Ok, I may have oversold this a teensy bit. I didn’t look through all ten billion Trump fan Tweets from last night. I looked through as many as I could before I started to seriously despair for the future of humanity.
Let’s start with a Trumpified 300 meme. If you haven’t seen a lot of 300 memes lately, that may be because the movie is nearly ten years old. But, what the heck, stick a trump head in it and it’s as fresh as today’s headlines!
https://twitter.com/DianeMBooth/status/709848887222149120
Now this might be sort of funny if Diane here were kidding about this. What makes this creepy is that she’s not kidding at all. Nope.
Oh, and she’s also a white supremacist.
https://twitter.com/DianeMBooth/status/709847714297610241
But, hey, not all of the Trump tweets I found last night were so blatantly racist. Some were slightly less blatantly racist.
https://twitter.com/RealDoctorWhite/status/709904827979997184
Let’s stick with this whole “racism” theme we’ve got going here. Whoever’s responsible for the next pair of memes apparently thinks that the way to win whites over to Trumpism is by posting lots and lots of pictures of pretty white ladies, possibly in swimsuits, with a tasteful overlay of histrionic racist slogans.
I can’t decide which of the following slogans I like best. And by “like” I mean “throw up in my mouth a little after seeing.”
https://twitter.com/2016twg/status/709987425452482560
https://twitter.com/twgforceone/status/709919875150573569
Well, that’s enough racism for now.
This next one is more puzzling than creepy, but it wins extra points for including the #GamerGate tag.
https://twitter.com/HJovey/status/709949394464972801
Ok, back to racism again, with a meme incorporating actual Nazi propaganda from World War II.
https://twitter.com/88_Odalist/status/709979510519828480
No Nazi propaganda in this next one. It’s just … weird.
POOR @megynkelly TONIGHT MUST HAVE BEEN REALLY TOUGH FOR HER. #PrimaryDay #TrumpTrain #Trump #MakeAmericaGreatAgain pic.twitter.com/QqzZuJDjZx
— Trump Memes (@trumpfansmemes) March 16, 2016
This next one is creepy because EYES AREN’T SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE THAT.
https://twitter.com/MargaretMcgui16/status/709968221433163776
Speaking of creepy eyes:
https://twitter.com/DerNormade/status/709957364938612738
On Friday Chicago took Trump's podium, tonight he took their state.#MAGA #PrimaryDay #TrumpTrain #Trump2016 pic.twitter.com/gnF1F44D0O
— Shadowbanned Barbarian (@rothbarbarian) March 16, 2016
And we’re back to the racism again.
@DOTRTurner2 #MAGA pic.twitter.com/ArE7K3RI9n
— skooks (@le_skooks) March 16, 2016
If you look in the corner there you’ll see that not only did someone draw an actual cartoon of Trump using a giant slingshot to send babies flying “back to Mexico,” but they proudly signed their name to it afterwards (or at least their initials).
If you can make head or tail of this next one, let me know:
🚄 #TrumpTrain 🔥🔥🔥 #TedCruzLieshttps://t.co/oU4GE4biWa <^CLICK!
@ArRuple @rgenci57 @InfidelMarine #Conspiracy pic.twitter.com/aY7TvtkOME— ♞JoxuaLuxor♞ (@JoxuaLuxor) March 16, 2016
This next one might well be the creepiest of the bunch. Brace yourself.
wow. Joel has a large base in Texas. @Demsvote4Trump #Trump2016 #AlwaysTrump pic.twitter.com/IJk3St8ZMi
— NightEagle2016 (@NightEagleAngel) March 16, 2016
I’m not sure if those two are cyborgs or lizard people. Whatever they are, they clearly aren’t human.
And, oh, I lied. That wasn’t the creepiest tweet. This was:
. @HillaryClinton Daddy is going to beat you.
— Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero) March 16, 2016
That’s a whole lot of ickiness h’s managed to fit into only 42 characters.
Says Milo Yeah-Nope, furiously whacking off to the man whose awful hair he’s clearly copying. (And wholly forgetting the Bern.)
@kat : ““You’re not supposed to sympathize with the Imperium” feels like a smokescreen to me.”
What about no ? You’re doing the equivalent of saying anyone who play as Germany in Heart of Iron is a secret nazi sympathisant. Or that any Napoleon Total War player is tote fine with all the nasty side of Napoleon.
