#GamerGate Viewed from the Right
Written by John Glanton Posted in Uncategorized
It mystifies me to hear the various journalists, “indie game developers,” and yapping dogs from the periphery who have arrayed themselves against GamerGate describe that movement as right wing. (Or at least it would mystify me, if I weren’t already aware of the… we’ll say “plasticity” of the English language when it’s on the lying tongues of progressive shills and charlatans and grievance mongers.) The point of confusion, of course, is that, whatever else they are, nerds are not right wing. Not collectively at any rate.
In fact, I would guess that, as a group, they tend toward to the opposite side of the spectrum. I’d guess that the gamer demographic skews young, skews urbanite, skews irreligious, educated, deracinated, etc. I’d guess they fit the political profile of the typical Millennial: mostly liberal in theory and thoroughly disillusioned with authority figures in practice. They’re not particularly socially conservative. They’re not philosophically reactionary. And they’re damn sure not the Tea-Partying, red-state, Christo-fascists that their opponents so desperately want them to be.
(And that’s just looking at the gamers’ demographics. We could consider the Right itself as well. It’s not as if historically we’ve held a special brief for gamers, or nerds of any stripe, really. There are a lot of nerdy libertarians, admittedly, but in general conservatives have either been indifferent to or deeply skeptical of the gaming scene.)
All that being said, I almost wish we could claim the legions of GamerGate as our own. Because the plain fact of the matter is that they’re succeeding where we’ve failed for decades. They’re winning. They took the media blitz and survived it. They maintained momentum under concentrated bombardment. And they’re even collecting heads in retribution. Yesterday they got a squeal of pain out of Gawker itself. Gawker. Let that sink in. The Echidna of aggro-leftist yellow journalism. They drew blood from her.
But even in their triumphs, they’re not right wing. Their tactics are identical to those of the social justice warriors they’re contending against. GamerGaters are demonstrably less apt to lie outright, to propagandize shamelessly, to fabricate “death threats” out of whole cloth. Sure. But such scruples aside, they’re still simply turning the weapons of the far Left against itself. Hashtag campaigns. Accusing the other side of “bullying.” Boycotts. And of course the old “hound your enemies financial supporters until they disassociate from your enemies” tack. (That’s the one that made Gawker squeal, by the way.)
So that, as far as I’m concerned, is GamerGate viewed from the Right. It’s a group of young liberals using tried-and-true leftist tactics to unseat and discomfit an older, more entrenched, and more radical group of liberals in the games industry and the media organizations that went to bat for it. This latter coalition evidently underestimated the numbers, the morale, and the organizational capacity of the former group. And they fell victim, in a stroke of poetic justice, to their own tricks. Got caught with their pants down.
This is why it’d be premature to consider GamerGaters allies in the great Kulturkampf of contemporary America, even in the theater of the internet where they’re demonstrating shock troop status. GamerGate is more an internecine conflict that anything. Whereas we on the Right would like to see the feminist critique broken entirely. They simply want the most transparently self-serving shouters of “misogyny!” run out of town on a rail. We would like to see the accusation of racism lose all of its power. They’re content to demonstrate that they’re not the racists that baiters like Polygon and Kotaku are perpetually looking for. We have common enemies, but not so many common end goals.
I don’t think that’s the final word on the whole topic, though. On the contrary. I have—I’ll let you in on it—a secret hope that the GamerGate victory unfolding in front of our eyes is something more than just an entertaining spectacle. I hope that it’s the start of a chain reaction of sorts. I hope it’s a turning point.
There are capable, intelligent young men in the GamerGate camp. And perhaps the single most encouraging upshot to this whole episode is that now those capable, intelligent young men have seen the true face of progressivism. They’ve seen the mask pulled away and caught sight of the ugliness underneath it. I can’t help but believe that they will be wiser for it. Every Millennial who grew up on the internet nurses a skepticism of the media. Every Millennial knows that news outlets lie. But these Millennials have now received that additional, esoteric revelation, one hidden from most: the media won’t simply lie to you, it will go for your throat. It will try to destroy you if you obstruct its agenda. To discredit you entirely. The people holding the megaphones in our public discourse aren’t merely incompetent or short-sighted or even merely biased. They’re malicious. They’re perverse. They’re hungry for power. They’re mean-spirited. And they aspire to a total dominance of that discourse.
I remember the day that same revelation came to me, the day I realized my social superiors hated me. I’ve been in those shoes, and that’s why I’ll wrap up this view of GamerGate from the Right with a message to GamerGaters from a rightist:
Now you know the modus operandi of the social justice Left, which as we have argued on this very site goes much higher up than the people who have been slandering you these past weeks. You know that they accuse you of misogyny, hatred, bigotry, and you know as well that you are defined by none of these things. Regardless, they simply pathologize you, pathologize your dissent, and shove you into the spotlight for public humiliation. It never mattered that your goals in Gamergate are reasonable and healthy and worthy of pursuit. Never mattered a bit. They heaped up whatever slurs they felt would work. Any stick was good enough to beat you with.
I won’t pretend to coach you through the rest of your fight with them. I’ll cheer you on, of course. I’ll even buy a beer for any GamerGater that gets Sam Biddle fired. But it doesn’t look like you need a whole lot of coaching. No. All I want out of you is that you apply this new intel of yours across the whole spectrum of progressive messaging. I ask you to look at us and people like us. Look at the folks on the Right, who have been smeared for years now in the same exact way that you have been. Sexists. Racists. Homophobes. Bigots. Haters. And see if what is true of you is not true of us as well. See for yourself whether we’re the unthinking vicious hatemonsters they make us out to be. See if our sole impetus is “rage” against all that is good and holy. You might see that our various programs are not entirely unreasonable, unhealthy, or unworthy themselves. That we’re as principled in our own right as you are in yours.
I want you to take this look because, like I mentioned above, I think you’re at the beginning of a much bigger conflict than perhaps you realize. The SJWs have invaded your favorite industry, yes. And they have poisoned it, yes. But that’s not the only thing they’ve invaded and poisoned. Our schools, our film and TV entertainments, our public policies, the halls of our capitals—they’ve all been invaded. And they in their own ways will try to break you just as surely as Gawker media did.
I’ll admit I’m a little jealous that you folks were the first ones to give them a bloody nose in public. And that’s a big reason why I’m making this appeal. You’re not the right wing nut job they try to dismiss you as. What I’m asking is that you investigate for yourself whether we have more than just that misrepresentation in common.
And if we do, well, by all means let’s forge ahead together. We’ve got some great intellectual traditions to draw from, some monumental thinkers who have gone ahead of us. Many of our aesthetics, our ideals, our critiques have stood the test of time. They’re crucially relevant today.
But for the love of God we could sure use some young’uns who know their way around a computer.
This is quickly erupting into quite the cultural war. Since the Gawker & Buzzfeed folks couldn’t contain the fire, the Cathedral has brought in the big guns. Just the other day MSNBC ran a hit piece on the GamerGate folks. They even attacked Mike from Danger & Play. GG is important because this type of corruption in media goes all the way up. All of media has been hijacked by the progressive left and used as a propaganda tool to promote their political agenda. I just wrote a piece today as well saying that we neoreactionaries should get a little more involved in this GamerGate thing because it is a great opportunity to red pill a lot of people into seeing that it’s not just gaming journalism that is corrupt, but the whole media complex.
Careful. Gamergate is defined by most as apolitical. Currently it happens most of the opposition defines themselves as “the Left”, but start having right-wingers take the oportunity and whatnot and you risk a backlash against you too.
Hey there – Please, please do not attempt to turn this into any kind of left/right ANYTHING, because that is not what it is. GamerGate appreciates support from all sides, massively appreciates this, so please dont get me wrong. You are correct in saying that GG is important, because this type of corruption in media DOES go all the way up, THROUGHOUT. Left-leaning progressive media and right-leaning conservative media. MSNBC/CNN are just as guilty of this as FOX is.
