on holiday, doing a spot of war tourism and pretending to be a journalist.
He says the buffoonery is clickbait for selling “Taliban merch” online.
The second time was in October, when the U.K. government flew him out of Kabul to London via Dubai, along with three other British men who had also spent most of this year as hostages of the Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence.
Routledge said he was treated well, kept in a guesthouse, allowed to use his laptop, and regularly taken on the back of a motorcycle to a market to buy food. The other three men, by contrast, were held in rodent-infested basement cells at G.D.I. headquarters, deprived of hygiene facilities, adequate food and water, clean clothing, and, in one case, life-saving medicines.
Dozens of foreigners, including an unknown number of Americans, remain in Taliban custody. The last American to be released, Mark Frerichs, was traded for a Taliban drug dealer.
“Lovely holiday,” Routledge told me, repeatedly. It’s his line. He was detained with a gun, he said, that he had no permission to carry, though he’d been posting videos of himself shopping for automatic weapons and taking lessons from his “Talibros” on how to load and fire them. For what purpose remains a mystery.
Barely back on British soil, he shared plans for an almost immediate return to Afghanistan to catch up with the “Talibros” he said had made him an honorary member of their “mujahideen,” and to strike it rich from a gold mine he said they’ve given him as an investment platform.
First, though, he wanted to join a squadron of Taliban fighters headed to Gaza to fight with Hamas against Israel, and to make a film about it. He was shocked when his U.S. visa was canceled.
“If all the village idiots got together and formed their own village, he would be that village’s idiot,” read one comment beneath a story about Routledge’s podcast with Tate, in The Times of London.
He is reviled as a reckless attention seeker who’s been repeatedly bailed out of trouble at the expense of the British taxpayer.
Others called him an eejit, dunderhead, fruit loop, waste of space, first-class twerp, clueless, ignoramus, narcissistic plonker, misogynist, and oxygen thief. “Watching Rambo but acting like Thrombo—a slow-moving, painful clot,” said another.
Routledge operates with a “Bring it on” mentality. The “haters” boost clicks, and clicks mean bucks. He’s a businessman, the goal is to get rich, and to that end he’s cashing in on his “danger tourist” notoriety, exploiting every opportunity to boost his profile and mimic his role model, Tate, who is said to be worth hundreds of millions.
Routledge has a long way to go. His $15, made-in-Pakistan high-top sneakers, which he wore in captivity and had his jailers sign, sold for $1,250. Talicrap on eBay and books of Nazi diatribes won’t pay much. Pennsylvania-based Antelope Hill published his first book, Lord Miles in Afghanistan: The Travel Diary of a Modern Day British Adventurer During the 2021 Taliban Takeover, and is set to release his second, Lord Miles’ Holiday in Taliban Prison, in the New Year. He says he is talking to directors and networks about a documentary on his life.
He was born in Birmingham, the U.K.’s second-largest city, where, he likes to say, he’s more likely to be killed than in any war zone. His softened accent betrays his northern roots. His mother, he said, is an alcoholic who conceived him with donated sperm; he has been estranged from her for years. His X (formerly known as Twitter) feed condemns pre-marital sex in a nod to what he calls his “strict” Catholicism, hinting at an incel profile.
He says that he was homeless as a teenager, worked in a hairdressing salon, and made it to university to study physics. He was destined for banking, he said, but couldn’t stand the thought of a life stuck behind a desk.
So along came “Lord” Miles (he added the honorific as his preferred title when opening a bank account) and allusions to a parallel life as an operative for the British secret service and the C.I.A.
As he plans his return to Afghanistan—for more lovely picnics with his “best mates”—he’s been dropping hints that he might disappear on his next trip. Lawrence of Arabia he’s not. Rather, beneath the bluster he seems like a fragile and frightened young man who has come to the realization that it’s going to be difficult, if not impossible, as the Chinese say, to dismount from the tiger he is riding. Trust in his Talibros? Not in this life.
Lynne O’Donnell, an author, journalist, and broadcaster, specializes in South and Central Asian affairs, war, and terrorism