"we're inclusive and accepting!" says #gamergate, before drawing racist caricatures of women they dislike. pic.twitter.com/zbFnWBOmdn
— Sarah Nyberg (@srhbutts) November 1, 2014
The other day, I posted a screenshot of an 8chan comment featuring the drawing above, a crude caricature of Anita Sarkeesian that’s a not-very-subtle variation on a racist and anti-Semitic cartoon that originally ran in a neo-Nazi newspaper.
Here’s the original, in all its crapitude:
Let’s face it! That is one fucking awful cartoon.
Now, if that picture — or at least the grinning fellow on the left — looks familiar, it’s because he’s been that’s turned into a meme (“Le Happy Merchant”) that’s proven popular with 4channers and Stormfronters alike.
Given that GamerGate itself has its origins on 4chan — and in an IRC channel populated mostly bey 4channers — it shouldn’t come as a complete shock that #GamerGaters, some of whom refer to Sarkeesian as “Jewkeesian,” have repurposed the image into a caricature of one of their most hated foes. Sarkeesian isn’t actually Jewish, but for whatever reason this doesn’t seem to faze her anti-Semitic non-admirers.
GamerGaters like to claim that this sort of bigotry “isn’t what GamerGate is really about,” and that anti-Semites and other bigots are fringe elements in their movement, if not “false flagging” feminazi shills trying to make GamerGate look bad. Here, one GamerGater makes that point with as much sarcasm as he can muster:
https://twitter.com/JakALope044/status/525839519161917440
This would be a much more convincing argument if GamerGaters weren’t so quick to excuse and/or explain away the anti-Semitic imagery every time it rears its ugly head.
Here’s one active GamerGater who wants everyone to know that, actually, it’s about ethics in game journalism.
https://twitter.com/SlushStuff/status/524266371069517824
But she has a pretty unusual notion of what “not hate” is, given that she posted this picture several days later:
This lovely little drawing combines the racist caricature of Sarkeesian with another bit of neo-Nazi propaganda that’s been floating around the internet for a while, and which had already been repurposed as an anti-Muslim comic. In other words, @SlushStuff has posted a mashup of a neo-Nazi cartoon that’s already been used in another bigoted mashup.
We can’t blame @SlushStuff’s glee in posting this on her ignorance of the sources of the cartoon in question; she’s well aware that the picture is based on anti-Semitic propaganda. She just thinks this isn’t a problem, because reasons.
https://twitter.com/SlushStuff/status/526342650375704576
https://twitter.com/SlushStuff/status/526396368609615872
Then again, @SlushStuff doesn’t seem to have a problem with straight-up racism either.
https://twitter.com/SlushStuff/status/521793824621088770
This is a common reaction amongst GamerGaters when confronted with this particular work of, er, art. When srh, who tracks GamerGate bigotry on Twitter, posted the tweet at the top of this post, here are some of the reactions she got, in a seemingly unending discussion that extended over hundreds of tweets. (These aren’t all successive tweets; see here for the whole thread.)
Yep. That’s right. A guy whose avatar is a white dude in an American Indian headdress (comedian Jim Norton, FWIW) is lecturing people about what is and what isn’t racism.
At this point I “noped” out of reading the rest of the thread before my head exploded from all the nonsense.
GamerGate claims to have an anti-harassment squad, but when someone posts caricatures of Anita Sarkeesian that are not just inspired by but probably literally traced from Nazi propaganda, these are the guys who show up.
To quote the robot bartender in The Fifth Element, do you want some more?
Here’s more.
After one anti-GamerGater posted a screenshot of Mary’s post featuring Sarkeesian painting fake threats on a wall, one #GamerGater had this response.
Here yet another GamerGater claims that the caricature is mocking Sarkeesian, so therefore it can’t be anti-Semitic:
https://twitter.com/NappalmSam/status/526385714968428544
Oh, wait, is this yet another GamerGater making the same terrible “argument?” Why yes, it is:
I ask #gamergate why they are condoning/reposting Ann anti Semitic cartoon. They respond: Jews Are Not A Race pic.twitter.com/Ef1mhYw6Dy
— Joshua Idehen (@joshuaidehen80) October 26, 2014
And, oh, it gets weirder. Here a GamerGater responding to a critic who was pointing out an instance of GamerGaters using “Le Happy Merchant” in an infographic … by suggesting he was “Jew-shaming.”
https://twitter.com/emvarez_dota/status/526379494580695041
And here’s a GamerGater who uses “Le Happy Merchant” as his fucking avatar … accusing Sarkeesian of anti-Semitism. And spelling it wrong.
