Racist terrorist James Jackson — who has confessed to murdering an elderly black New Yorker as a sort of test run for a more dramatic act of mass murder — in many ways seems like 4chan’s /pol/ made flesh, a deeply alienated young white man driven by racist rage and, apparently, deep fears of sexual inadequacy.
So you might have expected that his dramatic hate crime might have won him nothing but warm huzzahs from the folks in /pol/. And, in one recent /pol/ thread, he did inspire some cheers.
“[A]ny dead n*gger is a good n*gger,” wrote one anon.”The only thing James did wrong was turning himself in,” another anon opined. And still another gave the killer props for his ” fashy hair do … 10/10.”
But others were less impressed.
“He didn’t think about the long term,” one critic complained
What has he even achieved? Not even a good kill count. Just One, Old, man. Now Brevik. Brevik was an hero my lad. Imagine working all that shit out then planning it. He was not wrong either. They were indoctrinating kids
Another scoffed, “how much intellect does it take to stab a homeless black guy?”
Some wondered why Jackson had targeted black men anyway — when the real enemy, in their minds, is the (((Jew))).
“With so many scum bags in the world, why throw your life away to kill one homeless nigger,” one asked. “Guy could have at least taken out a (((wall street banker)))”
“Jews want whites to fight blacks,” wrote another.
Not Jews
The threat is from above (((wall street))) not below as Jews want whites to believe.
Naturally, this being /pol/, there were more than a few who dismissed the whole thing as part of a devious conspiracy to make white racists look bad.
“False flag,” one charged.
Dude from n*gger central Baltimore goes to New York to kill blacks, takes the life of a single homeless and then gives himself up to police. Couldn’t be more obvious.
Another saw the CIA’s fingerprints on the murder.
>decide to kill blacks to prevent racemixing
>target one 60 year old black guy
I’m sorry but that shit REEKS of a CIA plant/psyop.
A few stray souls even suggested that, as one put it, “White Supremacy is foolish nonsense” and that murder is, you know, bad.
But some thought these sorts of condemnations were self-defeating.
The right always condemns the lunatic fringe on their side like how Richard Spencer got kicked out of CPAC, but the right is always labeled as nothing but violent lunatics.
Meanwhile, the left embraces their violent lunatics and puts them on a pedestal but the same media kike puppets never call out their own side, let alone refer to the left as a bunch of violent lunatics.
The only solution?
I think the right wing needs to start embracing their violent lunatics like the left does with theirs. They have nothing to lose because they’re already labeled by the media as a bunch of violent extremists anyway, and eventually, leftist teeth are going to have to start littering the streets.
Huh. I’m pretty sure that the right has been embracing its most violent members for some time. Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 people, most of them children, had more than a few defenders in the right wing of the manosphere — not to mention the Breivik fan further upthread.
These are ugly, ugly times.
</only half-kidding>
Now wait just one second….
My whole life I’ve been told that my beloved hometown of Oakland, California is Thug Central, TM. And now I’m finding out that the distinction belongs to BALTIMORE?? I…don’t know how to feel.
Just kidding. I’ll keep loving my beautiful, thriving, multicultural (and flawed) city.
Ugh, these assholes. It’s exhausting following all the bile they spew, but I’m thankful to this site and it’s devoted commentariat for calling out and countering the hate. Also, hi! *waves* Longtime lurker delurking 🙂
@CleverForAGirl,
So I’ve heard…but laughter does too, and I much prefer that. (It’s why I’m so glad this blog exists. ?)
Richard Spencer sports the same haircut as Gary Smith. Very fashy.
And you also get to punch Gary in the face at the end. Talk about life imitating art.
*Snerk*
Handsome :Punkle Stan: Jack:
SFHC:
Huh. I honestly hadn’t noticed that before, but now when I think about it I kind of recognize it. Freaky.
“Jews want whites to fight blacks,” wrote another (moron).
This was said better years ago by the head of the Illinois Nazis, as seen in the Blues Brothers movie.
“White men! White women! The Jew is using the black against you. So, whatchoo gonna do about it, Whitey?”
@The Real Cie
And the Blues Brothers gave he best possible answer.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-ukFAvYP3UU
What Dalillama said.
I’ve said before, and I think it’s true, that a lot of *chan culture can be summed up as a sort of evangelical nihilism. They have nothing that they really enjoy or believe in, including their own lives, and they’re enraged that there are others who do believe in things.
It’s perhaps telling that 4chan has 22 million unique views a month (source: 4chan) and yet their influence is so pathetically limited. When’s the last time an overtly political, overtly antisocial organisation with 22 million members managed to do so little?
