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
I think part of the hypocrisy of JonTron’s position on immigrants is that he is the son of immigrants, being a first gen USian, himself.
That, and his lovely lack of self-awareness that Trump’s bloody immigrant ban would have included his father, were he try to emigrate today.
But do go ahead and keep insisting that “the US can’t be rebuilt with somebody else’s babies”, yo.
“A nation is not a nation unless it can decide who it lets in and who it keeps out”.
Jon must think we’re living in Axis Powers Hetalia, since he seems to believe nations are persons with the ability to make decisions (when in fact they are not persons any more than corporations are).
@Jack, Axe
To be fair, there are a few games for which I’m willing to draw pistols at dawn if you talk shit about them.
But a DDoS and attacks on his being fat and queer ? Hell no.
That said I agree that they may pretend there’s no politics in their hating (and vice-versa), but we know where this sort of thing usually ends.
Also, “you’re being too political !” is short-hand for “I can’t deal with the contradiction that you are someone who does stuff I like yet has opinions that I don’t like, so please stop having opinions that aren’t mine so that I can keep on liking your stuff in a manner that is comfortable for me.”
Those poor snowflakes.
@PeeVee
There’s also the fact that I’m pretty sure most people who say that “European American culture is under attack” don’t consider Iran apart of Europe nor the people from there white, just like they don’t consider white Jewish people white, so it’s just really fucking weird.
It’s kinda like a Doosh situation, but more about games than PUA.
Yeah, because the DDoS attacks are very likely more about his reviews; he’s a small-time reviewer compared to other gaming review sites so he’s more vulnerable to DDoS attacks. There has been two times I know of that he’s been DDoS’d and both of those time were on dates of which he put up low reviews criticizing No Man’s Sky and Zelda Breath of the Wild.
That is why I’m pretty sure this has less to do with him being fat and queer and more about his reviews because when he puts of podcasts that explain his views and shit, he doesn’t get DDoS’d or nearly as much hate.
Not to sound narcissistic or anything, but I just so happen to be one of my own favorite YTers.
Just sayin’.
(I’m so very sorry that actually was really fucking narcissistic of me and I’m very sorryyyyyy)
But yeah, there’s been a lot of disappointment in the YTer community as of late, especially the Let’s Play community.
I can second Jackie’s GeekRemix recommendation, and I can also rec a smaller YTer named Yippie Ki Yay Mr Falcon. He doesn’t often play games that I’m interested in, but he’s still fun to watch.
Manlybadasshero is also good if you’re like me and you like RPGMaker horror games.
Welcome to the club of narcissist small time YTubers. Wait…I just burned myself…drat!
(To continue because of the editing window)
He’s made follow up videos about Zelda and No Man’s Sky that should have gotten equally as much hate as they also criticized the game but didn’t because they weren’t his official reviews.
The attacks on his websites, while there maybe people joining in because they hate him, are definitely more about the review score than anything else.
Hs official review for Zelda got 2500 comments first day while his respond to all the terrible comments got under 500 in the last two days.
It’s also likely to do with the fact his review was put on MetaCritic and the score put it down from, like, 98% to 97% or something like that? So people are on MetaCritic and going to people that give their games low scores and attacking them because it’s games.
I’m not trying to justify it, but while I may mentioned he’s not straight and shit, he’s still a man first so he’s not getting attacked because he’s queer but on his reviews and his weight and shit is sometimes being used against him and stuff is all.
Since we’re apparently recommending video game YouTubers who aren’t shitheads, I’m going to strongly recommend Derek and Grace of Stop Skeletons From Fighting. They do reviews, deep dives on various issues and episodes of gaming history, showcases of obscure and unique games, and they stream weekly on Twitch. I seriously love their stuff, and they definitely deserve more subscribers.
@PI
Wait, what ?
… I didn’t even know this was a thing.
How?
@Jack
To be fair, I take any positive remark about Trump or his policies as tantamount to fascism, and I’ve seen a fair bit of ‘topical humor’ on that front, so… Perhaps I’m a bit skewed 🙂
@Paradoxy
http://img.memecdn.com/everyday-im-hustlin_o_397530.jpg
Get it, gurl!
@Axe
TBH, I haven’t seen a lot of “positive” Dump comments on his videos. I don’t know if it’s because the fan base is good or the comments are moderated well but Jim doesn’t have anything positive to say about Dump.
@Jack
I think I may actually have been hermiting a lot harder than I thought I was. I really, really need to get out more, don’t I.
For the past five years, you’ve missed Ib, The Crooked Man, The Witch’s House, Ao Oni, Misao, Mad Father, Yume Nikki, Mermaid Swamp…
EDIT: CORPSE PARTY! That one was one of the biggest. It was an RPG Maker game in ’96 before it went to PSP and Vita, I think. It got its own anime and everything now.
OT : Trump’s egotrippin’ at Snoop Dogg.
@Sinkable John, re: RPG Maker horror games
Duuuuuuuuuuuude. You’re laggin’ behind. Let me catch you up.
My gateway and a great look into it was/is Yume Nikki (Dream Diary). Requires a translation patch.
Others include The Witch’s House, Ao Oni, M*d Father, and one that quite appeals to me, Dreaming Mary. (No small amount of these also require translation….)
Edit: Handsome Jack, you ninja motherfucker. Got more than me, too.
….At least I got one thing you didn’t….
@Monzach
How can anything involving a Harvest Moon homage be off topic?
For example: PUAs could learn a lot from the original franchise. I mean, who needs dialogue when all women want are daily gifts of vegetables from their manly farms?
“I’m gave you a tomato everyday for a year! Why don’t you like me!?”
In retrospect . . . This may explain a lot.
Are Iranians considered White by White Supremacists? I doubt it. It makes me wonder when people who would be looked down upon by White Supremacists support White Supremacy. Strange.
