Let's Read "Kill All Normies" by Angela Nagle

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > Let's Read "Kill All Normies" by Angela Nagle

Stabbatical: Sep 15, 2011

an actual dog posted:

"Would there be an alt-right without the tumblr left?" is the big question though, and Nagle doesn't have a compelling answer.

Actually, I think she would and I think she'd say the answer is yes. The alt-right emerges from 4chan/reddit/other places in opposition to what it percieves as the mainstream. If tumblr alone didn't exist, with all other things the same, they'd have wound up with similar concerns and issues because their circumstances (extremely online and irony poisoned plus few economic and IRL social prospects) would be the same. Maybe they'd be a tad less hostile or get into fewer online culture wars as there maybe less organised opposition for them to constantly 'fight', but they'd still be there. Nagel never says tumblr alone is the sole thing they're reacting against. They want to freak out everyone they think is 'normal' by any means.

The term 'tumblr-liberalism' is short hand for a hell of a lot, and while it's a better term than 'SJW's or what have you, it may still be too broad.

# ? Jul 18, 2017 12:55

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# ? May 8, 2024 21:30

Helsing: Aug 23, 2003; DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU JOE BIDEN

Chapter One: The leaderless digital counter-revolution

Nagle�s opening chapter focuses on how the early, utopian (and either implicitly or explicitly progressive) dreams of the early 2010s have been upended by the emergence of the alt-right. I think this is one of the principle criticisms she deploys against left-wing theorizing on the significance of the internet � that it lazily takes for granted that new technology was, according to one account she quotes from, �breaking down traditional social barriers of status, class, power, wealth and geography, replacing them with an ethos of collaboration and transparency�.

quote:

It is worth thinking back now to the early 2010s, when cyberutopianism had its biggest resurgence since the 90s, before the dot-com bubble burst. This time it emerged in response to a series of political events around the world from the Arab Spring to the Occupy movement to new politicized hacker movements. Anonymous, Wikileaks and public-square mass protests in Spain and across the Middle East were getting huge coverage in the news, causing a flurry of opinion and analysis pieces about their profound significance. All of these events were being attributed to the rise of social media and characterized as a new leaderless form of digital revolution. The hyperbole and hubris of the moment should have been enough to make anyone skeptical, but most on the left were swept up in the excitement as images of vast crowds in public squares appeared on social media and the in the mainstream media.

This is a consistent them in Nagle�s account of the alt-right: how the left fundamentally misunderstands the significance of social developments over the last several decades. She�s not assigning blame for actually causing the emergence of the alt-right but she does think the left lazily assumed that the internet and its related social media technologies were inherently biased in a progressive direction.

In later chapters she expands on this critique and argues that after World War II the left adopted a new ethos which celebrated the artistic and political value of transgression for its own sake. Nagle will repeatedly point to this strong cultural bias in favour of transgression as one of the reasons that some left-wing cultural commentators could mistake the anarchic and pornographic chan culture of the early 2010s for some kind of progressive incubator.

quote:

But this fervor died down in just a few short years. The Egyptian revolution led to something worse � the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood. Islamists ran riot in the streets and stories of rapes in the very public square that had shortly before held so much hope came to light. Soon the military dictatorship swept back into power. The Occupy Wall Street demonstrators remained literally aimless and were eventually forced out of public property by police, camp by camp. By the end of 2013, a public-square style movement took place in Ukraine, which started with many of the same scenes of romanticized people-power in the public square. However this time the leaderless network narrative, which was already starting to look a little less convincing, was left aside because the protests quickly erupted into fascist mob rule.

In many of the events that were considered part of the leaderless digital revolution narrative, like Occupy Wall Street and the public-square protests in Spain, in which thousands occupied the Puerta del Sol, the Guy Fawkes mask was adopted as a central symbol. But the online origins of the mask and the politically fungible sensibilities that can be traced back through the mask should have offered a clue that another very different variety of leaderless online movement had potential to brew.