@ SFHC
This infuriates me to no end. The right has used violence, both legal and illegal, to achieve their goals since forever, but the second someone on the left gets fed up with alt-right aggression and bullying and punches them (note: punching is not equal to murder and genocide, Nazis, shut up already), the legends of “the violent left” start spreading like wildfire among the alt-right.
Meanwhile, the strongest condemnation for violence against political opponents on the right comes from the left, from the hand-wringing centrist* liberals who care more about maintaining a good standing in the eyes of Randian capitalists and fascists who would happily see groups of people die than people fucking dying.
So, when Mr. /polster says:
they’re only describing what they do anyway, but with another justification than the one they have been using up to this point. Because it has never been about honest discourse. The alt-right, fascists (and, really, the right as a whole when you get down to it) has never been about facts or negotiation, it’s always been about power. Kraft, nicht wahrheit.
And make no mistake, when they say “leftists”, they do not only mean the political left, they mean “any people we don’t like”. Painting this as a political battle when really, all the right wants to do is eradicate certain groups of people regardless of their political stance is, sadly, as common as it is disingenuous. It has never been strictly about politics, never mind what spineless centrists want to tell you to appear superior and “above” political discourse.
*Never trust someone who claims they’re ‘neutral’ or ‘centrist’. That claim only proves they’re on the side of status quo.
Sorry for the double post.
@EJ
I’m holding out hope that not all those unique viewers actually subscribe to the common ideas on the site. I know people who look through sites like that mainly to laugh at the ignorance of those who post there.
Other than that (probably small) number of people, yeah, I agree completely. 4chan likes to see themselves as this massive, anonymous gathering of like-minded individuals with massive influence on both political leadership and on grassroots levels, yet as is the case of all extremely loosely organized groups with nary a thing in common with each other besides a connection to a site they all frequent, they can’t really agree on anything.
Similarly, what gives me hope in these trying times is the knowledge that the right, as a political and ideological group, really have no ideals that bind them together for a very long period of time. Since conservative politics are mainly centered on power and supremacy, the hierarchies that form around them are prone to constant power struggles. This is really what was happening to the loose collection of manosphere groups; it was all just a giant pissing contest to see who was superior to whom. No honor among thieves and all that.
Also, this:
Absolutely. 4chan is a real-world embodiment of the pretentious balance fallacy that South Park helped cement into the public consciousness*. They represent a mixed sense of disillusionment with and disappointment in the establishment, both embracing all the ideals of the system and condemning it in its current state. Since a lot of channers are undoubtedly white men, they tend to not analyze their subconscious beliefs very much. They are used to having their worldview validated, as it usually plays straight into their privilege.
The only solace channers find in their confused sense of neutrality is the belief that by not publicly supporting any one political position, they can safely claim intellectual superiority over anyone they disagree with ideologically. Yet since their privilege makes them not actively question or think about their ideological and political stance, they sort of automatically fall back on supporting the status quo. The ridiculous “social experiment”, “free speech”, and “satire” claims can probably be traced from this mindset; since many of them really don’t think about what they’re supporting, they parrot the opinions of the most ideologically conservative but politically incorrect speakers. If this makes them lose face in public, they can blame the audience for “not getting it” rather than admit they were not able to support their views in a coherent and rational manner (not a fault in their debating skills necessarily, but in their base beliefs themselves). Channers and their ilk are, for all their bluster, probably the most politically ignorant group of all.
*Watch any episode of South Park that deals with social issues and you’ll find the “believing in things is stupid! Stop believing in anything (except perhaps race, gender and gender roles, the free market and other base myths of the system that we don’t question very hard and don’t really understand but need to comment on very strongly anyway for some reason)!” message.
There’s a guy on my Rocky cast who openly admitted to posting on r/pol and getting his political information from it. Like six of us dragged him for it without directly insulting him. It was hilarious how he couldn’t actually respond to any point we made.
Cause for the right, it’s not about being actually right. It’s about staying in power. It’s about maintaining the status quo. It’s about inflicting pain on others as a substitute for having something worth fighting for.
I haven’t liked this guy ever. He started out as a creep harassing the other women on cast, he constantly deadnames me, and he tries to modify what we do on stage to be more racist. He was already on my list of “People I expect to attack me eventually”. This whole shit that r/pol is doing is just highlighting how…entirely right I am to have that perspective on the situation.
@ anarchonist
There was a time when I used to eye-roll a bit at 1984 comparisons. They seemed such a cliche; and people were prone to use them just because the council changed the bin collection days; but the times they are a-changing.
@C.S.Strowbridge : Not Gitmo. And likely not by default. That won’t help anything, and it might make things worse by radicalizing thoses people even more.
Remember : if something did not help against more-or-less fascist islamism, why would it work against fascism ?
@Anarchonist
It tickles me that “political correctness” is still used to mean an excess of concern for inclusivity, politeness, safety, respect for the feelings of others and their cultural norms, etc etc.
