By David Futrelle
From Twitter, some thoughts about the horrific tragedy yesterday in Christchurch — and just who is responsible for creating the toxic environment in which this sort of murderous right-wing Islamophobic extremism thrives.
At some point I hope to have regular posts up on this horrendous subject but right now I just can’t.
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I just posted and then swiftly deleted a post on Facebook criticising Pewdiepie as irresponsible. I did not realise how defensive his fans are about him, they seem to see him through rose coloured glasses. He actively tried to court an alt-right audience, and prompted his impressionable young followers to sub to conspiracy sites. He has to face up to this, as a global influencer who YouTube will never ban because he makes them too much money.
@Virgin Mary
Not surprising they went after you with such zeal. Society nowadays teach us that our entire identity is based on what you like or dislike, so their little youtube celebrity being called out for Nazi pandering feels like a personal attack on them. It’s like they’re Nazi by association.
And whilst many of them are too naive to realize how Nazi conspiracies and propaganda winds its way through your head, pandering to your lowest impulses; it should be noted that PewDiePie knows exactly what he’s doing and should be held accountable, as you say.
Same holds true for every single internet personality that spreads Nazi propaganda.
@Virgin Mary
Well, his fans are young. Although, when I was that young, I don’t recall anybody I was that defensive about. But as Diego Duarte said, brand identity is what it’s all about. And that I did do when I was that young (being a computer nerd, it was all about being a big-boy PC user versus the Mac plug-and-play plebs).
But that’s the thing about a personal brand: it doesn’t get you anywhere to admit that you went too far and take personal ownership. In fact, your brand’s bottom-line demands that you exploit the spectacle whenever it occurs, so there’s all the incentive in the world to keep stirring the pot.
re: pyew-dee-cowflop
He knows exactly what he’s doing, and I believe his fan club does too. There’s a sense when using the internet that the whole world is listening (not “can listen”, but “IS listening”), and that there are no consequences. Yootoob will not ban anyone in the igno-right unless it is unavoidable. They are looking for an algorithm to flag “content which at sometime in the future will get us in trouble” and I’m afraid the web programming culture in place today is incapable of accepting the impossibility of that algorithm being developed. The igno-right is the perfect client for Big Web Tech, because they not only use the service, but they click and comment on everything, and subscribe to everything remotely in line with their viewpoint. They are the ultimate consumers of click-bait.
Big Web Tech wants to court that market, but they don’t want the pushback that comes with it. They can’t use trained content screeners because they don’t want to pay them. The igno-right will continue to post more violent content as long as they’re able to do so, and no one will stop them. When they “cross the line” (a line which is ever moving to the right), the content gets taken down, but it’s already been shared 10 million times.
In the words of Air Chief Marshall Hugh Dowding, “we are fighting for survival… and losing.”
…and, for those racist fucks who thought the victims of the Christchurch shootings weren’t real New Zealanders, kids who wanted to remember two of the victims who went to school with them gathered up more kids from schools across the Christchurch metro area and performed the Haka in their memory. Although it is true that the Haka is often performed only by men, apparently the girls weren’t having any of that sexism stuff and joined in the anti-violence, anti-white supremacy, pro-remembering friends Haka as well.
In entirely unrelated news, I am not crying AT ALL you booboo heads. YOU’RE THE CRYING. snif.
and what do you know, apparently I underestimated things. Turns out there are a LOT of people performing Haka to resist this latest act of white supremacy (as it has been used to resist many acts of white supremacy before). The student video is just the one that’s gotten the most views. Other haka that got posted to youtube include one said to be by a “biker gang” though I think it’s probably more like a “motorcycle club”. That one is here.
@ Rabid Rabbit
That isn’t a good thing. Representing himself provides the greatest opportunity to use the court as a soap box for white supremacist rhetoric. Could be wrong but there doesn’t appear to be anything the Crown or the Ministry of Justice can do about this.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/03/18/new-zealand-shooter-represent-court-former-lawyer-says-appears/
@Bryce:
If the prosecution moves, they might be able to close the trial to media. This is actually pretty easy to accomplish in Australia, much harder in Canada (but possible) where I live, but i don’t know NZ law on this point at all. Usually it’s much easier for proceedings in criminal cases in common law jurisdictions (UK and its former colonies that inherited the basics of its legal system) to be closed at the request of the defendant, not the prosecutor, which is obviously not going to happen in this case. But requests from prosecutors can be successful in some jurisdictions. I just don’t know if NZ is one of them.