I think that this is a more substantive critique from Nagle than the idea that �tumblr-liberalism� directly caused the alt-right to emerge. Instead she blames left-leaning cultural commentators for rushing to embrace the zeitgeist of the early 2010s without recognizing that the political incoherence of these movements made them ideal for co-optation by the right.

quote:

After the election of Trump, everyone wanted to know about a new online right-wing movement whose memetic aesthetics seemed to have infiltrated sites from the popular The Donald subreddit to mainstream Internet-culture. In the leader-up to the election, the most famous common imagery was of Pepe the Frog. The name given by the press to this mix of rightist online phenomena including everything form Mil to 4chan to neo-Nzi sites was the �alt-right�. In its strictest definition though, as an army of Internet pedants quickly pointed out, the alt-right term was used in its own online cirlces to include only a new wave of overtly white segregationist and white nationalist movements and subcultures, typified by spokespeople like Richard Spencer, who has called for a US white ethno-state and a pan-naitonal white Empire modeled on some approximation of the Roman Empire. The movement�s media also includes Scottish video blogger Millenial Woes, Red Ice, sites like Radix and the long-form and book publishers Counter Currents.

At this point Nagle does a survey of various stars within the alt-right firmament: Kevin B MacDonal of the Occidental Observer, Mencius Moldbug and Nick Land, as well as an overview of some persistent obsessions these figures have such as �IQ, European demographic and civilizational decline, cultural decadence, cultural Marxism, anti-egalitarianism and Islamification�. Most of all, however, the focus of the alt-right is on �creating an alternative to the right-wing conservative establishment, who they dismiss as �cuckservatives� for their soft Christian passivity and for metaphorically cuckholding their womenfolk/nation/race to the non-white foreign invader.�

quote:

But of course what we call the alt-right today could never have had any connection to the mainstream and to a new generation of young people if it only came in the form of lengthy treatises on obscure blogs. It was the image- and humor-based culture of the irreverent meme factory of 4chan and later 8chan that gave the alt-right its youthful energy, with its transgression and hacker tactics. The Guy Fawkes mask used in the protests in 2011 was a reference to Anonymous, which took its name, leaderless anticelebrity ethic and networked style from the chaotic anonymous style of 4chan. V for Vendetta, which the Guy Fawkes mask is taken from, and the �dark age of comic books� influenced the aesthetic sensibilities of this broad online culture.

While commentators praised the rejection of the right-left divide among a new wave of Internet-centric protest in the early 2010s, the political rootlessness of this networked, leaderless Internet-centric politics now seems a little less worthy of uncritical celebration. Anonymous activities have over the years leaned incoherently to the libertarian left and right, and everything inbetween, singling out everyone from Justin Bieber fans to feminists, fascists, cybersecurity specialists, and engaged in the kind of pervert-exposing vigilantism that blue-collar tabloid readers have long been mocked for.

To understand the seemingly contradictory politics of 4chan, Anonymous and its relationship to the alt-right, it is important to remember that the gradual right-wing turn in chan culture centered around the politics board /pol/, as compared to the less overtly political but always extreme �random� board /b/. Along the way left-leaning �moral fags� who had gravitated towards AnonOps IRCs suffered from a degree of state spying and repression during the height of Anonymous�s public profile from around 2010 to 2012. This absence of the more libertarian left-leaning element within chan culture created a vacuum in the image boards that the rightist side of the culture was able to fill with their expert style of anti-PC shock humor memes.

At this point Nagle name checks Chris Poole (moot) briefly (for the first and last time) references �Something Awful� as influencing the style of 4chan. She doesn�t really offer details but if you ever wanted to see the words �Anime Death Tentacle Rape Whorehouse� in print then this book is probably your only chance.

She describes how the early culture of 4chan evolved and took influence from iconic films like Fight Club and The Matrix and how �the culture of the site was not only deeply and shockingly misogynist, but also self-deprecating in its own self-mockery of nerdish �beta� male identity��. She describes examples of doxing and harassment emerging from 4chan and targeting female reporters and game makers, explains the origins of Pepe the Frog and the term �kek� and a bunch of other stuff that will be old news to anyone reading this thread.

quote:

One of the things that linked the often nihilistic and ironic chan culture to a wider culture of the alt-right orbit was their opposition to political correctness, feminism, multiculturalism, etc., and its encroachment into their freewheeling world of anonymity and tech.

