Watch out! The Daily Stormer is coming for your children!
Or so they say. Earlier this week, Andrew Anglin of the Daily Stormer launched what he’s calling the “Pokémon GO Nazi Challenge,” urging his readers to descend upon their local Pokemon GO hot spots with crude flyers promoting race hatred in general and his site in particular.
Great news, everyone!
An enterprising Stormer has been handing out fliers at Pokémon GO gyms for the purpose of converting children and teens to HARDCORE NEO-NAZISM! …
HE’S HANDING THEM OUT TO CHILDREN!
THIS IS ALREADY HAPPENING!
HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF ANYTHING SO GREAT AS THIS???
The Daily Stormer was designed to appeal to teenagers, but I have long thought that we needed to get pre-teens involved in the movement. At that age, you can really brainwash someone easily. Anyone who accepts Nazism at the age of 10 or 11 is going to be a Nazi for life.
The idea is so ridiculous, and the flyer in question so crude and over-the-top, that I assumed at first that it was a troll job — that either Anglin was trolling us, or that someone was trolling him.
The flyer (see the whole thing here) bristles with rabid denunciations of “n***er monkeys,” “burrito rats,” and “HOOK-NOSED JEWS.” It urges its readers to “vote for DONALD TRUMP” even while acknowledging that most of those reading the flyer are “probably too young to vote” for the “GOD EMPEROR.”
It promises its target audience of white not-yet-men that
Oh, and it compares catching Pokemons to … the Holocaust. Favorably
If Anglin is trolling, though, he’s trolling his readers as well as the rest of us.
In a followup post today, Anglin insisted that he was dead serious about the “Pokémon GO Nazi Challenge” — and defended it from alt-right critics saying the flyer was so over-the-top offensive that it could end up hurting the Nazi cause, and perhaps even Donald Trump as well.
“Trump has been called a racist six million times,” Anglin tells his readers.
If the media were to present these flyers and say “look, racist Alt-Right Neo-Nazi Pokemon conspiracy!!!!” it would simply be more noise.
It would also look ridiculous. There is so much news about so many different things related to the election, people just get these bits and bytes, and “TRUMP RACISM POKEMON NAZIS” is all their brain would absorb, which would simply cause the media to lose more credibility in their minds and cause them to draw closer to Trump.
As for all the racial slurs?
[Y]oung boys like rebellious things. It excites them. It makes them interested. The flyer, in my view, was perfectly designed to appeal to young boys, and I think we’re going to get a huge response once people start handing them out.
And what were the options, besides going hardcore?
Black IQ statistics? What kid is going to be drawn into that?
Saying “save your race” or some other generic, vague, low-energy statement? Most kids won’t even know what that means, let alone be interested in it.
Making it obscene and aggressive appeals to a primal drive in boys who are in or approaching puberty.
So there you have it.
I still think this campaign is more of a publicity stunt than an actual recruitment drive, but we’ll see, I guess.
This is a very strange year, no question about it.
I’m noticing more and more that “low-energy” appears to be the new euphemism for “not aggressively belligerent or outrageous”.
I think it’s a Trumpism.
@ Brian
I think it’s a post punk outrage for its own sake thing. There are no negative consequences for formally disgusting behaviour. They’re just following the model set by shock jocks and similar.
People don’t realise the real harm such actions can cause. Katie Hopkins or Ann Coulter can come out with stuff that in an earlier era would attract condemnation and shunning. Now they’re invited onto talkshows as entertaining eccentrics. You have to push the envelope now for your 15 minutes of fame in a competitive low attention span market.
Clickbait is the new Nuremberg.
@brian & Oogly
Yeah I think the message there is “better us than them” – “them” being, of course, THE EEVEL JOOS, who brainwash you and usury-rape you and Jew up your country, among other despicable evil things.
These guys really have their own mythology, heh.
@Kimstu & Dalillama
Yeah I seem to remember seeing it in tweets from Trump. Now the question is, did he borrow it from the alt-right, or the other way around ? Could be either, seeing as he takes his rhetoric from 4chan.
