A Normie's Guide to the Dissident Right - Part 4 - 2017 & 2018: CVille, HWNDU, Optics, Big Tech Censorship
A Normie’s Guide to the Dissident Right
& the Culture War Era
Trump Becomes President, pt 2
I remember the day after Trump was elected quite clearly. I was living in Los Angeles at the time. All around me a strange, eerie sense of gloom hung in the air. Every person around me was feeling it, communicating it subtly in an unspoken way. When I was around others on the street, the atmosphere of gloom grew thick.
In the office, everyone was transfixed. Staring at the news screens. Here, there was no cloud of gloom, however. The people around me were in a somewhat conservative industry along the lines of finance. Many of them were normie Trump supporters. Instead of despair, it was an air of confusion. A dreamlike state. No one knew quite what to expect next. Would Trump really be inaugurated? Would he really be allowed to become President? Would he really build the wall? Would he really ban Muslims? Would he really be the next Hitler? Or would he really drain the swamp? The one thing I knew for certain is that no one would be working hard that day. Which meant I could spend my time browsing 4chan and soaking in their victory.
One person who did predict that Trump would win was comedian Sam Hyde, who claimed to have bet money that Trump would win and used the money to buy a motorcycle. However, like the rest of the Alt Right, this celebration would be short lived. Under a month later on December 5, 2016, World Peace would be cancelled due to Sam’s political views, which resulted in a hit piece from Left Wing journalists and alleged internal sabotage at Adult Swim from liberal Tim Heidecker.
The Alt Right’s final ops pt 1 - OK
After successfully memeing Pepe, a smug cartoon frog, into becoming a hate symbol, anon wondered if they could do the same to other things. The idea was that, in theory, anything could be considered a “hate symbol,” no matter how ridiculous. In a way this satirized the entire idea of a hate symbol in the first place.
So anon decided to start a campaign to deliberately make the “OK” hand symbol a hate symbol.
In February 2017, 4chan users launched Operation O-KKK to "flood Twitter and other social media websites" with posts claiming the OK hand sign was a "symbol of white supremacy," along with a picture of an OK symbol identifying the three up-turned fingers as a symbol for "W" and the thumb-and-forefinger circle as a symbol for "P"
--Know Your Meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ok-symbol-%F0%9F%91%8C)
Some journalists took the bait, such as Fusion reporter Emma Roller, who tweeted a picture of conservative journalists Mike Cernovich and Cassandra Fairbanks doing the “OK” sign at a podium in what appeared to be the White House, with the caption "Just two people doing a white power hand gesture in the White House" and using the “white power” meme from 4chan as evidence.
Some savvier journalists, such as Tim Pool, didn’t take the bait. Instead he posted a video entitled "4chan Has Become Too Powerful," explaining the origin of the meme as originating from a 4chan troll.
However, after enough Alt Right, Alt Lite, or Alt Right-adjacent personalities such as Milo posted pictures of themselves flashing the “OK” hand signal, eventually groups such as the ADL began to actually associate it with white nationalism, essentially making the campaign a success.
On April 30th, The Independent published an article claiming the "The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) characterises the symbol as a 'racist hand sign'," citing an entry in the ADL database of a woman holding a hand in the form of a "W" next to a hand formed to make the letter "P"
-- Know Your Meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ok-symbol-%F0%9F%91%8C)
On September 14th, 2018 Twitter user @huppkels tweeted a video showing a member of the coast guard flashing the “OK” hand signal with the tweet “Am I being crazy? Is anyone else seeing what I am here?”
The video was widely circulated on Twitter, with some accusing the man of making a "white power" gesture. That evening, the official U.S. Coast Guard Twitter feed posted an announcement that the man had been identified and that they "removed him from the response”
– Know Your Meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ok-symbol-%F0%9F%91%8C)
“His actions do not represent the US Coast Guard” the Coast Guard tweeted.
In the optimistic days directly after the Great Meme War, 4chan felt invincible. It seemed like ops such as Operation O-KKK would simply go on forever. The success of the operation was further confirmation of this. So they continued to see how hard they could push the envelope. Next, anon decided to see if they could do the same thing to a Leftist symbol, re-appropriating it as an Alt Right symbol instead. They settled on the LGBT rainbow flag as their target.
The explanation for this one was that the different colored stripes represented the different races of people separated into their own countries. As with the OK hand sign, they began to produce memes and infographics warning of the dangers of the rainbow flag and its association with white nationalism. Unlike the OK hand sign, this operation was, for whatever reason, unsuccessful.
The Alt Right’s final ops pt 2 - okay to be white
Another notable post-Trump op was “It’s Okay to be White.” This was another op that was intended to challenge the concept of a “hate symbol.” Anon reasoned that since the media was anti-white, even the mildest form of sentiment that did not portray white people in a negative light would be considered a “hate symbol.”
To prove this theory, 4chan designed a simple poster. It was a standard white piece of printer paper with the words “it’s okay to be white” written in black text. This was about as mild and neutral of a statement as one could possibly make about white people. To disagree with it would be to imply that it was “not okay” to be white. That there was something inherently evil or wrong about white people based entirely on their race.
The plan was for anon to make copies of the poster and post it in public places, such as university campuses. When this inevitably caused the media to declare these posters as “white supremacist hate speech” surely this would wake up and redpill the normies.
Starting on October 31st, 2017, posts began circulating on 4chan calling for viewers to place posters with the slogan "It's Okay to Be White" in public places as a "proof of concept" that a "harmless message" would cause a "massive media shitstorm."
-- Know Your Meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/its-okay-to-be-white)
In the thread where the posters were being designed, anon would of course create alternate variations of the poster. This is how memes evolved. This is what always happened during ops. People would post their ideas for what anon should do next, and anon would collectively follow the ideas that they approved of. However, in this case, anon was discouraged from riffing off of the initial poster design, knowing that some would begin to push things further to the extreme and include more material that could potentially be taken as offensive. They also feared that “shills” -- Left Wing activists that had begun to infiltrate 4chan in order to undermine it – might try to sabotage the campaign. “There is no phase 2!” anon began to respond to any variations of the poster. Some anon responded by creating intentionally offensive and asinine variations of the poster, including those covered in swastikas and with links to The Daily Stormer. However, the vast majority obeyed the “there is no phase 2” command and posted the official version of the poster.
Whether the original trollers were white supremacist or not, actual white supremacists quickly began to promote the campaign—often adding Internet links to white supremacist websites to the fliers or combining the phrase with white supremacist language or imagery. This was not a surprise, as white supremacists had themselves used the phrase in the past—including on fliers—long before the 4chan campaign originated.
--ADL (https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbol/its-okay-be-white)
The posters more or less got the expected reaction. Police were called in to “investigate” the “hateful messages.” Many people decried the posters as “racist” or “divisive,” in spite of the fact that they did not even mention any other races. They also reacted by stressing their commitment to “diversity,” in spite of the fact that the posters mentioned nothing about whether or not society should be diverse. As is typical of the media, they also used the tactic of “guilt by association,” proclaiming the posters as hateful because 4chan was “hateful” while not addressing the content of the posters at all. This overwhelmingly negative reaction, along with the ADL officially listing the posters as a “hate symbol” was seen by anon as proof of a successful operation.
The University of Regina declared the posters divisive. University President Vianne Timmons said: "Simply put, these signs have no place at our university."
A spokesman for a Waterloo Region District School Board commented: "Our schools are safe spaces. We want to see them be safe for all of our children, so to see this kind of thing emerge is a worry."
...
The University of Utah said: "If, indeed, these tactics are meant to silence our work in diversity and inclusion, please know we shall not be deterred." Concordia College said that their president was planning a meeting where students could discuss the matter.
--Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_okay_to_be_white)
Why were the posters “divisive”? Do people disagree with the statement? If this sentiment has “no place at our university” then are white people not welcomed at their university? How would the statement make people unsafe, and how would it “silence [their] work around diversity and inclusion”? Are the efforts of diversity and inclusion invalidated by the inclusion of whites? Other statements were along similar lines.
Posters that read “It’s OK to Be White” have popped up in cities and schools across the country in recent days, including at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minn.
…
They have since been removed, but their brief appearance struck a chord with students who said the signs run counter to the school’s values of inclusiveness and safety for all who work and study there.
“I was really shocked that someone had the guts to do this because we try to promote diversity so much, and seeing this is saying, “Hey, we still have students who aren’t fully invested in this diversity message,’ ” senior Micah Ferden told WDAY-TV in Fargo.
…
Some have decried the posters as racist, and school President William Craft said he wanted to invite the campus community to engage in a more open conversation on the topic at a forum that he was working to facilitate.
…
“To be other than white is all too often to be subjected to discrimination, lack of opportunity, and even the threat and reality of violence,” Craft wrote. “We must reject silences that demean and exclude, and we must engage open conversation about the experience of race on this campus and beyond.”
--Star Tribune, Nov 4 2017(https://www.startribune.com/it-s-okay-to-be-white-posters-appear-at-moorhead-s-concordia-college/454977133/?om_rid=2048935369&om_mid=60882377)
Fliers saying “it’s okay to be white” were found taped to the exterior doors of a Maryland high school Wednesday morning, apparently as part of an effort to spark racial division.
…
Johnson described the school community as “smart, diverse and inclusive” and said it would not “fall victim to attempts to divide us.”
--The Washington Post, Nov 1 2017 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/signs-saying-its-okay-to-be-white-found-at-maryland-high-school/2017/11/01/92013a26-bf3b-11e7-959c-fe2b598d8c00_story.html?utm_term=.35460d8feddb&itid=lk_inline_manual_4)
Not every single instance of the operation was a success. Some universities did react more neutrally:
Executive director of Washington State University's Office of Equity and Diversity responded to the posters by saying: "In my mind, it's a nonthreatening statement", further stating: "Sure, it's OK to be white. It's OK to be African-American. It's OK to be Latino. It's OK to be gay.
...
Police were contacted regarding the flyers being posted at the University of California, Berkeley. A police department spokesperson said "the signs did not constitute a hate crime because they did not target a specific race and because no criminal act was committed".
--Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_okay_to_be_white)
When Tucker Carlson defended the posters, saying, “What's the correct position? That it's not okay to be white?” he was criticized by Newsweek for “Helping to Spread Neo-Nazi Propaganda”(https://www.newsweek.com/neo-nazi-david-duke-backed-meme-was-reported-tucker-carlson-without-context-714655).
The Washington Post also responded to the incident:
The episode is indicative of the efforts white-nationalist groups have made to recruit in and around the nation’s college campuses and other mainstream settings with claims of growing white maltreatment and expanding anti-white discrimination. The white victim construct is one that experts say, not so long ago, only had traction in avowed white supremacists, segregationists and neo-Nazi circles. But today, it animates open and anonymous public discussions of race and shapes the nation’s politics.
--The Washington Post, Nov 3 2017 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/11/03/its-okay-to-be-white-signs-and-stickers-appear-on-campuses-and-streets-across-the-country/)
On October 15th, 2018, The Australian Senate almost passed a resolution officially condemning the phrase, but it was narrowly voted down.
In the Senate debate, the leader of the Greens, Richard Di Natale, noted that the slogan “‘it’s OK to be white’ … has got a long history in the white supremacist movement”.
-- The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/oct/15/ok-to-be-white-australian-government-senators-condemn-anti-white-racism)
As of 2023, “It’s Okay to be White” is still considered a hate symbol, and is still occasionally used by Right Wing protestors, including relatively moderate ones that I would not consider to be part of the Dissident Right or far-right at all. Such as in this article from Portland, Maine on February 2023.
Counterprotesters show up to condemn ‘It’s OK to be white’ banner in Congress Square
-- Portland Press Herald(https://www.pressherald.com/2023/02/17/counterprotesters-show-up-to-condemn-its-ok-to-be-white-banner-in-congress-square/)
While the most recent example I can find with a quick google search, this was in a small town. However, the slogan has been used all over the world, reaching as far as Scotland in 2019.
Racist 'It's Okay to Be White' Stickers Reappear in Scotland
--Newsweek, Dec 17 2019 (https://www.newsweek.com/ok-white-stickers-scotland-1477743)
In February 2023, Rasmussen ran a poll asking black Americans if they agreed that it was “okay to be white,” directly referencing the meme. Only 53% of the black Americans said they agreed, while 47% indicated they either disagreed or were not sure (https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/poll-finds-over-a-quarter-of-black-americans-dont-think-its-okay-to-be-white-scott-adams-dilbert).
Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, was an early supporter of Donald Trump, starting an online political show “Real Coffee With Scott Adams” where he would often praise Trump’s skills at “persuasion.” In a February 2023 edition of the show, Scott Adams covered the Rasmussen poll, declaring black people “a hate group” since they did not think it was okay to be white.
So if nearly half of all Blacks are not okay with white people, according to this poll not according to me -- according to this poll -- that's a hate group, and I don't want to have anything to do with them.
...
The best advice I would give to white people, is to get the hell away from black people...There's no fixing this.
--Scott Adams, Real Coffee With Scott Adams (https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=K6TnAn7qV1s)
As a result, Dilbert was cancelled in many newspapers across the country.
This is the latest development as of 2023, when I am writing this. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. Half a decade after /pol/’s op, the ripple effects through society continue to be felt. As the antithesis continues to do battle with the thesis.
The phrase is in many ways the inverse of “Black Lives Matter.” While they have almost an identical literal meaning, one is totally accepted by society and one is considered hateful. Both operate in a similar fashion, if you disagree with “Black Lives Matter” then do you think black lives don’t matter? If you disagree with “it’s okay to be white” do you think it’s not okay to be white? Those who disagree with the phrase “Black Lives Matter” do not truly disagree with the statement but with the group it represents, or with the larger narrative around supposedly racist policing. This is the same argument made against “it’s okay to be white,” that the statement actually represents agreement with the entity it came from – 4chan or the Alt Right. Yet in the former case, the Left ignores this, while in the latter it is the focal point of their disagreement. The ADL lists one as “hateful” but not the other, although the concept of the two slogans is virtually identical
The Alt Right’s final ops pt 3 - He Will Not Divide Us. One More Final: I Need You
Aside from maybe “memeing Trump into the White House,” the most impressive display of the Internet’s power was probably during “He Will Not Divide Us” (often referred to as HWNDU). It would also serve as a swansong of sorts, one last epic win before the fiery death of the Internet.
He Will Not Divide Us (HWNDU) is an anti-Trump online performance art project by actor Shia Labeouf and artists Luke Turner and Nastja Rönkkö, featuring a 24-hour livestream held in a variety of locations. While initially launched outside the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York with a planned broadcast for the duration of Donald Trump's first term as president of the United States, the stream was moved several times after being disrupted by trolls from 4chan's /pol/ board and other online communities.
-- Know Your Meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/he-will-not-divide-us)
The initial “art project” was simply a camera mounted on one of the outer walls of the museum and pointed at eye level towards a parking lot opening to the city streets. Above the camera was printed the slogan “He Will Not Divide Us” (“he” referring to President Trump). Shia LaBeouf appeared facing the camera, repeating the words “he will not divide us” over and over again like a mantra. A mob of other Leftists (not sure if they were part of the project or random passersby) would join in Shia’s “He Will Not Divide Us” chant. The stream was open to the public, and anyone walking by could stop and participate in the stream. Supposedly, the livestream was supposed to air 24/7 like this for the entire 4 years of Trump’s presidency.
After discovering the campaign on 4chan, many anon visited the project to “troll” Shia, the project, and its Leftist participants.