Nagle cites the example of Kathy Sierra, a tech blogger and journo who faced an angry backlash from 4chan users after she called for the moderation of internet comments. She also mentions Andrew Aurnheimer (aka weev) as a representative example of 4chan�s trolling culture: �Once a part of the Occupy movement, he now regularly posts anti-Semitic and anti-gay rants on YouTube, has a swastika tattoo on his chest and was also the self-appointed president of a trolling initiative called the Gay friend of the family Association of America. This was dedicated to opposing popular blogging and other mainstream activities, thought to be destroying authentic Internet-culture.

After offering some further summarizing of various alt-right figures and their particular fixations (Gavin McInnes, Mike Cernovich, Milo, MGTOW, etc.) Nagle concludes:

quote:

What we now call the alt-right is really this collection of lots of separate tendencies that grew semi-independently but which were joined under the banner of a bursting forth of anti-PC cultural politics through the culture wars of recent years. The irreverent trolling style associated with 4chan grew in popularity in response to the expanding identity politics of more feminine spaces like Tumblr. This, itself, spilled over eventually into �real life� in the ramping up of campus politics around safe spaces and trigger warnings, �gamergate� and many other battles.

I would point out here that her argument seems to be, in part, that Tumblr encouraged the growth of chan culture�s trolling because it was such a target rich area. Much in the same way that early Something Awful was probably aided by the existence of all kinds of mock worthy late 1990s / early 2000s webpages (let�s not forget the term �goon� comes from the aggrieved complaints of some forgotten website owner who ended up as the target of one of LowTax�s Awful Links of the Day). It�s not just that 4chan was a backlash aginst tumblr: tumblr also presented an ideal target for any would be troll.

Nagle then discusses gamergate (�One can feel the life draining out of the body at the thought of retelling or rereading the story of the gamergate controversy�) and the obsession with comparatively mild feminist critics of video gaming like Anita Sarkessian, etc. the rise of doxing, etc. She builds to this conclusion, in which she grants GamerGate special significance:

quote:

"Gamergate brought gamers, rightist chan culture, anti-feminism and the online far right closer to mainstream discussion and it also politicized a broad group of young people, mostly boys, who organized tactics around the idea of fighting back against the culture war being waged by the cultural left. These included all kinds of people from critics of political correctness to those interested in the overreach of feminist cultural crusades. These brought in to the fold people like Christina Hoff Sommers, the classical liberal who started a video series called The Factual Feminist, which aimed to expose faulty statistics within feminism. Somewhere in the mix with the polite and light-hearted Sommers were also apolitical gamers, South Park conservatives, 4channers, hardline anti-feminists, and young people in the process of moving to the political far right without any of the moral baggage of conservatism. It also made Milo�s ill-fated career, as he used it to shoot to mainstream celebrity status. Ultimately, the gamergaters were correct in their perception that a revived feminist movement was trying to change the culture and this was the front, their beloved games, that they chose to fight back on. The battle has since moved on to different issues with increasingly higher stakes, but this was the galvanizing issue that drew up the battle lines of the culture wars for a younger online generation."

At this point she circles back to her early target: all those cyber utopians who thought the internet was going to be a benign, leaderless and utopian space. She references Hakim Bey�s temporary autonomous zone, John Perry Barlow�s famous declaration of independence for cyberspace, and then writes that �this leaderless anonymous online culture ended up becoming characterized by a particularly dark preoccupation with thwarted or failed white Western masculinity�. She goes on to give several examples of 4channers committing actual crimes, such as murder, online and then posting about it for approval, or the link between 4chan users and certain mass shootings and violent attacks on BLM before concluding that �the anti-PC taboo-breaking culture of 4chan is not just �for the lulz��.
She concludes that:

quote:

