So I’m going to appear on the Australian radio show Stop Everything on ABC RN tonight from 8-9 PM Eastern, talking about Gamergate and its legacy. (For those actually living down under, that converts to 10-11 AM Friday morning, Eastern Australian time.) The segment on Gamergate will take up roughly half of the hour-long show, but I’m not sure when in the hour that will be.
You can find the show here; it will be rerun several times and also put up as a podcast.
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Congratulations, that’s awesome! I’m mostly used to hearing about it from a US perspective, so it will be interesting to hear the difference in host perspective. Did you have to travel or was it remotely done?
That’s so cool! Congratulations!!
Has it not begun yet?
I live in the eastern US, and clicked the link, but the episode isnt coming up.
That’s terrific, David! Break a leg and all that. . . .
Listening now. Very good and polite discussion.
Nice one David!
OT, but people need to see this. CW: institutional normalization of literal Nazism.
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https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/justice-department-immigration-judges-white-nationalist
You speak Australian?
Impressive! Is this guy multi talented, or what?
🙂
@Cyborgette
That’s awful. Of course, I almost expect Trump to come out in support of it now, seeing what he’s done the past week.
Trump was always awful, but it seems like the past week or so he has been especially horrible. Talking about buying Greenland, declaring himself King of the Jews, his whole “disloyal Jews” thing, praising Henry Ford, and so forth. Is it just me, or is he really ramping up his shittiness?
I listened to it, though came in a little late. The link takes you to prior recordings, not live, so the recording is now there @Tony. Because I’m in Australia I just used the ABC listen app.
Thanks everyone! I thought it went well. Good questions, good commentary from the other guests as well.
Great interview, David!
@Naglfar
Probably. Looking back at the last few years of this regime I think there’s been a cyclical nature to the shittiness, with periods of less blatant stuff being punctuated by sprints of horrifying parallel nastiness. It’s a kind of psychological blitzkrieg IMO, and very similar to the way a lot of abusers work. All designed to get us off balance.
For a moment of good cheer: David Koch is dead.
No spoilers! I hafta listen after work! X(
Just on a parallel topic, there was a great interview that Matt Binder did with Dale Beran about 8chan, which of course took off after GamerGate, its rise and ultimate fall after El Paso: http://www.doomedpod.com/5fdd737f
One thing I learned in this interview that I didn’t know before is that the same guy, Fredrick “Hot Wheels” Brennan, who founded 8chan, created Wizardchan too. As Matt Binder points out, it’s the same bunch of like four or five guys that create these hideous outlets.
@Naglfar:
…ordering US companies to leave China (which he has no power to do).
…referred to the chairman of the Fed as an “enemy” of the US.
It does feel like the garbage is accelerating. Is it wrong of me to hope that he’s unravelling? I mean, it’s not inconceivable that he could go far enough off the rails that even the Republicans recognise that it’s time to invoke the 25th. Maybe he’ll be seen wandering around sans trousers at the G7 this weekend…
(And yes, I know that Pence would be dangerous)
@Mogie
After almost three years of this bullshit administration I am convinced that Pence would not be as dangerous as Trump. That is not to delegitimize LGBT+ people, who are at risk given his track record on the subject of trying to disenfranchise them of their most fundamental rights, but Trump is flat out endorsing, encouraging and amplifying literal fucking Nazis.
The man has single-handedly managed to shift all the political spectrum so far to the Right that we have actual fucking Nazis, and their enablers and sympathizers, constantly attacking anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the most dangerous elements of their ideology, as if they were the ones going against the establishment.
The biggest problem is that anything Trump says is immediately defended and normalized by Right wing pundits, who have lost all sense of shame. Pence might be a shit human being, but he is not as capable of driving the national discourse as Trump.
@Moggie
Sadly, that seems pretty unlikely. Every move he makes is normalized, not seen as a new low. Republicans love him, and they know they’d never win 2020 without him.
@Diego
As well, the best part about removing Trump from office is that the Republican Party has no other viable 2020 candidates, Pence doesn’t have the same ability to rile crowds and wouldn’t win, and the party would be rather aimless without Trump at the head. After 2 years of following his every move and standing behind everything he says, they essentially just mimic him. If he were impeached or got the 25th Amendment, the Republican Party would have no chance in 2020 and would probably fall apart in the long term.