There’s something deeply unsettling about the picture used for this post. Something about the sickly green and putrescent pink, the limp hair and dull, liquid eyes. Eugh. Looks like a pikachu corpse in a poorly-fitted uniform. Reminds me of a time I was asked to draw a picture of a character for someone, and they asked it to be put in a nazi SS uniform. Deeply unsettling.
Obviously we need more of Daffy Duck conking ol’ Adolf with a mallet.
Or maybe the Gremlins from the Kremlin:
http://dai.ly/x342hfv
How the-
Oh yes, this will totally work. You totally will convince loads of kids to support the guys who are named after the guys that had their faces melted off in Indiana Jones and got punched and locked in a cupboard in Doctor Who. You’re so totally going to convince children that the black and Jewish kids they play with are evil and should leave. You’re absolutely not going to be arrested for lurking around vulnerable kids. Much intelligent. So cleverness.
@Alan Robertshaw
Urgh, Katie Hopkins. What an evil, vile person. Every time she says anything evil comes out. Not a surprise the Daily Mail employed her, but not even they usually go as far as her. What she says about immigrants shouldn’t be printed by amy reputable news organisation, and her comments about those people who drowned should exclude her from public life forever.
@MexicanHotChocolate
Unrelated to the topic, but the Ancestry.com adverts annoy me so much! They make it look like you can just type your name in and your family history will spring up effortlessly for you- it takes years to make one! Its almost deceptive product description.
@ nparker
Ooh, how could I have forgotten that?
ETA: how’s that picture moving?! It’s all gone Hogwarts!
Ha ha ha, not even hardly. At that age, my dad was playing hooky from the Hitlerjugend, and there was nothing they could do to stop him. He thought the Nazis were a bunch of mooks and wasn’t about to join any of their clubs. (He was 12 when the war ended, for those wondering.)
And just think, this was a prepubescent kid, and a fairly typical young German at that. Even at the height of his popularity, Hitler only had the votes of 2 out of 5 adult Germans. More typically, it was only 1 in 5.
Methinks someone grossly overestimates the appeal of his idiot ideology here.
I don’t know why I’m surprised that these people don’t understand Pokemon any better than they understand … well, anything else. Trainers hunt them down so that they can make friends with them!
(Admittedly one generally makes friends with a Pokemon by getting another Pokemon to beat it up and forcibly capturing it, but that’s because they’re a Proud Warrior Species and you have to prove yourself worthy by fighting them. After that, stuffing them full of berries and cake helps …)
They’ve been promising that for the last 40 years.
and they do mean that quite literally in the sense of holding exclusive property rights.
I would have thought that anyone who cared about the future of the white race, would find Hitler pretty detestable considering the sheer scale of White deaths during WW2.
I mean, yeah, probably. From parents, who want to know who the fuck is giving their kids hate speech pamphlets.
Hi, there. Long-time lurker, first-time commenter here…maybe you’ve heard this tune before.
A lot of you folks have taken the words right out of my mouth already, in regards to the post. Finding Anglin’s latest gambit both sickening and pathetic? Check. Wondering if this attempt at radicalization of young people would even work? Check. Figuring that there are young, vulnerable people out there who’d get sucked into this particular movement (even in spite of the blatant hatred involved)? Check.
Anglin’s not even doing anything new here; AFAIK, his people have been playing this game for decades. I remember the day a former neo-Nazi gave a speech at my high school (about 20 years ago), walking us through his experiences and ultimately warning us about the people he used to be in with. “Don’t end up like me–running for your life, after wasting so much of it” seemed to be his main point. I’d thought (at the time) that Nazis had gone away back when World War Two ended, but…no. Maybe they never will, as long as ignorant people feel that hating [group of people] somehow makes them cool. (I’m no expert on the appeal of fringe political movements, but that’s my guess.)
Sorry for the “teal deer”, by the way, but this post kinda hit home for me.
A kid on the playground who doesn’t like Steven Universe?
