You might think the Alt-Right — that motley gang of Nazis, Nazi-apologists, and Nazi-apologist-apologists that has provided Donald Trump with some of his most fervent support — would be riding high right now.
Their “God Emperor” has been elected president. Traffic to their most popular websites, from Breitbart to the Daily Stormer, is soaring. The latest National Policy Institute conference, which brought hundreds of alt-righters to Washington DC this past weekend, got more attention from the mainstream media than it ever has before.
It’s that last item that’s turning into a bit of a problem — at least for those alt-rightists who like to pretend that they’re not really Nazis at all. Yesterday I posted a chilling video from the event, showing conference-organizer Richard Spencer, clearly feeling a bit chuffed by the at-right’s recent victories, crying out “hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory” to a large crowd, some of whom responded with Nazi salutes.
D’oh! They’re not supposed to be doing that in public.
And so, as the video of Spencer’s speech went viral, posted on countless news outlets and replayed on cable news, a veritable civil war erupted on the alt-right over Spencer’s words and the now infamous “Hail Trump” salutes.
Alt-right fellow traveler (and erstwhile juice seller) Mike Cernovich, clearly upset by the bad publicity the video was bringing to the movement he has hitched his star to, accused Spencer and the Nazi saluters of being secret shills trying to make the good men of the alt-right look like the Hitler-loving Nazis they so often declare themselves not to be.
“Let’s assume your goal is to normalize Nazis, which is what has been said at Richard Spencer,” Cernovich declared in a blog post with the combative title This is What Controlled Opposition Looks Like.
If you wanted to normalize being a Nazi, would you throw up an Heil Hitler in public after you invited over 100 fake news journalists to your event? Think this one through before forming an opinion.
Note: By “fake news journalists” Cernovich of course means real “news journalists.’
Why then were people at the event throwing up the HH? What tactical or strategic purpose could that possibly serve?
This is what controlled opposition looks like.
The Atlantic (and perhaps the CIA) is building up Richard’s brand, giving him millions in free PR. The fake news media ties Richard to Trump. In exchange for these goodies, Richard throws up a HH.
Damn you, The Atlantic (and perhaps the CIA)!
Cernovich was hardly the only one to cry foul.
Fantasy author and bigot extraordinaire Theodore “Vox Day” Beale didn’t go quite as far as Cernovich. But, in a post on his Vox Popoli blog, he declared the Nazi saluters “idiots” and attacked Spencer himself for being “tactically retarded.”
Beale dismissed the whole “Hail Trump” business as a “minor incident” that had been magnified by the evil mainstream media. He then offered a rather spectacularly backhanded “defense” of Spencer
No, I don’t think Richard is a federal agent or an actual controlled opposition figure,” Beale wrote, before twisting the knife a little.
I think Mike would have been more accurate to say “controllable opposition” or “dancing monkey”.
Usually when you’re defending someone you don’t call them a “dancing monkey,” but whatevs.
There was nothing actually wrong with what Richard said. … It wasn’t a big deal. But it was a foolish thing to do. The media is absolutely slavering to be able to have REAL PROOF that the Alt-Right are no-good, very-evil Nazis so that they can use it as a weapon against President-elect Trump, giving them ANYTHING is tactically retarded.
Nazi salutes in public, in full view of the media, are bad for the Trump.
It’s not about Richard. It’s about Donald Trump. If Richard is genuinely supportive of Trump, then pulling that sort of stunt was the very last thing he should have done. Making yourself the news story at the expense of the individual you are supposedly supporting and celebrating smacks of being self-serving. As Mike said, dress up like a Nazi, speak bad German and wear a swastika armband if you want, just leave Trump out of it.
Richard has failed to learn the lesson of #GamerGate and the principles of 4GW. He wants to be the media-anointed leader of the Alt-Right because he believes, wrongly, that this will help him achieve his objectives. It won’t. As Mike and I have both noted, the media elevates fringe figures to “leadership” specifically in order to attack the movement through them.
Oh, but Beale isn’t jealous of the attention Spencer has been getting. Ha! As if! So not jealous.
I am not opposed to Richard or jealous of Richard, nor do I want the attention he is receiving. I rather like him, I simply don’t think he understands that the media intends for him to become a David Duke figure, a weapon available for deployment against any politician or program that he nominally supports.
Yes, how terrible it is that the media compares people with basically the same views as David Duke to … David Duke!
