The goal wasn't to mask their speech (well, not long after they first tried it, at least). It was to make something innocuous into something malicious, have Lefties/Libs point it out, and then proceed to giggle like school children and circlejerk each other over how they got the Left into thinking a hand symbol/cartoon frog/AC unit was racist. It was always terminally-online, selfcongratulatory bullshit.
Really astonishing how effective the Ok sign campaign was. They managed to successfully turn the Ok sign into a Nazi hand signal, and simultaneously make a bunch of politically ignorant Reddit morons think that anyone who called it out was just "getting trolled."
Yeah, this is a correct analysis. I don't know how controversial this is, but I've never once felt afraid or worried about this particular branch of internet fascism, as in the whole 4chan meme lord shit. It's possible the most sedentary, pointless group of reactionaries I've ever witnessed. Even the stuff that escaped their stupid image boards (Qanon, the unite the right rally) ends up backfiring on them because they end up looking like dipshit or killing someone, resulting in no political traction that capital wasn't going to do anyway.
Maybe I'm missing something or I'm being too nonchalant
The fact that the New Zealand mosque shooter was a 4chan guy, and streamed his shooting to great acclaim in /pol/ should be enough to convince you that you're being too nonchalant.
In case it isn't, just know that talk of "shit posting" and chan originated meme shit is all over almost any IRL far right demonstration I've encountered. This shit is not confined to the internet.
The nazi who murdered Heather Heyer was also a 4chan idiot, plus the Qanon dipshit who fired a rifle into comet pingpong. There's these shooters and the idiot demonstrators, but what level is the 4chan stuff doing it and what level is it general societal alienation? Is the 4chan meme stuff the cause or is it just the particular flavor that fascism is taking this time around? This might be me getting too deep in the weeds, but if the whole meme culture didn't exist, wouldn't they have latched onto something else? I don't know if I'm fully convinced the memes are an independent variable, or even that strong of an influence, they're one of many conduits of their energy. Like the Nazis had Wagner and swastikas and stupid obsessions with occultism. They had their own language and symbols. Take that stuff away and they'd find something else until the root cause is crushed.
The thing is, the aesthetics of fascism are a huge part of their power. The red flags, the torchlight marches, the greek statues.
Fascism draws people to it with its symbols.
But also, apart from that, I've heard too many stories of people’s grandparents getting “red pilled” on 4chan, and going from being mainstream republicans to full on fascists (yes, there is a difference) to think that this shit is “just online” or immaterial.
i wouldn't say the stuff is insignificant, but rather, it's all a kind of shallow way of obfuscating their advocacy of ethnic genocide. it's probably still important to recognize their symbols for what they are, but there's some kind of inverse relationship going on where the more they're obsessed with the memes the less I take them seriously
The goal wasn't to mask their speech (well, not long after they first tried it, at least). It was to make something innocuous into something malicious, have Lefties/Libs point it out, and then proceed to giggle like school children and circlejerk each other over how they got the Left into thinking a hand symbol/cartoon frog/AC unit was racist. It was always terminally-online, selfcongratulatory bullshit.
Really astonishing how effective the Ok sign campaign was. They managed to successfully turn the Ok sign into a Nazi hand signal, and simultaneously make a bunch of politically ignorant Reddit morons think that anyone who called it out was just "getting trolled."
Yeah, this is a correct analysis. I don't know how controversial this is, but I've never once felt afraid or worried about this particular branch of internet fascism, as in the whole 4chan meme lord shit. It's possible the most sedentary, pointless group of reactionaries I've ever witnessed. Even the stuff that escaped their stupid image boards (Qanon, the unite the right rally) ends up backfiring on them because they end up looking like dipshit or killing someone, resulting in no political traction that capital wasn't going to do anyway.
Maybe I'm missing something or I'm being too nonchalant
The fact that the New Zealand mosque shooter was a 4chan guy, and streamed his shooting to great acclaim in /pol/ should be enough to convince you that you're being too nonchalant.
In case it isn't, just know that talk of "shit posting" and chan originated meme shit is all over almost any IRL far right demonstration I've encountered. This shit is not confined to the internet.
The nazi who murdered Heather Heyer was also a 4chan idiot, plus the Qanon dipshit who fired a rifle into comet pingpong. There's these shooters and the idiot demonstrators, but what level is the 4chan stuff doing it and what level is it general societal alienation? Is the 4chan meme stuff the cause or is it just the particular flavor that fascism is taking this time around? This might be me getting too deep in the weeds, but if the whole meme culture didn't exist, wouldn't they have latched onto something else? I don't know if I'm fully convinced the memes are an independent variable, or even that strong of an influence, they're one of many conduits of their energy. Like the Nazis had Wagner and swastikas and stupid obsessions with occultism. They had their own language and symbols. Take that stuff away and they'd find something else until the root cause is crushed.
The thing is, the aesthetics of fascism are a huge part of their power. The red flags, the torchlight marches, the greek statues.
Fascism draws people to it with its symbols.
But also, apart from that, I've heard too many stories of people’s grandparents getting “red pilled” on 4chan, and going from being mainstream republicans to full on fascists (yes, there is a difference) to think that this shit is “just online” or immaterial.
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i wouldn't say the stuff is insignificant, but rather, it's all a kind of shallow way of obfuscating their advocacy of ethnic genocide. it's probably still important to recognize their symbols for what they are, but there's some kind of inverse relationship going on where the more they're obsessed with the memes the less I take them seriously