"Just a few years ago the left-cyberutopians claimed that �the disgust had become a network� and that establishment old media could no longer control politics, that the new public sphere was going to be based on leaderless user-generated social media. This network has indeed arrived, but it has helped to take the right, not the left, to power. Those on the left who fetishized the spontaneous leaderless Internet-centric network, declaring all other forms of doing politics old hat, failed to realize that the leaderless form actually told us little about the philosophical, moral or conceptual content of the movements involved. Into the vacuum of �leaderlessness� almost anything could appear. No matter how networked, �transgressive�, social media savvy or non-hierarchical a movement may be, it is the content of its ideas that matter just as much as at any point in history, as Evgeny Morozov cautioned at the time. The online environment has undoubtedly allowed fringe ideas and movements to grow rapidly in influence and while these were left leaning it was tempting for politically sympathetic commentators to see it as a shiny new seductive shortcut to transcending our �end of history�. What we�ve since witnessed instead is that this leaderless formation can express just about any ideology even, strange as it may seem, that of the far right."

I think that last passage should help clarify who Nagle's target here is. While he has harsh words for the substanceless IdPol of "tumblr-liberalism" she's even more disdainful of the cyberutopians who yearned for a technological shortcut that circumvented all the messy hard work involved in traditional political organizing.

You almost could have titled this book "What's the Matter with 4chan?", it takes a now familiar leftist critique of contemporary liberalism, one that Thomas Frank (who, it should be noted, is the principal founder of the Baffler) seems to update with a new book every few years. The target here is how mainstream liberals will embrace seemingly any gimmick or fad that suggests they can win their future political struggles either painlessly, or at least without relying on anything as antiquated and distasteful as traditional social democratic organizing.

# ? Jul 18, 2017 14:49

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

So that's certainly an interesting take. I have a feeling that 'fetishization with transgression' is going to make an appearance again, when the book gets around to the Clinton campaign basically giving free advertising to the alt-right.

# ? Jul 18, 2017 15:28

Dreylad: Jun 19, 2001

rudatron posted:

So that's certainly an interesting take. I have a feeling that 'fetishization with transgression' is going to make an appearance again, when the book gets around to the Clinton campaign basically giving free advertising to the alt-right.

The first paragraph of the next chapter dives right into it (although not in reference to the Clinton campaign).

Not knowing that much about the online chan culture, I was a little surprised to see that an Occupy protester had made the loop to the alt-right. I figured most Occupy protesters, if they hadn't faded into the background or just moved on would have continued in leftist activist circles like R. L. Stephens.

Also there are so many weird things in this chapter you just don't expect to see in print from ADTRW's full name to a long explanation of gamergate that feels like one prolonged sigh. As I said, a lot of criticisms of this book tend to focus on one part and ignore the context of the rest. The worst I saw was people getting really mad because she thinks Zoe Quinn's game Depression Quest sounded dumb.

Dreylad has issued a correction as of 17:03 on Jul 18, 2017

# ? Jul 18, 2017 16:59

R. Guyovich: Dec 25, 1991

Helsing posted:

Her target isn't the "left" per se, it's post modernism of the Judith Butler variety as it has filtered down into internet discourse and been manifested on sites like UpWorthy or everyday feminism. One of her principle criticisms of the "Tumblr-liberal" blogosphere in the early 2010s is that she thinks these sites were intentionally used to undercut calls for greater economic equality. That blog Dreylad linked to earlier actually summarizes her position as "an old leftist�s idea of what a young leftist should be�a sworn enemy of identity politics, a dedicated partisan of class struggle. "

i don't buy that either tbh

# ? Jul 18, 2017 18:23

Venom Snake: Feb 19, 2014; by Nyc_Tattoo

The majority of tumblrs user base is young women who are into fandoms. I don't think that 17 year old girls going nuts over Benedict cumberbatch are responsible for the revival of neo-nazism in America. In fact I would go so far as to say that talking about tumblr in relation to the alt-right is scapegoating the transgressions of a majority male movement onto women because people have been doing that for a long time.

# ? Jul 18, 2017 18:27

Venom Snake: Feb 19, 2014; by Nyc_Tattoo

I saw a screen capped post on knowyourmeme of a tumblr user identifying as 8 different genders and now I believe in a white ethno-state

# ? Jul 18, 2017 18:32

Karl Barks: Jan 21, 1981

did 4chan facilitate the creation of the alt-right?