I could keep going, but after this, is there any point?
Bottom of the barrel, consider yourself scraped.
EDIT: Added more info on the source of that second Sarkeesian cartoon.
Also, this is the big reason why Leigh Alexander’s post angered them so much. It isn’t the deliberately ignorant take they decided to go with. They know it was about the industry no longer living in all-consuming fear of this demographic and pretending they were the be-all and end-all. And that is exactly what they oppose and fear. Not being everything, having to share, worse yet, not even being special, just another potential demographic.
For those used to having complete control, sites having less than 1% mentions of topics about people other than white men and occasional indie games about lesbians or depression must seem like an outright attack, something stealing that which is theirs.
And like every other regressive movement, they’ve found terrorism, gaslighting, and endless swarms to be powerful in reminding the “others” their “place”, i.e. getting the majority of actual people to feel scared and alienated and more likely to hand over the thing back to them because of the heavy price paid for working to make it more recognizant of reality.
They just need to pack it in.
Seems to me that the one place they’ve gotten any traction is in targeting advertisers—“keep sending those emails!” Thankfully, that kind of success looks like it be (sweetly) short-lived.
From Michael Schnier’s Brand Management After Operation Disrespectful Nod: A Brave New World.
@Bernardo Soares: I just looked up the Wikipedia entry on Esoteric Hitlerism. Let’s hear it for Europeans co-opting bits and pieces of Asian cultures to make themselves look Important.
Also, National Socialist black metal is a thing, apparently.
“Operation Disrespectful Nod” oh my god
“A Brave New World” sweet pogo-sticking Elmo
drowning in pretension
send help
All their “Operations” have similarly pretentions names – well, except for Operation Krampus which is just funny.
Or possibly even drowning in pretention.
One of those dudes tried to pull the, “you don’t deserve to have an opinion, because I’m a vet (right down to mythical 24 hour combat rucks with 90 lbs packs in Iraq: which was as close to a purely mech war as ever there was. The only time/place which came close to that was the Fallujah campaign and that was a very small percentage of the USMC).
I may have told him where to put that bullshit.
“Saul”
This is a shitty way to try to defend this. Because someone who is jewish (or has spent much time with Jews), is going to recognise the trope. It’s not the the picture is of someone who looks jewish, but it’s that it is a caricature of someone who, looks, “JEWISH!!!!”.
And all the Jews I know (my family, the rabbi who is my father in law, our friends, etc.) would spot this faster than I would (because I married in, my only direct, visceral, relation to it is from seeing Nazi-propaganda films when studying mass-comm, and WW2, and the tools of propaganda, as well as when I was doing work with PsyOp folks in the Army), and I saw it for what it was in a heartbeat.
So go ahead, tell me how I’m an anti-semite for recognising someone using the tropes of anti-semitism. That they targeted a gentile with it is actually more damning than not; because the trope is blatant, so the imputation that Sarkeesian is just another dirty, conniving, scheming, JEW!, was something they were willing to add to the rest of the balderdash they are spewing about her.
Which means they think being seen as jewish is a bad thing, i.e. they are using anti-semitic sentiments as a weapon, ergo they are bigots, and racists.
And you, expressly, support them in this.
Which makes you (jewish, or not) a bigot, and a racist.
Ah… I see “Saul” got the boot. What I don’t understand, from a purely tactical POV, is why anyone who is in GG would try to use the “not your shield” shit at this point. Are there some people who have been convinced the “SJW” are using them as cover for a nefarious scheme?
Probably, but the number of fakes is large enough that no one who is at all clued in (which the post should have made clear, if not the comments) is going to take a “notursheeld!” at face value, which scuttles the entire purpose.
Oh, and Ampesand… I’m sorry, it didn’t occur to me you were ampersand. I is abashed.
Yep. Also, replace “white” with “member of dominant ethnic group” and the pattern repeats itself all over the world. This is what happens when you teach people that they’re the norm and everyone else is an odd and inferior exception whose job is to serve them. It’s extra super obvious in American and Euro white guys because they’ve been taught that their dominance and status as the norm ought to apply anywhere they go, even places where they’re a minority and are in fact the outsider intruding into someone else’s space.