“it’s not just gaming journalism that is corrupt, but the whole media complex.” We are fully aware of this, and those that aren’t, are quickly having the curtains pulled back for them. There is NO NEED to red-pill anything, if you want to join and support, please by all means do so, but understand that it is not a left/right political thing. This up/down Authority vs Liberty.
I’ve felt, and seen in other GG-ers, that we know this is the beginning of a long fight. Once games media is toppled, I guarantee you we’re not stopping there. It may happen under a different name, but this is going to the top. The battle of our time is the information wars, we’ve grown up in the internet generation, we’ve been training for this most of our lives. We’re ready to grind.
it is not a left/right political thing. This up/down Authority vs Liberty.
What do you think the left/right political thing is?
Left / Right is inherently based solely around economic stuff.
It is not authoritarian vs liberal.
The left/right political thing is a left thing.
Don’t kid yourself. There are authoritarians both on the Right and on the Left; you can see a great many of them entrenched in the halls of power in DC.
What we are seeing with Gamergate — if anything — is that a lot of people on the Left are waking up and realizing that a frightening number of their cohorts are NOT in favor of freedom, of the liberty to make one’s own moral choices. For the first time, they are seeing the radicals whom they’ve been dragged into bed with, and they want out: “Jesus Christ, the right-wing nuts were RIGHT about these people!”
I don’t care who does it, I just want the SJWs to be banished from gaming. They are poison.
As someone who’s been involved with GamerGate since the very beginning, I just thought you might want to know, not all of us are quite as young, quite as idealistic, or quite as naive as you think. In fact, a less than insignificant portion of us, would best be described as post-punk socially left leaning libertarians, who have spent our whole lives on the fairly tolerant fringes of counterculture, but are disgusted by the fervent ideological intolerance the hard left and their unthinking Millennial twitter mobs, are now demanding we adhere to.
For the most part, what is really going on here, is we are largely a group of people who long ago opted out of the culture wars, and wanted no part of it, but are now being told we have to pick a side, or else. What they really didn’t take into account, is our most common trait, is we all have a problem with authority, and dislike being told what to think, far more than just about anything else.
I agree with your assessment there, and your point is well taken. I realized I was generalizing even as I wrote. Part of that is just practical necessity and part of that is the choice of my audience. I know not everyone in the movement is a bright late teen, early-twenty type who has been rapidly disillusioned, but those are the people to whom I’d give the foregoing message. He who has ears let him hear, and so forth.
I appreciate the comment.
If you pay attention to GamerGate closely, you would see that a lot of us are Generation X, with older generation Yers. Yes we have teens but for the most part, most of us are old enough to remember the SNES. And lmlloyd is quite correct, most of us have given up on “politics” we despise ideology and prefer discussion and debate not bound by partisanship. Now the 1 hobby that was mostly untouched by these cultural religious zealots, decide that gaming has gotten big enough. Well, what they didnt know is that there were a metric ton of younger Generation X and older generation Y’s with spending power not willing to take this one sided rad fem/SJW approach to games. This is a culture war, but more importantly it is a war against a VERY specific type of ideology, and that is authoritarianism, left or right is irrelevant, we dont want any of it.
I am in complete agreement with Ryan’s comment. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
We (gamers) come from all walks of life, from all social and economic backgrounds, for example I am a 47 year old hispanic female who works in the human services. I agree with Ryan & JCC. Let me add, I dislike gender/racial politics. Most of us do.
> it is a war against a VERY specific type of ideology, and that is authoritarianism, left or right is irrelevant, we dont want any of it.
I want to quote this for truth. See “Jack Thompson” for an earlier, more mild form of gamer outrage – against a definitely *right* leaning, conservative figure.
We are mostly apolitical types, if I had to identify with anything it might be some kind of libertarianism.
A lot of the young people in this movement come from similar places on the internet as the “Anonymous” movement, for further background. (But, perhaps a little less SJW and a little more libertarian than those guys – I’d argue SJWs have co-opted and warped Anonymous more than a little for their purposes.)
This is your comment:
-We are apolitical.
-Anonymous was apolitical, too.
-Anonymous was co-opted for SJW purposes.
Apoliticalness is by nature very, very easy to co-opt. It’s like taking over a bunch of nomadic tribes with no system of central defense. Very easy thing to do.
Responding to hadley: That is one of the reasons why there is such a movement to get people out of the #Gamergate tag. If numbers start to dwindle, a vocal minority can take over.
The other major reason being is the tag is accusatory of the media. The tag is a reminder that the media is corrupt, and not just a vague call for journalism ethics.
Both are reasons people need to stay in the tag.
In response to Hadley Bennett, since I can’t find the correct comment reply button:-
So, perhaps this is the wake-up call, and as argued, we’ll have to be more political from now on. I’m sure we’d all rather just play cool games though.
Maybe co-opting is the wrong word for what happened to Anonymous. Perhaps that particular banner is being used by others; but the *action* is still in the hands of… whoever acts. I’ll point to GamerGate as the evidence of this. It spawned more or less directly from 4chan, the birthplace of Anonymous and where most of the original Anon culture still exists. A place/culture that has long prized free speech and lack of censorship. (I suppose that can be considered the political outlook that is being threatened here. But it’s a very narrow one that doesn’t fit any common label; even “libertarian” is too broad.)
A lot of the problems are solved by policing the ingroup, and effectively policing the ingroup is very difficult without hierarchical structures. Infiltrators, entryists, love it when a movement has no leaders.
Read these two articles for some technical ingroup dynamics analysis and prevention strategies. Controversial? Yes, but big problems need big solutions and people willing to break things down bit by bit. At the end of the day, it’s about being correct and ensuring that we win. I’d rather win and have an ingroup than play the political correctness card and lose. The workshop pinpoints what we think has been one of the decisive factors in ingroup downfall. Don’t forget that what you’re seeing is a microcosm. Infiltration has already occurred on every level, whether you agree with those advancements, or not. In the 1980s, gay marriage was not a concept. Now, you’ll face the same fate as Brendan Eich if you even dare to donate to the other side. Whether you agree with gay marriage or not, you have to understand that such an incredible transformation of public opinion does not occur across all social spheres and groups without careful planning and careful infiltration. Gaming is one of dozens of other fields.
We’ve identified some of the patterns, and how to defend against them.
http://www.socialmatter.net/2014/10/08/practical-workshop-groups-deal-females-beta-males/
http://www.socialmatter.net/2014/10/22/war-will-never-end-youre-concession-enough-insatiable-left/
I recommend you read the rest of the Social Matter archive, as well.
To Hadley Bennett:
I would actually argue the exact opposite of your position. The vector by which SJWs have subverted every single organization they have every infiltrated, is by corrupting the hierarchy of the group. They get on committees, they form workgroups, they run in elections, and as soon as they get a position of power, they start enacting rules that shift the playing field to their advantage.
GamerGate avoids all of this, by being a flat structure of open discussion, and a meritocracy of ideas. There have already been multiple attempts, of varying levels of success, to influence what the SJWs saw as “thought leaders” of the movement, and they have all failed. Why? Because the ideas those supposed “thought leaders” put out once compromised, were weak, and didn’t stand up to scrutiny. I have described it before as an intellectual mosh pit, or a postmodern crucible of deconstruction. Every idea, no matter who it comes from, is examined, endlessly discussed, torn to shreds, and only the strongest ideas survive, and are synthesized with others, to form tactics and strategies.
The only reason this works, is because the people participating in GamerGate, have such a strong commitment to anti-authoritarianism. However, it is also the reason we have thus far succeeded where so many others have failed. We don’t have committees to infiltrate, leaders to influence, or charters to subvert, we just have one big yelling match, where the best ideas win out.
