"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.
I think pity is the result of spending a moment thinking what that kind of world view would be to live with. They are pitiful, and sad, I suspect.
Pity it is then. I just didn’t want to give the impression I had any sympathy for these people .
I can’t remember if i made a simular comment on another thread (insomnia aargh) but just to clarify I’ll add something further which I can’t remember if I did either.Anyway……
The way I feel pity for GG’s and trolls in general is the same way I feel pity certain other people.
My house looks right onto a wood.Maybe it’s not big enough to call a wood but it’s a big enough break between me and a busy road.I live just outside a city ,an area that you wouldn’t apply the word rural to in any way.I’ve always counted myself as lucky to live in an urban area with a little nature reserve (to me anyway) on my doorstep,I get everything that comes with a wood, birds,animals,flowers and my fav fungi. Some other people see it as a dumping ground though.
Now those people annoy the hell out of me, (to put it mildly)not just because of the eyesore but the damage it does to the enviroment. But I pity them because they don’t notice their surroundings. They would never say to anyone that they lived next to a wood because the only time they would think ” Hey I live next to a wood” is when they’re wondering where they’re going to dump their old sofa.
Too be that oblivious.
Please excuse the spelling and punctuation-tired but unable to sleep.
Did the GGers hire JudgyBitch to do their PR?
They really have all the emotional intelligence and critical thinking skills of your average 13-year-old, if they really think editing an obviously anti-Semitic caricature to feature Anita Sarkeesian removes the hateful context.
But then channers have a reputation for being wilfully obtuse. I wonder how much of GamerGate isn’t even about games or targeting the “LW”s, and is just about baiting “SJW”s for the sake of it. It’s the fact their stated objectives keep shifting around so much that makes me think this could drag on for months. There’s not much cohesion, it’s all just angry white hetero cis-men (and their sympathisers) who finally feel invulnerable enough to voice their grievances to anyone who isn’t an angry white hetero cis-man.
I kinda hope they will grow up and look back on this with shame, but then so many of them are actually grown-ass adults who should know better. Which is depressing.
The quantity of #Gamergate denialism surrounding the neo-Nazi origin of the anti-Semitic images adapted to attack Anita Sarkeesian is almost unbelievable as it is. Yesterday I began seeing GGers attempting to soft-pedal their neo-Nazism by referring to it by a less-tainted synonym, natsoc instead. (To join the dots together: NatSoc = National Socialism = Nationalsozialismus = Nazi)
An illustrative tweet follows by a GGer defending
Nazism“Natsoc”. Sheesh.https://twitter.com/kmaj_gpt/status/528692140071981056
That is another proof that GG supposedly wanting “ethic in journalism” :
– Don’t know what “ethic” is.
– Don’t have the intellectual tools for analyzing a medium, which pretty much explain why most of them are A-OK with financial corruption but a screaming blue murder every time somebody is doing a more deep or personal analysis of video games or even anything that is different from them opinions.
– Don’t even listen to the only guy in the movement who has indeed ethic and knows what he is saying and who was exposing the Shadow of Mordor Sacandal: TotalBiscuit explicitly said that attacking Anita Sarkeesian is nin no ways what GG should be about.
– Are a bunch of fucking tools.
I’ve just read Xanthë’s post and I should add:
– Have absolutely nothing resembling the prototype of the embryo of the beginning of the sketch of the draft of intelligence or culture.
No seriously, it’s just frightening to be that much gullible and just plain idiotic while trying hard to look clever.
I would argue that saying wrong things does indeed make you wrong, and in fact that’s a truism.
thratchen:
That’s exactly what it’s like! It’s pretty much the exact same level at which I’m currently speaking French. i.e. I have the core vocabulary and basic grammar down, but my constructions tend to sound unnatural because I’m still translating from English in my head as opposed to thinking in French. I also often use technically “correct” words in the wrong context. And of course, because my vocab is still only a few hundred words as opposed a few thousand, I tend to keep falling back on certain crutch words and am unable to elucidate my ideas when pressed.
