I used to moderate one of the chan offshoot IRC channels and the users there would frequently and openly talk about their desires for genocide, largely in a edgy teenager kind of way, but in retrospect they definitely meant it in a racist way.
Christ, I remember people going full blown "Glass the Desert!" back in 2003. Admittedly, that was back when hating Muslims was in vogue and therefore politically acceptable.
What's become socially unacceptable today isn't so much the anti-semitism (plenty of that among Evangelicals since forever) or the fascism (plenty of that since forever in the US) but the anti-Americanism. Adoption of the German fascist flag over the Stars And Bars is relatively new. Defense of foreign-style fascism - whether it embracing Ukranian ultra-nationalists or Erdogan's Turks / Assad's Alloyettes or trying to resurrect Mussolini or Franco or trying to Stan Le Penn or whatever - is very peculiar to this political moment.
There is some kind of formula of very isolated people, people who need to access Tor nodes, anime fans, and some kind of sniff of libertarianism that will just coalesce into an ideological fascist over time if unchecked. Chan boards are full of those types and many had already had their brains melted on BBS’s or usenet groups or somethingawful or seedy IRC channels.
I get the sense that the overwhelming majority of these people are just NEETs. And what's being tapped into isn't any kind of real militarism. Its just angry young people reaching out for anything to grab onto.
Right-Wing Media is heavily financed and distributed. Right-Wing themes dominate video games and social media. This is just what's on offer, so its the slop people consume. And it influences them accordingly.
But it doesn't have to be this way. It isn't simply "the internet melts your brain" so much as it is "the folks running the internet (:cia: ) have filled it with brain worms".
Christ, I remember people going full blown "Glass the Desert!" back in 2003. Admittedly, that was back when hating Muslims was in vogue and therefore politically acceptable.
What's become socially unacceptable today isn't so much the anti-semitism (plenty of that among Evangelicals since forever) or the fascism (plenty of that since forever in the US) but the anti-Americanism. Adoption of the German fascist flag over the Stars And Bars is relatively new. Defense of foreign-style fascism - whether it embracing Ukranian ultra-nationalists or Erdogan's Turks / Assad's Alloyettes or trying to resurrect Mussolini or Franco or trying to Stan Le Penn or whatever - is very peculiar to this political moment.
I get the sense that the overwhelming majority of these people are just NEETs. And what's being tapped into isn't any kind of real militarism. Its just angry young people reaching out for anything to grab onto.
Right-Wing Media is heavily financed and distributed. Right-Wing themes dominate video games and social media. This is just what's on offer, so its the slop people consume. And it influences them accordingly.
But it doesn't have to be this way. It isn't simply "the internet melts your brain" so much as it is "the folks running the internet (:cia: ) have filled it with brain worms".