# ? Jul 18, 2017 18:40

Uncle Wemus: Mar 4, 2004

Karl Barks posted:

did 4chan facilitate the creation of the alt-right?

In that they did nothing because they refuse to moderate anythibg that isnt a technical matter

# ? Jul 18, 2017 19:00

Ghost Leviathan: Mar 2, 2017; Exploration is ill-advised.

The bit about the liberal left being completely blindsided by what internet anonymity wrought just seems to be another way in which they were and are completely unable to deal with a growing army of alienated, socially rejected young men who see mainstream society as having discarded them and having nothing to offer them. It's all about hostility to the old order they see as an enemy to them, and the tumblr-liberals are basically seen as the pets and attack dogs of one arm of the mainstream.

Obviously they're pretty oblivious to when the right tries to co-opt them.

# ? Jul 18, 2017 19:04

The Ol Spicy Keychain: Jan 17, 2013; I MEPHISTO MY OWN ASSHOLE

Pretty weird how people are trying to downplay how much she attributes the rise of the alt-right to Tumblr/Modern feminists. The entirety of the book is set up to do just that. Her ENTIRE argument is that the alt-right was simply a response to this type of tumblr-liberal feminism. She completely ignores massive factors like race/immigration and focuses on a website that hasn't been relevant in years and a type of liberal that the left very strongly disassociated itself from, specially after the election.That medium post someone linked to on the last page is a pretty succinct take down of this book.

This book is bad and outdated.

# ? Jul 18, 2017 19:20

Kunster: Dec 24, 2006

I'm just going to wait until the part where she defends Tredeau's politics because she read a few posts on tumblr calling his policies bad and see how much folk twist themselves to defend that. Also most of her testimonials are her taking everything, everything at face value from every rw interviewee so I'm amazed there wasn't a part where she asks Lauren Southern poo poo and comes out wondering why tumblr libs care too much about the Syrian and Libyan wars.

# ? Jul 18, 2017 19:42

Victory Position: Mar 16, 2004

Kunster posted:

I'm just going to wait until the part where she defends Tredeau's politics because she read a few posts on tumblr calling his policies bad and see how much folk twist themselves to defend that. Also most of her testimonials are her taking everything, everything at face value from every rw interviewee so I'm amazed there wasn't a part where she asks Lauren Southern poo poo and comes out wondering why tumblr libs care too much about the Syrian and Libyan wars.

waiting with bated breath :allears:

# ? Jul 18, 2017 19:48

Dreylad: Jun 19, 2001

Scent of Worf posted:

Pretty weird how people are trying to downplay how much she attributes the rise of the alt-right to Tumblr/Modern feminists. The entirety of the book is set up to do just that. Her ENTIRE argument is that the alt-right was simply a response to this type of tumblr-liberal feminism. She completely ignores massive factors like race/immigration and focuses on a website that hasn't been relevant in years and a type of liberal that the left very strongly disassociated itself from, specially after the election.That medium post someone linked to on the last page is a pretty succinct take down of this book.

This book is bad and outdated.

That ignores the chunks of the book that look at how the alt-right defines itself against social conservatives and the ways in which the alt-right drew from the transgression fueled counterculture of the 1960s, at the very least. It is not her entire argument.

# ? Jul 18, 2017 19:55

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

an actual dog posted:

I might be speaking too soon but I'm pretty sure everything in Kill All Normies is already out of date. Bretbart is dying, Milo is dead, Verizon is gonna shut down Tumblr and Trump was always a normal republican but even more so now.

that's cuz this is the alt-right's beta (lol) test at being political, they will come back more coherent every election cycle

tumblr vs 4chan or something like it is gonna be one of the defining cultural war arenas of our generation now that enough old people died to make christian conservatism outdated

# ? Jul 18, 2017 20:23

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

Dreylad posted:

The first paragraph of the next chapter dives right into it (although not in reference to the Clinton campaign).

Not knowing that much about the online chan culture, I was a little surprised to see that an Occupy protester had made the loop to the alt-right. I figured most Occupy protesters, if they hadn't faded into the background or just moved on would have continued in leftist activist circles like R. L. Stephens.

In the 1930s plenty of people moved from Communism to Fascism and vice-versa without a stopover in the liberal center

Many people who join mass fringe political movements didn't join because of deep attachment to particular ideologies, they join because of a sense of futility in their own personal life combined with a desire for any sort of change. Ideologies are interchangeable in offering a sense of belonging, having something to blame and fight against, being part of something greater and the hope for a better future.

# ? Jul 18, 2017 20:28

Karl Barks: Jan 21, 1981

lotta people in this thread who clearly haven't read the book and have strong opinions hmmmm

# ? Jul 18, 2017 21:09

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Typo posted:

In the 1930s plenty of people moved from Communism to Fascism and vice-versa without a stopover in the liberal center

Was liberalism even at the center back then? I think the Great Depression did a lot to marginalize liberalism, making the center a battleground for conservatives and social democrats.

# ? Jul 18, 2017 21:11

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

Helsing posted:

Why, then, has this book proven so appealing across the political spectrum? Probably because one of its core messages is that the contemporary alt-right emerges, to a large degree, from the excessive conditions created by parts of the liberal left, especially as it manifested online in the early 2010s. For Nagle, this 'tumblr-liberalism' has much to answer for: it has spurred a right-wing backlash, continues to drive young people away from left-wing causes, acts as a mask for neoliberals who oppose any kind of economic populism, and cultivates styles of argument and habits of mind that leave the left incapable of meeting and defeating alt-right arguments on their own merits. How you feel about that argument will play a big role in how you feel about the book.

I came to those exact same conclusions independently so I'd probably love it.

# ? Jul 18, 2017 21:14

an actual dog: Nov 18, 2014

Karl Barks posted:

lotta people in this thread who clearly haven't read the book and have strong opinions hmmmm

I don't read books only posts

# ? Jul 18, 2017 21:24

deadgoon: Dec 4, 2014; by FactsAreUseless

Typo posted:

In the 1930s plenty of people moved from Communism to Fascism and vice-versa without a stopover in the liberal center

Many people who join mass fringe political movements didn't join because of deep attachment to particular ideologies, they join because of a sense of futility in their own personal life combined with a desire for any sort of change. Ideologies are interchangeable in offering a sense of belonging, having something to blame and fight against, being part of something greater and the hope for a better future.

im a loving idiot and i lust for a left movement with the stated aim of taking and using power rather than complaining that the people in power should stop doing whatever it is they are doing

# ? Jul 18, 2017 21:25

Pizza Segregationist: Jul 18, 2006

I haven't read the book yet but from listening to interviews that Nagle has done and excerpts posted here it really doesn't seem like she's "blaming" tumblr for the alt-right. If you are going to write a book about the alt-right then you're going to have to talk about liberal call-out culture because it's something that the alt-right never shuts up about. It's possible to have criticisms of the way liberals address things like racism and sexism without endorsing anti-SJW reactionary stupidity.

# ? Jul 18, 2017 21:27

Karl Barks: Jan 21, 1981

i think the online alt-right did at least partially spring up as a reaction to tumblr leftism (i can't believe i'm typing this sentence), and i also think it had literally no effect on the election

# ? Jul 18, 2017 21:28

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

A Buttery Pastry posted:

Was liberalism even at the center back then? I think the Great Depression did a lot to marginalize liberalism, making the center a battleground for conservatives and social democrats.

by liberalism I mean liberal capitalist democracies and would include everyone from social democrats to social conservatives who accepted the legitimacy of parliamentary elections

# ? Jul 18, 2017 21:30

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

Scent of Worf posted:

Can't take her seriously when she practically attributes the rise of the alt-right to tumblr liberals. The real surge in the alt-right came after Trayvon/all the other police murdering black men incidents as well as the refugee crisis/immigration. The number one topic being discussed in these alt-right shitholes is always, without fail, race. Racism against non-whites and the degrees of how racist they are has always been the #1 uniting /dividing force for these people. It is completely loving absurd to infantilize these parasites by saying they're just sexually frustrated nerds/outcasts who got bullied by liberals.

