"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.
https://twitter.com/HandsofaDream/status/529178779588259840
*shudders*
(Don’t bother reading the comments, their defense all boils down to “But I didn’t say that! Also, an anti-#Gater threatened to sue Cernovich and Sommers! You not denouncing him (sure, you actually did denounce him multiple times, but that’s irrelevant) is so much worse than us not denouncing the Nazis!”)
“I do appreciate when gater trolls try to use the language of social justice, though. It’s cute. It’s like they’ve found a google translate option for jerk-to-sjw.”
The thing is, they seriously believe that the only reason anyone talks that way is to make other people feel bad. They think the only reason the word “racism” exists is to shame racists, so they try to turn around and use it that way. They don’t consider that their targets may thoughtfully consider what’s actually being said as a statement and not just a gotcha.
Saul really was the anti-Semitic version of Erin the angry misogynist, but without the chickens. At least the chickens were kind of funny.
You’re average chicken is definitely better company than the trolls here.
They leave piles of poop behind them less often too.
There’s a Road to Damascus joke in there somewhere.
Also: natsoc? Natsoc! Kinder! Gentler! A thousand points of white!
I can’t figure out if the natsoc thing is meant to be a fuck you to leftists or if they’re like those creeps who read Lolita and thought that it was about how we should feel sorry for pedophiles.
I saw a chicken at the local zoo last weekend. Every one of its feathers was white with a dark brown or black edge, and it looked like it was wearing a feather duster on its head.
A chicken once bit my sister ….
We finally found out where they moved the petting zoo after turning the place it used to be into a butterfly garden and a camel ride. Plus I didn’t know they had beavers, and they had an enclosure for close encounters with budgerigars.
Inigo: “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
Rugen: “Well that’s a little extreme. It was just about ethics in journalism. Screencapped as anti-GG harassment!”
Oh, GamerGate. You will be a joke for many moons to come.
Are there actually people who think that, say, for instance, calling nazism “natsoc” or using an antisemitic cartoon to make fun of Anita Sarkeesian, isn’t completely terrible? Do they truly think that by changing a couple of surface details, like the name of a political movement or the clothes and hairstyle of a hateful caricature, actually changes the content of those things? In other words, are they really that stupid, or are thy intentionally trying to repackage racist stereotypes and ideologies? Little of column “A” and little of column “B?”
You know what the #notallgamergater crowd is reminding me of?
http://www.luminomagazine.com/2004.03/spotlight/officespace/images/bolton/bolton2.jpg
Michael Bolton from Office Space. Particularly the point where he’s asked if he ever considers changing his name and his response is “why should I change my name when he’s the one who sucks?”
Let’s assume that there are people who are legitimately concerned with a lack of transparency about the connections between games press and developers or some other ethical concern that isn’t just misogyny (yes, I’m being generous, but go with this for another paragraph or two). If you’re aligning yourself with a group that officially doesn’t have a leader, but has become inundated with misogynists, anti-Semites, neo-nazis and a Breitbart journalist to the point where the hashtag you’re using is more known for that than any actual concern over ethics in gaming journalism (to the point where even that’s become a joke at the hashtag’s expense), you have two choices:
1. Defiantly try to salvage the hashtag, which requires turning a blind eye to the muck and dren, or constantly posting “I don’t agree with this, but still #ethicsingamesjournalism”. Meanwhile giving continued life to what has become, at best, a smokescreen for perpetuating this viewpoints.
2. Stepping aside and saying, “I can no longer align myself with #gamergate because of what it’s become, but I still would like more ethics in gaming journalism and I’ll try to find another way to press this issue.”
If you’re sticking with option one, you’re part of the problem, and not helping raise issues about #ethicsingamingjournalism because that’s no longer the discussion around gamergate. (and yes, I know with #2 it’s not what gg became, but where gg started, but again, giving the benefit of the doubt to some people out there. I’m an optimist, sometimes.)
Granted, if I was Michael Bolton from Office Space, I wouldn’t want to change my name either, but that’s because my entire life I’d’ve known myself by that name. #Gamergate is something that’s chosen by the user and can be unchosen if they actually believe they have issues beyond misogyny and hate.
