On the Twitter, some of Donald Trump’s most unsavory supporters are celebrating his big win in New Hampshire by flooding Twitter with bad photoshops, racist cartoons, creepy fan art, anime memes, and more than a few Trump-themed Pepes.
I found a lot of these by looking at the #FashTheNation hashtag; it’s the name of an alt-right YouTube show. The “fash” part of the title refers to “fascism,” not “fashion.” I left out some of the more extravagantly racist memes I ran across.
https://twitter.com/grootstok/status/697230550159851520
https://twitter.com/franz_soapbar/status/697240141841068032
https://twitter.com/DinduNuffink/status/697232434841186309
https://twitter.com/franz_soapbar/status/697233905892524032
https://twitter.com/franz_soapbar/status/697230459785183233
#FashTheNation BREAKING NEWS: Trump wins NH. Anime girls materialize from nothing and immediately endorse Trump. pic.twitter.com/1NMDhBjiay
— Nuanced takes (@surgeonffs) February 10, 2016
https://twitter.com/grootstok/status/697229785299230720
https://twitter.com/JohnRandom1234/status/697239157970604032
https://twitter.com/genbarrison/status/697238840659079168
https://twitter.com/Clausfarre143/status/697238666813505537
https://twitter.com/Gajda_m8/status/697238412034764801
https://twitter.com/genbarrison/status/697224906732388353
https://twitter.com/neueeuropa/status/697234139477442560
Um, yes, I did mention that it hits every box on snowberry’s list.
I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear enough, I’m not on my game today (I’m diagnosed with bipolar) and sometimes I get excited easily and forget people can’t read my thoughts. The Archie comics are totally a caricature of some of the most deeply embedded archtypes of the (colonial white) America that keeps not only the States but the world at large from understanding different cultures and viewpoints. Sure, you say, it’s nothing but a small example and has no relevance to the world outside. According to the ancient wisdom of Hermetic philosophy though, “As above, so below.”
The entire cultural landscape of the Archie comics is a bourgeoisie hell-hole with no conflict or challenges of diversity. Jughead rationalizing the fact that he can’t lift weights and deciding to call himself asexual is not truly tackling hard problems. There’s a lot Archie comics could do to dispel the over-arching narrative of Islamaphobia by normalizing women in traditional Islamic clothing. Religious intolerance is getting to be too much. We’re on the verge of fascism here and if we want to make any progress we need to break down some dinosaur barriers of culture, and fast.
I can’t believe it’s 2016. Peace On Lemmings.
guy says:
Well, duh, not all the stock character sex objects are “helpless” and “demure” and “quiet” and “obedient.” Who said they were? Harems are about supplying whatever a male viewer/reader/player likes, and plenty of them like the physically or magically powerful girls. Or sassy girls. Especially seeing them get boob-groped or up-skirted. Or even raped. It’s still all about giving creepy nerds boners. And yet, the powerful and sassy girls still almost always end up damseled or tamed into traditional gender roles at some point, anyway.
You can tell a lot about a culture from what its media assumes are common background assumptions.
I watched an anime once. It was called Ghost in the Shell: Stand-Alone Complex. I watched it because the person I was dating at the time was very into it.
The anime mentioned in passing that there was a human insurgency against the AIs. “Cool,” I said, “This is going to be like the later Matrix movies except good.”
Reader, the only time it actually came up at all, the anime assumes that its viewers would naturally side with the AIs and would see purestrain humans – you know, those things that you and I are – as beasts that could be admired but not empathised with and which had to be swept aside so that the master race could triumph.
Again: this wasn’t a plot point. The anime simply assumed that its audience would naturally take this viewpoint.
What the fuck, Japan!
@Unlucky Blackjack:
Awww, you’re very kind. How about we just skip past the baby part and do the science? After all, babies are easy to make and assemble using unskilled labour and there’s plenty of people around who would happily do that if we gave them the money. Meanwhile real experiments need to be done: I’m still not convinced by any of the learned literature on whether or not dogs can look up, for instance.
@Scildfreja:
Coates himself is deeply uncomfortable with people saying that he endorsed Sanders, because he really feels that he didn’t:
Do people here seriously can’t understand those memes?
They are very direct to point.