Scent of Worf posted:

Pretty weird how people are trying to downplay how much she attributes the rise of the alt-right to Tumblr/Modern feminists. The entirety of the book is set up to do just that. Her ENTIRE argument is that the alt-right was simply a response to this type of tumblr-liberal feminism. She completely ignores massive factors like race/immigration and focuses on a website that hasn't been relevant in years and a type of liberal that the left very strongly disassociated itself from, specially after the election.That medium post someone linked to on the last page is a pretty succinct take down of this book.

This book is bad and outdated.

It's wrong to blame the entirety of the alt-right on "tumblr liberalism" or whatever you want to call that online movement from the early 2010s, but a lot of it was still caused by that. Specifically the enticement of people, especially young men, who wouldn't have been on the right otherwise. Stormfronters and /pol/ folks have been around longer than tumblr liberalism and they're hardcore. The discourse had no effect on them. It's more the apathetic or the vaguely liberal with half-formed ideologies who were vulnerable.

# ? Jul 18, 2017 21:35

Karl Barks: Jan 21, 1981

when did it become verboten to criticize tumblr??

# ? Jul 18, 2017 21:39

Yeowch!!! My Balls!!!: May 31, 2006

criticizing them? sure

the idea that if only tumblr did not exist, pasty unfuckables who cling to gatekeeping as their only source of community would never have figured out they can blame liberals for all their problems?

incredibly stupid+lazy

peace

# ? Jul 18, 2017 22:25

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

Ze Pollack posted:

criticizing them? sure

the idea that if only tumblr did not exist, pasty unfuckables who cling to gatekeeping as their only source of community would never have figured out they can blame liberals for all their problems?

incredibly stupid+lazy

peace

They'd still be liberals or apathetic. I say this as someone who watched the transformation multiple times online and off.

# ? Jul 18, 2017 22:28

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

I'm not saying Tumblr shouldn't exist though. Tumblr owns, and it wasn't the only place spreading the toxic discourse in 2011.

# ? Jul 18, 2017 22:31

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

it's pretty amazing to me the sea change between 2008 and 2016

back in 2008 pretty much every major internet community cheered on obama's election, by 2016 at least half of those are spewing poo poo about muslims taking over the country and TRUMP at every chance possible

# ? Jul 18, 2017 22:46

Jewel Repetition: Dec 24, 2012; Ask me about Briar Rose and Chicken Chaser.

Typo posted:

it's pretty amazing to me the sea change between 2008 and 2016

back in 2008 pretty much every major internet community cheered on obama's election, by 2016 at least half of those are spewing poo poo about muslims taking over the country and TRUMP at every chance possible

It also manifested electorally :whitewater:

# ? Jul 18, 2017 22:47

Yeowch!!! My Balls!!!: May 31, 2006

Jeb! Repetition posted:

They'd still be liberals or apathetic. I say this as someone who watched the transformation multiple times online and off.

remember how Al Gore's lines about music proved Republicans were the real punk rock

remember how Reagan was the guy who was willing to stand up to Big Democrats and tell them it was, finally, Morning in America

if there was no tumblr, they'd just be ranting about college campuses, rap music, etc, etc, the shock troops of white identity politics never change from the same people desperately seeking to achieve acceptance from their peers by preserving the only taste of community they have.

look up the people fifty years ago holding Race Mixing=Communism signs. not one of them would be out of place holding a kekistani flag. the precise nature of the people who trigger their realization "wait I could just blame all my problems on the loving libs" changes, the underlying battlecry remains the same: "surely, if I defend the cultural hegemon hard enough, someone will finally accept me."

# ? Jul 18, 2017 22:49

Yeowch!!! My Balls!!!: May 31, 2006

once upon a time these people justified their terror of western civilization collapsing with Martin Luther King Jr. marching on Birmingham.

now their instigating moment is _uwulvr69_ saying they're an otherkin.

how much more could we possibly coddle them than that

# ? Jul 18, 2017 22:52

Hodgepodge: Jan 29, 2006; Can't post for 232 days!

