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So In the beginning there was a friend named Zoe who made video games and this pissed off a shitty ex who invented the group known as ganergate (with an m). This group of toxic 4chan males driven to harass women and others who they targeted according to their vitriol.
After a bit it became obvious this group existed solely to harass women, and they realized that this look was unmarketable. They started pushing the supposed political stance that they cared about ethics in games journalism. It was a way to package their completely unhidden abuse
It started snowballing as 4chan got more involved and it became a bigger meme and their political rhetoric started to get more fleshed out but it was always clearly transparently flimsy stances to give pretense to harass women.
They started attacking and co-opting “social justice warrior” traits that they resented in more polite online culture and started turning the women harassment into a culture war against liberalism and tolerance promoted by tumblr and other communities and continued growing
At some point they started adopting openly nazi symbolism and their hate of tumblr and inclusive culture took them from misogyny to racism and xenophobia. At this time many demagogues like milo and cirnobitch started showing up from breitbart (the tech section)
As these demagogues rose to prominence it became more obvious that this rabid hate group cared nothing of video games and everything about harassing people and ruining lives, even issuing violent threats and stalking people. And again, this group openly associated using swastikas
At some point articles were being read and discourse was being had and people started to know what ganergate was and associated it with all these nazis and misogynist. This was right about the time they started using the alt right moniker. Ganergate rebranded as the alt right
It made sense. People knew ganergate as nazis. They talked about video games. They were angry virgin nerds. When they rebranded people didn’t notice. They thought it was a different group. The wider scope meant more appeal to not just angry 4chan virgins and so it worked out.
Cue the demagogues pivoting to the alt right. Milo, cirno, etc all talked about how ganergate was dead and how they were never ganergate anyway they were just these cool new guys interested in politics called the alt right. Except it was all the same. 4chan continued to putrefy.
Now they definitely weren’t just angry misogynists, they had a platform. Like rush Limbaugh. And people were noticing. Idiots. Wannabe demagogues. The kinds of people who look at milo and don’t vomit. This was working! They dug in, demagogues grew and multiplied.
No one knew what the alt right was for a while, and the only people explaining it were the ganergate nazis who pretended they were never ganergate nazis. These nazis made their stance seem reasonable and distances themselves from the overt crimes and abuse they did/promoted
Obviously all this misogynistic tripe tapped into some visceral online radicalization circuit that had been happening on 4chan for a while now. But then it started crossing over into the real political sphere.
Having successfully pivoted from hate mob rabble rouser to political commentator provocateur (hate preacher), mainstream politics and media were eager to horn in on the action, to use this power, or to profit on it. Basically the same motivations driving the early demagogues.
The media had no clue they were nazis, or misogynist abusers, they didn’t do their research, or worse, listened to and believed the ganergate narrative in good faith. They invaded the public sphere, having been hidden on the slightly less accessible online public sphere.
When trump came around, these guys were having vast success, printing money, throwing parties, scamming supporters, preaching hate, they were at an all time high. And here comes the most racist stupid mascot you could hope for. A racist gritty. An orange Pepe.
So of course they saw their chance. They went from stalking women to literal seats of political power by way of screaming about minorities and sjws. And the media mostly just shepherded along with their both sides and their denial of republican culpability, flirting w/ nazis
Remember the infamous fashionable nazi interviews that kept happening? People knew who they were and yet New York Times thought “stylish nazis, boy what a gas.” Everybody downplayed the significance of a violent hate mob gaining majority power over all republican policy stances.
It’s important to recognize that the Republican Party isn’t just steadily marching towards hatred as an aging populace goes increasingly crazy. Very specific things are happening to achieve these results.
Fox News And conservative talk radio are shoveling lies, hatred, and insanity into the minds of our most vulnerable to fake news and least media literate public. Mainstream news are letting them and mostly just chuckling about it. Mainstream news uses both sides to downplay hate.
News outlets pay partisan ideologues to go on and scream about guns and Muslims. CNN does. MSNBC does. Democrats treat republicans in good faith when they demonstrate evil intent. The public has no idea a new American nazi party has been festering the past 5 years.
The public thinks people of differing opinions are acting in good faith and not cynically pushing the Overton window any way they can. No one knows this history or how it explicitly created trump. No one shares it. No one makes the connection. It’s obvious.
Republicans think there’s no harm or at least sufficient value in aligning with white supremacist terrorists as a way to win popular appeal. This country that exists has allowed that to be a valid path to power. And democrats won’t talk of impeachment.
Years ago the fbi warned that white supremacist terrorists were infiltrating the fbi, police forces, and the military. The republicans, who were courting this power group, demanded the warning be retracted. Democrats allowed that to happen. We are living in the aftermath.
People always talk after a tragedy about why this happened. Why does someone take human life. The answer is simple. Because it’s a valid option on the table. Why did you touch a hot stove. Because it wasn’t impossible. Because it was an available option.
We allowed “being a nazi” to be a valid option. We allow “getting a gun and shooting myself or others in the face” to be a valid option. We don’t have to do that. We choose to do that. We can choose to make them invalid options.
Otherwise we’re telling the world “hey, being a nazi is a valid option for people seeking money and power”