The thing to remember, is that GamerGate is not some political movement, that is supposed to stick around for decades, and shape society to some agenda. It is a group of people pushing back against zealots trying to ruin what we love. We will keep pushing back, until the zealots give up, go away, or are driven out, and then we will fizzle out ourselves, and go back to our lives, just as it is supposed to be. We don’t need any ideology for that, other than “not the crap they’re pushing” and when your core motivation is just “not that,” then there will never be any possibility of it being perverted into the very thing it exists to stand against.
“We will keep pushing back, until the zealots give up, go away, or are driven out, and then we will fizzle out ourselves, and go back to our lives, just as it is supposed to be. ”
While I do generally agree, and expect nothing more, I do so very hope gamergate can do enough damage, and expose enough lies and manipulation, as to cripple the social justice warriors as an ideology long after we’ve accomplished our goals. They’ve held a monopoly on the discourse far too long, and we need some baance back in politics…and I think that starts by eliminating grievance politics, which the SJW types have mastered (the right is guilty too, but aren’t nearly as well adapted, and once it’s been exposed, they wouldn’t be able to pull off ether)
It’s clear that a permanent guard needs to be established. You can’t repel the invaders once and then permanently retire all the guards. It doesn’t work that way. Mobs are devastating in the short run, but vulnerable in the long run. How you all go about doing so is up to you. In fact, I may write about that next week here for my Wednesday slot.
It’s looking more and more what we need to do is to stop letting you Americans kick around more centrist flavoured parties so there’s more variety to political opinion, not just “don’t change” and “change for change’s sake”, neither of which are very palatable to many people.. One of your biggest issues, from what I’ve seen, is because of the first past the post system of voting that goes on. Fix that to a proper mixed proportional system so people can be properly represented regardless of where they live, and you’ll see a lot of this polarized partisanship filter out, and the people be much better represented, as well.
By the way, John Glanton: A lot of us are progressive, or even ultra-progressive. What they are is regressive, masquerading as progressive- little more than a return to puritanism via social engineering, rather than religion. So would be appreciated if you didn’t use generalizing slandering.
Going to have to heavily agree with this. The reason they are having no success with their traditional methods is the meritocracy of idea.
A *lot* of us come from imageboards like 4chan, where everyone is anonymous by default and there is no history to judge anyone off of, unless they choose to take a name themselves. What you end up with is a meritocracy of idea, where nothing about you is relevant beyond what you say in that specific post. No gender, no race, no history of activity, no political affiliation, nothing. Our opponents can not even comprehend this mindset, its like they were dumped into a foreign country totally naked and completely ignorant of the language and culture. Co-opting attempts have been extremely frequent, often seeing new tactics employed every three days like clockwork. They always get shot down relatively quickly, usually in under 24 hours. It feels extremely coached or professional in it’s execution.
Meritocracy of idea devoid of identity is their greatest weakness. People who are nothing without the importance of their victim status and identity have no power in that environment. If you are seeking to oppose this sort of thing on a grander scale, I would highly recommend organizing your “side” in this fashion to do it. No leaders, no power structure, simply a meritocracy of idea devoid of any identity. It’s not the only thing we have going for us, but it’s probably the single largest contributor.
While the author is correct and the majority of # Gamergate is not right wing conservatives, there are a good number of right wing gamers. But that is not the point. The point is 8 weeks ago most of these 20-30 something’s were social justice progressives. Today they are almost universally left leaning libertarians. 8 weeks ago they knew KNEW that conservatives were evil racists. Today it is not lost on them that Christine Sommers Milo yoanopouli and Breitbart have been the reasonable adults in the room. Cathy Young and Reason.com is suddenly making sense to them. More sense than any of the hate filled ravings they normally used to read ever did. And that is in 8 weeks. They are starting to read Thomas Sowell. Orwell. And they realize that Gamergate is not the traditional left wing boycott. They are discovering economics and market forces. They are learning true levers of power.
What I am saying is this is not the time for the Right to simply dismiss this as a left wing civil war. For the first time since WW2 the under 30 crowd is listening. Looking for other options. Looking for a light in the dark. Conservatives must not simply sit and watch. They must engage with a friendly gentle and sympathetic hand. Just give them a voice. Give them a forum. Let them be heard. Give them some coverage. These Gamers. They have stood up and fought back. They took the wheels off the “war on women” they bloodied Gawker and are dismissing MSNBC as the worthless hot air it is. They use the progressives own words against them in ways we never would. There is a lot they could learn from us. There is a lot we need to learn from them. These are gamers, they play to win. Reach out to them. We will be the better for it.
I have to agree, handled properly, this could be a real opportunity for both gamers, and conservatives. There are a lot of people right now who have had no choice but to abandon their political prejudices. As soon as they have, they’ve noticed there is a lot of common ground in the middle, that neither the hard left, nor the hard right have wanted anyone to look at.
If people on the right could put away their own prejudices, and try to meet gamers in the middle, this could turn into something that I think everyone in GamerGate is starting to realize our society needs.
I am a left-moderate who lives in Alabama, and happen to be friends with many conservatives, by nature and location. I’ve never considered conservatism evil, although I’ve occasionally had disagreements with some policies and representatives.
But I take up the shield for anyone who is unjustly attacked. That’s my way.
What you wrote is so on point.
8 weeks ago, I’d just consider myself a leftist without thinking too much about it. I like politics somewhat but only vaguely and certainly not in gaming. Gaming as a whole was left apolitical for a long time. Then these ideologues from the far left really corrupted this industry and polluted it with politics. About sexism and political correctness for the most part. What happened here was years in the making. The Zoe Quinn scandal? Irrelevant although it’s unfortunate it was a sex scandal that started the whole thing. People have always known the industry was corrupt, what it didn’t realize it to what lengths they would go to defend it, cover it up and how they would turn on their very audience. It’s the cover up and the attack on its consumers that got me into this.
We’ve been sick of people bashing us over the head telling us we’re sexist or bad people for liking what we do, a lot mostly just quit going to gaming sites for reviews like myself (except for a few exceptions) because they know they’re a joke. I relied on user reviews instead, a consensus and my own personal tastes. I never once in a million years saw them try to kill our culture, to slander it as ripe with sexism. This whole thing has been such an eye opener. I always considered Fox News as worse than MSNBC. I knew it was biased too, but I figured, “It’s more fact-based”. It took me until now to realize how it’s just as bad as outlets as Fox News can be. In fact, 24/7 news probably killed journalism as a whole. It’s really not until you cross those medias yourself that you realize how horrible and shameless they are in pushing their agendas. How they use terms like “sexist, racist”, demonize you and compare you to the KKK, ISIS, IRA, anti-abortionist (no offense to the pro-life people intended).
For what? Just wanting fair reporting and less ideological bias in the gaming press, running a boycott and emailing advertisers. Some assholes harassed a few women, you hear about it all over the news. 3rd party trolls are heavily involved and people flat out refuse to believe it just because they’re been told by the media you’re evil. They ignore #notyourshield, call you racist, sexist while engaging in sexist and racist behavior of their own. We caught them pants down on this and used it against their advertisers. Your assessment is correct, we are using their own tactics against them. They create a #tweetlikenotyourshield hashtag to mock women and minorities, they’re not called out on it by anyone in the press. Our members have been harassed just as well, doxxed and received threats left and right. But you’ll never hear about it in the news. Because it wouldn’t fit their narrative and so they erase all women and minorities inside GamerGate. “Not relevant” they said on Huffington Post when challenged on it. They speak for women as if they were a homogenous group. The NPR segment today pissed a lot of women and minorities off because they flat out dismissed them.
So yes, this has been a massive eye opener. Don’t get me wrong, while I have my conservative leanings when it comes to debt control and balanced budgets, I don’t think I’ll ever consider myself a right-winger and will always have issues with authority, be it from the religious Tea Party or this Left Tea Party we are fighting right now who claim to represent social justice while burning the whole house down and scaring women from the industry with their fake panic outrage.
