So another YouTube videogamer dude with a ludicrously enormous number of subscribers has started talking like a Nazi.
Jon “JonTron” Jafari built up his fanbase — he’s got more than 3 million subscribers on YouTube — with videos big on jokes and light on politics. But in recent months he’s started talking politics, and of course, this being 2017, it turns out that his politics are pretty terrible Trumpian/alt-right garbage.
OPPRESSION TEST: Can you drive to McDonalds not in hijab and get biggest Big Mac value meal? If yes: Not oppressed
— JonTron (@JonTronShow) January 24, 2017
Wow, how scandalous, Steve King doesn't want his country invaded by people who have contempt for his culture and people! NAZI!!!
— JonTron (@JonTronShow) March 12, 2017
If a nation cannot decide who to let in, or remove, it is not a nation at all
— JonTron (@JonTronShow) March 13, 2017
I wonder if they came back to life and saw a man marching on DC wearing a pink pussy on his head how fast they would eat cyanide pic.twitter.com/wMRcwNCfXh
— JonTron (@JonTronShow) January 24, 2017
Dude, take another look at the picture you just posted. The Founding Fathers wore leggings and powdered wigs. I don’t think a man wearing a pink hat would really faze them. But I digress.
Even some of his most devoted fans began to worry a little when, late in January, JonTron appeared on a 5-hour livestream with reactionary YouTube blabber Carl of Swindon Sargon of Akkad and basically came out as an alt-right fellow traveller.
This Sunday he managed to top even this with a surreal two-hour online debate with fellow YouTube videogamer dude Destiny. It did not go well for him, debate-wise, and over the course of the debate he revealed just how much of a racist idiot he really is.
In the JonTron subreddit, because of course there is such a thing, most of his fans seem to be a bit alarmed by his terrible opinions; he’s also lost more than 10,000 YouTube subscribers.
One industrious Redditor transcribed a number of JonTron’s more, well, colorful statements. Here are a few of them. (I haven’t gone back and checked these against the video because, well, life is short, but I believe these are mostly accurate.)
- “Wealthy blacks … commit more crime than poor whites, that’s a fact.”
- “What is so offensive about white people saying they’d like to preserve their demographic majority?”
- “It’s clear that whites are not allowed to speak up against their demographic um… oblivion.”
- “[Whites] are not being killed, they’re being displaced. You are the same guy who says that Europeans displaced the native Americans but apparently, when other people do it to white Americans, it’s okay because fuck white people.”
- “Why is it when the chinese were trying to colonise tibet, why was that a save tibet situation but when it’s white people… I’m using an analogy to try to give a parallel situation so you can see the hypocrisy.”
- “There is an absolute disproportionate of crime committed to whites by nonwhites. There’s no arguing that, that’s just FBI statistics. But white people are not allowed to address this because it’s called racist by people like you.”
- “I don’t recall Trump ever saying anything explicitly racist.”
- “Nobody wants to become a minority in their own country. Why is it bad if they (whites) remain a majority?”
- “Not all Mexicans are going to go on welfare but a lot of them are going to commit crimes. The El Salvadoreans are going to create the MS13 gangs.”
- “These days the confederate flag has been banned, they’re burning american flags in the streets. … And I think immigration policies that haven’t been the smartest are partially to blame for that.”
- “We’ve gotten rid of discrimination in our western countries. If you don’t think we’ve gotten rid of discrimination, you’re living in a fantasy land.”
- “This oppression in America, it doesn’t exist.”
Though JonTron likes to present himself as a champion of Truth and Reason, most of these are alleged truths are not in fact true, and most of his opinions are decidedly unreasonable. Adding to the surreality: the earnest defender of all things white is himself half Iranian.
I think this calls for the infinite facepalm.
If god forbid you want to listen to the whole damn debate, you can find it here, all 2 hours of it.
I tried to find a watchable video with some excerpts in it, to no avail; the only ones that did contain actual clips tended to be by pasty white dudes more or less defending JonTron.
This video doesn’t have any clips in it, but it summarizes the whole JonTron mess in a relatively non-annoying way, which is really the best you can hope for on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R02k1sQpc2k
@John: As far as I’ve seen there hasn’t been much discussion of Horizon from the YouTube crowd, at least not in their videos. I haven’t actually watched much about the game itself since I haven’t played much of it yet, though.
OT: As much as this doesn’t surprise me ever since he gave that Breitbart interview, it still makes me really disappointed that yet another YouTube personality I enjoyed is a raging bigot. The part that does surprise me is that Jon has talked at length about his Persian heritage, and he enjoys a number of typically “non-masculine” things, and of course his friendship with Arin Hanson and Dan Avidan. I get that all sorts of people take up stances completely counterintuitive to what should be their interests, but I still find it hard to understand how someone who either is Jewish or is friends with Jewish people can also be a white supremacist. (A Canadian who self-identities as Jewish on another website I frequent is a fairly loud Trump supporter, with all that that implies as well.)
If you want insightful commentary on Horizon or other games, I would suggest good guy gamer and Tabletop RPG designer Adam Koebel at @Skinnyghost on Twitter or @AdamKoebel on Twitch (and YouTube).
