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How White Nationalism Courts Internet Nerd Culture

35 points by aeontech 9y ago

misterHN 9y ago
The internet was built by white people. If you hate white people, then get off the internet. You're supporting something built by people you hate. The entire premise of these articles is "I hate the people who built something, so I'm going to use it to hurt the people I hate". This is the behavior of infants.
slphil 9y ago
> IQ is a pseudoscience This is how people trying to oppose the alt right shoot themselves in the foot. Alt right intellectuals and propagandists immediately capitalize on this kind of nonsense. (The fact that the author identifies as a communist before denying the strongest predictor in psychology is somewhat telling as well and acts as free fuel.)
- vowelless 9y ago
  The author is a self identified communist. What do you expect?
- moz-hx 9y ago
  > Alt-right > Intellectuals A+ joke!
  - slphil 9y ago
    Intellectualism isn't predicated on being correct. There are communist intellectuals, radfem intellectuals, etc. The major alt right intellectuals of note are people like KANTBOT, Frame Game Radio, and the bleedovers from the manosphere like Illimitable Man. I've debated with them multiple times on Twitter as a means of reaching out. They take it seriously and aren't pure ideologues. Edit: It should also be noted that even the widely-hated Richard Spencer is not a moron. He has a Masters in Humanities from the University of Chicago, and was a PhD student in European intellectual history at Duke until he left after 2-3 years to pursue activism.
- danharaj 9y ago
  IQ has scientific value but it falls quite short of the kinds of policy and ideology that spring up around it. It's a fair guess that if someone brings up IQ in a political context as justification for their position, it's pseudoscience.
- chickenfries 9y ago
  Is it non-sense? I've heard many times that there a hell of a lot of problems/criticisms of IQ and that it's history is intrinsically linked with eugenics and other kinds of pseudo science. Can you link me to something supporting your claim that it's " the strongest predictor in psychology" (predictor of what... I'm not sure)?
  - YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 9y ago
    IQ is, as far as I know, a pretty strong predictor of success in life (be it financial, educational, health-wise or longevity).
    - chickenfries 9y ago
      Oh well thanks, YSFEJ4SWJUVU6. If anyone ever questions about IQ I'll be sure to refer them back to you.
      - NuSkooler 9y ago
        Chickenfries attacks YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 based on chosen handle. Perfect.
  - slphil 9y ago
    You've heard nonsense. Please read some of the literature on intelligence research (1). Steven Pinker has also written a great book on why the ideas of the blank slate and social constructivism are purely ideological and do not hold up to analysis (2). IQ is a very strong metric predictor of pretty much every aspect of personal success, from successful marriages to income to academic achievement to interpersonal skills. By no means is the relationship deterministic, but that isn't what we mean by predictors. (Many other psychological metrics, like the nonsensical "emotional intelligence", predict nothing when IQ is included in the mix.) 1: https://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-Intelligence-Cambridge-Fundamentals-Psychology/dp/110746143X https://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-Intelligence-Cambridge-F... 2: https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0142003344 https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0...
- quantumofmalice 9y ago
  The IQ denials and blank slate creationists are hurting exactly the people they claim they are trying to help. (Hard to tell if it is genuine, it might just be virtue signaling.) The best thing we could be doing for disadvantaged groups is encouraging the smartest to have loads and loads of children.
SolaceQuantum 9y ago
I think there should be space for all kinds of discussion, even those I don’t agree with, but in this case what worried me the most was the authors claim that once a person enters a community to discuss whatever white nationalist subjects, they are told or manipulated into believing they cannot leave, or they are made to watch propaganda videos in order to stay in the group. That crosses the line from communication of ideas to coercion and cult behavior. I don’t know why people don’t see that they’re being treated in this manipulative way, though. Even at my most lonely, I was highly suspicious and dodgy whenever any similar tactic was used on me; I preferred to be lonely.
- slphil 9y ago
  Because a good propagandist does two things: 1. Ground the argument in some vestige of reality (the reliance on statistics is very strong). 2. Point out the opposing denial of reality (magical thinking, social constructionism, blank slate lunacy) in order to push the radically opposite perspective without nuance. This is inherently isolating but also makes the adherents feel very powerful. Think pieces like this do not oppose but rather support the cause they purport to be against, since the ideological leanings of the writer are plainly obvious and their own denials of reality stick out like a sore thumb. As long as the political left is dominated by social constructionism and other lunacy, the alt-right will never be exterminated. The task ahead of us is not trivial.
  - misterHN 9y ago
    > the alt-right will never be exterminated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilting_at_windmills https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilting_at_windmills
  - fahayekwasright 9y ago
    Social constructionism is lunacy why?
    - slphil 9y ago