8 weeks ago, I viewed this differently. Today, I am considering myself a strong left-leaning libertarian. No matter how GamerGate ends, this will have taught me a lesson of a lifetime.
This
“people flat out refuse to believe it just because they’re been told by the media you’re evil.”
What, exactly like you did with Fox news? I’m not defending Fox news, I’m calling you a hypocrite. And your hypocrisy has let MSNBC blindside you, so perhaps give it up out of prudence if you won’t do it out of virtue.
Let’s hope that this turns out to be the culture war equivalent of the Battle of Britain, or the Battle of Moscow, with us as the allies. This seems like the first major defeat of the social justice left in many decades.
Still, I don’t hold out much faith in being able to retake today’s culture.
As a liberal (albeit libertarian in practice) I do feel like I have my eyes open now. I do owe an apology to some conservative friends of mine. As a recent entrant into the gamergate fray (I joined after being attacked by fellow liberals) I have to say I am happy so many people of so many stripes are working together. It’s really bipartisan in a way that I have not seen in a long time or ever .
I’m also a left-leaning “gamer” (I never liked the term, despite campaigning under the banner now) who was there to witness the beginning of all of this on the much-maligned and misunderstood website 4chan, which has since cast us out. One of the reasons we came together so strongly is that the mockingly-titled “Politically Incorrect” board there gave us advice on what to do (like donating to The Fine Young Capitalists to show that we were not actually against feminism, but feminazis) and what we were actually up against – Cultural Marxism, and its footholds in academia. They showed us the COINTELPRO and Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” tactics that would be employed against us. Being completely aware of everything they did before it happened is what made the difference.
What a lot of people don’t understand about anonymous image board culture is that, on the rare occasions when the discussions become serious, it boils down to a pure meritocracy of ideas, shared, accepted, or discarded at blistering speeds. It could’ve been Hitler’s ghost suggesting these things and none of us would’ve known or likely cared. Once we knew how to proceed, and it was easy to separate a shill from the sincere, all we needed to do was keep going, and bring others to our cause by being polite and honest.
I believe we have held off on the academic angles, besides a select few investigating them, because it would look a bit to tinfoil-y to everyone on the outside looking in to see what all of the hub-bub is about after the MSM coverage. Many of us hope we can somehow return to it and do some damage after our hobby is secure… after all, we’ll need the escapism even more now that we’ve jumped down the rabbit hole.
Good post. Any discussion of Gamergate is incomplete without considering the role of /pol/ as a sort of ideological think-tank. While many Gamergaters wouldn’t want to be associated with /pol/ directly, there is a great deal of cross-pollination between /v/ (the video games forum) and /pol/.
At present there is a squabble between /pol/ and those promoting the apolitical, inclusive, anti-authoritarian image of #Gamergate.
Many of us are far-right Gen-X’s who see fear that Gamergate is following a pattern that could lead to infiltration and its co-option as “good gamers” to be used as a cudgel against the “bad gamers.” On the other hand, Gamergate is succeeding where the old, cranky right has failed. These kids aren’t dumb, either. They are fighting for the last space that they can call their own, and there isn’t anywhere else for them to retreat.
We’re pretty good at spotting infiltrators and bait tactics. That’s one of the reasons that we remain leaderless. Deny your enemy that which he covets the most for his own victory. As gamers we’ve been training in identifying the rules of the game and finding a way to win for years.
“Many of us are far-right Gen-X’s who see fear that Gamergate is following a pattern that could lead to infiltration and its co-option as “good gamers” to be used as a cudgel against the “bad gamers.” ”
This is part of the problem with a lot of right-wingers, I find. This concept that the individual is dumb and needs to be guided, rather than treated as an equal. It’s really god damn frustrating. Especially with this “/pol/ taught you a lot”. The amount of times i’ve taught a /pol/ack about the shit going on I can’t even count anymore. Intelligence isn’t a /pol/ thing, nor is it a right-wing thing. It’s an individual thing. And the sooner we can all understand that fact- and I mean everyone, anti-gg included- the sooner we can move on to better things in our lives.
/pol/ and the right-wing are voluntarily staying in the background, because as I mentioned, you guys are smart and doing a great job. Lots of people on /pol/ are ignorant or really dumb, and if you’ve educated some, good for you.
The reason /pol/lacks act paternal towards GG is not from lack of respect–it’s genuine paternal concern. Many of us are cynical, defeated veterans watching our “kids” go off to war. We know your enemies very well, and we don’t want you to make the same mistakes we did.
If you’re supportive, why not help out? The greater the number of people sending in emails to gaming advertisers and the more people pressuring news sites both local and national to hear our voices, the better. The BOTD that Jaydefox runs is pretty cool.
This <<<<<
Why not help us Gamergaters in practical action as Lisa NGO described above rather than being observers. We have the same enemy – help us to topple them using our tried & tested techniques?
If you were to do this then it would be win win for both of us. And it would do more to persuade Gamergaters that yours is a cause worth investing time to research.
Tsar Alexander,
“Still, I don’t hold out much faith in being able to retake today’s culture. ”
Faith is an act of courage, not a hypothesis.
Inherently parasitical proggie thinking. As per ClarkHat, there’s not one culture. That one side or another can or should control it is the problem in the first place. Demonstrate that it’s right for you to repel them from your side by staying out of their side.
I am not a liberal or conservative because I do not think either side adequately represents my views, and both are supported by the same big money interests. I am very pro gun, for gay marriage(because I don’t care), against the prohibitions on vice(victim less crime)and for the legalization and the taxation of those vices, against open borders, pro immigration reform, I am pro affirmative action for college admission and government jobs ,but against affirmative action requirements for private business. The one thing that totally represents me is the title gamer, and I resent being insulted by the gaming press at large. I just want to play games in peace without being insulted , called a nerd,a neck beard,and virginal loser because I don’t want my gaming experience compromised to please some thin skinned “culture critic” who is not even a gamer.
As one of the few conservative GamerGate members, I liked the tone of this article.
However. What you need to understand is that one of the key motivating forces of GamerGate is the desire to block the infestation of POLITICS, be it left wing SJW or right wing conservative, from our hobby. These people made the mistake of thinking they were going to hijack our medium as a tool to spread their message whether we liked it or not, and the penalty they will pay for that arrogance is ourselves razing their entire corrupt media organization to the ground, one site and one personality at a time. We’re nearing three months and we’re not even warmed up yet.
If the right wants to learn anything from us, then the first thing you learn is *God help you if you make the same mistake they did.*
Gaming belongs to gamers. We don’t care if you’re right, left, man, woman, child, black, white, Asian, whatever. A gamer is a gamer. Gaming is a neutral ground where all are welcome and none are dominant beyond the limits of their own ability to play. GamerGate is the Swiss Army. You screw with our neutrality and we will BURY you.
If you want a place at the table, you can have one. But having a place is not the same as having ownership of. If you want to make a game that incorporates conservative viewpoints, it is welcome. Those who like it can play it. The left is equally welcome under the same terms. You can be a part of, but you will never control. Any conservative (or liberal) willing to meet us on those grounds is more than welcome to stand by our side. You are our brothers and sisters too. But this is OUR fight. You don’t lead. You either follow and assist us or get the hell out of our way.
As we often say in the GamerGate hubs “This train ain’t got no brakes.”
Right on.
Do note however that when Jack Thompson ran his crusade against gaming, he was opposed by almost everyone especially the gaming press and the companies. This is because he was a right winger social conservative. You aren’t getting this luxury precisely because the press is on the left.
Of this we are keenly aware.
But the right is just as guilty in its attempts over the years to paint gamers as fringe, dangerous, school shooters, reclusive loners, and God knows what else. Both sides are equally worthless to us politically and its through their own actions that they are so regarded.
