Kill All Normies: Online culture wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the alt-right

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In academia, the ‘cultural turn’ saw a radical shift in scholarship whereby universities made culture the focus of contemporary debates. It also meant a shift in emphasis toward meaning and away from a positivist epistemology of discerning objective truth. Despite attempts to use the anti-postmodern language of real conservatives at times, Milo and his 4chan troll fans are in many ways the perfect postmodern offspring, where every statement is wrapped in layers of faux-irony, playfulness and multiple cultural nods and references.” Nagle’s explanation for their omission is that she ‘just didn’t think they were that important’ — surely representing the worst imaginable scenarios for alt-right membership.

The on-line left, as in Tumblr, SJW, performative wokeness, and the other kind of identitarianism is briefly covered as well. As did, a couple of years later, another major figure now associated with the alt-right: Donald Trump. The appeal of Trump to the online trolls made total sense.

Her celebratory tweet did have some traction. For example, it remains retweeted by ‘genderqueer’‘performer’ Ray Filar, who is friends with queer theorist, Sara Ahmed, formerly at Goldsmiths, author of Living a Feminist Life.

Nagle, Angela (2017). Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan And Tumblr To Trump And The Alt-Right. Alresford, UK: Zero Books. ISBN 978-1-78-535543-1.To imagine that all previous fascist movements have been stodgily conservative, and have styled themselves as such, betrays a peculiar ignorance of the history of fascism. What about the neo-Nazi skinhead scene of the late 1970s (still strong and vital in East Germany and much of Eastern Europe)? Many of the original Nazis wanted to abolish Christianity and instigate neo-paganism – hardly a reaffirmation of family-values conservatism. Successful modern fascist movements, like Greece’s Golden Dawn, have grown by becoming fashionable presences on schoolyards, and the classical fascist intelligentsia contained numerous young utopian idealists – Marinetti and the futurists, most famously – alongside conventional reactionaries. Arguments around the definitive features of fascism are often circular and unhelpful, but it is impossible to assemble a definition of fascism in which an ebullient spirit of radicalism does not feature at least in some cases. This group particularly is identified by Nagle as instrumentalising victimhood, competing in what could be dubbed an ‘oppression Olympics’. It just relies on a great deal of willing self-objectification and confessionalism to compete.

One other aspect of the failures of the left in my opinion is how the Left overlooked the realm of Desire that is almost necessarily not satisfied in our contemporary societies. Nagle discusses the frustrated sexuality of the regular young male today and it is a legitimate discussion insofar that it makes up a portion of the frustrated young male who is not politicized until he is pushed towards the misogynistic underbelly of the Web which is again, not necessarily Nazi, but a couple of steps away from it at best. Desire, in this case, is also a desire for the commodity, of course, which also necessarily dissatisfies. When you have the means to buy a given commodity, it fails to restore a sense of satisfaction but rather perpetuates it even further. When you are not able to buy it, well, in an intuitive fashion, you are dissatisfied in a world of instant satisfaction, pornographic images and incessant advertisements. The left’s complete immersion and self-satisfaction with identity politics (LGBT and the alphabet goes on as Zizek was lambasted by critics from the Left when he criticized some of the aspects of the politics of gender in a recent article debate, you can Google it) leaves the room for this new brand of extreme right to tap into the frustration and insecurities of the young male.The anonymous denizens of 4chan's other boards — devoted to travel, fitness and several genres of pornography — refer to the /b/-dwellers as "/b/tards." Measured in terms of depravity, insularity and traffic-driven turnover, the culture of /b/ has little precedent. /b/ reads like the inside of a highschool bathroom stall, or an obscene telephone party line, or a blog with no posts and all comments filled with slang that you are too old to understand. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/upshot/measuring-donald-trumps-mammoth-advantage-in-free-media.html

Book Info". www.zero-books.net. Archived from the original on 2019-07-14 . Retrieved 2018-11-08. They were good at taboo-breaking and were really good at media.... The problem is they didn’t actually have any ideas.” Explicit racism Her answer was unequivocal: fear. And we could add to that, personal ambition. Which Patreon accounted blogger wants to commit possible career and financial suicide over what an Oakland teenager with blue hair claims about themselves? The left didn’t get rid of Milo. Rather than debating Milo and crushing him and his lame straw man ideas, the left worked to “deplatform” him and rioted when he came to UC Berkeley. Bill Maher had him on his show and actually compared him to Christopher Hitchens(!!). Eventually the right got rid of him when he crossed a taboo and was no longer useful to him. Another unfortunate running sore is that Nagle persistently name-drops various seminal thinkers without taking the time to introduce, contextualise or explain the ideas being referenced. The result is simultaneously high-handed and poorly executed, as Nagle airily presumes her readers to be already familiar with various authors – Gramsci, Nietzsche, and the Marquis de Sade, among others – which she herself does not appear to be particularly conversant with. Nagle’s treatment of Judith Butler – who is found guilty, after a kangaroo court trial lasting a single paragraph, of being the reason why some teenagers online self-identify as plants and ‘Otherkins’ – is especially grating and ridiculous.For all that the title reads "4chan and Tumblr," her understanding of the online left is woefully inadequate. The book reads as though Nagle took her understanding of Tumblr simply from watching people on 4chan make fun of it, rather than doing any actual research herself. She completely misunderstands the divisions and subculture of the online left, and minimizes complaints about racism, sexism, and homophobia without even attempting to explain the left's point of view. She editoralizes the story of Gamergate with her own complaints about immature a hobby gaming is (irrelevant, and insulting besides) and how horrible a game she thought Depression Quest was, as if making a horrible game justifies death threats and ongoing harassment. She even goes so far as to equate people desiring to chop off their own limbs with transgender rights and the "spoonie" chronic illness community, which is...troubling, to say the le MacDougald, Park (13 July 2017). "Where Did the Alt-Right Come From? This Book Finds Some Uncomfortable Answers". Intelligencer . Retrieved 6 November 2018. Ultimately these online right-wing movements are a destructive perversion of identity politics coming from young men who feel disappointed with their lives. Nagle thinks this is an ineffective prescription for what ails them. of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right by Angela Nagle