It’s yet another reminder that online hate has consequences. In a manifesto of sorts he posted before he shot and killed 9 black people in a Charleston church, Dylann Roof noted that he had learned his racism online. He even specified one of the hate sites that fuelled his hate: the Council of Conservative Citizens.
Now it appears he was also a regular commenter at The Daily Stormer, an especially vicious neo-Nazi “news” site.
In his manifesto, Roof wrote that he “was not raised in a racist home or environment.” As he explained, it was the Trayvon Martin case that
prompted me to type in the words “black on White crime” into Google, and I have never been the same since that day. The first website I came to was the Council of Conservative Citizens. There were pages upon pages of these brutal black on White murders. I was in disbelief. At this moment I realized that something was very wrong.
Emphasis mine.
After this terrible “discovery,” Roof wrote, “I researched deeper,” ultimately “[finding] out about the Jewish problem and other issues facing our race, and I can say today that I am completely racially aware.”
One of the places he conducted this “research” was, evidently, the Daily Stormer. A researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center has discovered that a number of passages in Roof’s manifesto are virtually identical to comments left on The Daily Stormer by someone calling himself AryanBlood1488. It seems likely that this was Roof himself.
Just as Elliot Rodger seems to have picked up some of his misogynistic beliefs from PUAhate, a site whose best-known moderator at the time was a regular contributor to A Voice for Men, Roof seems to have picked up some of his “racial awareness” at The Daily Stormer, a site appealing to many of the same people — literally the same people — who regularly read and comment on popular “manosphere” sites like the proudly racist Chateau Heartiste and Roosh Valizadeh’s Return of Kings, which recently ran a long Naziesque screed, by Roosh himself, on the evils of “degenerate” and “cosmopolitan” Jews.
No, The Daily Stormer doesn’t see eye-to-eye on everything with pickup-oriented manospherans like Heartiste and Roosh; Daily Stormer founder Andrew Anglin thinks pickup artistry is “pure snake oil” and doesn’t consider Roosh to be sufficiently white. But he’s also praised Roosh’s “anti-Jew article” as “excellent.” As Anglin sees it, Roosh
no doubt sees which way the winds are blowing, and is attempting … to keep his media base in tact in the face of rising Nazism.
And it goes without saying that Anglin is as violently misogynistic as any of those I write about on this site; recent headlines on his site include Jew Announces a Bitch to be Featured on $10 Bill and God Should be a Bitch Says Church of England’s Slut Priestesses.
In the end, the various fine distinctions one can make between, for example, racist, misogynistic far-right hate sites that promote pickup artistry (like Chateau Heartiste) and racist, misogynistic far-right hate sites that don’t promote pickup artistry (like The Daily Stormer) seem less important than their innumerable similarities. They are all part of the same big ball of hate.
First Elliot Rodger, now Dylann Roof. In the past two years alone, two young men who read and commented on two specific hate sites I’ve written about on this blog have literally committed mass murders inspired by the hatreds they learned and developed online — and which they’ve spelled out clearly and unequivocally in manifestos they left behind.
Online hate has consequences in the real world. I can only hope that the authorities are paying attention.
H/T — r/GamerGhazi, which also points out that GamerGate icon Fredrick “Hotwheels” Brennan, founder of 8chan, recently published an article on The Daily Stormer advocating eugenics.
At some point the creators, owners and administrators of these site will have to be held accountable. The internet isn’t some fanciful black screen with green text, its an everyday part of everyday life and these everyday actions have bloody consequences.
Is the SPLC going to track the manosphere as an official hate group now?
“Racially aware”, “aware of true gender dynamics”…if raging racists and raging misogynists aren’t quoting the same playbook, they’re at least quoting playbooks written by the same coach.
What’s interesting isn’t just the confluence of racist websites and the Manosphere, but the very real sense of entitlement that male white supremacists have toward all white women. I’ll probably write something up on it at some point, but news reports suggest Roof was rejected by a white woman in favor of a black man. Frazier Glenn Miller discussed “race-mixing” between black men and white women in his self-published book. I think it’s an angle that needs to be explored.
Reblogged this on iheariseeilearn.