The left is too arrogant and shameless in chasing their ideology to make amends with us now. As far as a more welcoming ear to the voices on the right goes, the ball is in the rightwing media’s court now. Stand with us in our fight, abandon the old stereotypes, and your stock with gamers will go up. It won’t gain you a bigger chair at the table, but it will earn you friends in other ways.
That sounds Masonic. Nah, I’m only teasing.
The difference being Fox, that the right didnt try to infiltrate Gaming Industry institutions to do so outside the law,, by cultural appropriation of the institutinos of gaming. Youve got IGDA all in on Social Justice, Multiculturalism, Equalizing Male/Female employee ratios, and minority representation in the industry…as well as the Media infested with same pushing to punish Political Incorrectness and promote Political Correctness.
Jack Thompson just brought lawsuits under current law. SJWs will have laws written to enforce upon you…they care not for Free Expression, which conservatives have a conserving ideological principle to uphold.
And whoever it was, the Tea Party is nothing like SJWs, they are Gadsen flag flying lovers of freedom and constitutionalism. Free Markets and small government. Small government means less intrusioin into your private life, including video games.
I am a Tea Partier and active supporter of #GamerGate.
EV….you nailed it. Gamer gate wants for their world what tea partiersi want for the USA. Hey gov`t leave us alone.
if you want to see just how far we have uncovered look for games journos pros or hell even 8chan linked here
https://8chan.co/gg/catalog.html
8chan is a completely anon board were people have no idea who or what you are as such you can silently view what is going on and ask for more information without anyone giving 2 shits on who you are in the real world
I would warn you tho the anon culture is very harsh on people if you wish to have something abit easier from internet culture I recommend reddit this subreddit in particular
http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/
once again you can view alot of new information that you might find useful for articles against the “left leaning” media if you will
Gamergate’s more leftist bend is a bit recent and came about largely after leftist media started reporting on it. (unsurprisingly, the majority of MSNBC’s viewers are left-leaning) It seems some of the more moderate leftists don’t agree with the extremism of the SJW movement. Unfortunately, for all their ill-will towards SJW’s, they still mostly adopt the same kind of inclusive hugbox pandering that their social justice brethren do.
However, gamergate’s ‘brain behind the scenes’ is probably the politics board. This is a group of people who are a lot less naive in their views, and /pol/ is very often encouraging people in gamergate to realize that – whether they want it or not, they’re fighting an ideological and political battle that cannot and will not end in their success, unless they move it beyond videogames or videogame journalism to attack cultural marxism and the social justice movement itself in every industry and institution it’s managed to corrupt.
It might be more apt to say that gamergate is largely a group of disillusioned leftists being nudged along by a band of libertarians and national socialists (strange bedfellows that) towards fighting off the “progressivism” of the social justice movement. The politics board retains much of its culture of not giving a fuck what you think, and shows the truth of the matter through facts, citations and statistics. They are deeply pro-gun and anti-immigration, for example, and were anyone to question them about it, they would quickly find themselves inundated with books to read, studies to look over, and statistical examples pointing out why /pol/ is always right.
And yet, by the same token, /pol/ doesn’t try to indoctrinate people – https://i.imgur.com/Bs1wcaw.png – unlike in the social justice movement, people are not asked to “listen and believe” (https://i.imgur.com/xQZNPJZ.jpg). It is simply a group of people trying to figure out politics, and clear up the murkiness that surrounds so much in the present day and in history. Gamergate may be, in its own way, a little more conservative than you see on its face.
Dear Mr. Glanton,
I know you’re eager to get some scalps for yourself and there is nothing secret about applying gamergate and chan methods for your own needs.
People have the power and we have shown them the social chucklefuck media can be disrupted.
Just remember:
Starve the beast.
Be anonymous.
No manifesto.
No agenda.
No leaders.
Nothing to infiltrate and disrupt.
Just a bunch of ninjas in the night going for the jugular.
I think GamerGate is indicative of a split in the leftist base that has been inevitable for a while now, just like the Tea Party split from moderate Republicans. There are plenty of moderate Democrats who are not socially conservative, and get just as annoyed as the right by the nanny state policies of their far-left “allies”. We’re against bullying in schools, but we don’t think games like dodgeball and duck duck goose count as bullying. We accept different sexual orientations and gender identities, but don’t think it’s transphobic to say “I’m a guy” instead of “I’m a cisgender male.” And, we’re accepting of other religions, but don’t think law enforcement should be banned from investigating radical Islam groups because it might be construed as racial profiling.
If there’s one thing that GamerGate and these former 4chan users hate, it’s censorship. Once it became clear that the politeness police are willing to suppress free speech using mass libel if we disagree with their agenda, they stopped being allies. This realization is small-scale for now, but the far left is showing their true radical nature by slinging labels like sexist, misogynist and even terrorist at people who actually agree with them on most issues. For a group that claims to stand for tolerance, they’re completely intolerant of dissenting opinions. The left doesn’t need that kind of attitude any more than the right needs the Tea Party’s uncompromising views.
The debate has gotten ugly. REALLY ugly. People on both sides have said and done things that I’m sure they’ll regret later. But I’m hopeful that the more reasonable individuals involved will come out of it with an appreciation of the common ground that exists among moderates on social issues. If we can get unity out of this, rather than a continuation of the them vs. us stalemate that’s paralyzed political discussion, that would truly be worthwile.
This is why I say NRx has “the electoral coincidence that it has to despise everything that progressivism adores, a bizarre birth defect which does not appear to be treatable.”
Bullying is actually bad, eh? There might be a good argument against gay marriage, but all I’ve been able to find is point and sputter or beg the question. Yet NRx, especially self-identifying NRx, seem downright eager to throw the baby out.
You havent seen one arguement,from NRX, against gay marriage that isnt fallacious? I doubt that.
More over its not that they hate all that progs adore but its that they have totally different moralities. This difference in morality is why everyone is running to an apolitical stance since it easy to signal moral superiority without playing democracy war.
This idea that the Tea Party is analogous to the Stalinist Left is totally bogus. It’s like saying that uncompromising Libertarians are just as bad as the uncompromising Stalinist Left. Constitutionalist Classical Liberalism is nothing like Stalinist Marxists. Which brings me to my next point. What we are seeing with #GamerGate is the old Cold War consensus of Left Liberals/Social Democrats along with everybody else against the Totalitarian threat of Communism. This is a very good thing. The best thing that could happen is for the Center Left to reject this Radical New Left Totalitarianism and cripple it’s effectiveness by ostracizing them from polite society, refusing to coalition with them.
I am one of these millennialist you mention in your post. definitely, one of the things that gamergate has opened my eyes to is how the media will cooperate to drive a narrative that contradicts reality, to the point that it seems unbelievable that it is really happen. I’ll never trust the media again except for a few select writers from a few select media outlets.
I’ve been a democrat all my life, and probably always will be. For years I’ve sat in the various comments sections gleefully arguing with dimwitted conservatives. Last year I spent days on end defending Anita and Kotaku from the crazed accusations of feminist conspiracy. But I can’t do it anymore.
I expected Gawker to jump the Zoe situation like they’d collect the scalp of any other indie game developer embroiled in a sex scandal. This is par the course. But the week passed, and the games media was in a total blackout. It was the one story that every reader wanted to talk about, but no moderator or writer would let it pass. It was mind-boggling. It was a tactic admission that they wouldn’t expose someone in their circle to the same media scrutiny that they had given so many other female figures. We wanted answers, and they instead turned around and tried to turn society against us.
So to all the tea partiers with whom I’ve called racist, I’m sorry. I get it. It’s maddening to push forward in a good faith cause, only to watch one jackass blow up and define you in the eyes of society as a whole.
Thank you Sean, that means a lot to me as a Tea Partier.
