We Hunted The Mammoth
One of the most perceptive analyses of Trump and his followers was written more than two decades ago. I’m talking, of course, of Umberto Eco’s oft-discussed essay on what he calls Ur Fascism or Eternal Fascism, his attempt to set forth the central features that define Fascism. I reread it today for the umpteenth time, and was struck again by its eerie prescience.
To say that the Daily Stormer’s Nazi-in-chief Andrew Anglin is excited about Trump’s electoral victory is a bit of an understatement. Anglin, one of the most influential figures in the so-called alt-right, is so overjoyed by Trump’s success that he’s … encouraging his readers to harass depressed Hillary supporters until they kill themselves.Â
When I began this blog six years ago, the Men’s Rights Movement was little more than a curiosity. I’ve watched, with both amusement and alarm, as this small movement has inspired, and ultimately has been eclipsed by, a broader anti-feminist, anti-woman backlash, online and off, driven largely by the same white male rage.
One day before American voters quite possibly elect their first female president (fingers crossed), Trump supporter/Hitler fan Andrew Anglin of the Daily Stormer has come up with a new argument as to why women shouldn’t be allowed to vote or really be permitted to make any decisions at all.
Well, it’s a new argument to me, anyway, so I am hereby awarding Anglin with the prestigious Nazi of the Day award that I just made up.
We haven’t heard much from Breitbart “journalist” and self-proclaimed “supervillain of the Internet” Milo Yiannopoulos since he was booted off of Twitter. Sad!
But he’s kept himself busy with his Dangerous F****t “lecture” tour of American campuses, delivering deliberately offensive speeches in hopes of ginning up controversy and garnering publicity for himself.
I admit I probably write about pickup-artist-turned-alt-right-opinion-haver Heartiste a bit more often than he merits. But his combination of furious bigotry and purple prose is irresistible.
Consider his brilliant new plan to defeat Hillary Clinton by impugning the masculinity of her male supporters.
So I took a look at the Donald Trump Pepe blog today, for the first time in a long time, and the memes on display there seem to be getting darker and cruder and more violent as election day draws closer.
What the hell is going on in Scott Adams’ busy little brain? The Dilbert cartoonist and master persuader is now trying to persuade his readers that Hillary Clinton, not the volatile, easily angered Donald Trump, is the truly dangerous choice for president.
Because she’s been known to drink sometimes. And Trump supposedly doesn’t drink. At least not liquor. Maybe blood. People are saying he drinks blood.
So the Alt-Right and its fellow travelers have a brilliant new strategy to defeat Hillary Clinton — a hashtag (and assorted hashtag-related memes) intended to trick voters, especially women, into thinking that Hillary intends to draft women for an inevitable war with Russia.
Yet another woman has been driven off Twitter by misogynistic fanboy bullies angry that she had invaded their putatively male turf. This time, the arena is comics, and the woman in question is writer Chelsea Cain, a bestselling novelist who brought her feminist sensibility to the Marvel comic book series Mockingbird, which recently came to an end after eight issues.
