Black Hammer/Gazi Kodzo thread

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > Black Hammer/Gazi Kodzo thread

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Mr. Lobe posted:

Maoists would know all about the perils of cults, what with the various Austin Red Guard type formations and Chairman Bob and so on

i dunno what leads people in a group to start leaving dead animal parts on each other's doorsteps other than fetishizing the worst aspects of the GPCR. but i think it's probably the isolation from the masses and their ultra-left lines so ideological arguments become all-consuming, and personality conflicts (which are inevitable and can in a healthy organization be worked out in a "non-antagonistic" manner) become confused with ideological arguments, or the ideological arguments become a vessel for people to savage other people in the org they don't like for what are actually personal reasons

call it anarchism or maoism or hammerism or whatever-ism but it's a similar kind of thing just with different symbols

# ? Jul 22, 2022 22:41

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# ? Jun 13, 2024 03:42

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
(and can't post for 15 days!)

something else to keep in mind is that �Maoists� aren�t necessarily followers of Mao Zedong Thought. it�s an innovation that started with Gonzalo. the pig heads thing makes sense if you�re prematurely committed to waging a Terror.

# ? Jul 23, 2022 02:38

Sucrose: Dec 9, 2009

I legit think Gazi has studied other cult leaders, and thought he could emulate them far enough to get whatever sex and power he wanted. He probably think�s he�s a loving genius and could get away with it. But it looks like in reality he�s skipped almost straight to the �Go to prison for the rest of your life� part.

But I barely understand how he even got so far, cause everyone and their brother has been calling this group a cult since at least last year. Then again reportedly they�ve mainly been recruiting from the homeless population lately, and updated their �reparations corps� to full members, with Gazi supposedly telling the white members to claim they have Native American ancestry.

eSports Chaebol posted:

it�s cool how everyone knows about him and what he did and he�s such a part of history yet even after watching multiple tv documentaries about him as a kid I didn�t know until a few years ago he was a communist. it�s like he was so Powerful they feared admitting he was a commie would somehow make him more sympathetic instead of smearing the reds

Ah, I know a lot about this. That cult had started as a Christian faith-healing cult, and even after they�d long since moved away from Christianity they kept up the appearances of it in public so that they could fly under the radar and keep their tax exempt status. So I think when the massacre happened people just kind of took them at their word and assumed they had been a cult of the hardcore religious nutball type. I�m guessing the view only really started to change in recent decades when the hundreds of hours of tapes that the FBI had collected from Jonestown came out and revealed that Jim Jones openly mocked religion and the group�s ideology was nothing but his own twisted version of communism. I�m guessing that if the US government had actually known they were hardcore commies at the time they wouldn�t have been so nonchalant about sending a congressman over there to get murked. But who knows.

I think if there�s a lesson to be learned it�s that if you�re gonna try and make a revolutionary new society, there�s power-hungry, sex-hungry psychos out there who are gonna see it as their golden opportunity to seize power, and your movement has to be on guard for that.

# ? Jul 23, 2022 08:09

i say swears online: Mar 4, 2005

Sucrose posted:

and updated their �reparations corps� to full members, with Gazi supposedly telling the white members to claim they have Native American ancestry.

hell yes

# ? Jul 23, 2022 08:19

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

quote:

During "breaks" from this endless work, supported on a starvation diet, the Hammer House residents were subjected to regular, Manson-esque trips in the "space ship," a room where Gazi would loudly berate, love-bomb, and trauma-bond with them for hours, sometimes after group consumption of psychedelic mushrooms.

During a rare recording of one of these sessions, Gazi can be seen manically bouncing through the room, with hands outstretched like a cross; while they rave, with tears streaming down their face, about their messianic status as the "gravedigger of colonialism"; and then pressuring the bewildered Hammers, all seated on the ground, to profess their collective love for Gazi in the form of a cheer.

https://redvoice.news/the-devil-wears-dashikis-pt-3/

# ? Jul 23, 2022 09:11

Pirate Jet: May 2, 2010

Sucrose posted:

I legit think Gazi has studied other cult leaders, and thought he could emulate them far enough to get whatever sex and power he wanted. He probably think�s he�s a loving genius and could get away with it. But it looks like in reality he�s skipped almost straight to the �Go to prison for the rest of your life� part.

But I barely understand how he even got so far, cause everyone and their brother has been calling this group a cult since at least last year. Then again reportedly they�ve mainly been recruiting from the homeless population lately, and updated their �reparations corps� to full members, with Gazi supposedly telling the white members to claim they have Native American ancestry.

I know two people who were heavy into BH in 2019 and 2020 and similar to what people have noted about Joseph Smith in the thread, they started with at least putting up a front about doing mutual aid and direct action and trying to build up a reputation of all the things leftists are �supposed� to do now that electoralism has been proven pretty definitively to be a dead end. I think a lot of their appeal came from that, especially in the wake of the George Floyd stuff. Both of these people are mentally ill white men with leftist tendencies who were desperate to find ways to contribute to the cause. Neither of them are involved anymore, one of them going so far as to say they think the group has been CIA the whole time. So it goes.

The thing that shook them was when BH decided their targets of ire were gonna be Karl Marx and Anne Frank and that they would be teaming up with the Proud Boys - before that their whole thing was just telling people that voting for Bernie Sanders and AOC was dumb and would accomplish less than direct action. so, we know how that turned out.

Of course even back before they decided their main recruiting tool would be controversy, there was a lot of evidence going around that BH leadership was just pocketing donations meant to distribute N95s, food, and other supplies to the disadvantaged, often with the excuse of �the money is going towards the long term goal of building Hammer City which will do so much more good than immediate solutions� when they�d get caught. so it�s not like this was a good group that got corrupted, just a grift that hadn�t bloomed yet.

Pirate Jet has issued a correction as of 12:08 on Jul 23, 2022

# ? Jul 23, 2022 12:06

my bony fealty: Oct 1, 2008

Pirate Jet posted:

IBoth of these people are mentally ill white men with leftist tendencies who were desperate to find ways to contribute to the cause. Neither of them are involved anymore, one of them going so far as to say they think the group has been CIA the whole time. So it goes.

What are their forums usernames?

# ? Jul 23, 2022 12:43

Sucrose: Dec 9, 2009

Pirate Jet posted:

I know two people who were heavy into BH in 2019 and 2020 and similar to what people have noted about Joseph Smith in the thread, they started with at least putting up a front about doing mutual aid and direct action and trying to build up a reputation of all the things leftists are �supposed� to do now that electoralism has been proven pretty definitively to be a dead end. I think a lot of their appeal came from that, especially in the wake of the George Floyd stuff. Both of these people are mentally ill white men with leftist tendencies who were desperate to find ways to contribute to the cause. Neither of them are involved anymore, one of them going so far as to say they think the group has been CIA the whole time. So it goes.

The thing that shook them was when BH decided their targets of ire were gonna be Karl Marx and Anne Frank and that they would be teaming up with the Proud Boys - before that their whole thing was just telling people that voting for Bernie Sanders and AOC was dumb and would accomplish less than direct action. so, we know how that turned out.

Of course even back before they decided their main recruiting tool would be controversy, there was a lot of evidence going around that BH leadership was just pocketing donations meant to distribute N95s, food, and other supplies to the disadvantaged, often with the excuse of �the money is going towards the long term goal of building Hammer City which will do so much more good than immediate solutions� when they�d get caught. so it�s not like this was a good group that got corrupted, just a grift that hadn�t bloomed yet.

IMO the whole �Maybe Gazi is CIA!� thing is ridiculous, and is just more of the black-and-white thinking that cult members fall into. If they can�t figure out that groups like this can attract predatory personalities and diseased minds, rather than the CIA secretly pulling the strings every single time something goes wrong, then they�re just setting themselves up to be misled by the next narcissist who latches on to the social justice movement purely as a means of gaining power.

# ? Jul 23, 2022 18:23

skipmyseashells: Nov 14, 2020

Gazi also preyed on a lot of adopted POC with white parents telling them all their problems in life were because they left their country of origin to come to Babylon

# ? Jul 23, 2022 18:27

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
(and can't post for 15 days!)

Black Hammer doesn't have to be literally CIA to be managed by a national security group like the FBI. If they didn't even have an informant in the org then they're sleeping at the wheel. It doesn't really matter either way if it's true.

# ? Jul 23, 2022 19:27

skipmyseashells: Nov 14, 2020

Also last I heard not even 15% of black hammer was actually black people, it�s like saying the democrats are a black nationalist group because Obama was president

# ? Jul 23, 2022 19:37

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
(and can't post for 15 days!)

The amount of Asian people in Black Hammer is really bewildering. Isn't "The Shark King" Indian?

# ? Jul 23, 2022 19:48

AnimeIsTrash: Jun 30, 2018

Sucrose posted:

IMO the whole �Maybe Gazi is CIA!� thing is ridiculous, and is just more of the black-and-white thinking that cult members fall into. If they can�t figure out that groups like this can attract predatory personalities and diseased minds, rather than the CIA secretly pulling the strings every single time something goes wrong, then they�re just setting themselves up to be misled by the next narcissist who latches on to the social justice movement purely as a means of gaining power.

its fun to call everything an OP though

# ? Jul 23, 2022 19:59

i say swears online: Mar 4, 2005

AnimeIsTrash posted:

its fun to call everything an OP though

agreed, op

# ? Jul 23, 2022 19:59

skipmyseashells: Nov 14, 2020

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

The amount of Asian people in Black Hammer is really bewildering. Isn't "The Shark King" Indian?

lots of asian kids got adopted by yakubian parents

# ? Jul 23, 2022 20:03

Sucrose: Dec 9, 2009

More details: https://www.11alive.com/article/new...89-5f165911e754

# ? Jul 23, 2022 20:14

i say swears online: Mar 4, 2005

quote:

They do identify Rushin as the individual who was earlier reported walking a dog around the Woodbyne Subdivision and then allegedly ran off "when questioned about a kidnapping call we received from the address he lives at."

sounds about right

# ? Jul 23, 2022 20:26

my bony fealty: Oct 1, 2008

The Hammer City story is so incredible

quote:

According to Savvy, she suffered frostbite from exposure to the night air, due to lack of firewood and adequate camping equipment. But her worst affliction was due to the unresearched suggestion, approved by Gazi, that the Hammers substitute mugwort for firewood.

Savvy was told that mugwort had spiritual properties, that burning it would induce powerful dreams, according to unspecified Indigenous medical knowledge. Instead, the Hammers became frighteningly sick from handling and inhaling fumes from the poisonous plant, which contains thujone, a chemical compound that is toxic in high doses.

# ? Jul 23, 2022 20:32

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
(and can't post for 15 days!)

skipmyseashells posted:

lots of asian kids got adopted by yakubian parents

that�s Tricknology 101

# ? Jul 23, 2022 20:41

uber_stoat: Jan 21, 2001; Pillbug

my bony fealty posted:

The Hammer City story is so incredible

even here the pale fingers of the Yakubian devil grasp and claw... and at his right hand the Green Fairy.

# ? Jul 23, 2022 20:49

animist: Aug 28, 2018

Sucrose posted:

Then again reportedly they’ve mainly been recruiting from the homeless population lately, and updated their “reparations corps” to full members, with Gazi supposedly telling the white members to claim they have Native American ancestry.

incredible

# ? Jul 23, 2022 22:53

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Pirate Jet posted:

I know two people who were heavy into BH in 2019 and 2020 and similar to what people have noted about Joseph Smith in the thread, they started with at least putting up a front about doing mutual aid and direct action and trying to build up a reputation of all the things leftists are �supposed� to do now that electoralism has been proven pretty definitively to be a dead end. I think a lot of their appeal came from that, especially in the wake of the George Floyd stuff. Both of these people are mentally ill white men with leftist tendencies who were desperate to find ways to contribute to the cause. Neither of them are involved anymore, one of them going so far as to say they think the group has been CIA the whole time. So it goes.

The thing that shook them was when BH decided their targets of ire were gonna be Karl Marx and Anne Frank and that they would be teaming up with the Proud Boys - before that their whole thing was just telling people that voting for Bernie Sanders and AOC was dumb and would accomplish less than direct action. so, we know how that turned out.

i think it's noteworthy that this group went in an increasingly self-destructive direction at the same time there is more energy in the labor movement, like opposite forces. that gus hall article "crisis of petit-bourgeois radicalism" talked about a similar thing in 1970 when there is a lot of energy in social and political movements and a lot of people move into action, and various "bubbles" appear on the surface of it. some of these bubbles disappear but others turn into (as he described) "petty-bourgeois radical expressions," which results from frustration. it has its own inner logic which does overly radical things that the masses don't respond to, which then become "proof" you can't win over the masses, which is the rationalization for the small group oriented around some guru.

his point was that this kind of thing goes into decline as the more basic and working-class movements rise up, which i think in the 1970s would've been in the increasing intensity of work stoppages, strikes, etc. of course the whole thing fell apart and reagan came into power but i thought that was interesting.

# ? Jul 23, 2022 23:12

Pirate Jet: May 2, 2010

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

i think it's noteworthy that this group went in an increasingly self-destructive direction at the same time there is more energy in the labor movement, like opposite forces. that gus hall article "crisis of petit-bourgeois radicalism" talked about a similar thing in 1970 when there is a lot of energy in social and political movements and a lot of people move into action, and various "bubbles" appear on the surface of it. some of these bubbles disappear but others turn into (as he described) "petty-bourgeois radical expressions," which results from frustration. it has its own inner logic which does overly radical things that the masses don't respond to, which then become "proof" you can't win over the masses, which is the rationalization for the small group oriented around some guru.

his point was that this kind of thing goes into decline as the more basic and working-class movements rise up, which i think in the 1970s would've been in the increasing intensity of work stoppages, strikes, etc. of course the whole thing fell apart and reagan came into power but i thought that was interesting.

this would make a lot of sense - because of these two guys (who I want to stress are not friends of mine, I just know them) I kept fairly close tabs on the group and the decision to become controversy elementals seemed very much like a calculated turn. to begin with if you weren�t looking closely at the discussions around the group during their rise in 2019 and early 2020, they just looked like any other mutual aid group. I didn�t even know who gazi was or what their influence over the group was until that meeting TrueAnon covered on Twitter.

# ? Jul 24, 2022 00:55

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
(and can't post for 15 days!)

Gazi was already infamous for being a freak and an antisocial agitator online long before Black Hammer ever even got off the ground. He used to be noteworthy for harassing LGBTQ events.

# ? Jul 24, 2022 01:21

Mr. Lobe: Feb 23, 2007; ... Dry bones...

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

Gazi was already infamous for being a freak and an antisocial agitator online long before Black Hammer ever even got off the ground. He used to be noteworthy for harassing LGBTQ events.

What kind of harassment?

# ? Jul 24, 2022 01:26

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Pirate Jet posted:

this would make a lot of sense - because of these two guys (who I want to stress are not friends of mine, I just know them) I kept fairly close tabs on the group and the decision to become controversy elementals seemed very much like a calculated turn. to begin with if you weren�t looking closely at the discussions around the group during their rise in 2019 and early 2020, they just looked like any other mutual aid group. I didn�t even know who gazi was or what their influence over the group was until that meeting TrueAnon covered on Twitter.

yeah. i'll add that hall's point also wasn't that individuals who get involved in these groups are bad or that their ideas are necessarily wrong in the abstract (okay, gazi is bad but the people he preyed on could be dedicated and sincere individuals). it's more like a phenomena that crops up when people who have been moved into a struggle become frustrated. like they've suffered a defeat and are trying to cope with it. or the masses who they're trying to reach don't respond as quickly as they want ("that's why we need direct action!!!") and then it turns into an attempt to bypass reality itself

# ? Jul 24, 2022 01:33

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
(and can't post for 15 days!)

Mr. Lobe posted:

What kind of harassment?

He'd show up to parades or meetups to harass white people specifically, which is fair enough if that's where your sympathies lie but that's why I call him an antisocial agitator. He's an entrepreneur at creating divisions where there ought not to be, so that his sympathizers view him as the agent of their own empowerment.

# ? Jul 24, 2022 02:57

Sucrose: Dec 9, 2009

I can�t imagine why any decent person would have stuck with the group after the antisemitic Anne Frank stuff.

# ? Jul 24, 2022 04:45

Mr. Lobe: Feb 23, 2007; ... Dry bones...

Sucrose posted:

I can’t imagine why any decent person would have stuck with the group after the antisemitic Anne Frank stuff.

Do people join cults for irony fun and then get wrapped in on it for real?

# ? Jul 24, 2022 04:53

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
(and can't post for 15 days!)

Let's say there's a guy who brings you in from the cold. He feeds you, clothes you, says he loves you. He is giving you power. When he says Anne Frank was a colonizer, how easy do you think it would be to maintain ironic distance?

Cults work because they're filling the vacuum of community that capitalism has left in its wake. If you can guarantee someone's material and social needs, then they can also be weaponized. You can lord those needs over them. Every day we fail to organize a real communist party that can reconstruct political community, we leave people prey to this spiritual exploitation.

# ? Jul 24, 2022 05:41

Mr. Lobe: Feb 23, 2007; ... Dry bones...

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

Let's say there's a guy who brings you in from the cold. He feeds you, clothes you, says he loves you. He is giving you power. When he says Anne Frank was a colonizer, how easy do you think it would be to maintain ironic distance?

Cults work because they're filling the vacuum of community that capitalism has left in its wake. If you can guarantee someone's material and social needs, then they can also be weaponized. You can lord those needs over them. Every day we fail to organize a real communist party that can reconstruct political community, we leave people prey to this spiritual exploitation.

The IWW referring to the Salvation Army as the Starvation Army comes to mind

They were predatory and opportunistic strikebreakers

# ? Jul 24, 2022 06:09

Sucrose: Dec 9, 2009

Mr. Lobe posted:

Do people join cults for irony fun and then get wrapped in on it for real?

Well the typical cult thing is to try and present a benign outer layer to new recruits, who only see the cult�s inner craziness once they�re already in too deep.

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

Let's say there's a guy who brings you in from the cold. He feeds you, clothes you, says he loves you. He is giving you power. When he says Anne Frank was a colonizer, how easy do you think it would be to maintain ironic distance?

Cults work because they're filling the vacuum of community that capitalism has left in its wake. If you can guarantee someone's material and social needs, then they can also be weaponized. You can lord those needs over them. Every day we fail to organize a real communist party that can reconstruct political community, we leave people prey to this spiritual exploitation.

But you�re right this is totally different for desperate and homeless people, who don�t have the luxury of quibbling over ideological qualms with a group that�s offering to take them in and provide them with food and shelter and companionship. I was more expressing disbelief with the leftist-types who apparently went and sought this group out.

Edit: And even though he was reportedly one of the perpetrators, I still have to see the teenager who died as being a victim of the cult. He was apparently homeless when Black Hammer took him in, and he was only 18 years old. Gazi reportedly ordered him and another underling to lock two other members in the garage, and then Gazi proceeded to rape one of the two. When the police got there and were arresting everybody maybe this 18 year old killed himself because he figured that his life was now totally screwed. IMO from the sounds of things his blood is on Gazi�s hands. Hopefully he goes to prison for decades.

Sucrose has issued a correction as of 09:38 on Jul 24, 2022

# ? Jul 24, 2022 09:07