Thank you for the coverage. Like many have said this is the gamer’s movement. As a social liberal, true conservative governmentally, libertarian I personally hope this movement carries on to destroy the media as a whole. Not just the far left of the likes of MSNBC, but the far right of Fox News. To long the American populace has been ruled by the politicized fear of political pundits. It is my strong hope and desire to see us return back to investigative journalism. That being said if you wish to be our ally give us a platform, not just any platform but a fair platform with equal time for our opponents so we may crush them in fair discourse. Many of the biased reports already out when we have been given a slight voice we make them flinch. I do not want to see us with an open platform let us defeat our boss mob in a fair fight with an audience. That is the best and most you can do without claims that you are hijacking our movement being leveled against you. I look forward to your support.
Side note: yes I think this will make mew conservatives on the millennia, generation but they will be real conservatives not the moral conservative big spenders that is currently touted as being a conservative.
Liberal media will have to do some extreme backtracking to pick this up. These people is literally trained to win.
Journalism is inherently yellow. Hoping for investigative journalism is hoping for a vegetarian lion. There was never a golden age of it, it was just better veiled. I’m sorry. The best you can hope for is to discredit journalism in and of itself. Nullius in verba: nobody has credibility, everyone must prove everything.
I never (because I can’t speak for others) had a cause before, to rally behind. I was perfectly content living in my little world, ignoring everything and everyone else. Quite frankly, I am just now learning the meaning behind these rightist, leftist movement things. I don’t really care about that, but I do care about getting my little world back, and I am more than willing to make a deal with anyone be it devil or angel to get it back. Enemy of my enemy is my friend.
What terrifies and elates me is that I am actually listening to others on how to fight this war instead of keeping to myself. Each of us is alone, yet not alone. It’s like I am part of the machine that continues to evolve, a hive mind and yet I am still myself.
I am going to recruit others to take up the fight, I will cut their supply lines and ally myself with those who break alliances with them, I will turn them against each other, I will not forgive the two-faced bastards that betrayed our trust and I will do what needs to be done to slay this mass media monster and get my vidya back.
That said, good article – enjoyed reading it.
~Anon
Great write-up. The main difference between Gawker liberals and GamerGate liberals is that GamerGate liberals are honest and well-meaning. They want to know Truth. Unlike Gawker liberals who want Power.
Some GamerGaters will go down the rabbit hole, from liberalism > left-libertarianism > right-libertarianism > reactionary conservatism or whatever you want to call it.
Yep i’m at left-libertarianism now because of all this. Before i was hardcore liberal but that’s gone now.
Before all this i was very liberal but after the gaming media started attacking us and calling us sexist,racist and all sorts of vile things and noticing the stunning lack of research the liberal side of media does. When gamers and gaming as a whole where under attack the only people who where willing to stand up for us where conservatives. They where the only people who talked to us and found out we where not all sexist not all racist not even all men. So i get it i really get it i fully understand now what has been going on here with the media and how they portray conservatives and my views on you guys are much different now. Before i was very one could say bigoted towards conservatives barely wanted anything to do with them now i understand that we are not so different at all and they have some good points which i think has made me a better person.
This is the best article I’ve read on GG. Articulated impeccably.
Non-American GamerGater here. It feels funny knowing more about American politics than my own country’s, but oh well…
I can’t speak for the others, of course, but I’m definetly left-wing. I oppose (American) Neocons and Libertarians. I support abortion, gay marriage, and marihuana legalization, but I’m also for gun control and state intervention. I agree with American foreign politics to some extent, but I don’t support Israel.
I have always been against Cultural Marxism, but until now I thought it is just a few crazies on Tumblr. However the mainstream media’s incredbly one-sided coverage of Gamergate has ringed the alarm bells for me. Progressivism is indeed very dangerous, and has a lot more control then I actually thought. I guess it is the modern Left’s tragedy that it has become distracted by race and gender politics, instead of focusing on their original goal: the problems with capitalism.
From my perspective, America’s greatest political problem is it’s granite solid two-party system, and ridiculously old constitution (which politicans do not even respect anymore). It’s a system giving the illusion of taking a step left and then to the right, but actually locked in a perpetual status quo. If I were an American,I would definitely want to change that.
Ahem. In defense of the US Constitution, it is actually a body of law. Indeed, it is “the supreme law of the land”, which is why laws that violate the Constitution are struck down.
I understand that many European Constitutions are less a body of law and more a semi-formal set of declarations open to general interpretation: that was our Declaration of Independence.
Just to clarify.
But wasn’t it initialy supposed to be completely rewritten every half-century, instead of being a fixed body of law?
I think that speaks to how well it was written and the intelligence of the men who wrote it. Many times in our history people have argued against aspects of it and for the most part it has withstood their criticisms. We have changed it in the past however and you can see those changes in the US amendments (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution).
The Parlimentary Systems just arent that much better. Im most familiar with European and Anglo nation politics, and the Center Left and Center Right (usually the 2 biggest parties) are basically tweedle dee and tweedle dumb, the faux conservative parties basically just argue that they can better manage the Lefts social order and giant welfare redistribution system better. Two peas in a pod.
“it’d be premature to consider GamerGaters allies in the great Kulturkampf of contemporary America”
I hate to police your language, but please say “gamers” instead of “GamerGaters”. The left’s first tactic of slandering and browbeating “gamers” didn’t work to marginalise us, so now they’re trying to marginalise us by changing the description of what a gamer is, including themselves under that description, and saying that “GamerGaters/Gaters/Gators” are a vocal minority of gamers, rather than representative of video gaming culture. Calling us anything other than “gamers” feeds their propaganda engine.
For what it’s worth, I consider myself to be on the right. I’m not sure if that’s because I’m actually on the right, or because I’m so disgusted with the way the left has been treating me and others for years that I just want to dissociate myself from them.
“Whereas we on the Right would like to see the feminist critique broken entirely. They simply want the most transparently self-serving shouters of “misogyny!” run out of town on a rail.”
Please note that, within certain GamerGate camps, the only difference between extreme feminism and moderate feminism is popular appeal. There is a very strong base of politically-based conservative support within GamerGate, even if their voices are typically drowned out by the consumerist-based voices.
“All I want out of you is that you apply this new intel of yours across the whole spectrum of progressive messaging. I ask you to look at us and people like us. Look at the folks on the Right, who have been smeared for years now in the same exact way that you have been. Sexists. Racists. Homophobes. Bigots. Haters. And see if what is true of you is not true of us as well.”
Don’t worry, this is already happening! On 8chan I see lots of foremer leftists expressing disillusionment with the ideologies they used to hold, and the people who used to represent them. I’ve heard that most of the people who subscribe to the subreddit KotakuInAction showed up because they wanted to see if the vicious slander was true. The left has spent so long lashing out and biting at everything that they’ve caught their own tail and are beginning to devour themselves.
“I think you’re at the beginning of a much bigger conflict than perhaps you realize. The SJWs have invaded your favorite industry, yes. And they have poisoned it, yes. But that’s not the only thing they’ve invaded and poisoned. Our schools, our film and TV entertainments, our public policies, the halls of our capitals—they’ve all been invaded. And they in their own ways will try to break you just as surely as Gawker media did.”
I can’t speak for other websites, but, in my experience, most 8chan users understand how deep the corruption runs.
THIS. We are not “GamerGaters”. That is the label given to us by the authoritarian liberal media, and it is a deliberate attempt on the part of the radicals to get additional leverage in defining who and what we are.
We are gamers. Nothing more, nothing less. (Although, if you wish to give us a political identity, the vast majority of us are left-libertarian. https://imgur.com/Qvo6Ost)
I myself am left-libertarian, and have had said identity long prior to the events of GamerGate. I do find the right wing rather a strange bedfellow (especially considering Jack Thompson’s fiasco and conservatives’ generally negative attitudes toward gaming), but I am willing to stand beside anyone who will defend freedom of speech. With that said, I will re-espouse the sentiment already shared by several of my fellow gamers in this comment section:
This is OUR fight. We are the ones who drew first blood. The prey is ours. If you want to aid in the hunt, we welcome your assistance, but we reserve all rights when it comes to razing the radical authoritarian leftists to the ground. We are, as was said previously, literally trained to win, and win we most certainly will. To borrow common gamer parlance, “no kill stealing.”
