I was editor of a video game website when Gamergate kicked off, and it was a surreal experience. We suddenly had dozens of new commenters on our forums accusing us of being commies under any article that even vaguely gestured at anything progressive. Even a news story about a local school doing a coding day for 12-year-old girls ignited a firestorm of hatred from certain quarters. And these were comments from people here in NZ.
As you can probably guess, the things that united these ding-dongs were a hatred of women and an ability to remain impervious to reason in the face of all evidence. The movement hoovered up a lot of disaffected men here: those who felt wronged by the family court (read as: had had their kids taken away), men's rights activists, evangelical Christians, and teens who had been watching too much Ben Shapiro. A lot of new atheists (fans of Sam Harris et al.) surfaced as well. I imagine they are all super into Qanon now.
Anyway, as it did with Byron, this experience sent me to Breadtube, where I scrambled to understand what was happening. And of course, we all watched in horror as the same ghouls behind Gamergate played a huge part in getting Trump elected. Gamergate was clearly the dry run.
What's dismaying even now is the level of dog whistling by some politicians here in NZ to these creeps, as well as the way the media gets absolutely played by them. Admittedly, keeping up with the latest fashy memes probably isn't high on any newsroom's agenda, but maybe reach out to people like Byron who know the subculture well rather than repeat white supremacist talking points? Talkback radio needs to be killed with fire, but prior to that glorious day, maybe Ryan Bridge can just not say "there's nothing wrong with being white" etc etc.
One fun story that shows what absolute snowflakes the far right are: just prior to the mosque shootings, a group called Sovereignty NZ were protesting the UN Migration Compact on Courtenay Place here in Welly. The Right Minds guy was there, and the whole group was being very friendly with a pair of local neo-nazi (swastika tatts and all), just in case anyone was confused as to their actual politics.
A crowd gathered to heckle, which made me very proud, but when I walked over and stood next to the speaker with a sign saying migrants were welcome in NZ, a throng of red-faced boomers (all from Sovereignty NZ) got in my face and began yelling that I was bullying the speaker. As I backed away, they grabbed my sign and ripped it up. That's how sensitive these poor men are, but you'll always hear them ranting about free speech.
The best bit was the woman on the mic then tried to sing the national anthem to wrap things up and folks, she did not know the words. What an absolute patriot.
TL;DR: fascism is a loser ideology, but there are plenty of its followers here in Aotearoa
As much as I love reading your articles and those of others, it does make me shake my head in disbelief, and I wonder how we can ever prevail against all the evil dumfuckery that has grown like a canker in our country 😳
I enjoy reading this kind of documentation, because to me it means people are starting to see the far-right as the actual problem it really is. In my own experience with neo-nazis and other right wing folks I have found them to be nice enough people, that just have a very dangerous and violent attitude towards anyone or anything that is different from themselves (I have spoken at length with a few "hard core" neo-nazis before the days of the internet). Unfortunately from my perspective it was unsurprising that "white" supremacy rose to prominence again in an environment that allows any type of opinion, philosophy or even thought, to go out into the collective social arena (I am speaking about the internet in general). After knowing rather extreme people from the right in real life, then reading certain message boards on 4chan, I could see that certain attitudes were becoming very popular and certain parts of our society as a whole were going to become very unsafe for a lot of people, I think Nina Simone's song backlash sums it up quite well, where you have a group that advances themselves, another group takes umbrage to this advancement, then we have the "backlash", unfortunately it usually comes with violence.
In other news closely related, a man by the name of Mark Thompson is currently holding meetings around New Zealand, the group meetings "urges attendees to take action against a range of issues – such as 5G technology, vaccines, environmentalism and satanic ritual abuse – with the ultimate aim of bringing down the Government". Sounds like a grand old scheme this Mark Thompson has cooked up. His comments (by my interpretation) seem to read as follows "we have lost our illusion of control to that group over there (lets call them liberals), we must gain our freedom back (GOD given of course) by controlling these liberals", I may have paraphrased a bit there.
Byron, you're awesome. Keep up the great work.