Sadly, that’s also why Republican senators will never turn on him.
@Naglfar
Speaking of which, I am LOVING the poll numbers published by Fox News for the general election. If even Kamala Harris handily beats him by 6% points, in a poll from a network of straight up White supremacist propaganda, I can only imagine the reckoning that is coming in 2020.
I’m not entirely convinced that there are no other viable Republican candidates. Larry Hogan, for example, is considering running, is actually moderate and not prentend-to-be-moderate-in-order-to-get-elected, and seems to be reasonably popular as Governor of Maryland. (I am not from Maryland, so any correction would be welcome.) I couldn’t say how well he’d do on the national stage, though.
TL;DR follows:
U.S. Politics is a horrible mess. Republicans are trying to cater to nationalists and dominionists on one hand, who demand privilege to themselves above all, and the right to abuse and exclude those whom they deem inferior. On the other hand they’re also catering to libertarians and moderate conservatives, both of whom tend to be single-issue voters, and are increasingly seeing the demands of the other group a bridge too far. The Republican party can’t afford to lose either broad group, yet as the rift grows ever wider, it becomes increasingly difficult to hold on to both. So… in order to retain power and relevancy, they cheat.
Democrats, despite being more popular, have to chase down every last vote possible in order to win, since they won’t cheat and have a difficult time preventing Republican cheating. The problem is, trying to poach moderate conservatives alienates their base, and trying to turn out their base alienates the moderate conservatives, so there’s very little room to expand, and if they run out of new voters, they’ll get steamrolled.
Both parties are on the brink of implosion. This doesn’t necessarily mean the end of that party if it happens, only that the party which doesn’t implode will have nearly free reign to shape the destiny of the US for the early-to-mid 21st century; even if the other party (or its eventual replacement) comes back to power 4-8 years later, some effects will last for the next generation or longer. And the destiny of the US will have some impact on the rest of the world as well.
There are some “third options” which could prevent the implosion of either party, but there may be too much polarization for them to be realistic – and it’s the extreme polarization which likely caused this mess in the first place. So, it’s an existential struggle between two giants. I hope the Democrats win, obviously.
@Diego
I’m actually rather worried about violence against Democratic candidates. When the Republican Party is made up of Nazis advocating genocide and they all have guns, I fear for the safety of candidates like Warren and Harris. Plus there’s the fact that it wouldn’t be below Trump to encourage or turn a blind eye to physical attacks.
@Snowberry
I lived in Maryland for a few years and I still have family there. Larry Hogan is somewhat more moderate, but seeing as the Republicans haven’t even had real debates I still don’t think they could put forth a serious candidate if Trump were out. As well, he would probably be too moderate to gain the growing base of white supremacists that are becoming the majority of the party.
I think the Republicans are somewhat closer to implosion, as they essentially just parrot whatever Trump says and so if he were to be removed from office they’d be rather lost for a bit.
@Diego:
Not to be a downer, but in previous elections here in Israel, Netanyahu had used unfavourable poll numbers as a tool to get more of his crowd out of the house and voting – there’s been election-day spam saying things like “the polls are looking bad, it’s very narrow for the Likud, rush and vote!”, and apparently that has worked, too. While showing weakness seems intuitively like it would hurt one’s chances, when the Us vs. Them mentality is so strong, pushing the “oh crap, They might beat us” button is actually quite useful.
So, that might be what Fox News is going for: rallying up the Republican crowd by pushing that button.
I hope that’s not true, and that 2020 will bring a turnover. But it’s hard to tell, so far ahead.
@Naglfar:
w.r.t. violence against Democratic candidates, see also Gabby Giffords. Which happened after Sarah Palin had posted images saying ‘these are the people we need to defeat’ that included Giffords in crosshairs. Stochastic terrorism (deniably) strikes again.
@Jenora Feuer
I remeber that. Palin then tried to pass the crosshairs off as ‘surveyors marks’
I remember it as well, but to my perpetual shame, I was okay with it.