@Ooglyboggles
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Cx33AgZl1c0/UlYMmX3ZrtI/AAAAAAAAADo/3IC34e8mXOk/s1600/iron%2Bgiant%2Bart.jpg
The only YouTuber I watch doing LPs is Jon at Many A True Nerd. He played a couple of hours of HZD and had fun, but said he’d rather play Ghost Recon Wildlands.
I have had a lot of fun so far in HZD, although I don’t play it every day because of Kids and Hanging With Beloved and oh yeah, gotta play at least one Stardew Valley day every day.
@Falconer Stardew Valley is such a lovely and calm game! 🙂 It’s one of the few games that I’ve watched multiple LPs of, since everyone has a different style of doing things. I’ve found a couple of really fun LP channels on YouTube through Stardew Valley LPs. ^_^
Sorry for the OT everyone.
John “TotalBiscuit” Bain (abridged version):
“I’m not alt-right.”
*Recites alt-right talking points for hours*
LOL!
@Rafael –
Seconded! Adam Koebel is THE BEST. He’s the only reason I use my Twitch account and the only one I subscribe to.
Nope. They’d call it macaroni.
@PI, dslucia
So that explains it then. They haven’t been able to find anything that warrants “legit” criticism (can’t exactly go the “it’s not even a real game !” route like they did with Gone Home this time) so they just decided to avoid it entirely, I guess ?
It’s not flawless, I admit it. Inventory management needs a rework, for one (seriously, at least some manual and auto sorting features, pleaaase). The aggro range of some machines too (fucking Glinthawks always inviting themselves into and trolling up my epic battles). I don’t really like how they handled the outfits, and beyond that a “hide helmet” feature woulda been great. The weapon wheel needs a selective hiding function ’cause honestly why do you need those weak-ass basic arrows cluttering it up after you’ve unlocked Hardpoints ? The stealth is kinda underwhelming as soon as you’re up against human enemies, but then most modern games’ stealth element is half-assed so come on. Plus I’m a stealth fan so obviously I got high standards, doesn’t mean I can honestly apply them here.
I can think of a lot more like that. They’re so minor they barely justify the paragraph I dedicated to them, let alone a full-on hate boner on the game itself. The only “major flaw” I can think of is that 60 hours to hit 100% felt underwhelming, even though it’s still pretty good by most standards. Like, I just personally wanted moar, but to be fair I didn’t have a problem with restarting the whole thing to git moar out of it. Tangentially related, the open world feels rather small to me, but again that’s just me wanting MOAR. Plus I suck at sizing up game areas. Freaking Just Cause 2 felt sorta small to me.
So there we go. They can’t say it’s a bad game. It checks all the boxes for awesome and then some, and this time they can’t even find a good arbitrary set of criteria to apply to it and bring it down. They can’t talk about it without admitting they only hate it for its politics.
To everyone who’s playing (or planning on playing) it : I hope you have even half the fun I had playing it (and you know I had fun ’cause I restarted a fresh save right after hitting 100%), and be sure to use your Focus to spot important NPCs (read : those you can have conversations with) at every step of every quest, because every bit of dialogue is so wonderful. Irid at the festival in Mother’s Heart in the beginning is an easy one to miss, I only found him on my second playthrough, but that conversation is absolutely priceless. Also make sure to look for text collectibles in major Carja settlements, a lot of those are accounts by some chronicler on how the other tribes are barbarians, and they’re very masterfully written (the smug idiocy is fantastically rendered and really hits home).
Now to conduct some introspection in how is it that every time I have a rather short point to make (they can’t find good excuses to hate it) it eventually descends into one hell of a wall of text.
ETA : @Rafael
Well at least this time you’re drifting in the usual direction, down.
I’m a huge fan of the Loadingreadyrun live steam content, myself.
Man, I remember JonTron, when he was alive and not dead to me. *sniff* Not dead to me at all.
And also I feel like an idiot for just following him on YouTube and nowhere else because he’d been dead to me a lot sooner if I knew.
Meanwhile, while TotalBiscuit has been defending nazis, Jim Sterling has been DDoS’d because of a 7/10 review on Breath of the Wild (as stated before) and, so far as I know since I don’t follow him, Biscuit has spent more time trying to justify Jon’s racist ass comments than Jim.
So, like, evidently TotalBiscuit is either a shit friend to Jim or thinks defending racists is a more productive/easier than trying to defend people from Nintendo fanboys or, worst, a combination of both, which is the most likely.
Side note, may I promote my favorite LPers, GeekRemix, a pair of wonderful women who do their best and are sweethearts and inclusive to gender and race and talk about fucking robots a lot? They’re a great channel and are doing a HZD LP right now.
Here, have an animation of some great moments from their Life is Strange playthrough. #MariWasRight
Okay, I like Jim Sterling, but hearing about how he got DDoS’d for how he rated a game, my first thought was “well at least for once it’s a man who gets that shit”.
@John
He got DDoS’d when he gave No Man’s Sky a “not good” review, too, but Zelda fans decided to step it up and be even worst than they were.