On VDare.com, meanwhile, anti-immigrant crusader Peter Brimelow attacked the saluters, declaring that their “juvenile bravado undercut NPI’s conference triumph, the cause of immigration patriotism, and VDARE.com.”
But Brimelow somehow managed to blame not them but the media and the anti-anti-immigrant left, noting unhappily that fans of his website “came up to me in consternation” after
Spencer concluded his emotional defense of whites with the words, apparently extemporized: “Hail Trump! Hail Our People! Hail Victory!” He got a standing ovation, but several in the crowd added Nazi salutes. We had been assured that the press had been excluded but experience has taught this cannot be relied upon.
Damn those reporters for … actually reporting!
Also, leftists and the media were also responsible for the Nazi salutes themselves — by unfairly smearing totally not racist anti-immigration crusaders like himself. “[T]his continued vilification,” Brimelow sniffed,
has resulted a younger generation of Americans who, 71 years after the end of World War II, are clearly indifferent to accusations of Nazism, even if just out of bravado. This, too, is the fault of the Left and the gatekeepers of our public debate.
Well, that’s one way of looking at it, I guess. One bizarre, wrong way.
The unlovely and untalented Matt Forney offered a somewhat less backhanded defense of Spencer and his fans’ “Roman salutes.”
While Mike Cernovich recently accused Spencer and NPI of being controlled opposition due to several of the attendees jokingly making Roman salutes at the end of the conference, I have to pour cold water on this notion. The alt-Right is increasingly driven by young men who enjoy trolling for trolling’s sake and getting a rise out of the normies.
IT WAS ALL A JOKE HA HA HA HOW could anyone think that a bunch of people who walk like Hitler, talk like Hitler and salute like Hitler could actually have anything to do with Hitler.
Hell, our nametags even had pictures of Pepe the Frog on them.
PEPE THE FROG. Q.E.D.
While I can see why Cernovich might think the stunt was dumb, it wasn’t motivated by anything other than a desire to offend the MSM’s sensibilities. There are certainly feds who have infiltrated the alt-Right—he’s right to warn us on that front—but Spencer and NPI aren’t among them.
An even stranger, er, analysis of the whole kerfuffle comes from the farther reaches of Anton Lavey cosplayer and skull enthusiast Davis Aurini.
Vox Day corrects some of the wilder claims made by Cernovich (it is unlikely that Richard Spencer is a government plant; his hair is too fabulous), but the thrust of the argument remains. We have been using the tactics of the underdog for some time now. As many have noted, we’re the new anti-establishment hippies … but we’re no longer the underdog – and if we continue to use underdog tactics, we will become no different than the neo-hippies whom we are in the process of replacing. We will continue to fight the last war, and we will lose as certainly as Hitler’s Germany did, paving the way for the destruction of our own people.
So is he suggesting that the main problem with Hitler is that he lost? Who knows.
We cannot hope to get anywhere if we continue to be reactionary. The way to crush the Left isn’t to fight them; then we merely become them. The way to crush the left is to return to the upward pull, to build a civilization which glorifies God and which has earned the Mandate of Heaven. To strive for perfection while forgiving imperfection, rather than defining perfection as whatever we are already, while attacking those who are unlike us.
I’m sorry, I dozed off for a minute there.
What of the man at the center of this alt-hurricane? Richard Spencer is taking the Forney Way, declaring that it was all just one big hilarious joke.
“There’s an ironic exuberance to it all,” Spencer told NBC news. “I think that’s … one of the things that makes the alt-right fun, is that we’re willing to do things that are a bit cheeky.”
SO CHEEKY.
Here’s that video again. I don’t know about you, but I’m having a hard time seeing anything he said as “cheeky” or “ironic,” much less “fun.”
Who are you going to believe, Spencer — or your lying eyes?
@Sinkable John: I have FF9 on the PS3, and I beat it. I played it while nursing my babies, actually. Probably would have got through faster if I hadn’t used a walkthrough, though.
I’ve beaten, let’s see, FF 1 & 2 on the GBA, using a DS Lite and a walkthrough, FF7 on the PS2 with a guidebook, FF9 as aforementioned, FF10 and FF12 on the PS2 (without walkthroughs), and FF13 with a guidebook on the 360 (which stopped reading all discs beyond the first one on my preorder copy, so we had to get another one).
I’m working on FF6 on the Wii, and I might get back into FF8, it was kind of meh. Also, I have FF 3 & 4 on the DS.