These days, we have twitter to offer up all flavors of stupid for public mockery.

We even have a President getting into the content-provision game.

# ? Jul 18, 2017 23:04

Oligopsony: May 17, 2007

As others have noted, I don't think it's quite right to say that Nagle "blames tumblr" or SJWs or whatever for the alt-right, but I do feel like, despite being a Marxist, she does tend to explain cultural phenomena almost exclusively in terms of continuations of or reactions to other cultural phenomena. This leads to some interesting reflections but only the start of a conversation (not that that is a bad thing, especially for a slim, provocative book.) She's also totally right that transgression-for-its-own-sake was always an absurd idea for the left to embrace.

IMO the best parts of this are the asides, like the chapter about how the avante-garde has constructed their idea of "the mainstream" in misogynist terms for, like, two hundred years.

(also Zero needs to hire better copyeditors)

# ? Jul 18, 2017 23:04

Al!: Apr 2, 2010

Ze Pollack posted:

remember how Al Gore's lines about music proved Republicans were the real punk rock

remember how Reagan was the guy who was willing to stand up to Big Democrats and tell them it was, finally, Morning in America

if there was no tumblr, they'd just be ranting about college campuses, rap music, etc, etc, the shock troops of white identity politics never change from the same people desperately seeking to achieve acceptance from their peers by preserving the only taste of community they have.

look up the people fifty years ago holding Race Mixing=Communism signs. not one of them would be out of place holding a kekistani flag. the precise nature of the people who trigger their realization "wait I could just blame all my problems on the loving libs" changes, the underlying battlecry remains the same: "surely, if I defend the cultural hegemon hard enough, someone will finally accept me."

imo it's scapegoating that is attractive to certain people on the left who are more interested in offloading blame than building solidarity, when imo the failure is on the left to provide any sort of excitement or interest to people who are young dumb and full of cum. the most interesting thing the left has going on rn is like 10 guys on twitter, chapo, antifa, and cspam.

# ? Jul 18, 2017 23:08

Yeowch!!! My Balls!!!: May 31, 2006

pretty much

"If only we avoided hurting their feelings more we wouldn't have to offer them anything"

# ? Jul 18, 2017 23:12

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

Ze Pollack posted:

remember how Al Gore's lines about music proved Republicans were the real punk rock

remember how Reagan was the guy who was willing to stand up to Big Democrats and tell them it was, finally, Morning in America

if there was no tumblr, they'd just be ranting about college campuses, rap music, etc, etc, the shock troops of white identity politics never change from the same people desperately seeking to achieve acceptance from their peers by preserving the only taste of community they have.

look up the people fifty years ago holding Race Mixing=Communism signs. not one of them would be out of place holding a kekistani flag. the precise nature of the people who trigger their realization "wait I could just blame all my problems on the loving libs" changes, the underlying battlecry remains the same: "surely, if I defend the cultural hegemon hard enough, someone will finally accept me."

but said white idpol would have far less appeal without a clear "politically correct" enemy to fight

and by "Politically correct" I dont' mean pc-sjw or w/e but if white idpol make "I'm not getting laid but the brown/black guy is loving a white woman" the open narrative it makes the movement looks far stupider

# ? Jul 18, 2017 23:13

Dreylad: Jun 19, 2001

Oligopsony posted:

(also Zero needs to hire copyeditors)

Fixed.

But copyediting is a dying profession, it feels like. Trying to get paid after being hired to do it is the worst loving thing and I don't blame anyone else for giving up on it.

# ? Jul 18, 2017 23:16

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# ? May 8, 2024 21:30

AnEdgelord: Dec 12, 2016

I think it probably more accurate to say something more along the lines of "the alt-right used tumblr to justify itself" instead of "tumblr caused the alt-right". Its also immediately observable given how many fringe tumblrs are dug up and paraded around their communities to the chant of "this is why we are right".

# ? Jul 18, 2017 23:17

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > Let's Read "Kill All Normies" by Angela Nagle

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