#i cannot fucking believe i used the gamergate tag

[awhalenamedjonah]

On Punching Nazis

I'm probably gonna regret making this post as soon as a bunch of random tumblr blogs I've never interacted with suddenly fill my inbox with some great arguments about how I should kill myself (which is reason #1 why I don't get involved in stupid tumblr discourse) but this is something that's almost definitely going to have an effect on me and/or the people around me soon regardless, so I might as well get my stupid opinion out there.

Somehow this is a controversial opinion but...maybe...punching Nazis...is bad sometimes.

I'm sure everyone stopped reading already to unfollow me and tell their friends what a fucking idiot this guy on tumblr is for being a Nazi Sympathizer™ and an Alt-Right Neo-Nazi™, and a Hyper-Conservative Trump Supporter™ (I am none of those things). In my opinion Richard Spencer did deserve a solid punch in the face or fifty, but that's not the problem I have here. Encouraging everyone to Go Punch a Nazi in order to Keep Racists Afraid is a bad idea for everyone on all sides of this situation. So, begin rant proper.

In my experience with the internet, I've been told that everyone with a political opinion (read: everyone on earth) is somehow in support of a mass genocide or something nearly as sinister. Westboro Baptist Church types yelling about how The Gays are trying to destroy society with their wretched sinfulness, for instance. Recently, I learned from the ever-wise internet that all police officers (and those that support them) are pushing an agenda of inner-city racial extermination. I was told around the same time that Black Lives Matter just want to kill all whites. Currently I'm being told that everyone that the internet called "Alt-Right" is actually a white supremacist who wants all colored people to get out of the country or be lynched. This isn't an internet-exclusive phenomenon, either; when I was a kid there were plenty of protesters against abortion who claimed all left-wing pro-choice voters were in favor of mass slaughter of babies. Gee, maybe a tiny exaggeration there.

There's a very simple line of reasoning all of these hyperbole-filled generalizations follow, and it's always filled with fueled by the innate desire to be "the good guy" as well as the tendency humans have to paint a group as a singular opposed entity to the True Righteous Path that I, the most enlightened, follow. Here's my understanding of the chain of events. See if this seems familiar to you:

You have two groups that have differing political opinions. Usually fairly big ones. Obviously as usual there's mudslinging but it's the normal shit.

A bunch of specific bad individuals (neo-Nazis, pedophiles, looters, people who think the new series of Berserk is good) start sticking out from either crowd. This is always (and I mean always) a minority faction within the group, at most.

The media (or social media) highlights these gross people exclusively, to cast the entire group in a negative light. These individuals' views become Their views. Everyone in the group that's reasonable gets painted with the same brush. It becomes "Us Versus Them" now that it's confirmed all the people who disagree with you are (Nazis, pedos, looters, attracted to Benedict Cumberbatch)

A call to action against these vile (Nazis, pedos, looters, gen 1ers). Sometimes this involves violence (Punch a Nazi!) sometimes just protest, but it's almost always a gross overreaction.

Suddenly a huge group of people with primarily moderate views are conflated with extremists. Sometimes people will specifically defend this generalization by saying the moderates are “enabling” the minority (even if most people strongly oppose the beliefs of said vocal minority). This is where people get off saying that “whiteness” is inherently problematic.

Ironically this almost always leads to a fifth step where the vocal minority who are touted as the majority suddenly become empowered by the media rhetoric and thinks everyone actually does agree with their awful beliefs. The smaller minority that once quietly agreed now find the platform for their beliefs and the minority gets larger. A bunch of people who formerly kept it to themselves suddenly hear about how millions of voters are extremist homophobic sexist racists and collectively say "I'm not the only one who believes gays belong in internment camps! I've found a group to voice my opinions!" Then these people with newfound support start shooting cops or holding neo-nazi rallies.