To add another complexity of interconnectedness to this:
//Leader of group cited in ‘Dylann Roof manifesto’ donated to top Republicans
Council of Conservative Citizens cited on site linked to Charleston suspect
Ted Cruz campaign tells Guardian it will ‘be making a full refund’
FEC shows Earl Holt gave to 2016 hopefuls Santorum, Paul and others//
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/21/dylann-roof-manifesto-charlston-shootings-republicans
And it all just keeps giving: //The Deadly History of “They’re Raping Our Women”
Racists have long used rape to defend their worst racist violence.//
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2015/06/the_deadly_history_of_they_re_raping_our_women_racists_have_long_defended.html
Being racially aware sounds alot like taking the red pill, doesn’t it?
What have we read recently?
Make sure your therapist is aware of gynocracy.
They deserve to be annihilated.
All of the lies in Dean’s hashtag demonizing women and calling for them to be punished (because we’re really asking for it *barf*).
Women’s “accountability” for believing in and seeking gender equality being rape and murder.
It’s the same kind of propaganda and it’s inciting the same sort of violence.
But but but a website isn’t a “group,” even though websites have all of the characteristics of groups and serve as meeting places for groups.
Most of them also feel entitled to black women and other women of color. They just feel entitled to women in general.
Last night I answered a Reddit question asking why the Confederate flag is “suddenly such a huge deal”. I posted:
“Because flags that represent a racist regime were clearly an important symbol to the man who killed 9 people for being black. The shooter had the flags of apartheid era South Africa and Rhodesia on his jacket. It was a super-obvious warning sign to anyone who paid attention, and the parallels to the Confederate flag are obvious. The incident kind of throws the inappropriateness of continuing to display one in into sharp relief.”
Within hours no less than three other people showed up to state that condemning the flag is “arbitrary nonsense” and “an easy target”. One poster continued:
“A deranged guy shoots 9 black people in an obvious racist hate crime… Instead of having an open dialog regarding race issues in America, let’s take down a flag.”
I get so fucking tired of the approach to “race issues” (or LGBT issues, gender issues, etc) that NOMINALLY condemns racist actions while criticizing any actual attempt to do something about them. These people play a game in which they continually narrow the definition of racism until it just means “that one guy that did the bad thing”. Discussing the meaning of the Confederate flag is a PART of “an open dialog regarding race issues in America”. It’s part of an honest admission that society in general dismisses things like racism til they blow up in our faces.
Seriously, if a flag has so little importance, why is it so fucking important to this guy? It could come down tomorrow and have no impact on his life whatsoever. It’s not music he listens to or a statement he made; it’s no skin off his back, but it would make around 15% of Americans feel considerably more welcome in the country they were born in. He can’t pretend he doesn’t understand that.
is right up there with “I am aware of all internet traditions” in it’s sheer clueless mockability, but holy fuck is it a common idea among white folk even when they aren’t going all Stormfront.
I want to poke fun at the idiocy, but it’s so toxic and so dangerous there simply aren’t any jokes to make.
Internet forums have become as influential to people as a face to face group meeting in a clubhouse somewhere. This is why I call for more regulations of internet activity (I’m looking at you, Reddit. A handful of subs isn’t enough). It is part of daily life. It is part of society and community.
After a while, free speech needs to take second place to people’s safety. When terrorists like Dylan PUBLICLY ANNOUNCE THEIR PLANS in black and white how the fuck is there ANY excuse not to clamp down on that shit?
Look who else seems to think that men in specific racial groups own “their women.”
https://twitter.com/deanesmay/status/612952601131249664
I think that’s the point. It’s about power. If he can do whatever he wants and other people have to adjust to live around him, then he has the power and he feels good. If other people can feel safe and he has to adjust to live around them, then he doesn’t have the power and he doesn’t feel good.
The problem is that we live in a society which urges us to get power by any means we can, and rewards us by portraying being powerful as being admirable and being powerless as contemptible. Seen in that light, a racist asshole demanding the right to fly whatever flag he likes regardless of how offensive it is, is saying something very simple: “If I can’t offend other people then it means I’m weak, and if I’m weak it means I have to hate myself.”
The long-term solution is to change our culture and the way we educate our children. But that’s a very long term solution and we need a shorter term one too. I suggest telling such people to go and fuck themselves.
