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The Alt-Right Playbook: How to Radicalize a Normie
- Thread starter Veelk
- Start date
Oh you're one of THOSE people who think people getting impatient with your insensitivity means they're calling you a Nazi.
It's not me who's arguing in bad faith
Words - including 'Nazi' - have meanings and as fun as it might be to throw it out when you get super duper mad at someone, that doesn't mean it's correct.
Or... hear me out... you can listen to why they're mad and apologize.
Boom, they won't call mean names ever again. It's quite easy. Much easier than using your indignation to turn into an actual Nazi.
I can tell that you're excited to have found a thread you think you can unravel, but how about we get back to the original point which is the contention of some - including yourself - that there is not a single example of someone erroneously being called a Nazi.
So, respectively, do you consider the following people Nazi's?
- Joe Rogan
- Blizzard
- The ERG
- Jordan Peterson
- The Republican Party
- Boris Johnson
- Donald Trump
This isn't the original point.
The original point was that clowns claimed that there's an abundance of liberals running around calling people Nazi whenever and that causes them to drive to the alt right.
Yet, no one who made that claim, PROVE that people go to the alt right if they're called a Nazi.
That's the original claim.
So I don't know why you presented this list. You're just arguing in bad faith.
Look if you want to say any insensitive thing just do it already. No one;s stopping you.
"NO ONE DOES THIS! No one calls someone who isn't acting like a Nazi, a goddamn Nazi"
"I shouldnt have to convince people to vote for my side, they should just know!" Is not how you win elections and this thread is filled with that sentiment.
The derail started because a few members and I merely brought up the conundrum of the right having dozens of places to convert people to the right and the left has next to zero. Not one of us said ERA needs to be that place and still so much disdain is thrown at the mere thought of trying to get people on your side. Throwing people away is essentially giving votes to the other side.
Cute
And this is the list you compiled to disprove my point? People/groups, who either defended Nazis, acted like a Nazi, court Nazis, said bigoted things purposefully like a Nazi, or are so far to the right it doesn't really matter?
Like the only one in that group that would be questionable is Blizzard and even that's pushing it because to say that Chinese nationalism isn't far right would be laughable.
So again, you're not arguing in good faith. But if you want to say insensitive and edgy things so badly, have at it hoss.
To be fair I have yet to see a single example of this happening. Not even a screenshot of another website.
Jordan Peterson, the GOP, Boris Johnson, and Donald Trump are all sympathizers of modern-day Nazi ideals, yes. And Joe Rogan is a useful idiot for their cause.
LOL I know. It's so weird. It's almost as if the left calling everyone, who says a dumb thing, a Nazi is actually just an alt right talking point and liberals are actually stupid enough to believe it.
All the people on that list have been directly called Nazi's on this website. Lol weird huh!
That's a cute comic but I'd suggest it would be a more appropriate response to the multiple posters who keep saying "LOL this has never ever happened a single time show me the screenshots!!"
I'm sure you can always find a few people who just drive by or have a more abrasive/extreme stance, but focusing all of your energy on those and acting like they represent the entire left is either stupid or disingenuous, and distracts from the point. Great job derailing the thread though.
Yeah, it's almost as if these clowns either sympathized with Nazis or acted like Nazis
Congrats on sealioning me. But you're not arguing in good faith. So I'm done with debating you.
I'm not suggesting they represent the entire left in the slightest. Where did you get that idea?
I was replying to the red, bold, giant font statement that "ITS NEVER HAPPENED EVER!!!"
you're doing the sealion thing again by taking something said colloquially ("no one does this") and escalating it to extreme seriousness and spending a ton of posts arguing with people about the exact semantics of that expression. Usually when people say "no one" they don't mean "literally not a single person ever". But you probably know this, and are enjoying how big brained your logic and argumentation is by laser focusing on one specific point and ignoring the larger discussion and derailing the thread. Good job. You got us. You solved the leftist conspiracy of covering up for the handful of people who actually call Joe Rogan a nazi and denying their existence. You have defeated us.
Stop derailing over semantics
People are bringing up the old place but this video actually reminded me a lot more of a divide that happened on some GameFAQs boards I was on. The board originally had a not-insignificant-but-still-not-majority-by-a-long-shot number of people who clearly spewed hateful shit they brought over from 4Chan, and they were tolerated because it was seen as ironic or not overbearing. Meanwhile things like Anita Sarkeesian's content were at best debated and at worst mocked. Over time more and more people left and eventually most people who aren't terrible left for a Discord server we formed where left wing politics are second only to games themselves as a point of discussion. Meanwhile, on the board proper, any time politics comes up right-wing talking points dominate the conversation.
User Warned: Ignoring staff post
They're posting in bad faith? Really?