I’m pretty sure I have a stalker guys.
<3 Bookworm in hijab & New Zealand commenters.
I heard about this on the radio news Friday morning. I couldn't bring myself to check this site because I knew there would be a post about it.
That day I had two hours off to go to the March 15 climate protest in Montreal and I found myself thinking, "Well, what's the point of saving humanity if we just keep killing each other?"
(I know. Junior-high level nihilism, even stupider than the overly cheery personality I can have sometimes. But that's how I felt.)
I made myself go and it was encouraging to see so many people there – students, teachers, families with kids, and more. Here’s a story about it, with pictures: https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/picketing-montreal-students-force-some-schools-to-close-ahead-of-climate-change-march
@Lainy – That sounds scary. 🙁 What’s been happening, if you don’t mind sharing that?
(Sorry I couldn’t add that to the other post. The edit window timed out.)
@epitome
I have a co worker and I thought what he had just been a crush. But I made it clear to him that I’m engaged to a man I love very much, but he’s crossed boundaries now and I just learned something really scary. About 4 days ago some yellow tulips were delivered to my apartment and I thought they were from my fiancé because yellow tulips are my favorite flowers and I thought it was from him because he knew I had been stressed out about classes. Because of the 15 hour time differences we don’t talk all the time so when I did get on the phone with him I thanked him for the flowers and he told me he didn’t send me any flowers. Tonight when I went to my car after work I found the same tulip under my windshield whipper and my co worker was in the parking lot watching me as he smoked a cigerate. I threw the flower on the ground while he was watching me and hurried home.
He’s been getting really creepy lately. But the teams director told me to just ignore him and not edge him on because his family owns the dance studio I work at. I can’t just quite because I need this job.
@Lainy
Report it to the police as a precaution. Get a written report. You don’t have to inform your teams director you did it. That way, if anything did happen, the police have a record he was a problem/know where to look first.
People will tell you that’s an overreaction and don’t rock the boat, blah blah blah. To that I say, safety first. And also, why should his right to creep just because his family owns a business outweigh your right to not be creeped upon?
Hi!
I’ve been following this blog for years now, but I’ve finally decided to stop lurking when I saw this thread.
I was both sad and scared reading about the shooting, not only due to the recent increase in right wing violence but also because as someone living in Sweden it turns my stomach seeing the shooter use the death of a Swedish girl to justify the killings, because to people like him, white women aren’t any more human than the muslims, they are just a resource to defend against “the evil foreign horde”, and everything they criticize muslim fundamentalists of doing (and they lump all muslims in with fanatics and fundamentalists), the white supremacists wish they could do to white women.
The worst part is all the lies and fake news spread around Sweden, and no one actually talk about what the majority of Swedish women want, because most women here don’t want white supremacists to dictate their lives and aren’t more afraid of immigrants than Swedish men, but their opinions doesn’t matter to these types. The scariest part is that several people I know who are Swedes have started buying into this as well, blaming muslim immigrants on all sexual violence, and it worries me greatly because I feel like I have a harder and harder time finding people to turn to with my fears.
@ lainy & lurker
I’d second that advice. Also, keep a contemporaneous record of any incidents. Time date place what happens etc.
I’m not sure what jurisdiction you’re in, but it occurs to me that some general advice on obtaining restraining orders/injunctions/non molestation orders etc might be handy for some of our English Mammotheers.
Is that anything anyone would find useful? If so, I’ll bash something out.
My thoughts go out to all those effected by this outrage. I’m sad and angry, not much brainpower left over for digging deep into his motivations but I’m glad people are exposing this to sunlight – the best disinfectant. My concern has been that those on the right will try and shrug it off as just being an 8chan thing when it is clearly a toxic spectrum and a lot of those tweets show people calling out those normalising some of this nonsense in the mainstream.