At some point, peoples have to understand one can be intelligent enough to play a faction and not support its bad side. That’s annoying because it’s an argument who can be recycled to anyone who don’t play a faction of totally good guy. And in a lot of games, for realism reasons, thoses factions don’t exist.
The fact you mention chaos demon, and don’t apply the same reasoning to you, is kind of hypocritical to me. You can’t on one side say “playing space marine is disgusting because of the nazi association”, and not add “of course, playing the actual demons who actually have the rather hard achievement of being even more fucked-up is exactly as bad”
You also forget that the fact imperium is evil is delivered in a heavy handed manner. It’s not like they just say as a side note “oh, and we are the bad guy, boo”. They are described in vivid detail as the hellish and corrupt tyran they are ; the anecdots are so cartoonishly evil at time that the problem is closer that it can’t be taken seriously than that it’s an aftertought.
Plus, the space marine definitely aren’t the space nazi. It’s the Imperium and its guards, who are both shown as being very very bad at its jobs, and taking a lot of ideology from stalinism too. The space marines are more like evil version of the knight of the round table and of the various myths of army of heroic individual.
You also kind of argue that depicting in any positive light something associated with evilness is bad. It’s a nauseating thought to me, and a dangerous one who actually help fascists.
God Emperor? I prefer to think of Trump as the King in Orange. Let’s see how he does in the Carcosa primaries.
creepier than clowns, AND significantly less funny.
Nevermind, someone did get there first. Point remains, though.
@ Ohlmann
I don’t think defensiveness is the appropriate response here. Katz didn’t say everyone who plays Space Marines is a Nazi sympathizer. If she truly thought that all Warhammer players, let alone all Imperium players, were literal Nazi sympathizers then I doubt she’d even play the game in the first place.
@ katz
Your points are good. Morally awful though all the factions are, they’re each presented as cool to some extent. Obviously, you’re supposed to enjoy commanding any of the factions’ forces and believe that yours is badass. Whether or not it’s acceptable to enjoy playing as a faction while acknowledging that it’s evil, or if it’s OK to say an evil faction can still be cool or likeable in some regard, are good questions. Perhaps it comes down to whether the Warhammer game is acceptable “problematic media” or not (e.g. enjoying the game for being stupid, cheesy, and over-the-top) and if it matters if one acknowledges it?
But, really, I just want to apologize for coming off as using a “smokescreen” to protect Space Marines or implying that, “You’re not supposed to sympathize with the Imperium”. My intended point was to show that they’re arguably just as bad as their enemies, there are people who acknowledge this, and yet they’re also treated as the default protagonists or “good guys” in many cases. Which, in addition to being humans, means “ostensibly we’re supposed to sympathize” with them. The irony being that they’re not really any better than the supposed “bad guys”, who people also like and enjoy despite being the designated “evil factions”.
Still, a lot of the Warhammer media clearly intends that we ought to see humanity as the good guys, and plenty of players do. But we don’t have much reason to do this any more or less compared to the others. I truly didn’t mean the observations in my previous post to imply that I think we’re not intended to sympathize with them.
You’re right to point out that while the “bad guys” have plenty of their own disturbing iconography, not all of the factions draw on iconography from real world fascism or Stalinism either. The Imperium explicitly does. All you seem to be saying is: that’s creepy.
Again, though, I apologize for coming off as making a specious argument in defense of Space Marines and for what I’m guessing felt like a dismissal of your feelings as wrong to boot.
Sorry, I misspoke: I didn’t mean to say you guys were using a smokescreen, I meant that the “these guys are actually evil” aspect of the fluff feels like a smokescreen. (And I certainly don’t feel like you were dismissing my feelings. I hope I didn’t come across as attacking you either.)
Extremely good questions. I definitely don’t mean to oversimplify everything to “if there’s any morally questionable aspect to something, you’re not allowed to touch it with a ten-foot pole.” But I also think it’s oversimplifying to assume that, as long as the book says these guys are bad, there’s no problem (and I know that’s not your position).
It’s a complicated landscape to navigate.
@Ohlmann:
Blue Emu mentioned once that the Hearts of Iron forum mods have to delete quite a few threads every day that are posted by people who unapologetically support the Third Reich and see their video game as a pro-Nazi game. Since they’re European they delete these pretty quickly so nobody except the mods really sees them, but apparently they get whined at by the Nazi fanboys who believe that the mods are unfairly keeping the “real fans” away from “their game.”
