UPDATE: See update at the end of this post. It’s kind of funny.
By David Futrelle
On Monday, I published a post devoted to the proposition that Alt-rightists and their ideological kin lie about everything — usually badly. As if to prove my point, right-wing trolls from 4chan and Gab have launched a false flag “meme campaign” designed to smear AntiFa activists as supporters of domestic violence against women and children.
The campaign seems to have originated at 4chan — see the graphic at the top of this post — where it was quickly taken up by some of the resident anons. (Click for full-sized graphic; I’ve censored the graphic depictions of bruises.)
The idea quickly found its way to Gab — the famously “censorship-free” Twitter alternative, positively overflowing with Nazis and shitlords — where an alt-right Gabber called @Sperg quickly assembled a vast library of grotesque memes.
Here are a few of the tamer ones, lightly censored to obscure graphic depictions of bruises and other injuries — though they’re still pretty disturbing.
I’ve taken the liberty of writing FAKE on each in big red letters.
Many of the memes were so over-the-top that they could only fool the most gullible — like those advocating the beating of children and elderly women.
It wasn’t long before these memes began popping up on Twitter — some of them posted by alt-rightists and Trump fans, others posted by clearly fake AntiFa accounts. (Or at least clearly fake to you and me, not necessarily to your typical Trump fan.)
It seems incredible to think that anyone could be fooled by such obviously fake memes — particularly since the evidence that this is a false flag is being spread around the hashtag by leftists trying to correct the record. But smear campaigns like this work even if only a small number of those seeing the fake memes think they’re true; they further poison an already poisoned well.
Dirty tricks have always been a part of politics. But for many in and around the alt-right today, politics has become almost nothing but dirty tricks. We need to remember that these are people who lie as casually and compulsively as their hero Donald Trump — and call their hoaxes out every time we spot them.
UPDATE: Naturally, 4chan anons are mad that they’ve been found out, as Robyn Pennacchia details in a lovely post on Wonkette.
@ weird eddie
Thank you for that. How the techniques are still big used today is one area I want to look at.
What I’m especially after is any commentary about how women are portrayed in the manual; do any of the scenarios sound familiar; is it anachronistic or would it still stand up as a contemporary release? All that sort of contextual stuff.
Fishy Goat:
The World at War? The British docu series from the early 70s? Bloody hell, I remember watching that in 73-74. Haven’t thought of it in years, but I’m glad to hear it’s still shown, because I remember it as very good. Thanks for reminding me: I’ll get a boxset!
This and The Ascent of Man were pretty much the pinnacle of British TV docus in the 1970s.
@wwth;
One of the best sources of “Military Channel”-ish info about the USSR in WW2 is a series called “Soviet Storm: WW2 In The East”. It’s a Russian TV series using Soviet footage from the War. It’s available on DVD but I’ve never found it on “U.S. coded” media. I’m not adverse to hacking a foreign coded copy… I just don’t have that skillset. 🙁
It is available on Yoo-Toob, tho.
@ weird eddie
Thanks for that. How the techniques are still used today is one area I want to cover.
I’m especially interested in things like: the depiction of women in the manual; does the manual seem anachronistic or would it still feel contemporary if released today; are any of the scenarios familiar?
That sort of contextual stuff as much as the practical content.
Re: proving the past
Hugh Trevor-Roper’s book “The Last Days of Hitler” is interesting in this regard. It’s best known as a, if not the, definitive account as to what happened in the Fuhrerbunker. However the book also explains why Roper was asked to investigate that, and how he went about it.
The Western allies were concerned to stamp out any Hitler or Nazi mythologising right from the start. They didn’t want a neo Nazi resurgence in 20 years time with people suggesting that Hitler had been literally or metaphorically stabbed in the back by the generals, or that he was secretly alive somewhere, ready to return like a fascist Mahdi.
So it was vital to establish exactly what had transpired, and just as importantly demonstrate the reliability of the evidence for that conclusion.
Roper’s job was made a lot more interesting when Stalin suddenly decided it would suit his purposes to suggest the Western allies had rescued Hitler and he was secretly working for them on planning a second Barbarossa.
@Moggie That’s the one. 🙂 There’s also a colourized version, now. Still better than most that gets shown.
@WWTH I agree with you wholeheartedly. Just the fact that they changed the name from ‘Military Channel’ to ‘American Heroes Channel’ was worthy of a big side eye. 😛
But, god, it’s Nazis all the time there, it seems.
Holly shit I just stumbled across some trying to use this
https://twitter.com/fatlise/status/900098880880168961
its in the comments by some guy calling them self ‘antifaLA’
*sees Canadian flag on post*
*promptly runs out to strangle a telephone pole in disgust*
@ Alan;
My school sponsored a self-defense training course aimed at people who had little or no interest in Martial Arts, but wanted to learn a few techniques which could help them in a dangerous situation. Scenarios such as those in the pamphlet were reenacted, with a context such as “barroom bully”, “overaggressive date”, “street mugger”, etc. The process taught situational awareness, rapid decision making, rapid response and effective technique. The aim of the course was to give the student the tools to escape a situation by discouraging the attacker from continuing.
My function was to act as the attacker, and I can attest, these techniques have lost NONE of their effectiveness! I can also attest that, using properly applied techniques, a 55lb high school freshman can effectively “reason with” a 205lb 3rd year karate student. Perhaps the most difficult part is getting the person to apply the technique like their safety depended on it.
The first image is of a British actress named Anna Friel. This was a picture taken to publicise a domestic violence awareness campaign.
In Britain, Friel is best known for being one half of British soap’s first lesbian kiss (the character also stabbed her abusive father, and buried him under the patio). So, no, I don’t think she’s a Trump voter (she’s been doing a lot of work in the States recently, so I suppose it’s not beyond credibility that she might have taken citizenship – but, no).
