DRAMAGATE: Your #ComicsGate™ Minute!
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Dateline 10/26/18: Ethan Van Sciver Tries, Fails to Prevent Release of ComicsGate Expose
by Jason Yungbluth, Your Roving Reporter
(Now with 100% less Unicode formatting, for phones!)
@Indiegogo
Dateline 10/26/18: Ethan Van Sciver Tries, Fails to Prevent Release of ComicsGate Expose
by Jason Yungbluth, Your Roving Reporter
1) Everyone reading this should first know that Ethan Van Sciver, the self-appointed gatekeeper of the right wing ComicsGate movement, went to great lengths to prevent you from learning what I am about to tell you.
2) So please, if you don't mind, retweet this to everyone you can, as many times as you can.
3) Several days ago I announced that I would be writing a piece about white nationalism in ComicsGate. When Ethan caught wind of this he mobilized his 32,000 Cesar Sayocs to comb through my Twitter history and get me deplatformed by any means necessary.
4) Ethan Van Sciver also reported me to the FBI, and then began libeling me, publicly calling me a "pedo-cartoonist", (apparently over an award-winning animated short he'd seen based on my comic strip "Clarissa", which tackles the subject of sexual abuse).
5) Ethan is not the first person in whom Clarissa has stirred unhealthy emotions (I've been sent the Rule 34s that prove it), but that is between him and the Lords of Kolob. Sadly for Ethan, I am not James Gunn, and he is no Mike Cernovich. (Except in the looks dept.)
6) But what is it about what I had to say that so panicked Ethan Van Sciver that he chose to attach his own name and the #ComicsGate brand forevermore to to the topics of sexual abuse and Rule 34s?
7) The reason is that the House of ComicsGate is on fire, and Ethan, whose fortune is hopelessly tied up with it, cannot handle any more gasoline.
8) In the past weeks there have been murmurs of discontent from CG's talent pool over Ethan's role as gatekeeper, and a desire by some creators to get out from under the name "ComicsGate"--with its connotations of rape threats and trolling--and rebrand themselves.
9) Ethan himself has also voiced concerns about a pall that has fallen over ComicsGate, and all of this is due to CG's open flirtation with some pretty nasty folks, one of whom is Ethan's political guru and frenemy Vox Day.
10) MEET VOX.
11) Some of you already know Vox. Vox Day has been my special project for over a year now, ever since he launched the original ComicsGate project, Alt-Hero, through the now defunct alt-right crowdfunding platform Freestartr.
medium.com/@Death_Ray/the…
medium.com/@Death_Ray/the…
12) Vox is a right-winger in the Richard Spencer tradition and a Hitler-quoting admirer of terrorist Anders Breivik. The death of Freestartr (possibly due to suspicions of money laundering) is what led Vox to Indiegogo to fund his new comic book, Alt-Hero: Q.
13) When I noticed that the jolly bros of Van Sciver's Internet clique were welcoming Vox Day with open arms and few questions, I became interested in shedding light on this fact. The ComicsGate faithful, many of whom are only participating to "own the libs"...
14) ...routinely and reflexively fund any CG project dangled in front of them. Several very suspicious large donations to Alt Hero: Q not withstanding, Vox rode ComicsGate's coattails to tens of thousands of dollars he would not otherwise have raised.
15) Fortunately, Vox haters everywhere were already on the job. National Public Radio had just released a story connecting Vox to ComicsGate, and Rolling Stone had one of their own on the way. I felt obliged to help out.
16) I had already been writing DramaGate for a few weeks and I was following the YouTube channels of the major CG players. When I heard Ethan complain that a recent debate he'd had with a minor critic had left him bored, I cast my line into the ComicsGate swamp.
17) I contacted Nick Rekieta, the lawyer and CG confederate who had moderated the debate. I told him that if Ethan would only debate me, I would give ComicsGate's jaded Jabba the contest he deserved. On October 5th, my dream came true.
18) The debate went spectacularly! For nearly three hours I shined a black light on ComicsGate, finding Vox Day's fluids everywhere. I even provoked a hearty endorsement from Ethan Van Sciver for the political writings of Vox, the terrorist sympathizer.
19) Days later, Vox was all that ComicsGate was talking about, and my "obsession" with Vox was fuel for quite a bit of ribbing from CG's dude bros. But then, on October 11th, hours before Vox was to collect his pledge dollars...
20) ...Indiegogo squashed him like a bug, cancelling Alt-Hero-Q and refunding over $103K to Vox's donors.
21) Was the exposure I gave Vox the reason for this, even partly? I have absolutely no way of knowing.
22) But I do believe it is possible that Indiegogo could have been listening to the chatter of a small group of comic creators who were raising millions of dollars through their platform...
23) ...and when that chatter suddenly included mention of a "Nazi" (Ethan's word) raising cash through IGG, they were not asleep at the switch. True or not, in my debate with Ethan you can be sure that this hopeful outcome was on my mind.
24) This, then, is the story Ethan did not want me to revisit: his connection with white nationalism, and how it is imperiling future ComicsGate projects.
25) Ethan's status as the kingmaker within CG is now well established, and it has brought him considerable fame in his tiny niche.
26) But by Ethan's royal decree, IGG is also the exclusive crowdfunding platform for Van Sciver-endorsed CG projects.
27) Ethan has even trash-talked IGG's competitor Kickstarter and their "Comics Outreach Lead" Camilla Zhang, burning that bridge for anyone who wants Ethan's royal blessing for a CG campaign.
28) Small wonder, then, that ComicsGate creators are beginning to fear what will happen if the brand becomes further polluted by another tiki torch Nazi like Vox Day.
29) MEET NERKISH.
30) Nerkish is a ComicsGate fanboy. With a voice like Morty Smith and a sense of humor on loan from Gavin McInnes, it is no surprise that Nerkish has found a home in ComicsGate. It is also no surprise that he does not want anyone to know his real name or face.
31) Nerkish is both the writer and star of an upcoming ComicsGate project to be funded through @Indiegogo called Cash Grab. He is also a darling of Ethan Van Sciver, who has given Cash Grab his full-throated endorsement.
32) I don't know if Ethan is also the one who told Nerkish to scrub about three dozen videos from his YouTube channel that expose Nerkish as being next of kin to the hero of the Turner Diaries, but recently, that's just what he did.
33) It was a smart move. It would have been even smarter to have done it before I made this supercut.
34) And now, with all that said (the delay forced by Ethan REALLY gave me time to think!), I can finally say "goodbye" to the wormy apple that is ComicsGate.
35) They are not a "consumer revolt" or even, really, a "hate group." They are just a racket, one entirely dependent on a single crowdfunding website that has no taste for embarrassment. It's an open door, people. Push on it.
36) (And Ethan? Next time, leave the FBI out of our beef. They already have their hands full with you MAGA types.)
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