So yes, unfortunately there does appear to be a subculture of Nazis who believe that Hearts of Iron is intended for them.
@katz
Well, I personally feel that the games original intentions (being some pretty obvious satire of ‘GRIMDARK’ sci Fi, like WHFB was to dark fantasy) were why they used the Nazi stuff. Because having the ‘good guys’ be Nazis (also heavy on Stalinism and imperial Japan) with the Nazi aesthetic was so overblown no one should have been able to take it seriously.
I might not have phrased that too well, but I hope it gets my meaning across.
Personally, I like pretty much all the factions, aside from Nids and Necrons. They’re just boring, really.
Sir Bodsworth, claps for the KiY reference. I can imagine the horror of Trump saying, ‘Mask? I wear no mask.’
Regarding the Masonic bit – I may be the only Mason here. It always amuses me when non-brethren trumpet* their superior knowledge. To think that non-Masons know more about the ‘real secrets’ than I do is surprising.
*Pun entirely intended.
The King in Yellow is online!
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8492/8492-h/8492-h.htm
I am old enough to have read this in the Eaton Collection library at UC Riverside because that was the only copy of it available.
@Robert
Please, that just means you’re lying to cover up the illuminati NWO conspiracy on the part of your Masonic/Rockefeller masters, you reptilian scum.
#MakeCarcosaGreatAgain
Trump isn’t giving at all, he’s actually one of the least charitable billionaires.
@authorialAlchemy
But if Trump gave to Osteen’s church, wouldn’t that make Trump extremely giving and gracious?
@Robert
A Mason? I guess it’s not just for old guys!
My boyfriend’s dad was a Mason. My boyfriend and I live in San Francisco. When I pointed out the (extremely discreet) Masonic Lodge in the Haight (remember the Haight-Ashbury Summer of Love?) to my boyfriend, he was pretty surprised. He’d been walking by it for years without noticing it.
Most people have probably heard of him, one of the lizard people, aka Joel Osteen, is a hugely popular prosperity gospel televangelist preacher (emphasis on prosperity here) millions of gullible Americans tune in to. We get a few of his odious sermons aired on early-morning television here.
Here’s what I love about you carpet munching lesbians at WHtM –
You invariably make it easier for men to avoid you. We’ve cut you off with marriage – and now were going to finish the job.
Case in point:
Trump is winning. Hitlery will lose in a landslide.
Tim, I don’t mean to nitpick but why would lesbians care if you refused to marry them?
Or straight women?
Also, straight women who aren’t homophobic tend not to be bothered by accusations of being a lesbian.
I’m straight, but if some troll thinks I’m gay, who cares? It’s not an effective insult because nobody here thinks being a lesbian is bad.
@ katz
Thanks for the reply!
I didn’t feel attacked. I had assumed that your post was a response to mine (since we both used the word “sympathize” and touched upon lore and intent), and so was confused about what I had apparently communicated versus what I had intended to. And concerned that I had stepped on your proverbial toes.
Obviously, none of that is the case. Thank you for clarifying. We’re cool.
@Tim
So much to ponder in your brief missive!
Thanks, Tim. We love you too.
Easier than what?
Also, you’re talking about manosphere guys, so yay!
Does this mean you’ve married us? Was there a mass wedding?
What would finishing the job of marrying us be? A mass wedding reception? (Hint: I love chocolate cake. The more layers the better.)
Well, he’s winning among some Republicans. But that’s it. Sorry to have to be the one to introduce you to reality!
Now that’s clever to stick Hitler into Hillary’s name. No, really.
A word to the wise, Tim: Don’t bet the farm on Hillary losing.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Gay marriage is legal in the US now, so, like, we can just marry each other, like lesbians are wont to do. Because they don’t like men. At all. We were never attracted or wanted to fuck you ever so we don’t care if men want to marry us or not because boobies > dicks.
Donald Drumpf is the actual fascist, advocating actual fascist policy, but you go and called Clinton “Hitlery”.
That’s funny.
Most of us support Bernie Sanders, I’m pretty sure.
@Sir Bodsworth Rugglesby III
Drumpf: I wear no wig.
Camilla: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No wig? No wig!
@Tim
Translation: It looks like Hillary will win. What will this mean for my male privilege?! I’m scaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaared!