
I’ve gotten a number of extremely thoughtful responses from assorted alt-right twitterists to my post yesterday in which I offered an improved version of the new alt-right logo, with a Ku Klux Klanner head replacing the stylized “a.”
And by “thoughtful,” I mean “don’t read the following tweets if you’re not in the mood for jokes about murder, suicide, and the Holocaust and/or a defense of the KKK’s lynching of black people.”
I think I hear your oven timer going off, it's at 616 degrees right now.
— GrauTiger? (@PZKW117) September 12, 2016
https://twitter.com/soObviousTurtle/status/775460982239989760
https://twitter.com/AmericanReset88/status/775488975544856576
https://twitter.com/NationalistHero/status/775468355109007360
https://twitter.com/RedskinRey624/status/775469805046337536
https://twitter.com/RedskinRey624/status/775477705978421248
Oh look, a death wish:
https://twitter.com/ConciergeMthly/status/775469278183251969
Followed by a death threat:
https://twitter.com/ConciergeMthly/status/775469380905861121
This one, posted by someone using a picture of racist mass murderer Anders Breivik as an avatar and featuring a photo of actual dead people, is a little too NSFW to post here.
Given the, er, high racist content of these responses, I’m not quite sure why exactly any of these people are mad about being compared to the KKK.
To be fair, though, they weren’t all mad. There was one Pepe-avatared alt-right Twitterer who liked my fixed logo:
https://twitter.com/freed_humanity/status/775459668562849792
Oh, and FYI, Twitter Nazis, I’m not actually Jewish. Like a lot of the people sporting “echoes” around their names on Twitter, I added the marks as a tiny little “I’m Spartacus”-style act of solidarity. That said, I did go to a Jewish day camp for several summers as a kid. One time we got to meet Sandy Koufax! That makes me practically a Jew.
Well, those are very horrible.
I’m stuck on the guy who thought the Klan gassed Jewish people. I guess after a while, all these white supremacist hate groups start to blend together in their atrocities.
Don’t use ‘fam’ if you’re a racist
-Thanks, everyone
@Dave F
You met Koufax!? Dish! Deets! Did you seem him throw something!?
*melts in a corner*
I used to describe people like this as having a swarm of yellowjackets buzzing around in their heads. How in the hell does one live with oneself with thoughts so vile?
They don’t, nor do they manage to successfully live with other people.
@ falconer
I guess that’s the racist version of “when the Nazis bombed Pearl Habour”.
What a charming group of people! I’m particularly intrigued by KGB Turtle who isn’t winning any awards for their historical knowledge. As far as I know, the KKK weren’t actually responsible for the Holocaust, much as they might wish they had been.
Once again, David, I doff my hat to you; these very confused people cannot be fun to spend any time with, even if it’s only via Twitter.
ETA Ninja’d by Falconer!
(And I say confused because they seem angry at being given a label they otherwise embrace. The adjectives I think most apt are ones I wouldn’t deign to type.)
Pretty sure most of these dorks are what you get when you swim in a sea of amoral shock-humour too long. The chan games of trying to out-offend and out-nauseate one another can only be a joke for so long; pretend to be a genocidal racist assbag for too long and it sinks into your pores.
I don’t say it in order to absolve them, they pretty clearly own their gross opinions now. Just, well. I guess I’ll take it as a warning, myself. Be careful of the person you aspire to be.
I resent a racist using the name ‘KGB Turtle’, which, for inexplicable reasons, strikes me as very cute.
Beware who you follow, lest they lead you into a pit lined with jagged and unappealing logos.
Weatherwax,
I think angry is just their default state. It doesn’t matter what anyone says to them.
Oh, I have a fair idea. It’s because they think their racism and Nazism are soooooper seeeeekwit, and the “alt” tag is their flimsy effort to conceal the fact and generate plausible deniability.
(I also note the irony of “Concierge Monthly”, who styles himself as a “high-end lifestyle magazine”, being a neo-fascist death-wisher. Bet he’s another basement dweller, à la Roosh.)
Totally off-topic, but I sometimes sign Internet petitions and get links to other petitions emailed to me. One nature-related petition in my inbox said “Stop the Slaughter of the Profanity Peak Wolves!”
I love that this is an actual place name!
The “gay” one made me laugh so freaking hard. It’s like they were too busy listening for their over-timer signaling that their batch of KKK hate-cookies was done to do anything more than give David a lazy passing nod.
I think it’s an ironic confabulation, like “jet fuel can’t melt thimerosal!”
You figure? I don’t think so. I think they’re convinced that their racism isn’t a bad thing – it’s race realism. HBD nonsense and impossible purity standards. See, the KKK were all about the emotional hate-mongering, but not them – they’re the super-rational realists who live in reality-land. It’s the Democrats and Regressive Leftists who are the irrational hatemongers now, and the Alt-Right is the target of that hate. It’s a script-flip, exactly the sort of stupid nonsense we see in half of our trolls. It’s practically the chan themesong – “all humans are terrible, but at least we admit it.”
… eugh. Excuse me, I have to go scrub the inside of my mind with soap now. I got a little too in-character on that one.
Ugh. I know surges of xenophobia and nationalism are recurring phenomena in US politics, but can this one be over already?
It’s a pretty good encapsulation of the alt right that these people are angry about being compared to the KKK and are expressing that anger, in part, by telling David how great the KKK is… and also threatening to kill him, because consistency is important.
@Nikki the Bluth Wannabe:
Heck, there’s a real place called ‘Point No Point’. (Actually, there appear to be two such places, one in Washington State, one on Vancouver Island in British Columbia just north of there. The one in B.C. was so named because there are three ‘points’ in a row along that stretch of coast, with the middle one being smaller than the other two and so not visible from either side. The one in Washington because the original surveyor thought that there would be a nice deepwater anchorage behind the point that he saw, and instead it was shallow mud and barely a point at all.)
Somewhat OT, but it annoys me to no end that the stupid chan frog-thing meme is called Pepe. It takes away from the honor (and cuteness) of the *real* Pepe:
http://wow.zamimg.com/uploads/screenshots/normal/460110-pepe.jpg
@Pocketnerd
I want to place my bets for this being an extinction event, at least in the US.
Thus Spake ZaraOoglyBoggles:
I think we’ll get through it. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” as the good reverend said. But it’s a frustrating and sometimes frightening thing to live through, isn’t it?
How delightful.
These are simply people who have chosen rage as their drug of choice. You can’t reason with them. You can’t change them. They’ll eventually grow out of it, or they won’t. Best you can do is limit your exposure and limit their influence.
OT but not as much as it would seem : I am currently the proud owner of the largest kebab I’ve ever seen in my life, and it’s delicious and feels good and makes those fuckwads even angrier. I’m willing to share it with David and everyone else here. Especially David, after being on the receiving end of that kind of abuse. But there’s enough for everybody.
(seriously though, this thing is huge, no way I’m eating all of that by myself)
@PocketNerd
Bigots
old, young
raging, hating, screaming
a plague upon society
finite.
@Sinkable
Exactly how large is this kebab?
I don’t actually see them being mad that they’re being compared with the KKK. Maybe the anger is all in other tweets? Because I don’t see it in these.
I see insults and threats directed at David, and that one guy who keeps asking to be told what’s wrong with the KKK. No rage at the comparison.
Let’s remember, though, that the KKK is your grandfather’s racism. The alt-right thinks of itself as hip, modern racism (sorry, race realism). So I can see why they might not embrace the comparison.
@Oogly
It’s the length of my forearm, hand included. A whole forearm of fuck you nazis. It’s beautiful and delicious.
To add insult to injury, I donated the change to the mosque. I can’t ever donate anything substantial because I’m too poor to even have a bank account, but giving up the change when I buy food is within my reach. I know it’s ridiculously little but well.
And just in case anyone doubts that much of the Hillary Clinton hate has its roots in misogyny…
http://theslot.jezebel.com/some-guy-just-hung-a-topless-clinton-effigy-in-case-yo-1786581412
FFS!
@WWTH
Literal threat of rape and lynching. Oh for the love of oceania it’s a revival of KKK scare tactics and threats.
@PoM
Thank you, that makes a lot of sense. It isn’t the racism that angers them, it’s that it’s not the cool kind of racism.
http://giphy.com/gifs/reaction-arrested-development-ad-.gif
Today I learned that:
A) Feminists are the real Nazis.
B) The Holocaust was just Jewish lies.
C) The Nazis were heroes for killing Jews.
I’m not sure how these opinions fit together.
By power of logic that if
a=b
b=c
a=c
Feminists are the real nazis
The holocaust jewish lies
Nazies hero kill jews
Then Feminists are the real nazis who should be praised for killing jews but that is a lie because the holocaust never happened.
SCIENCE
@OoglyBoggles:
Rationality!
@Sinkable
Any of that kebab left?
It’s all about branding. They know if they come out and say “Yes, I’m racist” they’ve already lost the attention of most people, so they say “I’m not racist, I just believe [racist thing]”. Even though they’re absolutely being racist (and know it) they want to avoid the negative “brand image” that comes with the label.
“Racists have harmful ideas about race, but I’m not a racist, so my ideas about race are therefore not harmful.”
I wonder how much they themselves believe this “rational” racism. They’re just highly aware that the public won’t love their emotional fear of “the others” so they cover it in “evidence”, all as real as their evidence about man gud, woman not gud.
Is anyone else staring at their forearm?
@Nikki, Jenora –
WA also has a Cape Disappointment. I do love the names there. By the way, up on Olympic Peninsula in WA you can also find the intersection of Woodcock road & Kitchen-Dick road. The BF and I giggled for quite a while after passing through there.
(And now I really fucking wanna go visit goddamn Profanity Peak, because fuck, that’s some fucking great shit.)
(I don’t usually enjoy swearing, but this just felt really… err, friggin’ necessary.)
I’m sure they do! I’m sure they feel the emotional part of it just as ever, but since they’ve been given a “rational” explanation, well, that’s just a lovely gift-wrapped excuse to be a bit more unabashed about it.
As far as I can make out, ideological racists are split between the ones who want to hold on to their ‘plausible’ deniability and those who are chafing at it.
Jeez, this is horrible stuff. I don’t use twitter, reddit or facebook (I have a tumblr but it was a limited thing I haven’t updated in over a year), being an old fogey social media creeps me out a bit, so coming here has been my first real exposure to the ugliness on the net. My bubble of innocence has been well and truly burst, but then there are all the fantastic commenters here who show the other side of the web so I guess it balances out. I think.
If I was on twitter I think I would tell them it was just a joke and they should stop being so over sensitive. Also something about free speech
@BGHilton:
I can totally see that distinction. That’s an astute point.
OT: a cop got fired for actually trying to de-escalate a situation instead of killing a man.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/09/12/west-virginia-cop-fired-for-not-killing-a-man-with-an-unloaded-gun/
Edit: Penny, that’s one of my favorite intersections.
@ John the Sinkable of Regicidal Pansies and Pinko Burden Beasts
(your name is so fun to play with)
Damn you and your kebab! I haven’t eaten meat for years* but I can’t stop thinking about this kebab. Which I’m sure is all gone by now.
*with two exceptions (in the interests of honesty) – once by mistake and once when homeless and desperate 🙂
@kupo
If this isn’t a clearer example of how police departments are suffering from a lack of moral fiber, humanity and desire to even consider people as anything other than a threat I don’t what will.
He got fired for deescalating the situation and doing the right thing, and the irony is with alot of police departments becoming more militarized, this officer was an ex Marine, and he didn’t immediately fire his gun. While the two who shot a suicidal man with an unloaded gun go off scot free.
I don’t see why they’re so pissed…all David did was improve on the logo to better reflect who they are.
Do they though? Perhaps the pro-eugenics junk racial science used by groups such as American Renaissance is meant to somehow imply a dispassionate rationalism, but generally the alt right don’t seem all that concerned about a racist brand image.
@Victorious Parasol & Mish
There is some left ! I’m all out of beer though.
But meektoes shall have none of it. They can have seagulls.
@Podkayne Lives
I too resent one of them, for calling himself whitewolfgeist. While clunky and weird, that game does not deserve to have these jackasses associated with it.
@Sinkable John
That is one sizable kebab!
Fun fact about feet: Look at your forearm, from inner elbow to wrist — hand not included.
That is the approximate length of your foot (with shoes off). It seems so unlikely. But I checked it on myself, and my feet are actually slightly longer.
Amaze your friends with your knowledge about forearms and feet!
Does anyone know what “616 degrees” refers to? Know Your Meme and Urban Dictionary are no help.
I believe it’s the temperature that the crematoria furnaces at Auchwitz were heated to.
(Yeah, that’s what a ‘joke’ is to these people)