This entire series is amazing and Ian really does his research. For those interested, he actually has master post on Tumblr with a comprehensive list of the multiple books he's been using to build his series. A lot of them like 'This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed', 'Ur-Fascism' & 'Neoreaction a Basilisk' should be required reading. Not even just for adults since I'd say a lot of these are the kinds of books kids should be reading in middle and high school here in the US and elsewhere across the globe if for nothing else but to choke this alt-right pipeline early.
The basic problem here is that most people respond to alt-right talking points one of two ways:
1. Ignore/disengage/ban
2. Join in (ironically or sincerely, there's no functional difference)
Setting up a space to deprogram Gabes requires not immediately banning or disengaging people with reprehensible views, which means most non-Gabes won't want to stick around or (worse) will get sucked in themselves. I don't see any scenario where such a space doesn't just devolve into another alt-right echo chamber where awful people shout down the people who are meant to "save" them. At best it becomes another Twitter where each side is deeply entrenched and doesn't meaningfully engage with each other.
Saving Gabes probably requires a strong push from people who know them personally or exposure to non-alt right content, which can easily come from moderated left-leaning spaces. There's no need to foul up our own spaces by tolerating these cretins and their toxicity. Battleground spaces at best serve as equal opportunity recruitment, and probably favors the alt right because they aggressively drag the discourse down to their level.
Interesting video and I've never seen this channel so a hard subscribe from me. I don't know if anyone has been back to GAF lately but the bit about infiltration rings extremely true if you just look at some of the threads there.
Good video, I feel like the old place from late 2017-2019 should be a case study as an example of this radicalization process (it's at least one of the few instances I saw it happen live, as I don't think I know any gabes IRL). Once the owner (a purported 'ally') found himself in the center of a controversy, the community was at its most vulnerable state and gaf was already hated by a lot of rightwing / far-right communities within gaming for being ... not shitty and not pandering to straight white guy gamers, I guess? So from that point and on, a lot of alt-right fascists found a breeding ground on gaf for radicalization: they took advantage of the shitstorm and saw their opportunity as a lot of the community left and formed resetera. Then, in line with what the video says, gaf game back with no politics section in an attempt to separate the personal from the political, and a bunch of gabes stayed on it because "they were just here to talk about games".
Of course this 'apolitical' stance of the forum was just a gateway for pervasive rightwing talking points to seep into. All the new accounts were making (not so) oddly fash-y posts, or they were complaining about the left and the former community. The egregious bigots initially got banned, but the ones careful enough to not reveal their power level stayed on. The forum still had a stand against Trump, but it also started to erode as more trumpsters became vocal. The gabes of gaf that didn't come here probably felt excluded and started banding with the rest, or they were closet bigots all along who waited until the community left to reveal their true colors; couple of posters I think I recognize are now on full fascist mode talking about stopping all kinds of immigration, preserving the (white) ethnicity of their country or bringing up skull shapes and IQ graphs from nazi sources to argue that black people are genetically inferior and that's just how things are, leftists can't handle the f a c t s.
Since this forum remained vocal about social issues and the gaf gabes found themselves at the other side of the fence, the fascists played out their tested-and-true tactic of 'camaraderie of the accused' (credits to contra, in spite of her recent shitty deeds): they branded resetera and the general (american) left as a bunch of hyper-woke crazy cultists and authoritarians who (i) complain about minor shit (ii) crucify anyone not falling exactly in line with their beliefs (iii) struggle with their social life, and they got the gaf gabes to join them in ridiculing and caricaturing the left, all the while coddling them by letting them know that none of this leftist hyperbole was true about any of them; after all it's all crazy talk from lunatics. Eventually they drew a wedge between the forum and older users who weren't falling for this bullshit and could see where this was going, meaning they banned most dissenting voices and only left a few token "left leaning" users in a thinly veiled attempt to appear as a forum where "all ideas are welcome" and "everything can be discussed in a civil manner".
After the initial couple of months things weren't as bad as they are now iirc, but every time I went there I could see each stage of the radicalization. There were a few outright fascists talking about non-white immigration ruining the west (yadda yadda culture, islam, rapes), defending James Fields or speaking about the globalist agenda of the jews (especially Soros), yet most were gabes complaining about sjw culture in their games, or patting themselves on the back for being a free-thinking community unchained from the echo chamber (despite all of them forming an echo chamber that somehow had the same opinion on any social issue, pretty sure the irony is still lost on them). Then they kept going deeper and deeper into the onion layers as an "us vs them" mentality was established, and 'joking' about the left (or minorities) adopted a less humorous, more hateful tone. Now the forum has gone full MAGA, with any far-right bullshit talking point (or straight-up conspiracy theory) being free to fester in threads and posts, while any liberal or left-leaning talking point is being scrutinized, dogpiled on and eventually banned from the forum so that the radicalized gabes are further isolated. None of these points are actually ever debated because, like the video pointed out, the far-right is pretty shit at arguing and extremely biased. What occurs is a sea of bad, disingenuous, repetitive arguments with the slightest pretense of 'rationality', backed up by far-right news media and sources (since everything else is f a k e n e w s), and anyone calling this out either gets bored of talking to a wall, or is promptly branded a radical and kicked out.