These people really are disgusting.
In other news, the Daily Mail has discovered MGTOWs (non-DM link).
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/zmmqzj/the-problem-with-women-today?utm_campaign=global&utm_source=vicefbuk
Something went weirdly wrong with my connection for a while today; I tried to post a comment on Alan’s text a little while back – then everything disappeared – then it reappeared – and now it’s suddenly popped up one page back (it was before you mentioned the question of contemporary-or-not, Alan, but I did slightly mention that by accident anyway). (I recognise one hold-breaking thing from lessons, too)
@ opposablethumbs
re: the gent in the self-defense pamphlet, this is, indeed the esteemable Major Fairbairn
also, regarding the “knee to the pit of the stomach”, I had the same thought.
Wut.
@ wwth;
that was supposed to be 85lb…
Alan–
The efforts made in the final stages of the war and immediately thereafter were undeniably of paramount importance. There’s no telling how different things could have turned out had any of it been carried out sloppily. The Nazis had set about attempting to destroy much of the evidence, but there’s just no way they could have made all those corpses, bones, piles of shoes, just disappear, no matter how motivated they were. Still, evidence is worthless unless it’s collected and put in context.
That’s not to say it went off without a hitch. It’s an unspeakable shame that members of the French Prefecture of Police intentionally destroyed virtually the entire archive of arrests and deportations of Jews that transpired under the Vichy government. As in, all of the records, from all of France, from the beginning of the Vichy period, as I understand it. It seems like you probably know more on this subject than I, please, correct me if I’m wrong. Think of the information, the evidence, the closure, that was robbed from so many people. Despicable.
@ Weird Eddie, ha, yes, one cannot be a-mentioning of the unmentionables :-s
I do like the way it is so down-to-earth and unflappable.
@ opposablethumbs
Thank you ever so much for that. That’s the sort of thing I’m very much after.
I find it interesting that in the “wandering hands” section there’s no suggestion a woman should put up with it or that it’s no big deal. It’s just ‘If someone touches you without your consent you’ll no doubt want to remove their teeth. Here’s how.” Be interested to hear what the women here think.
That is covered in the umbrella bit.
Holding the matchbox means you can strike at full power with less risk of damaging your own hand. Modern MMA gloves have a bar across the palm for the same reason. Disposable lighters are a good substitute for the original technique.
ETA: The Commando manual is equally coy. That uses “fork of the legs”. They do say groin (and even testacles!) in the formerly top secret training films though. Which interestingly are narrated by a young David Niven (uncredited).
Even that’s way too light. I was a late bloomer puberty-wise and was still tiny and young looking my freshman year. I weighed about 115.
Sorry to seem all nitpicky about it. It’s just that there’s a lot of underestimation of what typical body weight for women and girls is supposed to be and it can be dangerous. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read books in which female characters are described as 110 pounds. When I was in my lead up years towards having an eating disorder, I would feel like there was something wrong with me and I must be so fat because I weighed more than that. Even though I was athletic and fairly thin in my late teens, the 140-150 range I hovered in seemed like it had to be fat because the numbers were too high.
the epitome of “British reserve”
Major Fairbairn* was also half the development team for the Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife… a grim tool with a grim job.
*I referred to Major Fairbairn as “esteemable”; this was premature, I know nothing about him except his profession… and given that profession, that may be an ill-advised term to throw out blindly….
Sorry if I’ve already been ninja’d, but I believe the reason they used a white woman instead of a white man in the “meme” is that they want to make anti-fascists seem like they only care about women insofar as they adhere to leftist beliefs and that they, the Nazis, are women’s true allies. Which we all know is 100% projection.
Re: W E Fairbairn
http://ejmas.com/jnc/miscjnc02/Fairbairn1.jpg
(Apologies for the WW2 era language)
http://ejmas.com/jnc/miscjnc02/Fairbairn2.jpg
Technically he was one third. Americans, correctly, refer to it as the Fairbairn-Applegate-Sykes knife; but you know how parochial we are (Rex Applegate was an OSS operative who came to Camp X to study Fairbairn’s techniques.)
No problem, I understand. I wrestled at 118 lbs my sophomore year, and probably would have had to take a deep drink before weigh-in to get there. The youth in question did, indeed weigh 85 lbs, though, as we weighed in before training. They were just extremely slender. I remember this, as they were chosen for the demo specifically due to that weight differential, to illustrate that the weight had less significance than would be expected.
After I grabbed the person’s shirt, a middle finger was sunk an inch into my hand between my first and second metacarpal, then somehow my elbow was bent back way farther than it was designed to bend, and I was on a one-way trip to the floor. As I indicated, convincing the student to APPLY the technique was the hardest part. I had convinced our young Jedi that they weren’t going to hurt me… I was wrong!!
Jeez, just when I thought the alt-Reich couldn’t get any stupider…
That part where the guy accuses antifascists of beating women and children on the vague suspicion that they might be Nazis and then says “We could’ve saved the six GoRillion if we killed baby Hitler” is perhaps the stupidest of all. These are people who regularly deny the Holocaust, use Nazi slogans and gestures, rally under modified Nazi war signs, constantly talk about “preserving the white race” or whatever, and fantasize about starting another Christian crusade… and then in the same breath have the gall to say “oh we’re not really Nazis you’re just an SJW” I swear, these people are the ones keeping me up at night…
This faked-up flyer was posted at altright.com months ago, and apparently shared through PEGIDA Canada before that.
I only bothered to image-search for its origins when I witnessed an acquaintance or two who were apparently willing to take the flyer as genuine after having it shared with them after Charlottesville. My acquaintances agreed on the tells of fakery once I pointed some tells out to them, but what if no one had pointed any out?