That day, YouTuber “I'm a fish” began uploading highlights from the stream in which /pol/ users praise Donald Trump, hold signs with Pepe the Frog, play the song "Shadilay" and write "KEK" on the museum wall.
-- Know Your Meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/he-will-not-divide-us)
At one point in the stream, a black Leftist claimed milk was “hate speech towards black people...like just purposely drinking milk outside very obnoxiously” because racists “try to say that black people are lactose intolerant” (https://youtu.be/_p4h3jwJob0?si=2C_QFNmrcefepu9O&t=264). From this point, some anon began carrying quarts of milk at the event.
Among the trolls was New Yorker Brittany Venti, an Alt Lite game streamer who sometimes ironically pretended to be an airheaded hysterical feminist in order to mock SJWs. Venti at first ironically pretended to be one of the Left Wingers on the stream, giving a speech about how Barack Obama had “saved Central Park’s ice skating rink, in only 4 months and for only 2.5 million dollars after the city had failed to. Under budget and ahead of schedule. Barack Obama!” (this was in fact true of Donald Trump, not Obama). This prompted the crowd on stream to break out in applause, one of them high-fiving Venti. Venti continued, “I have one more thing to say. Donald Trump failed to support our allies, including Israel. The Jewish word for peace and unity is ‘Shadilay.’” Turning to the crowd, “If everyone could say ‘Shadilay’ real quick, is that okay? It would mean a lot to me since I’m Jewish. Everyone say Shadilay?” The crowd cried “Shadilay!” Venti continued, “The Jewish word for ‘to divide’ is ‘Soros.’ Hashtag #NoSoros hashtag #Shadilay” (a reference to Left Wing astroturfed hashtag campaigns such as #NotMyPresident). Later she would hold up pieces of paper with memes, chant “he will nut inside us” and scream “fucking normies, get off of my stream! Reee!” at the top of her lungs. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLnYxoDoToo)(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmp9CcfJn3E)
In contrast to his monk-like chants, Shia grew increasingly “triggered” as he was successfully trolled by anon, getting up in anon’s face and angrily yelling “HE WILL NOT DIVIDE US!” over and over again aggressively. At some point, Shia got into an altercation with the mob of trolls, forcing him to leave the vicinity.
On the evening of January 25th, 2017, Labeouf was arrested on stream on suspicion of assault. According to a New York Police Department spokesman, Labeouf allegedly grabbed a man's scarf and scratched his face, then pushed him to the ground after saying something that offended Labeouf on the livestream.
-- Know Your Meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/he-will-not-divide-us)
With Shia gone, HWNDU became simply a livestream camera pointed at the parking lot, where random anon would show up and create content. The event became a de facto meeting place for anon who wanted to meet each other offline, or who wanted to visit the stream to make content for the anon watching at home. This content included political debates between anon and the Leftists at the events, and in some cases anon simply giving stream of consciousness monologues about whatever was on their mind at the moment.
You know something? I think for 70 years we’ve been divided. And I think it’s been by people from both parties. I think it’s been by people from both sides of the aisle. And I think what we really need is somebody to join people in saying, “we are middle America, and we need a person to represent us. Because for the last 60 years we haven’t had somebody to represent us. We’ve had somebody from the 1%. Every. Single. Election. And they don’t care what we think. They don’t care at all, they care about their money and they care about making more of it. We need people from us. We need people from the people who are standing here. We’re the ones that know what’s going on. These people fuckin’ don’t give a shit. And they don’t care at all. We need people from this parking lot. These are people who live here every single fuckin day. And we need these people to stand up. And take position, not the people who have been here for the last 80 fuckin years doin nothing but bullshit and jerkin’ our chain.
--NewYorkDashCam, He will Not Divide Us Funniest Moments (https://youtu.be/TOxo0REGhIA?si=aj9H5kgClVii6K8w)
Can I just honestly give my opinion on what this our project means? I don't think that this art project is meant to unite us. I feel like this art project divides us more than the “he” that it’s referencing, because if you're going to demonize Donald Trump, who some people -- people on the Right – have elected as their president, and people on the Left haven’t, then this art project is going to divide us more than this demonized version of Trump ever will. And I'm not even trolling I'm not even faking this. This is my own actual opinion on this.This...this is a shit art installation.This is gonna divide us more than Trump will.
-- unknown HWNDU partipant, “hewillnotdivide.us meets /pol/ - Highlights, Day 6 Part 2” (https://youtu.be/8MSnXaY9owI?si=OnaZAYXr-WUAdJwP&t=1015)
Many of the highlights from this original HWNDU stream are still available online on the “I’m a fish/@HWNDU” YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@HWNDU). It has also been covered by the YouTube channel The Internet Historian (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p4h3jwJob0)
Sam Hyde also crashed the event. He would be harassed by journalists, engage in a bit of trolling, and be swarmed by fans. Nick Fuentes, then a total unknown, attended the event and met Hyde, who he would later call one of his heroes. In 2020, by which time Fuentes had developed a large following, Hyde and Fuentes would collaborate for the video “Q-Anon Exposed By Sam Hyde!!!” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw7UqBuvDbc) Hyde also made a guest appearance on Fuentes’s show America First with Nicholas J Fuentes on DLive, during Fuentes’s election night coverage of the 2020 presidential election.
A photo of Venti and other anon who had met IRL, all enjoying a meal together, has become a bittersweet symbol of the last days of the Alt Right and Wild West-era Internet culture.
However, the story does not end there. This was only phase one of HWNDU. The true demonstration of anon’s power would be during the next evolution of HWNDU: Capture the Flag.
On February 10th, 2017, Page Six reported that the Museum of the Moving Image would be shutting down the He Will Not Divide Us installation, citing violent altercations that had occurred on-site.
-- Know Your Meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/he-will-not-divide-us)
The project was moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, outside the El Rey Theater. It was basically identical to the previous format of the project, featuring a single livestreaming camera with the words “He Will Not Divide Us” printed above it. Anon showed up at this location as well, although far fewer in number, and their content was often less “trolling” and more akin to the monologueing of the later part of New York HWNDU. In spite of this, the new location lasted only three days before the camera was spray-painted by a masked vandal, ending the Albuquerque location of the project.
On March 8th, the livestream returned. This time, it consisted solely of a camera pointed up at a white flag with the words “He Will Not Divide Us” on it, against the backdrop of the sky in an unknown, “secret” location. With only these clues and the power of 4chan’s collective autism, anon sought out to discover the location of the flag in order to continue trolling Shia.
After defeat on the battlefields of New York and New Mexico, Shia headed to a new, hidden location. No more chanting or interaction, this latest exhibit would just be a flag waving arrogantly in front of a camera. There were no landmarks. No scenery. No clues at all to its whereabouts. It would be impossible to find and nothing could stop the broadcast. Check. Mate.
And this would allow Shia to act smug for the next 4 to 8 years. That is, unless /pol/'s agents could find away to track it down.
Challenge accepted. It was to be the greatest game of capture the flag ever.
-- The Internet Historian, “Capture the Flag | He Will Not Divide Us”(https://youtu.be/vw9zyxm860Q?si=_97OLF75dOqhqkqi)
Because the stream was 24/7, anon were able to use the time of sunset to determine that it was in the Eastern time zone. Anon also studied the stars during the night, as well as clouds and wind patterns near the location. Other anon scoured the news and social media, trying to determine Shia’s whereabouts, and whether or not he was present at or near the site of the livestream. When planes flew over the location, anon monitored air traffic within the time zone. At one point in the stream, the croaking of frogs indicated the presence of water nearby – more meme magic.
Another major breakthrough came when a waitress posted about meeting Shia LeBeouf, with an article in TMZ confirming that Shia was in the vicinity of Greensville, Tennessee (which fell within the Eastern time zone).
However, it was ultimately the stars that would allow anon to locate the flag.