All of these things give me away as a decidedly non-fluent French speaker, and it’s often a bit embarassing… but none of it makes me an idiot, because I’m learning French so I can communicate better while living in a French-speaking country.
However, if I was trying to learn French purely so I could pretend to have a better grasp of French than actual French people… well, that would make me an idiot, and a contemptible one at that.
NatSoc? The horsies (GGs) are obviously trying to emulate Newspeak as put forward by IngSoc. Silly Horsies.
Since when is comparing your system to fucking Ingsoc is meant to be less tainted? Only in the sense that less people know about 1984 than about Nazism, right?
I think the moniker is apt. The spin department of this sorry mob pretty much acts like #GG’s own Minitrue.
“I guess a feminazi would eventually play the hilter card”
WAT.
Gamergaters are fucking tools.
Winston: How is this building a better world for anyone?
O’Brien: It’s actually about ethics in video game journalism.
Being deliberately obtuse on 4chan and its sister sites is so rampant I sometimes catch myself doing it in real life.
Heehee there it goes another totally minority jew #notyourshield-er. Hey, Saul, your fake jewish mom wouldn’t be proud at all of your terrible i-see-no-antisemitism impersonation!
Well there’s a coincidence. One Paul W Asright was recently claiming “SJW/Marxist Conspiracy” in the comments of a post about GamerGate on a conservative blog:
http://www.socialmatter.net/2014/10/29/moving-beyond-hit-run-warfare-gamergate-can-actually-win/
I wonder what he thinks Saul/Paul Was (W)right about, anyway?
I want to go back in time and show Karl Marx everything that’s ever been slandered as a Marxist conspiracy.
Actually, since it came up, I’ve found the parallels between neonazis and gamergate almost perfect.
“Don’t lump us in with Hitler, we just want cultural purity” versus “Don’t lump us in with those who started our movement, and attacked and harassed people, we just want ethical journalism”
“The holocaust was made up by Jews to give them arbitrary moral high ground to do whatever they want” versus “The threats to Sarkeesian were made up give her arbitrary moral high ground and do whatever she wants”
“We claim the entire cultural history of Europe, particularly Scandinavian as ours, even though a majority of people with that heritage don’t buy our bullshit.” versus “We claim the entire cultural history of gaming as ours, even though the majority of those who play games don’t buy our bullshit”
About the only major difference is the use of sockpuppet tokenism to cover for their crimes.
I’m particularly amused by the GGers that scream about censorship and free speech in one breath, and then talk about screencapping like it’s some kind of threat. Or, you know, scream about censorship on an article that is all about chronicling what the GGers have said.
“YOU’RE JUST AFRAID OF WHAT WE ARE SAYING”
“WAIT NO NOT THOSE THINGS”
“IGNORE THOSE THINGS”
Oh, I really hope Paul is still lurking so he can see that Newt has exposed Saul as a phony Jewish sock. I mean, we already knew it but this proves it.
I think this was his faux intellectual way of saying that getting banned from a website is the same as a free speech violation.
Ikanreed: It’s a perfect coalition. They both hate Social Justice types, and no matter how racist the NeoNazi’s get they can be sure that gaters will mindlessly spread their rebranded propaganda, spend all their time attacking the opposition when called out on it, defending the nazi bullshit for “not being that bad”, and ultimately sympathizing with them against a common enemy.
I’m willing to bet the racists are going to pick up a few more members from the gamergate ranks. People who lie down with hate groups tend to stay with them.
@leftwingfox
Yeah, if you ever look around and wonder where old white republicans pick up their awful beliefs, you can see the next generation of unforgivable shitbaggery developing in my generation right now.
It’s a terrifying and depressing natural experiment.
Catalpa: I find that the ones who cry loudest about losing their freeze peaches are the ones who are happy to to take away other people’s. Sorry GG, but either free speech is for everyone or it isn’t actually free.