Treat us neutrally. Give equal time to the opposition. We WANT the comparison to be obvious. We WANT the public to see these craven fools for what they really are. All we need is someone who will show them.
I agree with everything you said and I even identified myself a bit there, but I also think that ultimately gamergate do fight for what is an ideal of the right-wing, and that would be the free market. We’re fighting against SJWs corrupting the media, and at the end of the day they’re corrupting the media to try to shape the industry to what they believe is right. We don’t want that. We don’t want regulation, we don’t want a group of people dictating what the industry can make or not, we want to preserve our right as consumers to decide with our money what we want from the industry.
I’m not sure if I made myself clear, english is not my first language.
The concept of a free market is a liberal concept and more of us are Libertarian- that is, for individual freedom- vs. Authoritarian- so we want freedom of choice. I don’t think that’s particularily a Right thing as much as it is a Libertarian thing.
And no, I’m not basing what I say off of parties, I’m basing it off of the XY graph with auth/lib being the Y and left/right being the X axis.
Political compass surveys of “Gamergate” supporters have shown that while they are on average left LEANING they are, above all else, anti-authoritarian.
Still, I’m really eager to see the results of people, most fairly young, waking up the the use of sexism/racist to deflect criticism and smear opponents next month and especially in two years. It would be nice to have an honest discussion about political views for once.
While this is a good write up, I would be amiss to point out that it’s not just good young men. There are a lot of us that are 30-40+ and we have many women in our cause as well.
Also…
You must understand that GamerGate is not a politicised movement and must not become one. The very reason of it’s success is that it refuses to bite the SJW’s political bait. And even they can’t defend corruption.
GamerGate might just be the fuel for a new cultural war, but it isn’t perpetrator for it. These are just people defending their way of life.
I agree with you that gg is an overwhelmingly non-political group of people, and many of them are leftwing. However, there is a “reactionary” group of thinkers, at its core, that I think you should be aware of. That group of people of course is /pol/.
(I dislike the word reactionary, since classical liberal is more accurate. There are some /pol/acks that are more traditionally reactionary, but not the majority.)
I think /pol/ has gone unnoticed or underrated by the rightwing blogosphere, and that’s very unforunate. They have become the experts, bar none, at understanding SJWs and how to outplay them. They can do this because for many of them it is personal. Some of them are gamers, some are weeaboos, some are gun hobbyists or model painters. All of these are subcommunities which have been touched by SJWs in some way or ruined, well except for weeaboos but part of the appeal of that is that SJWs don’t exist in Japan.
You mentioned that Gamergate goes beyond gaming. That is true, however drop the conspiracy rhetoric about leftists in our schools and institution. That is true, but not of interest to netizens. It goes beyond gaming because SJWs have tried to pull their shit on other nerdy communities, such as comics/cartoons, tabletop gaming, and atheism. 4chan also has a large gun board and I don’t have to say anything about gungrabbers, do I?
It is weird that Gawker et. al. haven’t talked about this giant elephant in the room, however I think it makes sense why. Acknowledgment is power, but internet leftists fear /pol/ and don’t want to give it power. That is why they don’t have an issue wizardchan back into it, however /pol/ which is much larger and has a much bigger presence in GG scares them and they don’t want to acknowledge it. /pol/ scares them because it is funny, it has self-awareness and it is good at what they do.
/pol/ is unique for a lot of reasons besides culture war stuff, however their ability to fight back against cultural marxism is notable and I wish more people would notice that. When the leftists are able to signal-boost their irrelevant internet wars in Time and in the New York Times, /pol/ needs the ability to do that too since it is the only way in which /pol/ is less powerful than the SJWs. /pol/ is your greatest ally.
A great article! It’s nice to see someone who understand what’s going on for change. I’m not from the USA so I can only imagine how these people operate in everyday politics outside gaming, but it’s fucking scary. In the european country I’m from fortunately SJWs have no power, but they are more and more visible so it’s a big warning. I’m exactly the kind of gamer you described, somehow leftist, but not authoritarian and I agree with almost everything you wrote. Thanks to #GG I have already started to more question leftist media attacks on right wing people, although I still don’t agree with them. The only thing I don’t like in your article is that you speak about”young men in #GG”, but the fact is that we have A LOT of women on board. It’s actually mainly women who organize email boycotte campaign…
You may not convert us fully, but now when I see conservative news coverage I won’t immediately dismiss it. The right side of the media has been the only rational voice on this issue.
These people attacking gamers just shock me nonstop. Just when I think I’m done reading about it for the day, a handful of new revelations will come up revealing their hypocrisy. It’s so bad that I now even watch my “hero” (John Stewart) with a new found skepticism.
The funny thing to me about gamergate is how they just keep burying themselves. It was insanely gratifying to watch a company have advertisers pulled for supporting harassment.
In the words of Napoleon Bonaparte: “Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake.”
The most shocking things I’ve discovered are from reading hundred year old books written by people EXTREMELY FAR TO THE RIGHT. I could not speak for days about it.
So if you’re looking to expand your horizons, try to find PRIMARY sources on the most ‘settled’ issues of the day. The key here is that we can never suspend our judgment. Yes some of it will descend into what’s called ‘Holocaust Denial’ to take the most extreme example. The point is that, just like you know why 9/11 Truthers are BSing, you have to use your brain and judgment to judge these issues from history yourself because you cannot trust the current narrative on them.
Take American slavery. Find out calories consumed/health of Southern black slaves and Northern white factory workers.
Find out why Northern white union workers supported the minimum wage early in the 20th century.
Find out what happened to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), specifically the GDP/capita, income of black people, crime, discrimination etc.
It’s possible you’ll come out of all of this with the same opinions as you now hold, but I’m willing to bet you’ll find some things that are absolutely shocking.
If you want us gamers to warm up to the Right, you could start by apologizing for the kookiness and viciousness of Jack Thompson. I don’t expect it, real apologies seem to be very scarce these days, but you might be surprised at the consequences, if someone influential and highly regarded in the Right were to do so.
As it stands right now, most gamers with a memory, don’t really think either the Right or the Left at this point really care for them all that much. We don’t fight any more than we have to because, well, nobody’s really been at bat for us. We are for the most part, a neglected constituency at best and a maligned one at worst. We are up for grabs, but nobody’s really considered us worth grabbing.
We will run them out and then we will stop, unless there’s some compelling reason to keep going. We just want to play games in peace without anyone preaching to us. Either from the Right or the Left.
Like you said, the self-organizing GamerGate collective, doesn’t really need much from anyone. But I’m sure that most of the collective will accept help from anyone who is honestly wanting to provide it. I can’t speak for them, I can only give you tendencies in this, but past history bears my words out.
Information about the internal structure of these media entities, points of vulnerability we haven’t yet considered, etc. would be greatly appreciated.
I’m not sure anyone on this site would support Thompson-like crusades. Reactionaries are about leaving people alone as long as they don’t aspire to political power or suppress the natural order. Gamers enjoying whatever they wish on their own machines is none of our business. Social conservatives are not reactionaries BTW. Also the libertarian movement is mostly part of the Right, and they fought with gamers against Thompson, whereas the mainstream Left has clearly abandoned you.
As a gamergate myself, I hate apologizing for the others, you see all the antiGGers wanting us to apologize for every random troll out there. Expecting others to apologize for Jack Thompson is the same thing. As an individual (which is the genesis of #notyourshield hashtag), I expect to carry the consequences of my own actions and not else.
