Reaxxion, the world’s crappiest right wing woman-hating excuse for a video game site, has now officially responded to my post revealing that a GamerGate manifesto they recently published was literally a repurposed John Birch Society newspaper ad from the mid-1960s, with words like “communist” removed and replaced with their GamerGate equivalents.
Whether the, er, “author” of the post was trolling, or just the world’s least subtle plagiarist, it was a giant embarrassment for Roosh and Reaxxion. And so, in the course of a nearly 1000-word post, Reaxxion “ethics officer” announces that they’ve shitcanned the author – and congratulates the site for its heroic bravery for throwing out a writer who copied his entire post from an old John Birch Society newspaper ad from the mid-1960s, with words like “communist” removed and replaced with their GamerGate equivalents.
That’s all well and good, because journalists aren’t supposed to copy pretty much their entire posts from a John Birch Society newspaper ad from the mid-1960s, with words like “communist” removed and replaced with their GamerGate equivalents. If you’re an editor and catch a writer doing this, you’re supposed to send that writer packing. (Remember Stephen Glass?)
But Roberts ignores what is really the most interesting and revealing thing about the whole incident, which is that a writer copied his entire post from an old John Birch Society newspaper ad from the mid-1960s, with words like “communist” removed and replaced with their GamerGate equivalents – AND NO ONE NOTICED UNTIL I POINTED IT OUT.
And why is that? Because the hysterical anti-communist rhetoric of the original ad sounds pretty much identical to the ridiculously over-the-top rhetoric that’s characterized GamerGate from the start. And it’s rooted in the same sort of reactionary politics.
Which is itself even more embarrassing than the plagiarism itself.
The John Birch Society, if you don’t already know, isn’t just a right-wing group. It’s a group so far to the right that even the National Review has denounced it. As a Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report notes that for years those on the left and on the right basically saw the Birchers as “the political equivalent of an addled uncle sent down to the basement rec room to drink, rant and hopefully pass out” before he had a chance to thoroughly embarrass the whole family by saying something truly dreadful.
I found the Bircher’s newspaper ad in a newspaper from 1966. At that time, the Birchers were fierce opponents of the civil rights movement in general and Martin Luther King Jr. in particular, labeling him a tool of the communists. As the SPLC report notes, Birchers feared that “the African-American freedom movement was being manipulated from Moscow with the goal of creating a “Soviet Negro Republic” in the Southern United States.”
Of course, the Birchers saw communists hiding behind every tree and under every bed. Indeed, the group’s founder, Robert Welch, was convinced that even President Dwight Eisenhower was a treasonous Communist puppet, and that LBJ was plotting to turn the United States over to the Communists even as he sent troops to fight against the Viet Cong.
So congratulations, GamerGaters, you’re now as officially ridiculous as the John Birch Society.
It might be a good idea to reflect a little on your life choices.
So basically “trust us, we know what rights you really want better than you do”? Yep, sounds like Republicans.
If babies are humansc then minorities are at a disadvantage before birth. I’d rather not take the chance that humans could be dying. No reason you can’t care about a minority before and after birth, though.
But seriously, guys, there is a huge gap between right wing beliefs on abortion and treating women with the remotest resemblance of decency. There’s a lot of common ground here from the far left to the middle of the right. That’s why I freaking love this blog even though I’m conservative raised and still believe a lot of their ideals.
Ok, I’ve read Right Wingnut’s post 3 times & I still don’t understand what zie is trying to say.
The common ground between the far left and the middle of the right is that we’re all mammals? Except maybe Romney, not so sure about him.
Well to be fair, if you’re fimilar with the existence of the dork enlightenment, national review does seem pretty tame
Right Wingnut, I was raised thoroughly conservative, too. My brother is an MRA and my father and mother think liberals want to rain communist, bleeding-heart hell upon the land. With a little effort, I promise you you can become a person who thinks instead of reacts. I did it! Mostly! Some of the time! heh
tl;dr even though I’m pro-life, I consider the issue of abortion a red herring compared to the stuff that MRAs publish here. Even born and raised a conservative Christian Republican, I would have been appalled to see the way MRAs behave. It seems unbehooving of whatever bizarre belief system they want to align themselves to. :/
…So I come here instead, politics be darned.
Also, I suck at typing on mobile devices. 😛
@thebewilderness Oh, the Jayson Blair scandal? He was a far more devious and skillful plagiarist than this guy – he pulled together bits and pieces of news stories, basically aggregating the content and rewording slightly. The Times was also slow to embrace the internet back then (as a fact-checking and anti-plagiarism tool).
The NYT isn’t perfect either, but their “ethics in journalism” are light-years ahead of Reaxxion’s obnoxxious dysfunxxional projexxion.
It’s nice that you’re pro telling me what I can and can’t do with my uterus, sweetie, but nobody asked for your opinion. Now shush.
@Wingnut
If you’re against reproductive rights, then you don’t “Treat women with the remotest resemblance of decency.” You can’t say that you’re pro-slut-shaming, pro-legislating women’s bodies, pro-forced birth and pro-manslaughter by backalley then say that you’re not a sexist. That’s not how it works.
“I’m against misogyny as long as it’s the kind of misogyny that inconveniences me personally. When it’s about telling (other) women what to do with their bodies I’m all for it! Because babies are ‘humansc’ and I don’t know what a fetus is, much less a blastocyst.”
