Reaxxion, Roosh Valizadeh’s embarrassment of a gaming site, recently published am apocalyptic GamerGate manifesto under the title “#Gamergate Is A Critical Battle In The War To Save Western Society.”
In the manifesto, posted by someone calling himself Allan Quatermain – presumably not his real name – defines GamerGate as
a grass roots consumer rights affiliation of people, men and women of good character, humane consciences, and principled beliefs [who] have voluntarily joined together to combat more effectively the evil forces which now threaten our freedoms, our hobby, our way of life and the civilization we love.
Quatermain described the enemies of #GamerGate in similarly vivid terms. The evil Social Justice Warriors, he wrote,
seek always and everywhere to bring about more interference, less individual responsibility and an amoral way of doing things. On the plain of action, until the SJW’s can be stopped from their subjugation of all western society, there will be no opportunity for us to move forward at all. …
They deceptively appeal to every motivation in human character, from sordid selfishness, to practical politics, to misguided idealism. They have gradually beguiled a lot of very good people into joining the attack on us, until the maligning of #gamergate has probably exceeded in intensiveness and extensiveness that faced by any other organization in all of western history.
I was all set to write an essay describing how the rhetoric in Quatermain’s manifesto resembles the rhetoric of other reactionary, conspiracy-minded movements in American history, drawing upon historian Richard Hofstader’s famous essay The Paranoid Style of American Politics.
But then I started getting a little paranoid myself. While many GamerGaters see their, er, “struggle” in similarly apocalyptic, some of the language in Quatermain’s post seemed weirdly old-fashioned, almost as if he were cribbing from some old John Birch pamphlet on the “communist menace” from half a century ago.
That’s because he was. I pasted a few sentences from Quatermain’s essay into Google and discovered that they did in fact come straight from an old John Birch newspaper ad from the 1960s.
In fact, the whole essay is essentially a verbatim copy of a giant chunk of that John Birch society newspaper ad, with the words “John Birch society” replaced by “GamerGate” and “Communist” replaced by “SJW,” and a few other references changed here and there.
That bit from Quatermain’s essay I quoted above describing how SJW’s allegedly “seek always and everywhere to bring about more interference, less individual responsibility and an amoral way of doing things?”
Well, here’s the original paragraph as published by the John Birch Society in a newspaper called the Reading Eagle in January of 1966.
You can see the entire John Birch ad here.
Roosh, you’ve been trolled, and trolled hard. And none of those commenting on his site suspected a thing.
To the troll behind this, kudos on some masterful work.
Slow clap.
Good gods, that is a beautiful troll.
I love this so much it hurts.
The saddest part is that they probably will just agree that the John Birch Society knew what they were talking about when they find out…
Now if only we could “trick” them into being decent human beings.
Guy has articles going back to November though. Are you sure he’s a troll rather than a generic asshole plagiarist?
I concur with david, this is a masterpiece of trolling. Whoever the troll is, I salute you.
Do we learn Roosh’s views on water fluoridation next? I agree Flora, these are people who agree with neo-nazis.
I’ll be honest, until you suggested a troll job, up until the very end I believed we had ourselves a genuine Joseph McCarthy wanna-be successor on our hands (as opposed to a Ginuwine Joseph McCarthy wanna-be successor, which would probably at the very least inject some fresh beats into the stale marshmallow that is the socialist-fearing segment of our society).
Then again, the gators have proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that they’re all far, far too disorganized to mount any kind of campaign on behalf of the Birchers. The current of “I don’t have to listen to you, you’re not my real dad” running through GG cannot be tamed by old money alone.
Ugh, Birchers. They sometimes set up a table in Brookline (a suburb/courb of Boston) with their stupid posters of Obama wearing a Hitler mustache. I thought that was especially classy when they did it on Holocaust Remembrance Day, what with Brookline being ~1/3 Jewish and all.
It was when he threw in “our hobby” that I just laughed and stopped reading. Because yeah, those evil
CommiesSJWs are out to stop poor dudes having hobbies!Hilarious. Gamergate basically is a younger more internet based version of the John Birch society. So it makes sense.
Allan Quartermain? So nice he took time out of his busy day: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Quatermain
GOD I LOVE THIS TROLL AND WANT TO BUY THEM CANDY. LOTS OF CANDY.
emilygoddess – MOD: You sure it was the birch society? Because I am fairly certain the Lyndon LaRouche people do that same thing as well. XD
Hey, off topic, but can anybody fill me in on what Brianna Wu did that’s got people threatening to release chat logs or something? I can’t find any actual information.
I saw this on Ghazi and noticed it has a very old school Right Wing ring to it but I didn’t even consider it was really that old school. Kudos to David for sniffing this out, a slow clap worthy feat itself.
Sweeet
You know, I wasn’t sold on this being a troll until I saw the Allan Quartermain bit. This is a little in the weeds, but bear with me –
Allan Quartermain is one of the literary figures picked up as a character for “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” a comic book series penned by Alan Moore.
Moore, of course, is the writer of “V for Vendetta,” the origin of those omnipresent Guy Fawkes masks. That work, of course, has been co-opted (and misconstrued) by many frothing anti-government types – you know, the kind so common in gamerghazi’s ranks.
I mean, it’s possible that some “innocent” soul, unburdened by respect for authorship, picked that nom de troll by accident – “Man, I love Sean Connerty!’ ” – but the parallels between the hijacking of “V” and the repackaging of this John Birch pamphlet are just too close. At the very least, I don’t want it to be coincidence.
Hmm. Maybe he IS a plagiarist and not a troll. Still pretty funny though!
Hahahahaha. The Man-O-Sphere never ceases to disappoint. ROFLCOPTER-levels of hilarity right here.
God, I should really cobble together all that sleep-deprivation-fueled research into the corporate history of Real Social Dynamics’ shady, scammy web empire I did the night that whole story broke about whats-‘is-face getting deported from Australia. Weird, weird stuff.
Also, it says a lot about the targets of that billboard that the creators felt the need to draw an arrow pointing out, oh, only the most recognizable face of the Civil Rights Movement.
I thought of doing something like this myself, so naturally it turns out that someone else has already done it in truly excellent form.
Of course, Gamergate is so concerned with right wing conspiracy theories like Cultural Marxism that it is at times impossible to distinguish from groups like the Birchers.
Do they even thing plagiarism is wrong? Maybe not, considering how much reactionary keyboard activists love shitty copy pasta.
I’m never sure if the copypasta warriors have written their screeds themselves or not.
Breakfastman – I’ve seen LaRouchites here in the Bay Area. They remind me of the RCPUSA (a/k/a Bob Avakian Fan Club). It would be amusing to believe in an afterlife in which LaRouche and Avakian share eternity together.
Birchers – feh. Possibly the only worthwhile thing William F’in Buckley ever did was chasing them out of paleoconservatism. Now that he’s dead, nobody on the USA right has the ability, much less the will, to do the same.
“Editor’s Update: It has come to my attention that part of this article may have heavily borrowed from a 1966 anti-communism article published by the John Birch Society. I’m currently investigating and will provide a second update within a day or two. -Roosh”
I can’t tell if Quatermain’s autobiographical bits are made-up. South Africa tested a nuclear weapon in 1979, but I don’t think he’s making a roundabout joke about being some kind of mutant. I kinda suspect this is “just” plagiarism, rather than trolling, but if so, that makes it even more hilarious.