And while he’s a man, he’s also fat, openly queer, and I think he’s semi-openly feminist and hates Dump with a passion so that’s not helping him either.
(Disclaimer: fuck jontron forever)
Why the hell do people keep mentioning he is “half iranian” as if to mean he’s not white or fully white? I’m sorry but this is some bullshit only americans would think, iranian is a nationality not a race/skin color, dear god. the dude is white, period. look at his gross face. Its ok to mention his half iraniannesss to counter his xenophobia, but not his defending of whiteness. Honestly, considering “white” is already a dumb impossible-to-define construct, this is some elitist bs.
Case in point: my grandfather was lebanese and his entire family consisted of blue-eyed, blonde christians; im “white” and brazilian and yet in america, once people know im from BR (and only after they learn that), they treat and refer to me as if i’m “non-white” (which I love, but they think “latin” or is a race/skin color. interesting how the french, portuguese etc are not “latin” but that’s another issue)
@Jack
Nazis being dropped from corporate sponsorhip for being nazis is serious business, but garmes jurnalizts being targeted by nazis for their work is not too big a deal. But it’s about ethics…
If anybody is looking for more, um, morally reliable youtubers who do gaming stuff/LPs, I really enjoy Dodger’s videos (her YouTube handle is PressHeartToContinue).
I haven’t watched 100% of her content though, and I don’t follow her on social media, so of course disclaimer that there might be something she’s said or done that I don’t know about.
This is why I’ve never been into the whole Youtube gaming thing. I have friends who are, and that’s cool, but it just seems like a good way to set yourself up for disappointment. Every few months another gamer would turn out to be a massive a-hole and my friends would be justifiably upset. I don’t know what it is about gaming that seems to attract the scum of the earth, but it sure does.
@Sally
Question asked and answered in a single post. In the U.S., ‘white’ means, always and only, ‘of exclusively Western (preferably Northern) European heritage’, and usually ‘speaks English as your sole native language’. As far as American bigots are concerned, nobody named Jafari will ever be white, regardless of actual skin tone.
Sally: Seriously, the ‘half-Iranian’ thing only makes sense in a context where you’re still considering, say, Irish and Italians as not-white, too.
@Sally
White people equals white privilege. Our current understanding of what constitutes white (that is, including the Irish, Slavs, etc) is only ~100 years old at most. Whoever is included as white gets a boost in society that not everyone else does. As an example, stereotypically white names on resumes get more callbacks than black or Latin names. How would a perspective hirer react to Jon Jafari? The reason we point out his being Iranian is that, no matter how white supremacist he acts, the system will never really treat him like he’s white. Not all the time anyway. We just wish he’d understand that
As for you being white in Brazil and latinx here, same thing. You have white privilege at home, but not in my country. A lot of people are white in Ecuador or Mexico, but they come here, have the ‘wrong’ surname or speak with an accent, and they’re not white anymore. This isn’t us saying that’s how it should be. But it is. Racism has never made sense, so ya can’t just logic it away
@Jack
Aight, I didn’t know about any of that, I retract that first thought – they just decided he doesn’t count as a man so whatever goes.
@Axe
Nah, I’m pretty sure most of the people who have DDoS’d him are genuinely just really mad that the game they love didn’t get an “acceptable” score from him, it’s just that the fact that he’s fat and stuff also gets tossed in there as insults and as ways to “discredit” him because god forbid he gave HZD a 9/10 while BotW got a 7/10. Obviously s Sony shill. /sarcasm
I mean, sure, there were probably some nazis in there too, no doubt, but it was mostly about the reviews for sure in those cases. Jimquisition is still very popular and a lot of people respect his opinion about other games still, even by people who don’t like his “SJW talk” in some of his videos. He may have gotten a few threats here and there but it doesn’t seem as bad as others have gotten and by others I mean women mostly, but he is white and a man, so, yeah.
@Jack
We’ve seen what happens when people use bigoted, fascist rhetoric for the lulz or to get a rise outta people. Something about ironic goat fucking…
Unless someone is an avid hate follower of him, stalking his Twitter and podcast, most of the more vocal haters probably just make fun of him because he’s fat tbh. He’s been trying to keep the channel only on games and stuff to have it be a place they can go to to not hear about Dump and stuff, which is appreciated.
i mean, the way I learned he was queer when I first started watching his YouTube is when he called himself “openingly queer” when he decided to talk about the Pulse shootings at the end of an E3 video. He never talked about it beyond doing “pounding Iron Bull jokes”, which could be constructed as a “haha gay” joke by a more casual viewer.
He’s spoken about a lot of things across numerous videos but he’s much more open on Twitter, I think. I don’t look at it that much because I’m not on Twitter but I know he’s said people have been complaining about his Twitter lately on his podcasts because he’s “too political” on their and then he did a snarky rant about being a person who wants people to be treated equally and how much he hates Dump, so…
I can’t say I’ve seen facist stuff (not that I’m trying hard to find or remember it) but definitely seen shit that attacks him on his looks and junk. I’m just admitting that maybe some of those anime and Link avatars are nazis, even if they haven’t actually said any nazi things that I know of.