@falconer Sounds like an Appenzeller Spitzhauben. They’re a Swiss breed. 🙂
http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/CGA/Spitz/BRKSpitzhauben.html
Or a Polish – if it had an Andy Warhol hair-do
http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/CGP/Polish/BRKPolish.html
🙂
This gives me some hope that most gamers see this hateful bullshit for what it is and won’t entertain it:
A Gator tried to derail a panel at PAX Australia with the question “What about ethics in video game journalism?”
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/11/for-a-culture-at-war-pax-australia-was-the-perfect-antidote/
Unrelated, but on that note – I can’t bring myself to call myself an atheist anymore, it’s just far too tainted with hateful, misogynistic, anti-religious, hypocritical, fundamentalist (for lack of a better word) screeching assholes to ever take it back; what’s another word I could use to separate myself from bigoted shitbags like Dawkins? Irreligious?
Non-believer would probably cover it.
non-believer relies on an assumption that religion is first and foremost about belief, which is a very Christian view. Irreligious is better.
I’ll label my lack of interest in religion however I want, thanks. Though I personally haven’t given up on atheist yet and am not willing to cede that particular term to the assholes.
The line about “hilter” just makes me think of that one Python sketch.
“We’re going on a trip to wales”
“But mr hilter, this is a map of Stalingrad!”
@titianblue:
Polish it is!
Atheism, on the other hand, didn’t start in a brew of misogyny. It has clear submovements that are pro-human rights. Humanism, atheism+, and many many similar movements.
That said being defined by what you’re not is always going to be a problem. I’m not religious. I find religious claims from the material to the moral to have serious justifiability problems. That doesn’t say anything about what my values are. There are literal neo-nazis who that describes. It describes Ayn Rand. It describes Dawkins, Stalin, and Mao.
Atheism is who I’m not. A secular humanist who values human empathy and intelligence is who I am.
Yeah, atheism is just the generally understood term for someone who doesn’t believe in god/s and or the other religious stuff that often goes along with that. I think trying to turn it into a secular equivalent of a religion is part of where all the bullshit we’re seeing from the asshole atheists comes from. For them it is who they are, ie. central to their sense of self, and that’s why they’re so fixated on boundary maintenance and so on.
This reminds me a bit of when Bill Maher showed photos of a Republican candidate for Congress running around with his SS Nazi reenacting troupe. It’s not fallacious to bring up Godwin if the other side is actually using Nazi imagery; it just confirms some very nasty implications that people may have assumed.
If anyone wants to accuse Gamergaters of being Nazis, they both use the same propaganda.
@cassandrakitty:
Interestingly, a similar argument to yours (being an atheist is just about lacking a belief in a god) is used to argue that atheists should never, ever talk about sexism or racism or anything like that, and to do so would be to turn the label “atheist” into another haven for the SJWs. (And the counterpoint is that a big part of religion is handing down a morality; without religion, we have to be responsible for creating a new morality, and that is intimately tied up in SJ concepts)
I don’t actually think it’s about atheism being central to their identity or about a religious equivalent… I think it’s the same reactionary backlash to eroding privilege you’ll find everywhere else, from gaming to politics. The strict boundaries of dictionary atheism are just a go-to argument to stop the conversation.
That’s a stupid argument, though. Someone can be an atheist and a socialist, or an atheist and a conservative. The atheist part isn’t automatically connected to anything other than the person’s feelings about religion and/or the existence of deities. People do currently seem to be attempting to redefine it as “smug asshole who thinks they’re smarter than all the non-brights”, but words mean things.
The smug assholes are also forgetting that one can be an atheist and a woman, an atheist and black, and so on, and that “atheist” doesn’t cancel out the awareness of social issues that goes along with being part of those other demographics too. Or maybe not forgetting so much as vehemently denying, because that’s not true for them, and dammit they own atheism (because they say so).
Re: Atheism
I find it very baffling that asshole atheists, who are otherwise so vehemently anti-religion, stop in their tracks when the god-given privileges of the white cishet man is questioned. It’s like, at least fundies have the thin, transparent veil of goddidit to hide behind, what’s your excuse? What’s your extraordinary evidence that social inequalities that just so happen to benefit you should exist?
I can’t see how people claiming to be so invested in progress can justify a conservative viewpoint regarding the status quo. It’s assholish and hypocritical.