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/steven-universe/images/1/12/Jail_Break_Animation_Jasper_Squinting.gif
@Steampunked
How dare you use Jasper against me, my favorite gem, my beautiful, orange, fluffy, buff Cheeto puff, I am offended and also that was really good use of that gif kudos well done.
@Handsome “Punkle Stan” Jack:
http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/steven-universe/images/e/ef/Say_Uncle_Animation_Nothing_Canon.gif
(I am firmly of the belief that SU would be an excellent inoculation against Anime Nazis).
Edited: Why my gifs so teeny D:
Current earworm. Marginally related. For all of you <3
Me, too. Also, I’m not over today’s episode and I think it’s been an hour, I don’t know, I have been Overwhelmed™ with…her. And Pearl’s outfit. And it’s amazing and it’s my favorite episode now, right up there with Earthlings.
@Scildfreja Unnýðnes
That is cute as hell. I love it when cartoons have excellent music like that.
I really need to get back into watching Gumball.
you guys might be right, but wow.
as much as I, hopefully obviously, believe that Nazis and white supremacists are horrible entities that should make feces ashamed to be associated with their heads, I’ve tended to assume that they are, at least, sincere in their odious beliefs. and if you sincerely believe that it’s “for the good of the white race” or whatever the fuck, I imagine you’d believe that the RIGHTNESS of the message should be able to convince people. that the TRUTH of your views would shatter the awful, manipulative lies of “the Jews” (or whoever… but it’s usually “the Jews” running things in their conspiracy theories, right?).
I mean, I got shit I believe in that I think is pretty important (that killing people is bad, that all humans deserve basic levels of dignity and respect, that the earth is getting to be in really terrible shape and we need to deal with that on a massive societal level right the fuck now, that your religious beliefs are your business but don’t give you the right to fuck with the business of anyone else, etc) but the idea of trying to BRAINWASH people to agree with me is ludicrous.
brainwashing is what you do to get people to believe garbage nonsense that doesn’t make rational sense. that’s why you have to wipe their minds clean to get it to take. it is, frankly, obviously, what VILLAINS do. so the idea that anyone who sincerely believes the garbage nonsense they are spouting ALSO says, “yeah, we gotta start brainwashing kids with this” just boggles me.
Just out of curiousity, is there any level of blatant racism that a racist can reach which would make him not take offence at being called a racist?
I’ve never been able to understand why they can’t just own the fact that they’re racists. They’ll literally say “kill all jews”, and a second later they’ll be outraged by the suggestion that they might be a teensy bit racist.
I’ve heard my father-in-law say “blacks have a chip on their shoulder”, “blacks need to stop speaking ebonics if they want to be taken seriously”, “blacks just don’t want to work”, “blacks are lazy and want things for free”, “slavery was a big mistake, since it left us with a whole class of people who will never get over it and move on”, “blacks are named Tyrone or Lakiesha”, etc etc etc, and he’s still hugely offended that anyone might think of him as prejudiced in any way. He brags that he’s never treated anyone differently because of their ethnicity, and thus he’s not a racist.
To these people, everything about being a racist is a good thing, except self-identifying (or being identified) as racist. Why not just own the word? I’m not proud of the fact that I love burgers, but you’re not gonna see me claiming to hate the taste of burgers while eating a Triple Baconator.
@Brian
Pretty thick line between brainwashing and education. Incidentally, it’s also a decent moral compass.
ETA : @Petal
They do own the word now. At least the Stormer people do. When they’re called out on their racism, they wear it proudly. Pretty sickening.
@Bina
Neo-Nazis really have a talent for that.
Andrew Anglin, visual approximation:
Ugh. I just can’t with today. At least I’m baking a cake.
This made me feel a bit better about having to hand out flyers for work – sure, most university students aren’t that excited about getting ads for a tutoring centre, but, hey, at least I’m not handing out neo-Nazi propaganda.
Which leads me to think… if this is real, who would actually DO this? Surely even hardened neo-Nazis have some inkling that many people regard their views as garbage, and wouldn’t want to run the risk of being charged with hate crimes and such… right?