I don't know how far into the altright onion the old site has gone, it's probably not at the stage of the jewish question yet (though there are a bunch of rampant antisemites, most of them keep quiet for now and are content on liking antisemitic posts). It's basically a mix of /pol/ and r/the_donald, except they can't say f***** or n***** (but again, I'm sure a lot of them in there use these words often and have them at the tip of their tongues, they're just frustrated they can't say them there yet).
Of course this 'apolitical' stance of the forum was just a gateway for pervasive rightwing talking points to seep into. All the new accounts were making (not so) oddly fash-y posts, or they were complaining about the left and the former community. The egregious bigots initially got banned, but the ones careful enough to not reveal their power level stayed on. The forum still had a stand against Trump, but it also started to erode as more trumpsters became vocal. The gabes of gaf that didn't come here probably felt excluded and started banding with the rest, or they were closet bigots all along who waited until the community left to reveal their true colors; couple of posters I think I recognize are now on full fascist mode talking about stopping all kinds of immigration, preserving the (white) ethnicity of their country or bringing up skull shapes and IQ graphs from nazi sources to argue that black people are genetically inferior and that's just how things are, leftists can't handle the f a c t s.
Since this forum remained vocal about social issues and the gaf gabes found themselves at the other side of the fence, the fascists played out their tested-and-true tactic of 'camaraderie of the accused' (credits to contra, in spite of her recent shitty deeds): they branded resetera and the general (american) left as a bunch of hyper-woke crazy cultists and authoritarians who (i) complain about minor shit (ii) crucify anyone not falling exactly in line with their beliefs (iii) struggle with their social life, and they got the gaf gabes to join them in ridiculing and caricaturing the left, all the while coddling them by letting them know that none of this leftist hyperbole was true about any of them; after all it's all crazy talk from lunatics. Eventually they drew a wedge between the forum and older users who weren't falling for this bullshit and could see where this was going, meaning they banned most dissenting voices and only left a few token "left leaning" users in a thinly veiled attempt to appear as a forum where "all ideas are welcome" and "everything can be discussed in a civil manner".
After the initial couple of months things weren't as bad as they are now iirc, but every time I went there I could see each stage of the radicalization. There were a few outright fascists talking about non-white immigration ruining the west (yadda yadda culture, islam, rapes), defending James Fields or speaking about the globalist agenda of the jews (especially Soros), yet most were gabes complaining about sjw culture in their games, or patting themselves on the back for being a free-thinking community unchained from the echo chamber (despite all of them forming an echo chamber that somehow had the same opinion on any social issue, pretty sure the irony is still lost on them). Then they kept going deeper and deeper into the onion layers as an "us vs them" mentality was established, and 'joking' about the left (or minorities) adopted a less humorous, more hateful tone. Now the forum has gone full MAGA, with any far-right bullshit talking point (or straight-up conspiracy theory) being free to fester in threads and posts, while any liberal or left-leaning talking point is being scrutinized, dogpiled on and eventually banned from the forum so that the radicalized gabes are further isolated. None of these points are actually ever debated because, like the video pointed out, the far-right is pretty shit at arguing and extremely biased. What occurs is a sea of bad, disingenuous, repetitive arguments with the slightest pretense of 'rationality', backed up by far-right news media and sources (since everything else is f a k e n e w s), and anyone calling this out either gets bored of talking to a wall, or is promptly branded a radical and kicked out.
I don't know how far into the altright onion the old site has gone, it's probably not at the stage of the jewish question yet (though there are a bunch of rampant antisemites, most of them keep quiet for now and are content on liking antisemitic posts). It's basically a mix of /pol/ and r/the_donald, except they can't say f***** or n***** (but again, I'm sure a lot of them in there use these words often and have them at the tip of their tongues, they're just frustrated they can't say them there yet).
Did you watch the video? I think the point is that it's using their language.
I haven't kept up with the other place in a long while so this is a great informative summary of the radicalisation of that forum after we left to join Resetera.
I wonder if there's a value in setting up a completely separate 'holding space' as in the video, where derailing conversations can be moved without being dismissed or dogpiled. If it's completely separate, it would mean that those with the energy and motivation to see and engage with those posters could do so (even if it turns out to be bad faith), meaning that folk who have to deal with that shit daily don't have to. If people refused to move discussions over to that space it would also be a useful red flag for bad faith trolls