And no problem at laughing at my son’s exploits in Minecraft. If that’s the way he wants to play, that’s fine with me, and some lessons might only be learned the hard way. But not only did my daughter cry, but she also started grabbing his controller and telling him how to play, which is a big no-no.
They’re twins, and they’ll be 4 in January.
I’m going to have to remember to tell Beloved about your niece and the “BWAAAGH!!” — probably where my kids can’t hear.
@Fishy Goat
Thankfully she’s got an afro. That’s a hell of a safety device both for her, and us.
@Falconer
I have the best parenting advice.
Hey, FF VIII is actually my second favorite FF ! But I can think of a number of reasons why one might not like it, the weird stats system with spells binding to attributes among them. Definitely not something I enjoyed as a kid, so much so that I basically went the whole game without using it, which made everything unbelievably hard. And Squall isn’t too likable either. Well, he is, but only because BELTS. ALL OF THE BELTS. I appreciate how his personality was written, but sometimes it really strays into “too much” territory.
But IX remains my all-time favorite, although probably in part because it was my first RPG (aside from Pokémon Blue two years or so prior) and the first game to ever engross me in such a story. And of course, it is fucking beautiful. The soundtrack, the amazing pre-rendered environments… The amazingly lovable characters. I realized recently that the main character in my current writing work is probably based in great part upon Beatrix, who is probably my second all-time favorite character in fiction ever (I already mentioned The Boss from Metal Gear, well, she gets first place).
Okay, gushing mode off. Maybe.
@Pie
In Yudkowsky’s ethical framework, if you need to exterminate all non-whites to reach the singularity, then exterminating all non-whites must be ethically justified. It’s not that Yudkowsky believes that’s necessary, but it can give a powerful justification to actual racists.
@Falconer: You should read NRXaB when it gets its general release (from your not having read it yet, I take it you didn’t back Phil’s original Kickstarter). In the meantime, I not only backed it, I made notes on my Nook copy, and then posted those notes to my Tumblr under the tag #annotations a chimera. (Having waited to do the posting until my Conspiracy Zine Edition arrived, I was able to add the bits where words on the background Blake plates peeked through.) I invite you to read it, and I hope you find it enterlightaining in its own idiosyncratic way.
@Austin Loomis, I’ll try, but sometimes I can’t handle Sandifer. I had to stop reading his Doctor Who essays when the one on “The Deadly Assassin” got too alchemical for me.
Also, sometimes his opinions get too sniffy for me. I’m glad I don’t have a PhD in criticism to live up to.
My only exposure to Warhammer 40K has been the first few “God-Emperor gets a text-to-speech synthesizer” YouTube videos. The Fabulous Custodes were my favorite part – I think Alan Robertshaw is how I learned about it.
The immediate disintegration of the Garbage People Alliance is unsurprising. It reminds me of one of the lesser known defects of the Nazi regime; the chiefs of the various ministries, agencies and directorates were deliberately set against each other by Hitler. If they were constantly jockeying for power, influence and access, they would be less of a threat to his ultimate control. Sort of like Versailles with worse taste in art. It greatly reduced the government’s ability to get anything done – fortunately for the rest of humanity.
Part of me wants the Electoral College to go rogue and (s)elect the popular vote winner; the rest of me realizes that these hammerheads would lose their collective shit in truly terrifying ways.
@Sinkable John:
Actually, maybe you can help me understand what went on in FF9.
So Queen Brahne looks like The Villain, but she’s really being manipulated by someone else, the tall person in white we spend most of the game two steps behind.
But he’s motivated by rebelliousness against Sid, because Sid has a breeding program and tall person failed it? I think?
And we end up fighting tall person and defeating him, and then fighting Sid, who actually wants to destroy the world and end the cycle of reincarnation in something like someone with a poor grasp of Buddhism might write?
I think?
@Falconer: Your kids sound like my son, doing anything but actually playing the game. I’ve let him play Fallout: New Vegas, because the chances he’ll actually get to any parts that I might have doubts about are slim to none; he’d much rather wander around Goodsprings doing who-knows-what than follow the storyline. And I let him play Fallout 4 for the same reason: he spends his time launching his character from some sort of cannon/artillery thing and giggling. (He’s 9, though, so.)
As far as Trumperdink and that whole mess, if they want to spend their time infighting, that’s perfectly ok with me. If they’re focusing on that, they can’t do as much terrible stuff.
@Sinkable John
-after having gotten up at 2 EST and missing a lot of things-
re:RP
You wouldn’t be interested in seeing if we can match each other, would you? -kyeh-
At what point does it stop being a joke? When Muslim citizens are forced to register with the government? When we force children to “return” to countries they’ve never set foot in before?