On March 9th, an unknown person was recorded taking down the flag and replacing it with a "Make America Great Again" hat and Pepe the Frog T-shirt
...
On March 10th, the news site Get Riced posted an article about how the location was discovered, claiming that viewers used triangulation techniques based on planes seen in the stream to determine the general area. A local then began honking their horn repeatedly while driving in the area, which were picked up by the webcam's microphone to further narrow the location. Finally, using star maps, 4chan users were able to identify the exact location of the flag on Google Maps.
-- Know Your Meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/he-will-not-divide-us)
After Shia removed the MAGA hat and shirt, he remained at the location, guarding the empty flagpole. According to The Internet Historian, Anon speculated ways of reattaching the hat to the poll using a drone. However, I have not been able to find evidence of if this was ever completed before the project was moved to its next location.
On March 22, the flag moved across the Atlantic, relocated to the top of the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology in Liverpool, England. It would be found by anon and taken down within 25 hours. Anon first tried forging a fake press pass in order to gain access to the roof where the flag was located, but was unsuccessful. Other plans involved drones fitted with contraptions such as weed-whackers, flamethrowers, and high wattage lasers. However, before these could be completed, anon had already scaled the building in an attempt to remove the flag.
On March 23rd, as masked man appeared on the Liverpool stream. The stream was subsequently taken offline and photographs began appearing on both 4chan and 8chan of an empty flag pole on the building, with many speculating that it had been stolen by the masked man.
...
Shortly after, a photograph of the masked man standing on a roof with a cohort was posted to /pol/, referring to the pair as ''parkour autists'' That day, the official @FACT_Liverpool Twitter feed announced that "on police advice" the installation was removed "due to dangerous, illegal trespassing"
--Know Your Meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/he-will-not-divide-us)
Next, the exhibit moved online, featuring a digital placard with the words “He Will Not Divide Us” overlaid across a digital HWNDU flag. “HWNDU has been removed and relocated several times, but this one is here to stay” the site claimed. A bold claim to make. The fact that they thought the exhibit would fare better online, on 4chan’s home turf, seems a bit short-sighted. Needless to say, the site would quickly 404 for several hours, supposedly due to a DDoS attack from 4chan.
For the next year and a half, the project would relocate to various locations across the world, including London, a remote cabin in Finland, and Nantes, France. In each case, anon was able to discover the new location and troll Shia. In France, a drone was finally employed in a HWNDU op. The drone, equipped with a flamethrower, attempted to burn the flag, but it was made of a fireproof material. By this time, many anon had grown bored with the campaign. The last HWNDU location was announced by Shia on May 8th, 2018, but I can find no other information regarding it.
Since 2018, Shia LeBeouf has converted to Catholicism, and seems to have become more based and redpilled:
LaBeouf also says, before his conversion, he did not initially feel compelled to have a relationship with Jesus because he only knew the “soft, fragile, all-loving, all-listening but no ferocity … meek” Jesus (Barron immediately offers the word “feminized”), and it was only when LaBeouf encountered what he considered to be “masculine” — “cape, dipped in blood, sword” — that Jesus felt “appealing.”
-- Religion Unplugged, September 7, 2022, “Shia LaBeouf's Newfound Catholicism Part Of His Hollywood Redemption Story” (https://religionunplugged.com/news/2022/9/6/shia-lebeoufs-newfound-catholicism-part-of-his-hollywood-redemption-story#:~:text=The%20actor%20%E2%80%94%20who%20comes%20from,for%20the%20role%20of%20Pio.)
The Alt Right and the Alt Lite
The unexpected victory of Donald Trump seemed like a great victory for the Alt Right and the inevitability of their ideology’s ascension, but in fact it created a major problem: what was their ideology? A true answer to this would never be found, and instead the Alt Right would fall apart after the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville.
The Alt Right had really never been intended to be a serious political movement, but instead more of a joke, or an “epic troll.” Like Plankton from Spongebob, they “never thought they would get this far.” As stated repeatedly throughout the text, the Alt Right was a big tent coalition loosely organized around a common opposition to political correctness and support of Donald Trump. Many “Alt Right” personalities were trolls like Sam Hyde, not true political figures. Some did not even care about politics but simply found “trolling the libs” funny.
Thus, the Alt Right began to fracture across ideological lines: those who wanted to be American nationalists versus those who wanted to include Europe, those who were pagan or atheist versus those who were Christian. These divisions would become very important after Charlottesville, during the “Optics Wars.” However, for now, the greatest divide was between the “Alt Right” and the “Alt Lite.”
The “Alt Lite” were more similar to the anti-SJW movement that arose after GamerGate. They were essentially liberals, libertarians, and moderate conservatives that were against the social justice Left and political correctness. They generally still believed in liberal assumptions about the world concerning racial equality, feminism, civic nationalism, etc. They might criticize Leftists because they were being “racist against white people.” But that was because racism was wrong and we should all “judge each other on the content of our character not color of our skin.” They might criticize feminists whenever they “held men and women to a double standard.” But that’s because they weren’t truly treating men and women “equally.” Or, as ShoeOnHead, an Alt Lite content creator often did, they might criticize a particular aspect of feminism, such as saying that the wage gap was a myth. At the same time, they would be fully supportive of women in the workplace. They might be against illegal immigration, but for immigration “as long as it was done legally.” In spite of their more moderate stance, members of the Alt Lite would still use the frequently racist or anti-Semitic memes of the Alt Right, but did so strictly ironically or simply because they were popular at the time.
The “Alt Right” on the other hand, was more extreme. They were more willing to touch on “third rail” issues and directly contradict the assumptions of liberalism, which most Americans on all sides basically agreed on at the time. The Alt Right did not believe in equality. They believed that the races and genders differed from each other genetically, and thus there would always be disparate outcome between groups. They did not believe in colorblind civic nationalism. They believed white people had the right to their own homeland and to organize towards their own interests as a racial group. They did not believe in feminism, but that a woman’s role was as a mother and wife. They were against immigration on a mass scale, whether legal or illegal, and wanted to retain a white majority in historically white nations.
And some members of the Alt Right went even further than this. Because the original idea of the Alt Right was based on “shock value,” the trajectory was to become as offensive as possible and to become more and more extreme. There was no such thing as someone who was “too far-right” on the Alt Right. This was not a problem when it was all about making a statement about political incorrectness. But when the irony was stripped away and it was time to decide on one’s true views, then it was necessary to draw the line somewhere.
This failure to draw the line somewhere brought people like David Duke and neo-Nazi skinheads into the big tent. This mistake is what lead to the eventual death of the Alt Right in August of 2017.
Charlottesville: the Fiery Death of the Alt Right
In 2017, the Alt Right was still riding off of the high of electing Donald Trump. Many had decided that it was now time to take the movement offline and turn to IRL activism. This culminated in a protest planned for August 11, 2017 called “Unite the Right” in Charlottesville, Virginia, which was organized to protest the city’s decision to remove a statue of Robert E Lee (which the city saw as a racist celebration of slavery and Jim Crow).
The Unite the Right rally soon became a lightning rod, attracting many Alt Right organizations such as Identity Europa, the Rise Above Movement, the Traditionalist Workers Party, Vanguard America (the precursors of Patriot Front) and Alt Right figures such as Mike Enoch of TRS, Richard Spencer, and Internet troll Baked Alaska. Some personalities within the Alt Lite, such as Brittany Venti, also decided to come to the event, some merely out of curiosity. Other racist and neo-Nazi groups not associated with the Alt Right, such as David Duke (former Grand Wizard of the KKK), and neo-Confederate and neo-Nazi groups also attended the protest. Nick Fuentes, who had recently began his career as a streamer on Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN) earlier that year, also attended, although he was virtually unknown at the time. He did not participate in the infamous “tiki torch” march, having gone there mostly out of curiosity and because he had heard that others in the Alt Right and Alt Lite were going. He would be fired by RSBN as a result of his attendance.