      Because it's factually wrong. Biology matters, and I'm not trying to bring in concepts like race (which is a total intellectual disaster, since the term refers to multiple concepts that mean radically different things). Many studies do not account for simple heredity, when adoption studies have already shown that traits like IQ and even personality are heritable to some degree (1). There are genetic correlations with intelligence, aggression, etc that are difficult to untangle but undeniably real. Humans are incredibly unique animals, but you are still a biological machine and your brain is not a piece of magic pixie dust. Without getting into the free will debate, biology does not determine behavior but does influence it heavily. Edit: I'm not denying the existence of culture or social norms. These matter, but are also undoubtedly linked to the biological machinery of the human animal. Human society is an evolutionary result (2). Second edit: It's very easy to find evidence that the social evolution of humans is a biological process. Here is one of my favorite papers on the self-domestication of the human species (3). 1: https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0142003344 https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0... 2: https://www.amazon.com/Before-Dawn-Recovering-History-Ancestors/dp/014303832X https://www.amazon.com/Before-Dawn-Recovering-History-Ancest... 3: http://resources.seattlecentral.edu/faculty/jwhorley/Gracilization.pdf http://resources.seattlecentral.edu/faculty/jwhorley/Gracili...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
KON_Air 9y ago
tl;dr: furry sjws are mad at furry neo-nazis on internets
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
moz-hx 9y ago
It's incredibly aggravating how aggressively Nazis are attempting to corrupt internet culture to espouse their hateful ideals. The original mindset that developed on the internet was about how nobody's identity IRL mattered, and what you said/did was what proved your worth. Now, a bunch of basement-dwelling Nazis are trying to turn that meritocracy into their own whites-only club? Fuck that, that's not what internet culture is about. I strongly believe that anyone who cares about the internet and its culture of free ideas will recognize it as a place where people can be judged based on their skills and the quality of their ideas rather than their race or gender, and will harshly judge anyone who attempts to exclude others based purely on such superficial metrics.
- danharaj 9y ago
  There were white supremacists pushing holocaust denial on usenet. What actually happened is that the social places on the Internet suddenly stopped moderating themselves which let white supremacists congregate, organize and normalize.
- krapp 9y ago
  >I strongly believe that anyone who cares about the internet and its culture of free ideas will recognize it as a place where people can be judged based on their skills and the quality of their ideas rather than their race or gender, and will harshly judge anyone who attempts to exclude others based purely on such superficial metrics. The internet doesn't have a culture. It did once, but only because the pool of users was small, but as the internet became mainstream, "internet culture" became a reflection of humanity in general. That's not a corruption of anything, it's just the maturity of the platform.
dvt 9y ago
This article is pretty bad and it's kind of annoying that it (somehow) reached the top of HN. But I'll bite. 1) IQ is not a pseudoscience. Admittedly, IQ is a pretty shitty test for intelligence (as it's highly culturally-biased), but calling it pseudoscience is just dumb and shows an inherent misunderstanding of what it's supposed to do. Yeah, white supremacists are idiots and use it to justify racism, but that's a different point than what the author is making. 2) Author criticizes Trump's sharing of the "black on black" statistics arguing that it's fabricated. However, some cursory research shows that it is, in fact, not as fabricated as one might believe: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_6_murder_race_and_sex_of_vicitm_by_race_and_sex_of_offender_2013.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-... According to the above, 90% of African American homicides were perpetrated by African Americans. This can be compared with white homicides which were perpetrated by 83% whites. Obviously, the numbers are highly skewed in the infographic shared by POTUS, but to bury your head in the sand and pretend this isn't a problem in black communities is unfair and does a great social disservice. 3) It doesn't take some kind of genius to "spot the signs" of Neo-Nazism. Swastikas are kind of a tell-tale sign. 4) "Deo is a union Millwright and a 12 year member of the Furry Fandom who spent 6 months infiltrating multiple Alt-Right and neo-Nazi online groups observing and recording how they recruited, organized, and operated." -- laughable. "Infiltrating" = joining a few discord servers and posting on 4chan. Got it. Completely worthless article devoid of any actual real social commentary, potential solutions, or plans of attack. Medium has been turning into a soapbox lately.
- chickenfries 9y ago
  > 4) "Deo is a union Millwright and a 12 year member of the Furry Fandom who spent 6 months infiltrating multiple Alt-Right and neo-Nazi online groups observing and recording how they recruited, organized, and operated." -- laughable. "Infiltrating" = joining a few discord servers and posting on 4chan. Got it. I mean I'm the first to laugh at Furries myself but how else would suggest infiltrating and online community other than by joining the community online? Clearly whoever posted it and whoever is upvoting it finds it to have value. I wonder why it's enraged you so that you feel the need to say it's completely worthless.
- 9y ago
grawprog 9y ago
I don't think I've ever read anyone babbling on about white people being superior because they invented technology, that's a a new one for me honestly. The article was pretty rambly and I have to admit I just skipped a bunch of it. My takeaway was he pretended to be a furry nazi for a while and discovered a bunch of idiots believing in idiotic shit then had to write a bunch of idiotic shit about his 'traumatic' experience listening to idiotic shit. Furry nazis are pretty fucking hilarious though. I wonder if they realize real nazis would have executed them for their sexual attraction to cartoon animals?
- Toboe 9y ago
  >My takeaway was he pretended to be a furry nazi for a while and discovered a bunch of idiots believing in idiotic shit then had to write a bunch of idiotic shit about his 'traumatic' experience listening to idiotic shit. She said something the nazis didn't like, then there was drama including threats against her. She didn't back down, and kept her position. She also read in some of their chats. (If they let her in or someone send her logs) Then she posted that text about nazis trying to infiltrate nerd cultures like the Furry fandom (which she is a member of). So, you completely missed. But at least you tried?
  - grawprog 9y ago
    Nah I gotta be honest. I didn't really try at all.