How did such stupid, evil people come to power? It’s chilling.
A fanboy did a 40+ minute YouTube video about this. The screenshot for the video was a picture of the god emperor with the word “Triggered” so I’m guessing it just a 40 minute ‘femnazis insulted my fandom’ rant.
Damn, typing is hard. It feels like I’m drunk-posting, except I’m not. Damn you, day-sleep ! Also I probably don’t make any sort of sense at all.
@Falconer
I wrote a very long post trying to explain it as best as I could, then realized it forced me to stray so far to explain everything and I got sidetracked all over the place. I’m BAD at that stuff. Which is ironic ’cause I’m a writer. Or maybe it’s not ironic since a writer’s job is the opposite of summarizing anyway.
So, huh, anyway, sorry. I’m just gonna drop this link very rudely. It’s about Garland’s breeding program plan and stuff, which is the whole key to understanding everything else.
[SPOILER WARNING ! All of the spoilers ever for Final Fantasy IX in a few paragraphs, do not read if you haven’t played the game. Seriously though, if you haven’t played it, then I don’t know what the hell you’re doing on the Internet when you really should be playing FFIX instead.]
[Moar spoilers] Long story short, Garland is the one you called Sid. Sid is actually the king of Lindblum, one of the good guys. Dude in white is Kuja. Actual final boss is some random schmuck called Necron (or Darkness depending on localization, that’s their name in the French version) who apparently seeks to destroy everything so that everything can be freed from suffering and fear of death. I’d say that’s a pretty weak and dumb motivation, but then that’s pretty much what happened with Trump, so whatever. Makes sense now. Anyway, Necron’s role is only really a plot device meant to redeem Kuja and provide a happier ending, hence why they appear out of nowhere at the very end of a pretty long game without ever being mentioned before. Bad writing, but whatever. [End of spoilers]
EDIT : I edited this whole part a bunch of time since I posted, you might wanna read it again to be sure.
@Troubelle
When I said fucked up I meant that more as “in general”, not specifically RP (which I haven’t done in years) (also even that means so many different things in so many different contexts).
Okay, so, the correct answer is : the amount of fucked up that would result from such a match would probably disrupt the very fabric of not-fucked-up-ness and usher in an era of fucked up like never before, which actually seems like a pretty damn sweet ass idea.
I did say that it was difficult for me to make any sense right now. I’ll go get some coffee.
@Sinkable John
Ahhh, pardon. Still, such an era may be a preferable alternative to what could be on the horizon. We could try.
@Troubelle
Roughly what level of fucked-up are we talking exactly anyway ?
Also, it’s really starting to feel like I’m drunk right now. Struggling to keep a coherent line of thought (and even then, I’m not sure it actually is coherent, as evidenced by my last post) and also to engrish up properly. Wonder if the flu + lack of sleep/sleeping during the day is all there is to it, or if I have absorbed ridiculous amounts of alcohol without noticing it. Which would be hard, since there’s none in the house.
Feels like I’m rambling randomly without a point or any form of consistency. Is that how it comes across ?
… I feel like a MGTOW. Fuck.
@Sinkable John
The worst thing I’ve done, in a broad sense, is creating a character who is fully aware that he’s supposed to be the overarching nemesis, and who won’t be killed off anytime soon…despite constantly being in immense pain, and being in/being a dimension of flesh with little to no control over their movements.
They tend to facilitate several things more immediately fucked-up to mortal morals in a desperate attempt to Do Certain Things. And just wait for me to die, kinda.
That count?
@Troubelle
Okay, that is fucked up, but also a pretty good idea.
Nowadays all of my creative processes go towards this damn novel that I can seem to finish already. I can think of a few characters that are in “somewhat” similar situations – not about to die anytime soon and pretty much stuck in a state of imprisonment and pain. And they’re the rare concessions I’ve made so far to fantasy elements, with other characters usually struggling with more “earthly” pains. I actually noticed only very recently that pretty much everyone in that damn text was dealing with fucked-up shit including their own deeply-flawed selves but also what a deeply-flawed world’s done to them.
And then empathy kicks in and I start hating myself for what I make them go through. Heh, go figure. I might not be fucked up enough.
Edit : (hey, by the way, where’s the name Troubelle come from ?)
