By David Futrelle
It’s not altogether surprising to see a writer at the far-right internet shitsheet Return of Kings crying “censorship” in the case of The Daily Stormer, the notorious neo-Nazi hate site that has been banished to the so-called Dark Web.
What is a little surprising is the language Return of Kings contributor “Jimbo Jones” used in his defense of the neo-Nazi site. “Years from now, ” Jimbo wrote in a post yesterday, “the ‘Unite the Right’ event in Charlottesville, Virginia may be remembered—oh so ironically—as a digital rights Kristallnacht” ushering in a new era of internet censorship.
Wait, what?
Kristallnacht (“The Night of Broken Glass”) refers, of course, to the Nazi-orchestrated orgy of anti-Jewish violence in November 1938 that destroyed thousands of Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues and led to the deaths of hundreds of German Jews. To use the terms to describe the booting of a neo-Nazi site from the public internet is, well, pretty fucking egregious.
Jimbo also repurposes “First they came,” that famous poem from German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller lamenting the cowardice of German intellectuals in the face of Hitler, in his defense of the neo-Nazi site. Classy, dude.
Similarly egregious is Jimbo’s attempt to disguise the truly vile nature of The Daily Stormer, which he described as
a satirical website that the mainstream media labels as “neo-Nazi,” “anti-semitic” and “white supremacist,” among other arbitrary, self-serving descriptors .. .
Not even close. The writers and commenters at The Daily Stormer may make a lot of obnoxious jokes, but there is nothing satirical about the site; it’s run by a self-described neo-Nazi who is sincere in his hatred of Jews and people of color as Hitler himself was. Judging from their comments, most of his readers are equally sincere in their hatreds. Nothing ironic about these Nazis.
Indeed, the Daily Stormer sent a contingent to the “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville, with one of the site’s regular contributors telling Vice News that the rally
means we are showing to this parasitic class of anti-white vermin that this is our country, it was built by our forefathers, and it will remain our country … At some point, we will have enough power that we will clean them from our streets forever! That which is degenerate in white countries will be removed!
Hilarious, right?
Ironically, most hardcore alt-right neo-Nazis — like the kind who read and write The Daily Stormer — consider Return of Kings publisher Roosh Valizadeh, who is of Persian and Armenian descent, one of those “parasites,” and would boot him from their utopian white ethnostate even more quickly than The Daily Stormer was booted off the public internet after Charlottesville. That is, if they didn’t simply kill him outright.
At this point my Irony Meter has been broken so many times I think it’s probably beyond repair.
I’ve seen sexist men claim they’re the victims of metaphorical witch hunts. I’ve seen racists claim they’re being metaphorically lynched. I’ve seen white supremacists claim to be victims of metaphorical genocide.
This is the first time I’ve seen a Nazi sympathizer claim Nazis are victims of a metaphorical Krystallnacht.
Funny isn’t it, how people who belong to the classes who perpetrated these actual horrors like to claim to be the victims of them?
Metaphorically.
They can’t think of anything worse than what their predecessors did. They have no idea what living in actual fear of actual violence is. So anything the don’t like must be just as bad and they must be the “real” victims.
There must be a name for this, more specific than “projection”. Is there a name for the deep, desperate desire to distance yourself so far from the reality of your people’s history and the privilege it gave you that you decide you are the victim of the thing you want to deny?
I took a quick look online and I saw several psychology articles and all of them labeled it projection. I call it ridiculous and “wearing blinders”, but that’s me.
I’d hate to resurrected an old thread, but I have to point this out. The Daily Stormer is named after the German newspaper called the Der Stürmer. It is most famous for publishing an front page article called “Ist die Judenfrage gelöst?”
Translation: Is the Jewish question solved?