Others thought that the rally was a bad idea. Gavin McInnes (a politically incorrect journalist, co-founder of Vice Magazine and creator of the Proud Boys) was invited to attend, but declined because he did not want “to be associated with explicit neo-Nazis.” The Proud Boys themselves had been founded in September 2016 and were a fairly new organization. They were not a visible part of the rally, although some attended. In fact, Jason Kessler, the organizer of the protest, had been kicked out of the organization by McInnes personally, “once his racist politics became apparent.” The “irony bros” such as streamer Beardson Beardly and Internet troll Paul Town also chose not to attend, the former sensing the potential for sabotage that would undermine the goals of the far-right. Mike Cernovich, an Alt Lite political commentator, also called the rally “a trap.”
The Charlottesville rally was a disaster for the Alt Right. Trump was a charismatic celebrity billionaire, and could be beloved by Americans even when he said unpopular things. The Alt Right’s trolling could also be seen as humorous, so long as they were a nebulous, anonymous bunch of Internet trolls. However, seeing a bunch of weirdos from the Internet emerge from their mother’s basements and crawl into real life carrying fascist symbols and marching next to David Duke was far less palatable. The infamous “tiki torch” march was at once freakish and terrifying from one perspective, and buffoonish from another. The fiery faces of angry protestors lit up in the night recalled that of the KKK burning crosses on people’s lawns, or a lynch mob. This was exactly the sort of image the media had tried unsuccessfully to attach to the Alt Right since the beginning. At the same time, the fact that instead of real torches, they were tiki torches, such as you might buy at Home Depot for a luau-themed barbecue party, combined with the assortment of Kekistan flags and Internet memes mixed with strange, esoteric, fascist symbols made the entire affair seem bizarre and comical to normies.
The violent street clashes between Antifa and counter protestors on one side and the Alt Right on the other, culminating with the death of Heather Heyer, fed perfectly into the media’s narrative of an America about to succumb to a violent and dangerous fascist movement, which had just taken its first victim.
The myth of Charlottesville is that the rally was a big success for the alt-right. However, the organizers had two major political goals for the rally: firstly, to show the country that the alt-right is not just a social media phenomenon, and secondly, to bring various far-right groups together. Neither of these goals was realized.
Whether 500 or 1,500 people attended, Unite the Right was undoubtedly one of the largest explicitly extreme right rallies in recent US history. But while 1,500 people looks impressive in a town of 50,000, they came from all over the country, and constitute only a minuscule faction of the alt-right trolls on social media, let alone of the population of 325 million that live in the US.
-- The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/10/unite-the-right-rally-alt-right-demise)
This violence (which included protestors and counter-protestors attacking each other with sticks and even homemade flamethrowers) was in a way the painful hangover from the “lulz” of 2016. It prefigured the chaos of 2020, a year in which running over protestors with cars became routine, as did street clashes between Proud Boys and Antifa.
After the events of Charlottesville, nearly every Alt Right faction hated every other Alt Right faction. People blamed Richard Spencer for the failure of the event, and Richard Spencer in turn burned bridges with everyone else. People began to dox one another out of spite. The movement had been humiliated in the eyes of the public. The lulz were over and the Alt Right was now a “dead meme.” In the wake of Charlottesville, the Alt Right soured to the idea of IRL activism, and what remained of it would be an Internet-only phenomenon. The Dissident Right would not attempt to mobilize IRL again until Stop the Steal in 2020.
The Unite the Right 2 rally occurred on August 12, 2018, and saw low turnout, with up to 30 Kessler supporters while counter-protesters who demonstrated against the rally numbered into the thousands.
-- Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally)
The immediate consequences of Charlottesville forced the Dissident Right to abandon the Alt Right’s strategy of being as offensive as possible for “shock” value. A line had clearly been crossed, and it was clear that the Dissident Right was no longer being “ironic” but had evolved from trolling into a more serious political movement. Thus, the Alt Right began to dissolve, and the Dissident Right began a process of trying to determine what it actually believed in and what its identity would become. It began to distance itself from explicitly neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups, and no longer employ fascist or Nazi imagery such as the swastika. This process culminated in the “Optics Wars,” which would ultimately replace the Alt Right with something closer to the Dissident Right that we know today.
Effects of the Alt Right on my Worldview
In 2016, I had still been something of a libertarian. I supported parts of the Alt Right, because I was against political correctness, but I did not support unironic fascism or Nazism. I thought there should be a peaceful pro-white advocacy group of some kind, similar to the NAACP but for white people, to prevent them from being discriminated against by the clearly anti-white Left. But that is a very different stance from supporting Nazis.
I still basically believed that people should not use the government to “force their beliefs on others.” I originally supported Trump because I believed that since I opposed the Religious Right forcing their religion on others in the 2000s, I was a hypocrite if I did not oppose the SJWs for doing the same to Christians and conservatives in 2016. It was my hope that a victory for Trump would mean the end of “woke” Leftism, and a return to their older, more liberal form.
Around 2018 or 2019, my opinion began to change. I realized that a truly “liberal” government was just as much of a pipedream as an anarcho-Capitalist Utopia of pure “free markets” or the Communist’s Utopia of “to each his ability, to each his need.” The fact of the matter is that every individual could not simply choose for themselves. It was impossible to have a society without a set of shared norms with some mechanism of enforcement. All that liberalism did was create a vacuum in which the radical Left, or some other group, could come in and enforce their agenda.
To allow everyone to choose whatever rules they wanted for themselves would be like allowing everyone to use whatever currency they felt like or obey whatever traffic laws they felt like. The entire idea of society is that people give up a bit of their liberty in order to participate in society, and in turn reap the benefits of that society. These are benefits that the individual could not achieve on their own, but are possible only through organized and collective action. Therefore, it was inevitable that society would follow one ideology or another, one set of norms or another. In America in the current year, that either meant that the “Religious Right” would enforce their views on society, or else the “Woke Left” would enforce their views on society. Any other third alternative was entirely impractical.
Although not a Christian myself at the time, and still firmly an atheist, I decided that I preferred them to the Woke religion. This was primarily on two grounds:
1. The traditional morals of Christianity were closer to the norm than the Woke ideology. Christianity is closer to what was considered normal in most religions, and in most civilizations (including the Early Roman Republic, Islamic society, Buddhist and Confucian civilizations). The Woke ideology was based on ideas that had never been tried before and were entirely experimental, such as gay marriage or transgenderism. Any negative effects of traditional morality must have been discovered long ago. Meanwhile, it was totally unknown what a society shaped by the Woke ideology would be like.
2. The society that Christianity created was a great place to live. Christian Europe and the more religious America prior to the 1960s were places where there was a high quality of life, people treated each other with respect and manners, the streets were clean, society was efficient, and people cared about the sanctity of human rights and dignity. As society had become more liberal, things seemed to have indeed degenerated, becoming dirtier, poorer, more primitive, more rude, more miserable, etc.
Therefore, I decided to choose a side and support the side of tradition, based on Christian morality. However, the Alt Right was not a viable pathway towards creating this society. I hoped that, as I had predicted in 2016, their views would become more moderate and evolve into a more mature form as time went on and they continued to spread. Then perhaps there would be a movement that I could support.
The Weekly Sweat: Rise Of The Irony Bros
The Alt Right was a “big tent” movement, and it stressed unity between all factions of the Right against their common enemy, the Left. The basic assumption at the time was “don’t punch right” and “no infighting.” However, while one side of the Alt Right was drifting towards unironic and explicit white nationalism and fascism, resulting in the disaster of Charlottesville, another side of the Alt Right went in the opposite direction. This side of the Alt Right, having emerged victorious over the Left in electing Donald Trump, now set the same weapons of irony and trolling against the Alt Right itself. They became known as the “irony bros.”