Also, why is it weird to hate Canada, the most cuck-friendly country in the whole Americas?
Why would it be weird to depict the execution of rivals?
Why are you such pussies?
Hello.
Well, the range of japanese comics and cartoons is as wide as in any other countries, with many categories and sub-categories. Being that wide may imply that almost anybody can find something she/he like.
And as for movies or videogames, you can even be pleased by something which does not deeply tie in your moral points of view and principles. This does not mean that you can not see or report the flaws in it, but you have maybe found some points that entertain you, and thus you enjoy it at your own level.
So, the same way you may enjoy a movie with shitty scenario, bad actresses/ors who played badly stereotyped characters, and cheap setting, just because it is so absurdly bad it makes you laugh (in France, we call that a “nanar”), you may enjoy a manga full of flaws and/or not primarily directed to you just because some points are appealing to you. You can be a Woman of Color and enjoy an anime aimed at men with no character of color because the plot please you. You can be a cis man and enjoy a yaoi manga because the story takes place in a era that you like.
So it is no wonder that people we are not agree with can sometimes use anime/manga characters as icons, in the same way they can use characters from comics. That is a pity for the artworks in question, but we are not narrowminded to generalize and to always associate the said artworks with the way of thinking and acting of those who use them, are we ?
Have a nice day.
@Brony, Social Justice Cenobite
Thanks for doing all that thinking about why people do terrible things. You put into words some things that I was feeling but couldn’t articulate. “Dominance display”: You called that one.
I had a quick look at your website. I can see you’ve been doing a lot of thinking for quite some time now!
@EJ (The Other One)
You made me laugh!
@ EJ
I quite like it when a narrative goes against assuming readers will side with the human protagonists. That seems to be the default (“writers are human” as tvtropes would put it) and it’s good to challenge that.
Probably the first book I ever read that took the stance that ‘humans are the bad guys’ was ‘The Secret of NIMH’. That book was very influential on me and perhaps informs my stance on animal rights (or maybe just reinforced a few I’d already formed, it’s always hard to say).
Challenging the inherent prejudice that there’s something special about humans is, I think, a good thing. Telling a story from the perspective of non human protagonists, whether they be animal, machines or aliens causes us to have a long hard think about ourselves. That works particularly well where the narrative doesn’t labour the point.
To use your GITS example, having the story draw attention to the fact that its viewpoint is unusual would be like Mark Twain having an introductory paragraph along the lines of “Oh by the way, I know it’s not what you’d expect, but in this book you’re meant to rooting for the black guy.”
@Alan:
Secret of NIMH was excellent in that it explored the concept of what it is to be an animal, but it did that explicitly as foreground: it forced you to think in that way and it made all the characters likeable and empathic once you’d put your head into that mode of thinking. That’s cool. I can go with that. Likewise, I Am Legend does the same thing with the “humans are cthulhu” trope, and arguably The Walking Dead does it to make you sympathise with the zombies.
However, this requires deliberate work and planning on the part of the author.
There’s a big difference between that and works which simply assume that it’s a basic background assumption which everyone shares. For example, go back and read Coriolanus again (or watch Fiennes’ excellent film of it.) It has an unquestioned assumption in it that “democracy is bad because non-aristocrats are sheep who are easily led, and any leader who’s elected rather than born to the post is always bad at it.” Unlike NIMH, this isn’t the point of the work, and so it isn’t developed properly enough to get you into that headspace: to a modern reader it just grates.
Another example is the Turner Diary: it assumes that its readers are already in favour of white supremacy and see liberalism as weakness, and so doesn’t spend any words trying to sell you on it. This assumption about the audience means that when a disciple of Karl Popper (like myself) reads it, they’ll go “Wait, what? Where are all the words that you should have written to make these racists’ heads inhabitable?”
This, to me, is the big difference between Ghost in the Shell and something like Blade Runner: the one carefully makes the case for you sympathising with machines over humans, and the other just assumes that you’re already in favour of it and panders to that.
(EDIT: Another example, from the opposite side, might be Hamlet. Hamlet is my favourite Shakespeare play of all time and I will not hear a word said against it; but it translates very poorly into other cultures. The film critic Kyle Kallgren told an anecdote about trying to explain it to West Africans whose culture was in favour of women remarrying their death husbands’ brothers, but was strongly against youths rebelling against elder authority. When these things are presented as unquestioned assumptions, it means that the piece grated on these viewers.)