The silence or gleeful sidelining of a lot of the American Right from that whole debacle was rather galling, though, you have to admit.
As others have said, why should anyone apologize for the actions of another individual? And if people on the right need to apologize for Jack Thompson, shouldn’t people on the left apologize for Tipper and Al Gore for their attacks on the music industry in the 1980s; Joe Lieberman, Herb Kohl and Janet Reno for their actions throughout the 1990s against the gaming industry; and Hillary Clinton, Evan Bayh and Joe Lieberman for their actions against the gaming industry in the mid-2000s? All the people I mentioned threaten lawsuits and passing laws to throw people in jail for content of their products. Parents Music Resource Center, Video Game Rating Act and Family Entertainment Protection Act were all products of the left, not the right.
You needn’t assume responsibility for his actions. As Kain said above, gamers’ view of the right was skewed far afield by Jack Thompson’s authoritarian drama-peddling. Openly disavow Thompson’s rhetoric and you will soothe a wound that, for many gamers (myself included), is still quite raw. Go on to PROVE that you’ve disavowed it and you will gain many a new friend.
Asking the rightwingers to apologize for Jack Thompson is like asking Gamers who support #GamerGate to apologize for rape and death threats.
Thanks for the article sir. (Though we aren’t only men, there is also women within our group, and #NotYourShield)
Of course we bore the media brunt. Do you expect a demographic so often mocked and ridiculed to truly care about the “progressive” media’s smear tactics? We’ve been pushed around all out lives and taken it. Our own media and industry has mocked us and we’ve taken it. We’ve been fooled in to parting with our money for shoddy merchandise and we’ve taken it. We’ve been shamed for liking specific genres that don’t suit the journalist’s agenda and we’ve taken it. We’ve been blamed for every domestic tragedy that can be blamed on us. We’ve even been declared dead. But enough is enough. We’re patrons of a multi-billion dollar industry. In the financial crisis of the not too recent past *we* held our industry up from collapse. We deserve better than what we’ve received from this industry thus far.
We are Gamers.
We are Alive.
In Europe, fortunately, the term Social Justice is never used and is mostly not a problem, we have bigger issues and we frankly don’t care most of the time, however, as a gamer and i’ve been following the scandal since the early days, and being European really did not felt like i was outside the problem, i felt the foul stench of the accusation being thrown at me like they were bullets by so many people i thought they were sharing my same passion, the so called “gaming journalists”, at the beginning it was just like another story or gossip, “a girl that confessed to be cheating on another guy that happened to be a gaming journalist that happened to promote her game” – “yeah whatever right?” , we already knew that gaming press wasn’t exactly a good press, and i personally NEVER liked most of them, however, things changed, for the worse i should say and we slowly unravelled this network of people colluding with each other for money, favors, anything and when we asked the press to cover this issue we got stabbed on the back by the same people that were supposed to report this kind of stuff.
As a right-winger currently involved in GamerGate, I would say your assessment is incorrect. This is not merely an “internicine conflict”, despite the fact that most GG member are indeed on the leftward-libertarian point of the spectrum.
This is because they are exposing flaws in extreme-leftist logic, which is why their OPPOSITION feels it necessary to portray them as right-wing. Having fellow leftists strenuously denying the Kool-Aid being forced down their collective throats is a danger to the more moderate voices who voluntarily chose or are choosing to drink from the same pitcher.
By calling attention to the same flaws GamerGate has already identified, indeed by rising up to champion the group against propagandizing from no less than MSNBC and NPR, those organizations come under highly-justifiable fire from moderates — and even from leftists who, like GamerGaters as a whole, were led to believe all this time that they were on the “right” side of history.
Thanks for your article. Beautifully written. As a young’un who took a lot political jargon for granted, you’ve given me a lot to think about.
I find #gamergate to be more entertaining that most video games. I think that is why #gamergate supporters are still going after months, this is all like a game to us and we’re legitimately having fun.
Dear newfags, please don’t mention /pol/ outside of 4chan. We don’t need our board getting flooded by libtards. Just direct them to /v/ or some shit if you really need to mention 4chan.
Why contain it?
S’cool.
“There are capable, intelligent young men in the GamerGate camp.”
AND WOMEN, dude. And also pets.
Just curious, but why is it you only single men out as having their eyes opened by their involvement with #gamergate? I follow it very closely and have been doing my small part to push it forward, but I can attest that there are a great number of women, prominent figures and organizers, who count themselves as supporters of #gamergate, who I’m sure have undergone their own minor epiphanies, with regard to closely held beliefs about how society actually functions. Leaving them out, along with the diverse members of other minority groups instrumental to #gamergate’s ongoing success, only undermines the olive branch you are extending on behalf of The Right.
Additionally, addressing only the “young men” of #gamergate, plays into the hands of our opponents who are desperately searching for any evidence, ANY hint that could be used to bolster their mis-characterization of us as nothing but angry, frightened, cis-gendered white, homophobic males. They’ve been accusing #gamergate of being just that since day one and it’s one of the more egregious lies about us that we’ve struggled to contend with (struggled only in that the truth has been deluged by a tsunami of deceit and keeping it at the surface has been tough).
#gamergate supporters are constantly having to prove our sincerity to a public who have already been poisoned against us. Portraying us as just men makes the task that much more difficult.
Otherwise, a very fine and very accurate article. I almost want to frame the damned thing, seeing how rarely they’re written.
The point is to learn to stop being defensive about being a young, white cis-het man. These days simply calling a movement, group or organization as “full of white dudes” is an insult, and you need to ask yourself why you should accept it or search for minorities (even if they already exist within) to shield you? Do you not wish to exude self respect to these scumbags?
Listen, I hail from the right and I’ve been on the front lines of the war against these totalitarian cultural crusaders for years. I’ve seen their campaigns in action and I’ve seen The Right make every stupid mistake in the book when going up against them, then failing miserably every time. #gamergate is succeeding because we ignore the insults and turn them into ammunition. We don’t fall for nonsense rhetoric about pride. We’re winning for one main reason: WE ARE PLAYING THEIR GAME BETTER THAN THEY ARE. And that means giving no quarter on any front, meeting the criticisms leveled against us head on and then crushing them to dust.
The biggest criticism we face and a weakness the enemy uses to stage almost every single attack they launch, is our identity. That makes it a priority to address. Your comments hail from (apologies for sounding snide) a losing playbook. Just listen to us and have some trust. As the man said, we’re the first to have drawn blood, so we’re obviously doing something right. Diversity is our strength, not theirs, and we damned well should be using it.
Read the rest of the Social Matter archive. The subtitle is ‘Not your Grandfather’s Conservatism’ for a reason. We have nothing to do with Republicans or contemporary conservative political strategy, mostly because they continue to lose for want of half-decent tactics. The difference the neoreactionaries at Social Matter is that we understand that all movements or organizations not explicitly right-wing will drift leftwards. That’s called Conquest’s second law. Our criticism of GamerGate is (1) it isn’t willing to play dirty, and so will ultimately lose, and (2) it’s trying to be politically neutral. In the long run, this will fail, just as Occupy failed, just as Anonymous has failed and become a mere shadow of its former self.
Criticism of our limits and methods from those who self-admittedly “failed for decades” at the same task is not a productive line of discussion.
You’re a Frenchman giving Russians advice on how to win a war in the winter. Or do you not think that the Internet and all it holds is a nerd’s home soil? #GamerGate is far more students of Sun Tzu. We reasoned early on that we had no need to fight, only a need to win. That is why the media attacks that would buckle and break a political movement, assassinate its “leaders”, or reduce it to resorting to “playing dirty” and poisoning its own well, fill our forums with laughter and mockery.
We won this war before it ever started by structuring our own efforts to have no possible failure condition. Victory is nothing but a matter of time and patience. I’ll let you think about Gamers for a bit and try to imagine just how much of those two things we have.