Infuriating other factions of the Alt Right, especially fans of TRS (a podcast network including The Daily Shoah, Fash the Nation and others) the “irony bros” critiqued the Alt Right from the Right, rather than the Left. Others eventually came to find this faction to be attractive, following the epic fail of Charlottesville.
The irony bros revolved around Beardson Beardly’s livestream show The Weekly Sweat, part of the YouTube channel Honeypot Productions, which also included videos by content creator TVKwa and Twitter troll and influential Meme War veteran Paul Town. TVKwa’s show was a surrealist, Million Dollar Extreme-esque parody of the news (which I cannot find anywhere but was very funny) featuring TVKwa dressed in a ski mask, sitting at a desk floating in a psychedelic void. Paul Town’s content contained a humor that was racist but mostly nihilistic, misanthropic and extremely ironic and insincere (like a more dark triad version of Sam Hyde). The Weekly Sweat was a talk show hosted by Beardson Beardly, a gaming streamer, and Prince Hubris (also known as Shawn), a dakimakura-hugging NEET gym bro. It often revolved around drama within the Alt Right and mocking other Alt Right figures such as Richard Spencer and Mike Enoch.
Allied to the irony bros was Ricky Vaughn, Meme War veteran and one of the most influential Twitter accounts during the 2016 election.
The MIT Media Lab's quantitative analysis of social media and news influencers, which found the Ricky Vaughn Twitter account "was more impactful ... than several major media outlets and figures such as NBC News and The Drudge Report."
-- Vermont Public, April 10 2023 (https://www.vermontpublic.org/programs/2018-04-10/trumps-most-influential-white-nationalist-troll-has-vermont-roots)
Nick Fuentes also was aligned with the irony bros and frequently called into the show as a guest.
Their biggest rivals were Richard Spencer and TRS, who would come to be emblematic of “wignats.”
The Optics Wars: the Dissident Right Grows up, Finds Jesus
While the irony bros focused on mocking the Alt Right, Nick Fuentes offered the Dissident Right an alternative. Fuentes was a former student of International Relations at Boston University. Although originally a traditional Republican who supported Ted Cruz for President, Fuentes would become redpilled in college and change his allegiance to Donald Trump. At 18 years old, he dropped out of college to start his show America First with Nicholas J Fuentes, which he hosted on RSBN out of a friend’s dorm room. After attending Charlottesville, he was fired by RSBN and continued the show independently on his own YouTube channel.
Unlike many members of the Alt Right, who tended to be misfits and anti-social NEETs who locked themselves in their room browsing 4chan, Fuentes was a normal, well-adjusted kid. He had been Student Council President at Lyons Township High School, and had even been voted “most likely to be President.”
On an episode of Nationalist Review, a far-right podcast Fuentes hosted with James Allsup, Fuentes would criticize an appearance on a college tour by Mike Enoch and others from TRS, calling it “bad optics.” His criticisms included the schlubby, overweight and poorly dressed appearance of Mike Enoch, the lack of production quality of the event, the low level of audience turnout, and humiliating disruptions by hecklers.
Additionally, he criticized the Alt Right’s use of fascist, Nazi and skinhead aesthetics, considering them to be “un-American” symbols of foreign, obscure ideologies of the past that would not resonate with conservative Americans. This difference in symbolism also applied to rhetoric. Fuentes emphasized making arguments in a very precise way and sticking to the facts of the matter in a way that would appear reasonable to the average person, rather than going for maximum shock value.
However, his largest criticism of the Alt Right was its lack of Christianity, which he said must play a prominent role in the Dissident Right movement. He harshly condemned and mocked both paganism and atheism.
Fuentes stressed that a distinction must be made between the Dissident Right and groups such as neo-Nazis, skinheads, and white supremacist organizations such as the KKK. Fuentes accused these organizations of being full of “wignats” or “white n*gger nationalists.” According to him, wignats were low IQ, violent, anti-Christian, low-lifes. Utterly spiteful, unsophisticated, and unsuccessful people who were were as degenerate as those they criticized, and destined only for failure. In contrast, Fuentes promoted paleoconservatives such as Patrick Buchanan and white advocates such as Jared Taylor.
Fuentes accused wignats of having a similar attitude of self-victimization as black people who blamed all of their problems on white people, except that they blamed all of white people’s problems on Jewish people instead. While criticizing Jews on certain points, such as their “dual loyalty” to Israel, as well as Jewish influence in the media and politics, Fuentes accused wignats of sounding “schizophrenic” and “obsessed with Jews” to the point that they appeared insane.
This new philosophy became known as “American Nationalism,” and its adherents “amnats.” The basic idea of it was to take the best ideas of the Alt Right, and merge them with the more mainstream conservative movement, thus shifting the Republican party away from the neocons and towards a truly oppositional Right Wing movement that was “actually conservative.”
Fuentes was criticized by most of the Alt Right for his positions. They argued that the Dissident Right should be a “big tent movement” that included anyone who was “pro-white” including figures like David Duke. They also conflated the idea of “optics” with Fuentes’s position on distancing themselves from certain symbols and rhetoric, referring to it as “optics cucking,” and accusing Fuentes of “hiding his real views” in an attempt to deceive normies into supporting his actual, more fascist positions. They also attacked Fuentes for not being white enough (he is half Mexican) and not being concerned enough with race, accusing him of “civic nationalism.”
Fuentes received support from Ricky Vaughn, who called into an early episode of America First and called it “the future.” The Daily Stormer’s Andrew Anglin, who himself might have been considered closer to a wignat in aesthetic, also praised Fuentes, seeing him as a useful and necessary compliment to his own strategy of over-the-top shock humor.
On the other hand, Murdoch Murdoch, a popular Alt Right show at the time, was anti-Fuentes, mocking him in two of their cartoons for being Mexican, his association with Baked Alaska (a personal friend of Fuentes at the time and seen as a buffoonish character by some in the Alt Right), depicting him as an immature Zoomer, and a gay “catboy.” (Fuentes, who described himself as an “asexual incel” and associated with many “ex”-homosexuals, such as Milo, was often accused of being gay. He also appeared in a livestream with an edgy, racist livestreamer “Catboy Kami” during one of his livestreams in which Kami was dressed as a “catboy” for shock value). TRS and Richard Spencer were perhaps the biggest antagonists of Nick Fuentes, with amnats going out of their way to attack them, and being attacked back in turn.
The debate between the “wignats” and the “amnats” was known as the “Optics Wars.” While ideological in nature, it also heavily involved many other areas. Aesthetics, with amnats excluding followers who used white supremacist or Nazi imagery (such as the swastika, 1488, and the black sun) while wignats embraced them. Rhetoric, with amnats being more deliberate and specific with their arguments and trying to appeal to the average conservative, while wignats preferred the extreme shock humor of the earlier Alt Right. Individual personalities, with amnats refusing to associate with neo-Nazi groups, skinheads, supporters of TRS, Patriot Front, David Duke, or Richard Spencer. Religion, with amnats being exclusively Christian (particularly Catholic), and wignats being pagan or atheist. And even race, with amnats accepting non-white members and wignats criticizing people in the movement not considered adequately white. Amnats also typically were supportive of Donald Trump and other Republican politicians, while the wignats started to become critical of Donald Trump and claimed there was “no political solution,” instead favoring strategies such as dropping out of society to live in a remote place with like-minded people.
In addition to the “Optics Wars,” Nick Fuentes also launched a “Thot War,” accusing the Alt Right of simping for egirls such as Brittany Venti and Lauren Southern, not being sufficiently anti-feminist, and stressing that any political movement must be exclusively led by men due to the drama and security concerns that women brought with them, and the innate incompetency of women in politics. The irony bros assisted Fuentes in these “wars,” especially the Thot War, which often included trolling or raiding female members of the Alt Right and Alt Lite.