@ EJ
Ha, you won’t be surprised to know that ‘Coriolanus’ is the only Shakespeare play I like :-). Although that’s because of its Kiplingesque “It’s Tommy this and Tommy that…” theme of ingratitude to soldiers once they’re no longer needed rather than the politics.
I get what you’re saying about ‘laying out the argument’ for sympathising with non human characters; but I still prefer the approach of not doing so. That approach still comes from the perspective that ‘humans are the default’ whereas just diving straight in there as if the book was written for a non human audience seems to make the point better for me. That way seems to have a more authentic ‘voice’. But that’s just subjective taste of course.
Dragon Ball Z is amazing. Watch Dragon Ball first, though. Avoid Dragon Ball GT.
(Naruto sucks.)
@EJ
Actually, Ghost In The Shell:Stand Alone Complex is not run by AIs; the only meaningfully intelligent AIs in the show are the Tachikoma spider tanks. Virtually the entire population is some degree of cyborg. The protagonists range from Togusa, who basically has a cell phone in his head and no other augmentations, to Major Kusunagi, who was severely injured in a plane crash as a young girl and is presently a human brain in a robotic shell. There’s one episode where they attack a terrorist organization that flatly rejects any form of artificial modification in order to rescue hostages; otherwise anyone they meet can be assumed to be at least as augmented as Togusa.
Ghost In The Shell has a lot of different versions and in some of them (like the movie that actually inspired the Matrix in a number of ways) do have other AIs, but not as a ruling overclass.
A place where anyone can speak their mind, without having to put their name to it or defend their point of view. You can post something, then post something directly afterwards that contradicts it just for shits and giggles. How on earth is anyone there forced to be strong? You’re all anon. It’s a pretty safe, secure place to be; you never have to back up anything you say or face any opposition or criticism whatsoever.
Which is fine, I suppose, if you’re just screwing around. But this attitude that /pol/ is some free expression utopia where only the strong survive is baffling to me, since it takes no courage or fortitude whatsoever to be one anon in a sea of anons posting memes. IRL it would be like a huge room full of people hidden behind screens, using voice disguisers. How are you forced to be strong when you’re safely hidden and no-one knows who anyone is?
@EJ, I know that Coates really doesn’t want to be seen as giving an endorsement, and I respect him hugely for taking that stand! Unfortunately, he’s a very well respected voice, and regardless of what he says, it’s gonna be seen as an endorsement. That’s sort of what a vote is, after all – it’s an endorsement of a candidate.
re: Ghost in the Shell; I’ve seen a few of the movies, but not a huge amount of it. The plots are nuanced and quite complicated, but I’ve never seen it as “AI Good Human Bad”. I’ll have to look at it again! There is a lot of male gaze pandering, though.
@Pandapool; you need to watch Dragonball Z Abridged. Need to need to. Here is the playlist. Ten minute episodes, and give it a few – they’re a little shaky until episode 6. Naturally, it doesn’t get really good until Vegeta shows up :3 I don’t even like Dragonball, and DBZA is hilarious.
(Dammit Nappa.)
I must admit the whole reason I orgianally liked ghost in the shell was for that one part in one of the movies where kusunagi gets naked at the top of a building so she can turn invisible and jump off. But then again I was about 16 at the time so I like to think my taste has developed more than just ‘there were boobs in it’
Yeah, there’s a lot of Ghost In The Shell adaptions. Characters and setting are pretty much the same; plots are different. And yes, The Major does spend quite a lot of time in skintight outfits. Supposedly this is partially to convey a sense that full-conversion cyborgs are desensitized to nudity due to their fully mechanical bodies. I can buy that for the 1995 movie; the assembly montage in the opening deliberately highlights the lack of any gentilia and the disconnection from normal human experience is a reoccuring theme. Stand Alone Complex, not so much; it’s got plenty of philosophical themes but not that one.