@Lainy. You might want to suggest your boss run that pathetic excuse passed his lawyer or an HR as I’d imagine they’d have some stern words for him (I’m assuming they’re a he, adjust the following accordingly). However, you’ve highlighted this and he has dropped the ball so I can see why you might not want to keep hammering away at this particular stuck nail. Contacting the police is a good idea but you might also want to speak to a friendly layer who can send your boss a letter detailing all the ways he is wrong, negligent and leaving the organisation open to all sorts of legal issues if this isn’t addressed – not a threat that you’d sue but he clearly needs to know quite how legally exposed he is. If you don’t know one I’m sure anti-stalking charities can find a lawyer for you in your jurisdiction and they’d probably be prepared to work pro bono.
Keep yourself safe in the meantime.
@Alan I doubt it’d ever be a wasted effort.
I’m going to try with a police report but I can already see it not going over well. Everyone I’ve talked to already has basically said “oh so the boy just got you some flowers, stared at you and told you your pretty and you want to make a big deal out of it” and I’m like first of all he’s 23 years old. He’s an adult man not a boy, I’m not a girl, he shouldn’t know where I live or that my favorite flower is yellow tulips. He’s also been leaving like “love” notes in my bag which means he’s going through my things. (it’s in a locker by the way, unless he’s coming into the girls restroom and putting them in there when it’s outside the stall he’s going into my locker) I can’t prove anything and everyone higher up then me has been treating it like it’s nothing. I’m tempted to give them my fiancé’s and parents contact info and tell them they can call my love ones after he kills me then.
On the previous thread it was said that the mainstream media might not be well placed to address this. I think Bellingcat’s analysis is probably the best so far and describes the manifesto as a trap for unwary journalists:
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/rest-of-world/2019/03/15/shitposting-inspirational-terrorism-and-the-christchurch-mosque-massacre/
Also want to add that these flowers didn’t go to the front desk of my apartment complex, no they went to my actually apartment. Like had a flower delivery guy knocking on my door which is why I thought it was from my fiancé.
@Lainy, that’s terrifying. Stay safe my duck. Heck, Finding somewhere safe that he doesn’t know about to crash at for awhile may be a good idea too. Not that you should go there now, but that you should find a place and be ready to go there instead of home – if you find out that stalkerbro is waiting for you at your home one day or something.
N’th’ing the suggestion to contact the police and get a record of events going, too. This guy sounds like someone who doesn’t hear the word no very well. Also want to suggest job-hunting for someplace else, too; as much as you’re able to of course.
Stay safe <3
@Lainy I’m disappointed that the reaction from people you’ve told has been so dismissive. He clearly left behaviour that could be defined as “romantic” long behind and his behaviour sounds very manipulative to the point where it sounds like he is enjoying your discomfort.
If a friend or family member told me that was happening I’d be concerned for their safety and would do what I could to ensure they’re safe and are taken seriously. It might all peter out and come to nothing but I wouldn’t want to rely on “might”. The police should treat this seriously, if only because they’ve so badly dropped the ball in the past. If you speak to someone from an anti-stalking charity they will be better placed to identify all the red flags and help you frame the case properly when you do go and see the police.
Good luck.
@Scildfreja
You know if I knew what I was doing that attracted such creepy guys in my life I would stop it. I think it’s just because I’m short and tiny, makes me an easy target or something. Ever since my assault when I was a teenager and I started to read this blog, I read all the things the creepy type of men complain about on women and tried to adapt some of those things into my look. Short hair, unnatural dyed colors, a few tattoos, stuff like that but it doesn’t seem to work very well.
@all
I’m sorry for bring this up at all. I was waiting for an open thread to maybe talk about some of the creepy stuff my co-worker was doing and then the open thread was about the shooting and my problems seemed so small compared to it. If I derailed anything I’m sorry and I formly apologize to Bookworm in a Hijab if I did. The horrific crimes committed against Muslim people are far greater then anything I could be dealing with and I really hope I didn’t take away from that.
@Lainy We just hope that you will be safe. <3
@Lainy – Don’t worry about being off-topic. Your safety is important. Besides what everyone else has mentioned, do you have a lock you can put on your locker at work? It’s worrying that this guy has gone in there to leave notes.