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.
Regarding the LaRouchies and their Obama/Hitler literature:
I went to the 2009 Worldcon in Montreal. After the con wrapped up, I stayed on for a couple of days to hang out with friends. One afternoon in Old Montreal, I came upon three Larouche followers who had set up a table full of pamphlets. it was mostly anti-Obamacare propaganda, and featured the President photoshopped with the aforementioned Hitler moustache.
I just had to ask one of them why he was protesting Obamacare, an American healthcare policy, in the middle of Montreal, which is the most progressive city in the most progressive province of Canada, a country that has had single-payer healthcare since the mid-60s.
Instead of answering, he tried to sell me a large booklet featuring Obama photoshopped into a scene that made him look like he was shaking hands with Hitler’s inner circle. I just gave up and walked away at that point.
Karen Straughan….ugh. While watching a video of hers I was struck by how many times she cited the example of “women and children first into life boats” as an example of the “disposable male”. Yeah, like I’m getting ahead of men in life boats every day.
P.S. I was trying to post a comment for sometime and kept getting a pop-up that this site We Hunted The Mammoth is compromised, unsafe and not private. Just thought I’d let someone know. I was worried it got hacked or something.
Yikes – Nice heads-up, Kyla.
Coming back to say that I want to clarify: It’s not that the Mr doesn’t care about his long eyebrow hair (re: me alerting him), it’s that he’s been fairly far-sighted since his late 20s and needs to put on reading glasses to do any close-up grooming himself.
He hates his reading glasses, so he relies on me for updates.
I, however, love his reading glasses – especially if he wears them when his eyebrows get long. They transform him from super villain to “kooky professor with subversive ideas”.
It seems to be okay if I go through wordpress but not facebook. So I had to create a wordpress account. Weird, so be careful. I could well imagine them trying to bring down this site.
I don’t mean Facebook infiltrating this site, I mean the folks in the Manosphere.
Blockquote uberfail. oops.
proxieme,
My husband trims stray long eyebrow hairs. He calls them his Mentat brows. Occasionally I get them too. Do Not Want!
I was going to suggest that perhaps the OP wasn’t trolling, but may, like many of Roosh’s followers, genuinely believe that both SJWs and communists are dire threats to our culture. It was nice of DAP to illustrate that point for me.
As for “debating” Karen Straughan, what would be the point? You’d waste half your alloted time just pointing out that her “facts” aren’t even factual.
My go-to image for “kooky professor with subversive ideas” is Prof. J. P. Kettlewell, the Victor Frankenstein figure from the Doctor Who serial Robot:
http://www.doctorwhoworld.org.uk/Images/episodes/cs12ep1/cs12ep1c.jpg
Admittedly, that’s more “male pattern balding embracing” than “eyebrows.”
I have one eyebrow hair in each brow that grows out really long and coarse compared to the rest of my eyebrow hair. It scoffs at my wee eyebrow hair trimmer.
Did GWW even ask for a debate with David?
How has nobody addressed the thing of beauty that is that spam comment?
I especially like how it offered us 50 dollars and put several zeros after the decimal point so it looks much bigger. The 666 in the email address is a nice touch too.
Do we have Mammotheers in France? I can’t think of anyone off the top of my head but just in case, hugs.
“Secretilluminaititemple666” is way too on-the-nose for it to be an actual spambot. It’s somebody either trying way too hard to take the piss out of the conspiracy theorists or trying way too hard to take the piss out of us.
100 bucks a week, so a little over 5k a year? Eventually? I wonder if they expect membership dues and time investment… seems like a bit of a raw deal. Sadly that income alone probably won’t make someone rich.
But hey, “STRONG and spiritual powers!” Is the James Randi challenge still going on? Demonstrating actual proof of supernatural abilities would definitely make one rich and famous. If only one of the founding members of “secretilluminaititemple666” had just taken the challenge, they wouldn’t be able to stop the people from swarming to sign up.
I guess then it wouldn’t be a secret, though…
Why do the reactionaries (and new atheists) love the idea of debating? They seem to think that winning a debate can prove a factual claim.
It’s weird.
What would a secret Illuminati temple DO day-to-day anyway? Is it just a mafia-esque system of favors? Or do they do community work, like brainwashing the masses through bake sales?
Illuminati cookies.
I personally just like seeing two people with different world views talking directly to one another, and debates are the usual way that even happens. All the rhetoric has to mellow out. It won’t give you truth, but it can be fun to watch how a person’s beliefs hold up to direct questioning.
That or just watch the fireworks.
(I’d totally debate GWW if I thought I could handle a debate… Especially because I’m pretty much a nobody, so I’d have nothing to lose.)
@WWTH : Lurkers at least 🙁
proxieme:
My Ms doesn’t seem to notice them, so the first warning I get is an eyebrow hair tickling my eyelid.
I hate how trolls always take a refusal to debate as a victory. Every time I’ve told someone that they’re being purposely obtuse so I won’t engage anymore, they think it means their argument must be correct. Nope. Not how it works. There’s just no point in spending hours on a completely unproductive conversation.
It would be fun to see a debate with Karen Straughan. If and only if there is a strict time limit for answers and rebuttals. She would have such a hard time sticking to it and it would be glorious to watch. All the same, David shouldn’t have to subject himself to her if he doesn’t want to.
Falconer:
Yes, that’s it! And it’s pretty stealthy in my case, grows really long while staying hidden in amongst the rest and then suddenly leaps out and refuses to remain subdued.
Oh good, so it’s not just me, then? I usually go on a mad hunt for those two pesky hairs with the tweezers when I see that they’re back again. (I have plenty of other, better behaved brow hairs, so I never miss ’em when they’re gone.)
@WWTH: We had a troll who said he was French, and he lived on a houseboat in England.
@kirbywarp: Now I want to pull my copy of GURPS Illuminati and read it, maybe it’ll help me think of what the Secret Masters get up to in their copious spare time.
GURPS Warehouse 23 has a couple of lines where the authors mention that the Ark of the Covenant would smite scorpions while the tribes of Israel wandered in the desert, and then they boggle at the notion that a Secret Master keeps it around as a bug zapper.
Oh, so you all have just ONE out of control eyebrow hair? Hmph. Gonna give my two wannabe caterpillars a talking to.
Guh, hate debates. In an era where people can actually link to evidence and write long-form discussions, It’s obsolete. It’s style over substance with a psudo-intellectual gloss.
(I also hate watching people being embarrassed. Even when politicians I hate are called out in the most justified ways on their lies, it makes me physically uncomfortable to watch. Even a “successful” debate for my side is painful for me.)
As for the John Birch Society, they’ve been mainstream for a while now. It’s just called Fox News now.
I have a freak albino eyebrow hair that appears regularly, every 4 months or so. It’s like Halley’s Comet. Hunting and weeding it is an enjoyable activity.
Trolls put way too much stock in debate, when they don’t even know how to do it properly. They have this vague idea that you “win” by “scoring points off your opponent”, but they focus on subduing the opponent instead of addressing their ideas.
Dear trolls:
1. Volume (shouting in ALL CAPS at your opponent) doesn’t mean you’re right.
2. Intensity of feeling (anger, name-calling, cold contempt, condescension, hyperbole, abuse of “-nazi” suffixes) doesn’t mean you’re right.
3. Quantity (torrents of bogus facts, links, and unsupported assertions) doesn’t mean you’re right.
4. Popularity (“Everyone else thinks the same way I do!”) doesn’t mean you’re right.
5. Refusal to engage or acknowledge your opponent’s argument means you’ve lost