35 points by aeontech 9y ago

The internet was built by white people. If you hate white people, then get off the internet. You're supporting something built by people you hate. The entire premise of these articles is "I hate the people who built something, so I'm going to use it to hurt the people I hate". This is the behavior of infants.

slphil 9y ago

> IQ is a pseudoscience This is how people trying to oppose the alt right shoot themselves in the foot. Alt right intellectuals and propagandists immediately capitalize on this kind of nonsense. (The fact that the author identifies as a communist before denying the strongest predictor in psychology is somewhat telling as well and acts as free fuel.)

vowelless 9y ago
The author is a self identified communist. What do you expect?
moz-hx 9y ago
> Alt-right > Intellectuals A+ joke!
- slphil 9y ago
  Intellectualism isn't predicated on being correct. There are communist intellectuals, radfem intellectuals, etc. The major alt right intellectuals of note are people like KANTBOT, Frame Game Radio, and the bleedovers from the manosphere like Illimitable Man. I've debated with them multiple times on Twitter as a means of reaching out. They take it seriously and aren't pure ideologues. Edit: It should also be noted that even the widely-hated Richard Spencer is not a moron. He has a Masters in Humanities from the University of Chicago, and was a PhD student in European intellectual history at Duke until he left after 2-3 years to pursue activism.
danharaj 9y ago
IQ has scientific value but it falls quite short of the kinds of policy and ideology that spring up around it. It's a fair guess that if someone brings up IQ in a political context as justification for their position, it's pseudoscience.
chickenfries 9y ago
Is it non-sense? I've heard many times that there a hell of a lot of problems/criticisms of IQ and that it's history is intrinsically linked with eugenics and other kinds of pseudo science. Can you link me to something supporting your claim that it's " the strongest predictor in psychology" (predictor of what... I'm not sure)?
- YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 9y ago
  IQ is, as far as I know, a pretty strong predictor of success in life (be it financial, educational, health-wise or longevity).
  - chickenfries 9y ago
    Oh well thanks, YSFEJ4SWJUVU6. If anyone ever questions about IQ I'll be sure to refer them back to you.
    - NuSkooler 9y ago
      Chickenfries attacks YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 based on chosen handle. Perfect.
- slphil 9y ago
  You've heard nonsense. Please read some of the literature on intelligence research (1). Steven Pinker has also written a great book on why the ideas of the blank slate and social constructivism are purely ideological and do not hold up to analysis (2). IQ is a very strong metric predictor of pretty much every aspect of personal success, from successful marriages to income to academic achievement to interpersonal skills. By no means is the relationship deterministic, but that isn't what we mean by predictors. (Many other psychological metrics, like the nonsensical "emotional intelligence", predict nothing when IQ is included in the mix.) 1: https://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-Intelligence-Cambridge-Fundamentals-Psychology/dp/110746143X https://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-Intelligence-Cambridge-F... 2: https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0142003344 https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0...
quantumofmalice 9y ago
The IQ denials and blank slate creationists are hurting exactly the people they claim they are trying to help. (Hard to tell if it is genuine, it might just be virtue signaling.) The best thing we could be doing for disadvantaged groups is encouraging the smartest to have loads and loads of children.