The Alt Right continued to decline in popularity over time. This was not immediate, but rather a slow process. The wignats can be seen as the last vestiges of this movement, and they would remain for some time, especially on non-mainstream platforms such as /pol/, 8chan, Gab, and later federated instances such as poast. However, by about 2021 or 2022 they would lose whatever remaining relevancy they had. Richard Spencer would become a Biden supporter in 2020 and shill heavily for the Covid Vaccine while TRS faced financial lawsuits from Charlottesville and internal drama.
The amnats would effectively win the Optics Wars, becoming more and more popular, especially after the Groyper Wars in 2019 and Fuentes’s rise in popularity. In my opinion, they offered a welcome change. It was more serious and reasonable, decried racial violence of any kind, promoted social conservativism and responsibility, advocated for white people while not being hostile to others races, and, most importantly, had a clearer and more positive message based on Christianity. I could not have supported a neo-Nazi or white supremacist movement, or one that associated itself with the KKK, but I did not see any problems with supporting a movement that was simply pro-white and followed something akin to Christian Nationalism. I certainly saw it as better than the alternative the Left was advocating for: a society hostile to whites and to God.
Then in 2022, Kanye West, assisted by none other than Nick Fuentes himself, would become the ultimate wignat, proclaiming “I love Hitler” to millions of viewers on InfoWars, thus definitively rendering the “Optics Wars” moot. It also fundamentally changed the trajectory of America First. It was no longer about synthesizing the best ideas of the Alt Right with mainstream conservatism. Instead, Fuentes would unveil a new ideology for America First, which he called “Christian Futurism.” But, by that time, the landscape of both the Dissident Right and the nation had totally changed. The Alt Right was firmly in the rear view mirror and these sorts of disputes were no longer pertinent.
In addition to their organic loss of popularity after Charlottesville, as well as several Alt Right-inspired mass shootings that would occur in the following years, the Alt Right’s demise would be accelerated by Big Tech censorship, which would begin in the same year.
Big Tech Censorship: the fiery death of the Internet
During the 2016 election, the establishment looked clueless and out-of-touch with the new Internet counter-culture that dominated the youth and was growing more popular by the hour. The Internet also allowed Trump’s message to bypass the mainstream mass media, and narratives that contradicted them to proliferate unimpeded. There was only one solution: the Internet must be shut down.
A video recorded by Google shortly after the 2016 presidential election reveals an atmosphere of panic and dismay amongst the tech giant’s leadership, coupled with a determination to thwart both the Trump agenda and the broader populist movement emerging around the globe.
...
Walker says that Google should fight to ensure the populist movement – not just in the U.S. but around the world – is merely a “blip” and a “hiccup” in a historical arc that “bends toward progress.”
...
CEO Sundar Pichai states that the company will develop machine learning and A.I. to combat what an employee described as “misinformation” shared by “low-information voters.”
-- Breitbart, December 12 2018 (https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-google-leaderships-dismayed-reaction-to-trump-election/)
This resulted in the “Censorship Era” of the Internet, an era of increasing censorship of dissident views via a public-private partnership between the Big Tech companies and intelligence agencies such as the FBI (and sometimes even the White House directly). It was also facilitated by a new development in technology: machine learning, also known as AI.
With AI technology, it was possible for large tech platforms to censor tens of millions of users automatically, without the need for a human to be involved. It also allowed for a level of arbitrariness and opaqueness, which made it more difficult for people to circumvent by rephrasing their messaging to get past the censorship.
However, censorship was not relegated to machine learning algorithms. The government was also personally involved in Big Tech censorship. As the “Twitter files” revealed in 2022 (following the company’s acquisition by Elon Musk) the government, including the White House, would “ask” Big Tech to censor specific narratives, specific posts, and specific accounts, and there were daily meetings between the tech platform and government entities.
Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth not only met regularly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, but with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Also, Twitter was aggressively applying “visibility filtering” tools to Trump well before the election.
-- Twitter Files, Pt 3 (https://www.racket.news/p/capsule-summaries-of-all-Twitter?r=5mz1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web)
The government was in constant contact not just with Twitter but with virtually every major tech firm.
These included Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Reddit, even Pinterest, and many others. Industry players also held regular meetings without government.
-- Twitter Files, “Twitter AND "OTHER GOVERNMENT AGENCIES" (https://Twitterfiles.substack.com/p/Twitter-and-other-government-agencies)
At the close of 2017, Twitter makes a key internal decision. Outwardly, the company would claim independence and promise that content would only be removed at “our sole discretion.” The internal guidance says, in writing, that Twitter will remove accounts “identified by the U.S. intelligence community” as “identified by the U.S.. intelligence community as a state-sponsored entity conducting cyber-operations.”
The second thread shows how Twitter took in requests from everyone — Treasury, HHS, NSA, FBI, DHS, etc. — and also received personal requests from politicians like Democratic congressman Adam Schiff, who asked to have journalist Paul Sperry suspended.
-- The Twitter Files Parts 11 and 12(https://www.racket.news/p/capsule-summaries-of-all-Twitter?r=5mz1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web)
In addition to leaks such as the “Twitter files,” the government’s engagement in censorship was legally found to be in violation of the 1st amendment in 2023.
The White House, health officials and the FBI may have violated the First Amendment rights of people posting about COVID-19 and elections on social media by pressuring technology companies to suppress or remove the posts, a federal appeals court ruled late Friday.
The decision from the conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals partly upheld an order from a Louisiana federal judge that blocked many federal agencies from having contact with companies like Facebook, YouTube and X, formerly Twitter, about content moderation
...
The 5th Circuit panel found that the White House coerced the platforms through “intimidating messages and threats of adverse consequences” and commandeered the decision-making processes of social media companies, particularly in handling pandemic-related and 2020 election posts.
“It is true that the officials have an interest in engaging with social media companies, including on issues such as misinformation and election interference. But the government is not permitted to advance these interests to the extent that it engages in viewpoint suppression,” the judges wrote.
-- USA Today, Biden administration coerced social media giants into possible free speech violations: court”, Sep 9 2023 (https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/09/08/biden-administration-coerced-Facebook-court-rules/70800723007/)
"Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say," Judge Andrew Oldham, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, wrote in the ruling.
-- Reuters, “U.S. appeals court rejects big tech's right regulate online speech” Sep 17 2023 (https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-appeals-court-rules-against-big-techs-ability-regulate-online-speech-2022-09-16/)
However, while it is nice that a smoking gun has finally been uncovered in recent years, this was never necessary. The exact whys and wherefores never mattered. Everyone on the Internet felt the effects of Big Tech censorship almost palpably. They also correctly guessed its motivations, and the shape that would it take. Big Tech would operate by “boiling the frog.” Banning the most controversial accounts first, and then slowly working their way up from there.
The first banned man was Andrew Anglin, founder of The Daily Stormer. This occurred shortly after Charlottesville. Anglin said that Heather Heyer did not die from vehicular impact, but instead from a weight-related heart attack. As a consequence, his site would begin to be censored.
On August 13, the website was informed by its domain registrar GoDaddy that it had violated the terms of service by mocking Heyer in an article by Anglin. He was given 24 hours to locate a new registrar for the site.
The next day it moved to Google which almost immediately cancelled its registration for violation of terms, also terminating the website's YouTube account. The following day, the website registered with Tucows, who canceled it hours later for regularly inciting violence. On August 15, it was announced by "weev" that the site had moved to the dark web, and that it was now only accessible via Tor, while Facebook banned links to the site and Discord banned its server. On August 16, Cloudflare, the DNS provider and proxy service used to protect The Daily Stormer, also terminated their service.
Cloudflare had previously refused to terminate sites based on their content, but CEO Matthew Prince made an exception, posting a public announcement and explanation on the company's blog. The Daily Stormer now receives DDoS protection from a content distribution network set up in March 2017, BitMitigate. The company's founder, Nick Lim, said that he found The Daily Stormer to be "stupid" but believed in freedom of expression. Several Twitter accounts connected with The Daily Stormer were also suspended.