Umm, no misogyny inconveniences me personally AFAIK, since I’m male and all. I just think misogyny is wrong. Any taking away life or liberty from another person is wrong. Labeling is just a means to dehumanizing. Label a human as a slut, an embryo, a blastocyst, whatever, it’s still a human, and all humans still deserve respect and a chance to live. That’s my reasoning, anyway.
@cassandra: You can do whatever you want to with your uterus, but I don’t consider myself my mother’s uterus. Even as a clump of cells it’s still a human being (not an alien) and unique (not the same genetics as mother or father).
You needn’t be condescending by calling me “honey” or telling me to “shush.”
Is there a new way to be condescending? Do tell!
*props chin in hand, bats eyelashes*
Hey, I need kidney dialysis for nine months. Can I come be totally dependent on your biological processes, distort your body, alter your hormones, for nine months or more, and eventually pry your pelvis apart down the middle in a process that takes days or weeks? ‘Cause I’m definitely a human being, a separate person from you, and I have a right to live, too.
Oh, you just shush now, darlin’, run along and play. The grownups are talking.
Oof, lost my first comment. Second try!
@Right Wingnut
“Human” is a label, and it’s a label you’re very interested in applying to a wide variety of things. Labels are just language.
There you are using labels again. Shame shame shame. Fun fact; back when you were a clump of cells in your mother’s uterus, you didn’t consider yourself much of anything. The cells necessary for neuronal activity would have been weeks away from forming.
If I’m not mistaken, then the 1-2 mm cell ball that you were (“blastocyst,” or “human” as you wish to call it), had fate been less kind, could have failed to implant as happens in around 10-20% of all pregnancies.
But hey, keep telling us how much you respect women, and how you respect them too much to let them have bodily autonomy that supercedes the future rights of a potential person.
This is the grossest part.
The number of children per family is inversely correlated with a country’s general wealth and standard of living. It takes resources and time to raise kids, and if there’s no concept of family planning, you get poorer families with more child deaths.
And guess who tends to be most affected by these issues? That’s right, minorities! So in your pleading for helping minorities by essentially forcing them to give birth, you’re offering the symptoms as the cure.
By the way, that afterthought you had at the end about caring about “a minority” after birth? That tends to be an afterthought for many pro-life folks. As long as the little ball of cells eventually comes out breathing, to hell with them.
Right Wingnut, I’m going to be a little kinder to you and assume that you’re a fairly decent individual, but you find the idea of abortion distasteful. Please ask yourself why someone should have to continue a pregnancy (which can be very hazardous to her health) and give birth to a child she doesn’t want, can’t afford, or can’t care for. I would also ask you to do a little digging into pro-life rhetoric. Often you will find pregnancy framed as a “consequence” of having sex, with the unspoken suggestion that if women didn’t want to get pregnant, they should keep their legs together. Apart from being sexist, such a belief ignores all the social fuckery that surrounds sex, such as: men need and are entitled to sex; women who don’t put out are frigid; women who won’t have sex with their partners are “withholding” sex; oh oh condoms take away all the sensation; etc.
TL;DR – the woman always disappears from pro-life conversations, except as someone who did something bad and is now trying to weasel out of her punishment. It’s cloaked in words like “responsibility” and “consequences”, but that’s what’s really meant. And pay attention to the number of pro-lifers who also oppose contraception and push for abstinence-only sex education. Proper sex ed and easy access to contraception would do far more to reduce the number of abortions than closing abortion clinics.
Don’t forget the number of pro-lifers who oppose welfare, especially in single motherhood cases. Otherwise known as “Literally every pro-lifer I’ve ever met.” =P
My problem with that “labels” rhetoric is that every kind of rhetorical step is taken in order to assert that a barely formed and possibly not even viable clump of cells (zygotes/blastocists) are indeed fully, completely, and undeniably human, and that any attempt to say otherwise is clear evidence of callousness and depravity, but somehow those same people wave away the humanity of the not at all hypothetical or potential, but actual real woman in front of them.
@gillyrosebee:
When they aren’t equivicating, anyways. “Hey, remember when black people were not considered human? That’s exactly the same as not considering a little ball of around 300 cells human, because in each case something isn’t being considered human. I see no reason why these situations are different in any way.”
> TL;DR – the woman always disappears from pro-life conversations, except as someone who did something bad and is now trying to weasel out of her punishment.
I never found my biological mother someone who did something bad. As someone whose father decided I was just a “clump of cells” and encouraged her to abort me, and then abandoned her, I consider him far more responsible and more of a failure than my mother, who gave me up for adoption.
I appreciate the people who are trying to treat me with a little decency here. Beats the vast majority of MRA sitegoers.
I’m so happy that a man has come to tell us the difference between right and wrong.
Your bio mother made a choice. That’s great. I was unplanned and my mother decided that she wanted to keep me. Again, it was her choice. For some pregnant women, abortion is the best choice. Your opinion on that choice is irrelevant.
Also, your bio dad was an asshole for trying to pressure your bio mom into doing something she didn’t want to do and for abandoning her, not for believing you were a “clump of cells.” Plenty of pro-lifers get abortions (yes, even the ones picketing in front of clinics), and plenty of pro-choicers don’t.
Speaking of misogynists and forced birthers http://jezebel.com/manly-christian-bros-apologize-for-letting-their-women-1679315680