SolaceQuantum 9y ago

I think there should be space for all kinds of discussion, even those I don’t agree with, but in this case what worried me the most was the authors claim that once a person enters a community to discuss whatever white nationalist subjects, they are told or manipulated into believing they cannot leave, or they are made to watch propaganda videos in order to stay in the group. That crosses the line from communication of ideas to coercion and cult behavior. I don’t know why people don’t see that they’re being treated in this manipulative way, though. Even at my most lonely, I was highly suspicious and dodgy whenever any similar tactic was used on me; I preferred to be lonely.

slphil 9y ago
Because a good propagandist does two things: 1. Ground the argument in some vestige of reality (the reliance on statistics is very strong). 2. Point out the opposing denial of reality (magical thinking, social constructionism, blank slate lunacy) in order to push the radically opposite perspective without nuance. This is inherently isolating but also makes the adherents feel very powerful. Think pieces like this do not oppose but rather support the cause they purport to be against, since the ideological leanings of the writer are plainly obvious and their own denials of reality stick out like a sore thumb. As long as the political left is dominated by social constructionism and other lunacy, the alt-right will never be exterminated. The task ahead of us is not trivial.
- misterHN 9y ago
  > the alt-right will never be exterminated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilting_at_windmills https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilting_at_windmills
- fahayekwasright 9y ago
  Social constructionism is lunacy why?
  - slphil 9y ago
    Because it's factually wrong. Biology matters, and I'm not trying to bring in concepts like race (which is a total intellectual disaster, since the term refers to multiple concepts that mean radically different things). Many studies do not account for simple heredity, when adoption studies have already shown that traits like IQ and even personality are heritable to some degree (1). There are genetic correlations with intelligence, aggression, etc that are difficult to untangle but undeniably real. Humans are incredibly unique animals, but you are still a biological machine and your brain is not a piece of magic pixie dust. Without getting into the free will debate, biology does not determine behavior but does influence it heavily. Edit: I'm not denying the existence of culture or social norms. These matter, but are also undoubtedly linked to the biological machinery of the human animal. Human society is an evolutionary result (2). Second edit: It's very easy to find evidence that the social evolution of humans is a biological process. Here is one of my favorite papers on the self-domestication of the human species (3). 1: https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0142003344 https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0... 2: https://www.amazon.com/Before-Dawn-Recovering-History-Ancestors/dp/014303832X https://www.amazon.com/Before-Dawn-Recovering-History-Ancest... 3: http://resources.seattlecentral.edu/faculty/jwhorley/Gracilization.pdf http://resources.seattlecentral.edu/faculty/jwhorley/Gracili...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

KON_Air 9y ago

tl;dr: furry sjws are mad at furry neo-nazis on internets

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

moz-hx 9y ago

It's incredibly aggravating how aggressively Nazis are attempting to corrupt internet culture to espouse their hateful ideals. The original mindset that developed on the internet was about how nobody's identity IRL mattered, and what you said/did was what proved your worth. Now, a bunch of basement-dwelling Nazis are trying to turn that meritocracy into their own whites-only club? Fuck that, that's not what internet culture is about. I strongly believe that anyone who cares about the internet and its culture of free ideas will recognize it as a place where people can be judged based on their skills and the quality of their ideas rather than their race or gender, and will harshly judge anyone who attempts to exclude others based purely on such superficial metrics.