I was editor of a video game website when Gamergate kicked off, and it was a surreal experience. We suddenly had dozens of new commenters on our forums accusing us of being commies under any article that even vaguely gestured at anything progressive. Even a news story about a local school doing a coding day for 12-year-old girls ignited a firestorm of hatred from certain quarters. And these were comments from people here in NZ.
As you can probably guess, the things that united these ding-dongs were a hatred of women and an ability to remain impervious to reason in the face of all evidence. The movement hoovered up a lot of disaffected men here: those who felt wronged by the family court (read as: had had their kids taken away), men's rights activists, evangelical Christians, and teens who had been watching too much Ben Shapiro. A lot of new atheists (fans of Sam Harris et al.) surfaced as well. I imagine they are all super into Qanon now.
Anyway, as it did with Byron, this experience sent me to Breadtube, where I scrambled to understand what was happening. And of course, we all watched in horror as the same ghouls behind Gamergate played a huge part in getting Trump elected. Gamergate was clearly the dry run.
What's dismaying even now is the level of dog whistling by some politicians here in NZ to these creeps, as well as the way the media gets absolutely played by them. Admittedly, keeping up with the latest fashy memes probably isn't high on any newsroom's agenda, but maybe reach out to people like Byron who know the subculture well rather than repeat white supremacist talking points? Talkback radio needs to be killed with fire, but prior to that glorious day, maybe Ryan Bridge can just not say "there's nothing wrong with being white" etc etc.
One fun story that shows what absolute snowflakes the far right are: just prior to the mosque shootings, a group called Sovereignty NZ were protesting the UN Migration Compact on Courtenay Place here in Welly. The Right Minds guy was there, and the whole group was being very friendly with a pair of local neo-nazi (swastika tatts and all), just in case anyone was confused as to their actual politics.
A crowd gathered to heckle, which made me very proud, but when I walked over and stood next to the speaker with a sign saying migrants were welcome in NZ, a throng of red-faced boomers (all from Sovereignty NZ) got in my face and began yelling that I was bullying the speaker. As I backed away, they grabbed my sign and ripped it up. That's how sensitive these poor men are, but you'll always hear them ranting about free speech.
The best bit was the woman on the mic then tried to sing the national anthem to wrap things up and folks, she did not know the words. What an absolute patriot.
TL;DR: fascism is a loser ideology, but there are plenty of its followers here in Aotearoa
As much as I love reading your articles and those of others, it does make me shake my head in disbelief, and I wonder how we can ever prevail against all the evil dumfuckery that has grown like a canker in our country 😳
That was a great but unnerving read thanks David and Byron, I'm looking forward to Part 2.
Well. This was fascinating. If you make a T-shirt, make sure you get us all to rain a variety of emojis on it before you do the screen capture.
I enjoy reading this kind of documentation, because to me it means people are starting to see the far-right as the actual problem it really is. In my own experience with neo-nazis and other right wing folks I have found them to be nice enough people, that just have a very dangerous and violent attitude towards anyone or anything that is different from themselves (I have spoken at length with a few "hard core" neo-nazis before the days of the internet). Unfortunately from my perspective it was unsurprising that "white" supremacy rose to prominence again in an environment that allows any type of opinion, philosophy or even thought, to go out into the collective social arena (I am speaking about the internet in general). After knowing rather extreme people from the right in real life, then reading certain message boards on 4chan, I could see that certain attitudes were becoming very popular and certain parts of our society as a whole were going to become very unsafe for a lot of people, I think Nina Simone's song backlash sums it up quite well, where you have a group that advances themselves, another group takes umbrage to this advancement, then we have the "backlash", unfortunately it usually comes with violence.
In other news closely related, a man by the name of Mark Thompson is currently holding meetings around New Zealand, the group meetings "urges attendees to take action against a range of issues – such as 5G technology, vaccines, environmentalism and satanic ritual abuse – with the ultimate aim of bringing down the Government". Sounds like a grand old scheme this Mark Thompson has cooked up. His comments (by my interpretation) seem to read as follows "we have lost our illusion of control to that group over there (lets call them liberals), we must gain our freedom back (GOD given of course) by controlling these liberals", I may have paraphrased a bit there.
Jeez, scary stuff - I look forward with trepidation to part 2 😟