You can probably think of at least a few specific examples immediately. Some of you are mentally tagging this #black lives matter and some of you are tagging it #gamergate and that alone is a good example of how this same bullshit happens to two distinctly different crowds. I’ll use those two as examples, as much as I never ever wanted to talk about gamergate again.

I remember being on Twitter almost 24/7 when shit was going down in Ferguson and being completely floored by how the mainstream media was exclusively showing burned-out buildings and using the phrase "riots" left and right. Meanwhile I was watching dozens of on-site sources post live video of huge silent crowds standing firm and not instigating anything. To the people disconnected from it, it sure seemed like the people of Ferguson were a bunch of thugs and looters and rioters just itching for an excuse to punch a cop. Meanwhile the sane protesters in the town were forming living barriers around buildings to stop arsonists and looters from doing any more damage-- but the effect of the media spin was long done by then and to this day people still have completely fabricated ideas of what happened there. And of course this painted future protests the same way. They escalated until the rational and sane people started coming out less and the riled violent crowds became exactly what the media said they were: rioters. Bam, now you have cops getting shot from rooftops and the media succeeded in minimizing the original message of BLM. Now I'm not sure if most of the remaining BLM protesters are actual violent criminals or if the media is just twisting it that way, because the truth is so blurred-- either way there's no way I'm ever associating with that particular group now that they're branded terrorists.

I also remember being on Twitter almost 24/7 when shit was going down in the #gamergate hashtag. Everyone I knew was talking about how ridiculously stupid and elitist gaming journalism had gotten, but a bizarre twist happened in which everyone seemingly decided that it was actually about how sexist gamers are and how badly they want women to leave game development. Legitimately awful humans like Milo Yiannopoulos [insert sound of vomiting here] suddenly got a surge of new followers because on a surface level they supported the original argument (that game journalism had become too elitist and started becoming a circlejerk about the writers' Superior Artistic Taste and Moral Uprightness) but were in it for less savory reasons than to support a reform of the gaming media's journalistic ethics. Suddenly the discussion was all about sexism instead of the original point, and anyone who made a post at the beginning of it like "maybe videogame journos should be required to be actually good at videogames #gamergate" are suddenly sexist and a social media terrorist. To the people disconnected from it, it sure seemed like the gamergate crowd were a bunch of sexists and racists just itching for an excuse to drive women out of gaming. Meanwhile the sane gamergaters involved were getting new gaming sites started and promoting up-and-coming journalists (some of whom quickly got hired by major gaming sites like The Escapist)-- but the effect of the media spin was long done by then and to this day people still have completely fabricated ideas of what happened there. Now I'm not sure if most of the remaining #gamergate supporters are actual sexist lunatics or if the media is just twisting it that way, because the truth is so blurred-- either way there's no way I'm ever associating with that particular group now that they're branded terrorists.

Currently the big one is a huge group of people being thrown into the category of "Alt-Right" for a variety of reasons, varying from actual neo-nazi affiliation to having an anime character for a Twitter avatar. I see legitimate media outlets refer to "anime avatars" as a prominent warning sign of white supremacists, and if that isn't a sign of some hyper-generalization I don't know what is.

Now back to the point of this, which you've probably gathered by now if you're not completely fucking dense. It’s simple: Telling people to punch Nazis isn't the best idea, because nobody can agree on who actually is a Nazi. I've seen people get called a Nazi constantly over a decade on the internet, for reasons such as supporting communism (lol what), voting for Trump, being anti-abortion, or watching Axis Powers: Hetalia.

If you expect the general internet-using public to exercise restraint when told to “Punch a Nazi,” then you're either new to the internet or legitimately insane. If the former: Welcome! We have tons of great porn here. Click this link! Also don't ever Google "meatspin," "goatse," or "lemon party."

Get ready to see a lot of people who voted for Trump get punched in the face for no good reason. If that sentence makes you respond “voting for Trump is a good reason,” you’ve instantly proven my point.

Meanwhile Trump and his supporters get more and more of the evidence they need that anti-Trump protestors are violent criminals.

This isn’t going to end well.