Incidentally it alludes to gender identity with one of The Major’s subordinates occasionally asking why she doesn’t switch to a male body, since they’re physically larger and thus have more room for artifical muscles and she’s very much traditionally masculine in behavior. The apparent answer is that she’s not trans (when her current body loses an arm she gets an upgraded version of the same one) and she doesn’t need to outmuscle people when she can instead hack them and make them punch themselves in the face (also as a top-end military model she usually wins contests of strength and anyway owns a gun), but people do it and it’s heavily implied it’s not generally considered strange. The only specifically known instance was rather creepy, though; a woman got an exact copy of one of the male members of Section 9 and tried to kill and replace him. But that didn’t really imply it was in any way creepier than if a man had done the same thing. First episode also has a politican who likes swapping his brain into a geisha robot and the control system into his body; people find it a bit of an odd preference but it’s only plot-important because someone takes the opportunity to swipe his brain mid-transfer, swap their brain into his body, and steal classified information.
@Guy
I think EJ may be talking about “Ghost in the shell:Stand alone complex,Solid State Society” . If I recall correctly A.Is were using Ghost hacking to place neglected children with equally neglected seniors in the hopes of giving both better lives or something like that.
@Scildfreja:
Since I wrote that this morning, I’ve done some reading and my position has somewhat hardened. I’m very disappointed in the Sanders campaign for the way they’ve handled this.
Coates went on air not to praise Sanders, but to raise the point that Sanders has said some problematic things and can be seen as throwing black people under the bus. He wanted to spark off a deep and important dialogue that really needed to be had.
The Sanders campaign should have responded to him in a way that showed some respect. Instead, they seized on the brief moment where Coates said that he was still personally probably going to vote for Sanders anyway, completely ignoring every other point he made. Coates’s deep, passionate and well-reasoned thinking may as well have been him singing covers of old Aqua songs for all the response it got.
If this was malice then I could understand it, but I don’t think it is. I think they simply don’t give a damn what he thinks as long as they can spin it as “Prominent Black Person Supports Us”; and I’m troubled by what this says about Sanders’ attitudes to black people.
I’m not black and I’m not American. I don’t know what it’s like to be black and American. But if I were, I don’t think I would consider this episode much of a reason to support Sanders.
@Fabe
Possibly; haven’t watched that movie. It apparently does involve the Puppetmaster AI, which appeared in the 1995 movie. In that one it was a military attack AI that went rogue after being used for some dubious purpose. Main villains are the humans responsible for the incident and willing to kill to cover it up. Ultimately mind-merged with The Major to become something neither human nor AI, roll credits. Mind, it explictly had a soul, which is a measurable phenomenon in the setting (the titular Ghost).
It’s true, I was friendly to several cuckolds today.
Pretty sure Dr. Pavel up there is the totally uneccesary return of Pell.
Had much fun reading that comment analysis, thanks guys, great fun!
But always remember, the reason you don’t like Trump is because he is everything you’re not.
He’s successful, while you’re mediocre at best. He’s surrounded by hot women while you’re not getting any attention. He provides for himself and others, while you leach. He loves himself while you’re barely holding any facade. He is liked by many whatever he says, while you constantly seek approval. He has, you have not.
And for everything above you will find a justification, that he is not smart, not in a good shape, not at all wealthy, not a provider. All of that is – you. Even worse than that, you just don’t have the capacity to accept things for what they are.
Never change, God bless and greetings from not (yet) so delusional Europe!
@EJ,
I know, I’m really leery of how Bernie is handling the issues of African Americans and minorities, too. He’s had ample opportunity to speak up about those issues in more than sound bytes, and has yet to do so. It’s one of the elements of his campaign that he hasn’t been clear about. The fact that he continues to do so it worrisome.
I support Bernie (for all the good it does a Canadian to support Bernie) because his central platform is all about re-regulation and fair taxation, universal health care, and accessible education. Hillary is going to let the Wall Street games continue, which will have knock-on effects that the whole world will feel.
He’s got problems, but is overall moving in the right direction. She’s a political chameleon indebted to the financial industry. Hopefully he can sort out his problems; I can’t see Hillary repairing hers.
@Guy:
Thanks for reminding me. Yes, it was that episode with the pro-human militants. The dialogue called them extremists but I remember feeling when watching it that this term felt ‘off’ in the way old South African media referring to black nationalism as “terrorism” and “a tiny minority who everyone else shuns” was ‘off’.
I might be misremembering it though. I was, erm, distracted.