@Handsome :Punkle Stan: Jack
Probably because he, like Jon Jafari, is a piece of shit. He did join up with Gamergate as a “consumer rights movement” (pffffft!)…
It really shows you how bad these FREEZE PEACH warriors are at setting priorities. They’ll often go out of their way to remind people, upon criticizing another person for bigoted comments, that they have a right to say such…while forgetting those individuals have every right to criticize them as well. And why come to the defense of someone making inflammatory comments that will receive blowback, instead of someone simply expressing an opinion that is unpopular but not exactly discriminatory? Probably because, I dunno, those people might hold similarly inflammatory positions – they’ll act like they don’t, as if they’re just playing “Devil’s Advocate,” but they’ll always put more effort into that than defending anyone else who said far less worse (they seem to ignore almost all those cases).
It’d bother me less, albeit only slightly, if they were honest about it instead of being so fucking goddamn disingenuous. That pisses me off as much as the racist bullshit.
@Jack, Troubelle
This is what five years of hermiting will do, I guess.
Still… I think I can live without more horror games though. At least while I’m still trying to put all of the pieces of my brain back together in a way that functions.
Fun fact : I saw the launch trailer for RE 7 today (yeaaah not up to date at all even on things that are right under my nose) and immediately… went back to aimlessly wandering and murderizing giant robot dinosaurs for scrap.
It was the spiders, you see.
If you’re like me and are perpetually obsessed with Fallout games like for real might I suggest alchestbreach on youtube. In the year of our Lord 2017 he is still making videos about New Vegas mods and stuff. I doubt his politics are the best but he hasn’t made my eyeballs roll out of my head yet so there’s that.
Boogie can fuck all the way off with his “both sides, can’t we all just agree to disagree” bullshit. I don’t know why he gets so much leeway from people. It’s like because he was bullied so badly we treat him with kid gloves that other people do not get. But then women are bullied constantly and the same community tells us to buck up or fuck off. The same shit happened with GG. Which, speaking of GG, Jon Tron was an asshole about back then which is the only reason I even knew who he was. I feel bad for Zoe Quinn. Seems like lately every time some asshole crosses a new racist line and everyone suddenly turns on them she is there with receipts from years past where they were shitting all over her. Must get annoying to see that stuff get a pass and then later on people are like “Ooooh he’s an asshole? How could we have possibly known?”. I dunno. I guess I’m just eternally amazed by how much shit she puts up with while staying relatively positive. I wouldn’t have it in me.
I wonder why Jim associates with him still? Apparently TotalBiscuit isn’t defending “consumer rights” anymore if he’s outright defending JonTron instead of independent, non-corporate sponsored reviewers.
Let’s take the benefit of the doubt and say that he doesn’t agree with what they’re saying, but defending their right to say it–why? Jontron is a big boy with lots of fans who rabidly defend him. He’s been PAID by GAMING CORPORATIONS for REVIEWS. SPONSORED BY THEM! That should go against the ideology of anyone who actually cared about the “ethics in game journalism”. Jontron is the last person TotalBiscuit needs to defend.
Is it suddenly easier to justify racist viewpoints than 7/10s on video games?? Is he afraid the Zelda stans are gonna come in and ruin him or something? Are Zelda stans scarier than nazis in his eyes? Does he think that the audience he’s cultivated during GamerGate would likely lash out at him if he spoke against alt-right ideology Jontron is spewing?
Do you think he’s worried about that at all?
I was subscribed to him for a bit because I love New Vegas. It’s one of my favorite RPGs buuuuuut…I don’t remember exactly what he said but I unsubscribed because it definitely made my eyes roll out of my head. Which is a shame, really, because I liked him a lot. Maybe I’ll try him again but for now the only modding channels I’m subscribed to are Brodual and Morrowind Modding Showcases (which also has recently taken up Oblivion mods as well).
It’s really hard not to find a modding channel that doesn’t showcase a fan service mod every episode.
Bethesda games: Where you can lose five hours of solid playtime because your character’s wife fell through the map never to be seen again, only to immediately forgive it because holy shit did that Vertibird just take a raider’s mini nuke to the face and fireball into the ship graveyard that was fucking awesome.
(Can you guess what happened to me in Fallout 4 today?)
@booburry:
God, I can’t stand that false equivalence horseshit and how it’s supposedly an “objective” position – even though everyone I know who hold such has some extreme biases nonetheless. They’re completely lacking in self-awareness.
@Handsome :Punkle Stan: Jack
Same here. I’d of stopped being on friendly terms with such a person ages ago.
I don’t think he thinks things through whatsoever.
Wait, Destiny? The same Destiny who got dropped from his SC2 team for using racial slurs? The same Destiny who basically made a name for himself being an unrepentant shithead? How is he the reasonable side in a debate? What world is this?
Also, YT gamer recommendations: If you’re at all into Mario Maker, or speed running, or the kaizo mario scene (or better yet all three) definitely check out CarlSagan42 and GrandPooBear. They’re both Twitch streamers, but I only ever watch the stuff they post to YouTube. Carl almost exclusively plays Mario Maker, likes to field questions about his work (vaccine research) and science in general, and releases 1-2 videos a week. Poo plays a lot of MM but also will put up LPs of other stuff as well, and usually puts up at least one video every day. He recently did a blind Undertale LP, and is currently playing BotW. (Also they’re best friends. The bromance is strong and adorable)
I haven’t noticed any obvious shitty behavior from either of them; their commentary tends to be pretty apolitical, and despite constantly responding to the users in their Twitch chat, politics and social issues just don’t really ever come up. It tends to be more stuff like… debating the finer points of private jet ownership. Or making Poo’s text-to-speech bot that reads out his donations say “marbles” over and over for half a minute.