These days you need only take a very brief look at the prevailing sorts of political sentiment and the rise of nationality to realise that it is politically correct to hate brown people, foreign people, people who have sex with the wrong people, poor people, people with the wrong genetalia, etc etc.
On 4chan, surely a politically incorrect speaker would be one who says “fucking hell guys (for we are all pretty much inevitably guys), we’re a bunch of flaming assholes. lets not do this shit anymore“.
Obama has been accused of having a “politically correct” strategy for fighting Daesh because he wanted to minimize civilian casualties. Since Shinra took office, we’ve been bombing mosques and shit on purpose. So in this case, “politically correct” meant “not literally being willing to kill hundreds of civilians to kill 5 terrorists.”
I mean, it may look silly when I call him Shinra but he acts like President Shinra more and more every day.
@Alan Robertshaw
Yep. It’s baffling how relevant the point about newspeak* is becoming, with actual politicians seriously claiming that half-truths and outright lies are “alternative facts”. Although my country’s xenophobic noise-makers have used the same tactic earlier (defending a made-up claim with “who cares if it is true or not, that’s how we see things”, to justify racists’ feelings), the current POTUS and his supporters have certainly mastered the art of being extremely unsubtle about it.
*I could go on for hours about this subject, because the power of language and how language is being used to change how people think is related to both my job and my interest in politics and ideology.
Apparently, bookstores all around USA ran out of 1984 in a short time after Trump was made POTUS. So that should tell us something about the state of our western society.
It never ceases to amaze me how right-wing libertarians and outright fascists try to co-opt Orwell into their ranks, claiming that the Party and Big Brother were stand-ins for… democratic socialism apparently? Did they read his books at all, or were they too busy quote mining?
Excellent choice of quote, by the way. Pretty much sums it up.
@Pie
Very true. The way the phrase is being used, with referring to the most politically correct things you can say and do in the current climate, “politically incorrect” (with quotation marks) should always be the correct form.
@Policy of Madness
There is something extremely cynical in how racists, xenophobes and Islamophobes want to close all borders and force refugees back to the countries where they face persecution, AND also want to bomb those same countries with no concern for civilians. It’s almost like they don’t care about fighting terrorism and ending injustice, only about killing brown people. Go figure.
@ anarchonist
Indeed.
ETA: I think we had a Sapir-Whorf discussion here some time back (or maybe I’m just mis-remembering that; which would be ironic bearing in mind the subject matter)
Funny. I really don’t remember the entire left embracing, for example, the violent Berkeley protestors. In fact, quite a few leftists condemned their actions. Then again, racists don’t use facts or evidence, so it’s not surprising that they’d forget this.
When did the punk-rock movement start?
@ leftwingfox
In so far as punk had a political ideology (which it sort of didn’t by definition) it was inherently nihilistic. It wasn’t about changing anything. It was just about recognising the futility of 70s life and sticking up two fingers at society. The most hardcore punks were overtly anti-political. Students from local unis who tried to use punk to raise issues were usually met with the eloquent words of Anti-Nowhere League “So fucking what?” (and then beaten up)
Ironically punk itself was nurtured/exploited by arch capitalists like McLaren. But punk recognised the inherent paradox. People may express surprise at John Lydon’s support for Farage and Brexit but that was as natural an evolution as him advertising butter. It’s the great rock and roll swindle. “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated” *wink*
However punk did then feed into the more politically aware (or at least interested) collectives like Crass, and the post punk movements went on to great things.
But ultimately punk was a victim of its own success (not that it would have cared). It accidentally became the new mainstream. People might spout “punk’s not dead” but it was mortally wounded the moment Royalty started wearing Vivian Westwood.
TL;DR – Punk never intended to change anything, but in the end it changed everything.
@leftwingfox
Not sure. But it ended as soon as John Lydon attempted to join in.
Number 1 regarding the hatred although there is no doubt there is hatred there and they enjoy it as weel. I also feel that there is this whole thing about irony. About how they say I’m on so many layers of irony right now etc etc. Of course they beleive it but irony is their excuse when questioned. Or its the layers of irony meme that makes them feel its okay to say these things and make people like this their hero
Number 2 the )))))((((( thing pisses me off to me that is smiles! I would putthat on my texts like )))) have a nice day )))) and these sacks of shit make me look like a nazi now. ? cant we have anything nice?
Regarding punk Johnny rotten is a big let down. But i think he was just really anotherside of the mclaren coin. Sid vicious i feel was proper punk but in the end his own demons turned him into a murderer and a monster 🙁 punk now had a better life with bands like Gogol Bordello and also they have politics that i can agree with. The sex pistols really were a rock and roll swindle from start to end.