I prefer to say that the terrorist website “The Daily Stormer” radicalized Dylann Roof- just like CH and RoK are radicalizing vulnerable people every day.
Well a flag is a symbol of power, an identity and a rallying point. It seems to be a facile argument that the confederate flag isn’t part of Roof’s identity (especially as he chose others to identify with), that he was aware if it;s symbolisism and that he rallied to many other’s with similar ideologies.
I don’t see it going away though, given that the swastika flag of Nazi Germany still sells well and gets waved a lot. The US federal government would have to have a massive de-confederization plan, similar to post war Germany to sort that problem out. I don’t see know how it could be done as it such an ingrained identify, just steer clear of the buggers who have it.
Slacktivist put up an interesting post about this a couple of days ago, about the intersection of racism and misogyny. This is a Christian blog, so he also includes the link with reactionary Christianity in the equation.
In it, he links to Lisa Wade’s more comprehensive analysis of the danger inherent in “benevolent sexism” and how it links with colonialism, which will not contain much new information to regulars, but which is nevertheless worth the read.
Curse you, blockquote mammoth.
I’m just very glad that I’m fully racially and sexually aware, and have been for years now. Namely, I realize and recognize that my being a white, fairly able-bodied man gives me countless advantages, but it doesn’t make me any different from people of differing skin colour or visible gender. I will keep trying to bring this view to the attention of the people I talk to day to day, in the hope that maybe I can help other people to become as aware as I am.
I just wish that there wasn’t such a pressing need to get people to understand that racism and sexism are truly toxic ideas that destroy countless lives.
Um, those were not the reasons Reconstruction failed.
I can’t help but wonder how much overlap there is between these groups and the slymepit types.
It seems like misogyny always gets left out when people discuss hate. I’m not sure why that is. Maybe because it’s so pervasive and so old?
Anyway, I think these incidents highlight the importance of privileged groups not getting defensive about the possibility of one of their members committing terroristic acts.
Remember that FBI report predicting the rise of right wing extremism? Remember how the right had a temper tantrum and accused the Obama administration of attacking run of the mill conservatives? It caused them to back away from the report a little bit. Maybe enough that domestic right wing hate groups weren’t monitored as well as they should have been.
To tie this together with the earlier part of my comment, the FBI doesn’t seem to include misogyny in its definition of right wing extremism either.
Sure, forced birthers are misogynists, but the FBI doesn’t call them out as such and as we see with the manosphere, opposition to abortion is hardly the only way one can be misogynist. Again, I think that misogyny is so normalized it doesn’t even occur to the FBI that the hatred of women is connected to other forms of hate.
But this
Is so similar to MGTOW gleeful predictions of there being some sort of collapse of society.
I typed MGTOW apocalypse into the search and found plenty of similar rhetoric.
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2013/12/13/a-voice-for-men-doubles-down-how-dishwashers-tv-dinners-and-marital-rape-laws-are-rendering-women-obsolete-also-the-apocalypse/#more-10695
Here’s what will happen if women don’t learn their place
Here’s another prediction of the MRA apocalypse. https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2012/06/07/its-a-tsunami-its-a-coiled-spring-its-a-mixed-metaphor-mgtow-manpocalypse/
I could go on, but I’m already deep into teal deer territory. You all get the idea.
Extremist misogynists are no different than racist, Christian fundamentalist and anti-government extremists.
Keep seeing people defend the flag because it’s a “historic symbol”. The two problems I see with that are 1. Southern states, including SC, brought the flag back in the 20th century to protest integration of schools.
2. The history it symbolizes is slavery. How can you possibly be proud of that?
I am heartened to see Walmart pulling all confederate flags from its stores. Whatever you think of Walmart as an institution and whatever you might think of the motivation behind the act, think that pulling the flags is a good thing.
The issue with the SPLC not declaring any of these misogynistic sites as hate groups is largely because they define groups geographically, so anything on the internet — even when the SPLC does pay attention to it — doesn’t count as a hate group. They actually don’t count Stormfront as a hate group either, even though numerous people who’ve been involved with that site have actually murdered people.
They really need to come up with a better way to deal with internet hate. There’s no question that AVFM functions as a group, for example.