– Wikipedia(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Stormer)
As of 2023, The Daily Stormer is only available on the tor network or “Dark Web,” a part of the Internet that is inaccessible by normal browsers and requires the use of the anonymizing Tor browser to use.
In spite of the content of the site, at the time it was unthinkable and unprecedented that a site could be purged from the Internet in such as way. Publications such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Slate, The Los Angeles Times, National Review and even NPR wrote about the risks of opening the door to censorship of the Internet, warning that it could spread to censorship of other political views, including Left Wing ones.
The next target of censorship was Alex Jones. Alex Jones had been another high profile Trump supporter during the Great Meme War. He was syndicated on 129 stations, had a daily audience of five million listeners and his video streams topped 80 million viewers in a single month. InfoWars brought in tens of millions of dollars in ad revenue, allowing the production quality of his show to rival that of any mainstream media program. This created another avenue where the mainstream mass media narrative could be bypassed. On August 6, 2018, he was banned from YouTube, Apple and Facebook, “citing repeated violations of policies against hate speech and glorifying violence.” On September 6, 2018, he was banned from Twitter (https://apnews.com/article/2521ccbe3b5a43d68d66c21c030a7f2d).
"Apple does not tolerate hate speech," the company said in a statement. "We believe in representing a wide range of views, so long as people are respectful to those with differing opinions."
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Early Monday, Facebook announced that it had permanently removed four Alex Jones-related pages — the Alex Jones Channel Page, the Alex Jones Page, the InfoWars Page and the InfoWars Nightly News Page.
"We believe in giving people a voice, but we also want everyone using Facebook to feel safe," the company said in a statement. "It's why we have community standards and remove anything that violates them, including hate speech that attacks or dehumanizes others."
-- NPR, August 6 2018 (https://www.npr.org/2018/08/06/636030043/YouTube-apple-and-Facebook-ban-InfoWars-which-decries-mega-purge)
From this point on, censorship spread further and further. “Ban waves” on platforms such as Twitter and YouTube became common, where multiple accounts would be banned all at once, sometimes across multiple platforms, and usually with no explanation whatsoever. Aside from censorship initiated by the platforms themselves or at the behest of the government, advertisers would also initiate “ban waves” such as during YouTube’s many “adpocalypses”
Organizations such as the ADL and SPLC would also use advertiser boycotts as a weapon. One such campaign, launched against Facebook in 2021, was called “#StopHateForProfit.”
The report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)—one of multiple civil rights groups involved in launching the #StopHateForProfit campaign last June—analyzed the success of the boycott in realizing its goals a year later.
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The #StopHateForProfit boycott was started last summer amid outrage over Facebook’s content moderation policies, including its refusal to regulate a post from Trump in the midst of racial justice unrest that said, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” After its June 17 launch, the boycott quickly drew the participation of “thousands” of companies, according to the ADL, including big-name brands like Pfizer, Best Buy, Ford, Adidas and Starbucks. Some of these companies pledged a short pause on advertising spending, while others vowed to cut off funding for the rest of the year or until Facebook made tangible changes.
-- Forbes, Jun 17 2021 (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2021/06/17/last-years-advertising-boycott-of-Facebook-led-to-change-but-not-where-you-think-report-finds/?sh=3ed6ada94522)
These boycotts put further censorship in the hands of organizations such as the ADL. As a result of these ADL-led advertiser boycotts, it became common practice to consult with these organizations when crafting terms of service, effectively putting these organizations in charge of such policies.
The era would reach its height in 2020 and 2021. During 2020, all information about the Covid-19 pandemic that contradicted the official narrative, including the inefficacy of masks, the theory that Covid originated in a lab rather than from a wet market, and side effects of the Covid vaccine, were either “fact checked” with automatic tags inserted onto the posts containing the establishment narrative, or the accounts spreading this information would be banned outright (even when it came from credible sources, such as doctors).
In the 2020 election, the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop leaked. It revealed both pictures and videos of Hunter Biden using racial slurs, smoking crack, and having sex with prostitutes, as well as using his father’s name to enrich himself and general government corruption. The details of the story itself are really not important, but rather the attempt to censor it. A story about the laptop and its contents was published by the New York Post in the last months of the 2020 election. In spite of it coming from a reputable source, the story was banned on social media. Users were not even able to share the story in direct messages to one another. The mainstream mass media claimed the laptop story was “Russian disinfo.”
Then, of course, in 2021, the sitting President of the United States, President Trump, would be banned from Twitter and Facebook.
By 2021, conservatives were not only being banned from social media platforms but other services such as AirBnb, payment processors such as Patreon and PayPal, and even banks. In the case of Lauren Southern and Michelle Malkin, even their families were banned from these services. On February 6, 2022, Michelle Malkin and her husband were both banned from AirBnb (https://prescottenews.com/index.php/2022/02/06/opinion-why-airbnb-banned-me-and-my-hubby-too-michelle-malkin/). Lauren Southern’s parents were banned from AirBnb in 2023 (https://www.foxnews.com/media/conservative-activist-rejects-airbnbs-apology-banning-parents-something-more-nefarious-going-on).
In both cases, their family was not involved in their political activities.
Nick Fuentes, after the events of January 6th, would even be put on a no-fly list and have his money seized by the government (although it is unclear whether this was solely from his speech, or whether it was because of his refusal to wear a mask on a flight and because of a mysterious bitcoin donation around the time of J6. Still, these could simply be convenient excuses by the government). As of 2023, Nick Fuentes has been banned from every payment processor in the world, including those in Russia and China. He has been banned from most banks, having to move his money from one bank to another frequently. He is also banned from some crypto exchanges, such as Coinbase. He is also banned from several tech services, such as Github, in order to impede his ability to develop his streaming platform, Cozy.tv.
The entire time, Leftists dishonestly insisted that conservatives were not actually being censored by Big Tech at all, a fact that has now been debunked by leaks such as the Twitter files.
A video of Google’s first all-staff meeting following the 2016 election has been published by Breitbart, revealing the candid reactions of company executives to Donald Trump’s unexpected victory.
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The video was characterized by Breitbart as evidence of Google’s supposed partisan bias against Republicans – an allegation that has been made repeatedly by Trump, Republican lawmakers and conservative media outlets in recent months.
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But the bombastic responses ignored the substance and true tenor of the meeting, which was more measured and less partisan than Breitbart implied.
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Nevertheless, the leaked video will probably only fuel the Republican narrative that major technology companies are biased against conservatives. Just last week, Twitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, faced four hours of questioning from a House committee, with Republican representatives focusing almost exclusively on specious allegations of anti-conservative bias.
-- The Guardian, September 12 2018. (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/12/breitbart-video-google-trump) This article was written in an attempt to do damage control for the Breitbart article cited at the beginning of this section. As is typical, it pretends that censorship was not happening and there was no bias against conservatives, in spite of this plainly being the case to any reasonable observer.
Leftists also dishonestly claimed that, even if censorship was occurring, it was not a violation of the 1st amendment because, as a “private company” they could run their business “however they wanted.” In addition to having been contradicted by the courts themselves in recent years, this is also contradicted by the Leftist’s own stated beliefs. In no other case have Leftists ever asserted that “private companies can run their business however they want,” instead favoring ever-increasing regulations on private companies. Additionally, Leftists do not believe in “freedom of association.” If private companies are free to do business or not do business with whomever they want, then they could choose not to do business with black people or to not bake a cake for gay people. The first of these has been made illegal due to the efforts of Leftists via the Civil Rights movement, while the latter is contrary to the positions of the Left and also illegal in some jurisdictions due to Leftist activism.
The Censorship Era seems have ended in 2022. By this time, alt tech platforms such as Rumble had become popular enough to circumvent tech censorship. In the same year, Elon Musk bought Twitter, promising to turn it into a “free speech” platform and loosening censorship somewhat.