I’m a bit late with this, but I just saw the bit about the site mirroring this post. It’s skeezy, but since someone else earlier seemed that it might be a security issue, I thought it should be pointed out that it’s almost certainly not. The way HTML works, all the resources to display a page have to be publicly accessible, and it’s extremely trivial to just scoop all of that up and make a copy of a page.
As for what to do about it, I’d do exactly what the guy said: contact his host and tell them that he’s copies your page without permission. You could even legitimately file a DMCA notice, but I’d be a little wary of that. The DMCA is a bit of a boogeyman in tech circles (remember the, as far as I can tell, baseless accusations that Zoe Quinn issued DMCA takedowns towards the beginning of this whole mess), and it’s possible that this guy is trying to goad you into using it so that he can paint you as “silencing criticism” and sic the mob on you. It’s an option if you need it, but I’d start with an email to their host just explaining the situation.
You do realize Anita is Armenian which is a semitic race, right?
Katz, your explanation is as good as any. I used to think most people could distinguish fact from fiction unless it was something very subtle (like the reality is unrealistic tropes), but these gaters seem to have significant problems with reality, so there are probably others like that.
Vyait, I guess I can see the appeal of being surrounded by beautiful blonde women would hold for a heterosexual man, but I still don’t get how the whole ‘he caused death and destruction on a massive scale’ can be seen as a positive. I know there are people who think eliminating x group is a good thing; I just can’t understand that thought process. Sorry this was convoluted.
John: Nope. Armenia is nowhere near Israel, their language is Indo-European (it’s not related to Hebrew or Arabic at all; indeed, it’s a distant cousin to English), and their religion is an old, old variant of Oriental Orthodox Christianity.
Whut… Armenians are not semetic. They are indo-european. Yes, they were subjects of the Ottoman Empire, but so were Greeks, and Bulgurs and Kurds,and Turkmen, and Turks, none of whom are a semetic people.
So I have no idea 1: where you got that, and 2: where you were trying to take it.
Um, ok, but that doesn’t make the cartoon any less anti-Semitic or any less awful. Sarkeesian’s ethnic background has nothing to do with that.
I dont think its like a ‘trans or not trans’ issue to call out hetrosexism? To me its similar to asking people not to use cr*zy as an insult.
“Jews aren’t a race” despite the fact that the caricature is clearly a racial one, with the large nose.
Also – Anita is of middle eastern heritage, as are Jews, so yeah, it’s still kinda racist. She probably “looks” jewish to them since the idea of her having middle eastern heritage some other way is all complicated and things.
on the internet, especially 4chan, anyone you don’t like is a Jew or the n word. whether you’re actually Jewish or black doesn’t matter, they just want to feel grown-up by using racial slurs.
Everybody getting bent out of shape over recycled propaganda – perhaps a bit less ranting over the content and a bit more about the posters’ lack of originality might be worth considering ?
@Kevin
Yeah, let’s discuss their lack of originality when dealing with anti-semitists, racists and misogynists. That is their biggest problem! Pervasive racism isn’t a problem, boring, recycled racist jokes are! We should come up with new, refreshing racist jokes! Thank God someone has their priorities straight! *rolls eyes*
No, a lack of originality is just a side-effect of conforming to age-old, dehumanizing stereotypes. For example, no matter how boring and lacking in personality the “bikini armor” trope is, it’s really just a side-effect of how awfully commonplace it is for us straight guys to think of women only in a sexualized context, not as full human beings, and that there are various, more serious problems that follow with this mindset than just the dull character design.
Misogyny, racism and anti Semitism are boring and unoriginal. That doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous and not worth discussing.
Not going to lie, this is messed up. I support Gamergate, btw.
Please read the following in a British accent, it makes me sound more factual.
We here at GamerGate are absolutely appalled by the insinuation that we are simply explaining away or excusing antisemitism on our site. That isn’t all we do. We also welcome it with open arms.
Here is an 8chan thread that proves we will censor porn but not explicitly neonazi posts. That’s right, we have absolute freedom of press, as long as it’s our people!
8ch(dot)net/gamergate/res/477533.html