@Sinkable John
-LATENESS-
I note that my character is, if I didn’t make it clear, aware that I am the one who made them and put them into this predicament. They know that I could stop it, but I won’t, and they resent me for that. Hence the “waiting for me to die” part.
But I can see what you’re doing, and apply it to the more mortal characters I’ve incorporated into my strange crossover ‘verse. (I mentioned in an earlier thread that Captain Olimar from Pikmin got hit like a ton of bricks.)
My alias?….I just sort of made it up as a portmanteau of “trouble” and “belle” (because I’m just barely Southern and female….well, AFAB and not especially conflicted about it). I initially used it while playing Fibbage off the Jackbox Party Pack with my family.
-past editing time so-
Yes, I’m aware that “belle” is originally French, but that’s just the term and connotation (“southern belle”?) that sprang to my head at the time. -shrug-
i tried.
Heh, “trou” is also French, that’s probably why I didn’t connect the dots with “trouble” – it’s also the first letters of a bunch of other words. All in all it ended up not sounding like French, but not sounding like English to me either (but that’s because I’m dumb, since it actually does) and long story short, I are puzzled.
Could be argued that any character you create is by default aware of your existence, unless you specifically stated otherwise. So I assumed as much anyway :p
(okay, so there’s probably not a lot of people who’d argue that, but that’s how I operate)
They know even if you don’t know they know, unless you know they don’t know – and they know a lot more things, like how to grow and learn on their own.
I have a strong suspicion that all my characters have escaped my clutches and now force me to write them how they want me to write them, making their decisions by themselves instead of letting me do that for my own narrative purposes.
Also they probably are extremely judgemental of me.
@blackrising: “The point of history…learn from it, not repeat it.”
I think what I learned in school about the history of the Nazi regime was mainly “Nazis are bad.” With the implication of “Good thing our ancestors learned from it. We’re nothing like those guys. Whew! Never again, and all that. But yeah, those Nazis were bad, amirite?”
That is, I think, literally what I took away from middle school/junior high Holocaust lessons. Also, that Nazi concentration camps were the worst things ever, and also the definition of genocide. And we Americans are awesome and totally saved the day. Oh, and the Nazis didn’t have “reasons” for going after Jews. They just did it for no good reason. (And while that is true, it’s not how people experienced it. They, like every other group of people even now, believed they had “justifiable” “reasons.” This should really be retaught in high school.
No one ever explained how that stinking works, probably because no one teaching it (or apparently writing textbooks) was a sociologist or psychologist. Only two history teachers [a college professor and a high school true-history-teacher-and-not-a-coach]) even made a point to connect past with present.
@Sinkable John
-late again because dinner-
Fair enough on the topic of name. You could also argue that “trou” could be short for “trousers,” since formal trousers are The Best Thing Ever.
On the topic of characters: If they’re aware of me and my role, aware that shit’s going on around them, and connect the dots, the inevitable downward spiral begins there.
“Mandate of heaven?” Isn’t that a Chinese concept?
@Jules
Pretty much how I experienced it in school.
Neo-nazis see themselves as the ones who did their homework and started looking into reasons why it happened, etc. So they go half the way, figure out that there actually was a reasoning, and stop right there.
That’d almost excuse them, sadly it doesn’t. Many more people have done their “homework” than just the nazis. Those people have also figured out that the reasoning was bullshit.
Fascistoids like to brag that their eyes are open, blah blah blah, because they didn’t take summary history classes at face value and looked deeper into it. Fine. So they go on and take 70 yr old propaganda at face value instead.
Yeah, nah. That’s not how “looking deeper” into anything works. If anything, instead of learning anything new or useful, they just unlearned factual (if insufficient) knowledge. Meh.
@Troubelle
PJ pants are The Best Thing Ever.
Well, even if they’re aware, there’s not much they can do, besides trying their hardest to manipulate you through your own empathy to make you change their situation and make them happy. I know mine totally did that. Sneaky bastards.
The whole thing is great though : it makes them more than characters, they become people. You grow to love them and nurture them “as if” they were people in your care – but really they are people by that point.
Empathy is a powerful thing.
@Sinkable John
Well, the one in question has a tendency to attempt to convince me to do something very drastic. I always shoot him down, but they try….and when I expose my other friends to them, the friends often get _very_ concerned for my stability.
That’s the best part.
A parisian friend who proof-reads my stuff once sent me a box of chocolate and postcards showing kitties on rooftops, after I sent her a particularly nasty body of text.
I wish she still had time for that kinda work. Those were great kitties.