danharaj 9y ago
There were white supremacists pushing holocaust denial on usenet. What actually happened is that the social places on the Internet suddenly stopped moderating themselves which let white supremacists congregate, organize and normalize.
krapp 9y ago
>I strongly believe that anyone who cares about the internet and its culture of free ideas will recognize it as a place where people can be judged based on their skills and the quality of their ideas rather than their race or gender, and will harshly judge anyone who attempts to exclude others based purely on such superficial metrics. The internet doesn't have a culture. It did once, but only because the pool of users was small, but as the internet became mainstream, "internet culture" became a reflection of humanity in general. That's not a corruption of anything, it's just the maturity of the platform.

dvt 9y ago

This article is pretty bad and it's kind of annoying that it (somehow) reached the top of HN. But I'll bite. 1) IQ is not a pseudoscience. Admittedly, IQ is a pretty shitty test for intelligence (as it's highly culturally-biased), but calling it pseudoscience is just dumb and shows an inherent misunderstanding of what it's supposed to do. Yeah, white supremacists are idiots and use it to justify racism, but that's a different point than what the author is making. 2) Author criticizes Trump's sharing of the "black on black" statistics arguing that it's fabricated. However, some cursory research shows that it is, in fact, not as fabricated as one might believe: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_6_murder_race_and_sex_of_vicitm_by_race_and_sex_of_offender_2013.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-... According to the above, 90% of African American homicides were perpetrated by African Americans. This can be compared with white homicides which were perpetrated by 83% whites. Obviously, the numbers are highly skewed in the infographic shared by POTUS, but to bury your head in the sand and pretend this isn't a problem in black communities is unfair and does a great social disservice. 3) It doesn't take some kind of genius to "spot the signs" of Neo-Nazism. Swastikas are kind of a tell-tale sign. 4) "Deo is a union Millwright and a 12 year member of the Furry Fandom who spent 6 months infiltrating multiple Alt-Right and neo-Nazi online groups observing and recording how they recruited, organized, and operated." -- laughable. "Infiltrating" = joining a few discord servers and posting on 4chan. Got it. Completely worthless article devoid of any actual real social commentary, potential solutions, or plans of attack. Medium has been turning into a soapbox lately.

chickenfries 9y ago
> 4) "Deo is a union Millwright and a 12 year member of the Furry Fandom who spent 6 months infiltrating multiple Alt-Right and neo-Nazi online groups observing and recording how they recruited, organized, and operated." -- laughable. "Infiltrating" = joining a few discord servers and posting on 4chan. Got it. I mean I'm the first to laugh at Furries myself but how else would suggest infiltrating and online community other than by joining the community online? Clearly whoever posted it and whoever is upvoting it finds it to have value. I wonder why it's enraged you so that you feel the need to say it's completely worthless.
9y ago

grawprog 9y ago

I don't think I've ever read anyone babbling on about white people being superior because they invented technology, that's a a new one for me honestly. The article was pretty rambly and I have to admit I just skipped a bunch of it. My takeaway was he pretended to be a furry nazi for a while and discovered a bunch of idiots believing in idiotic shit then had to write a bunch of idiotic shit about his 'traumatic' experience listening to idiotic shit. Furry nazis are pretty fucking hilarious though. I wonder if they realize real nazis would have executed them for their sexual attraction to cartoon animals?

Toboe 9y ago
>My takeaway was he pretended to be a furry nazi for a while and discovered a bunch of idiots believing in idiotic shit then had to write a bunch of idiotic shit about his 'traumatic' experience listening to idiotic shit. She said something the nazis didn't like, then there was drama including threats against her. She didn't back down, and kept her position. She also read in some of their chats. (If they let her in or someone send her logs) Then she posted that text about nazis trying to infiltrate nerd cultures like the Furry fandom (which she is a member of). So, you completely missed. But at least you tried?
- grawprog 9y ago
  Nah I gotta be honest. I didn't really try at all.