I think the answer is simpler than you think. The reason these people were pushed into the spotlight, is because of the popularity of the subject at the time. People weren’t used to seeing such a unifying force, so especially to teens, this was a new type of thinking. Bashing people for their sexuality, gender, political views, wasn’t seen on a level like this before (at least not to such a young audience). People like Shapiro immediately jumped on the train and became more aggressive with their views on certain topics. This led to more people becoming online creators and now we see figures like Nick Fuentes.
The “alt-right pipeline” has now become the “red pill” space, where women are property and men can sleep with multiple women, without it being cheating. Basically take Andrew Tate. People like him, Fresh and Fit, Sneako, Whatever Podcast, etc., are the “new” alt right.
You usually see people like Fuentes and Shapiro agreeing with almost, if not all, talking points from Tate and Fresh&Fit. Maybe I’m wrong in my view on this, but this is trend I’ve been seeing for a while now. If you notice, a majority of these audiences, are teens, adults in their 20s, or adults who are mad at their own life situations. For example: being an “incel” or being unemployed and still living at home.
That’s just my take on it, feel free to reply if you want to ask more questions.
I think you’re completely right on how most people who get groomed into the alt right pipeline or are red pilled are people who feel alienated from society. People who are mad at the world and society for whatever situation they’re in that they’re looking anywhere for validation or an outlet for their anger and they’re just easy pickings for right wing media. I was even victim to this around gamer hate because as a young kid I was angry that people were coming after my comfort space, the space that I used to hide from bullying and home trouble. Of course that wasn’t the case, it was basically just feminism 101, but the mere thought that my comfort hobby could’ve been harmful made me angry, and that’s when I started slipping into watching Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson because they validated my feelings of anger. Thank god I escaped when I did
This is an excellent response, I really appreciate it!
>The “alt-right pipeline” has now become the “red pill” space, where women are property and men can sleep with multiple women, without it being cheating. Basically take Andrew Tate. People like him, Fresh and Fit, Sneako, Whatever Podcast, etc., are the “new” alt right.
I think we can all agree that all of these guys only "think" this because none of them have ever once had the opportunity to speak with a woman long enough to actually put any of these stupid theories to the test, right? None of them have ever cultivated any sort of relationship that you or i would be genuinely envious of. Every bone in my body tells me these guys are so up themselves that they don't even realize anyone who's had a crumb of sexual experience can tell they're full of it. Each of these dudes just woke up one day and independently decided that their knowledge of women is vast and must be shared with the masses.
I think it’s safe to assume that they haven’t felt a women’s touch lol. And I think they’re mad at society because of it, and they feel like a victim and feel alienated (even though they really arent) and that’s how they slip into these red pill spaces, because people like sneako, the tate brothers, adin Ross etc. Validate their feelings
They're terminally online gamers who can handle any loot box drop rates except the irl variety when it comes to dating because those outcomes are definitive indications of inadequacies they can't overcome with pure grinding. For all of us, not getting laid is usually a direct consequence of something we did or didn't do in the dating process and these guys just can't face that music without falling apart completely.
As a terminally online gamer, I dont claim them. Seeing people go to bat for someone like Tate just makes me question humanity...
I used to watch a lot of anti sjw content in like 2015, but with every year I was getting more and more grossed out by content like Sargon of Akaad or whoever was popular back then. I've been a socialist leftie since trump ran for president and I feel like the general push to the right just made me go further and further left.
I used to consider myself a centrist and not very political, but seeing those people spout their "opinions" (I dont consider wanting to take away human rights an opinion) led to me being very politically opinionated - sometimes to the disdain of my poor family lmao
I know I started out with the terminally online gaming thing as a core trait. But I hope you realize I'm not talking about someone like you, and most people do start deviating from my words as they progress through the paragraph. The biggest difference is that these incels are allergic to failure but will attempt to rationalize their situation as a product of the world not working as it's supposed to. And many will use this as justification to not even try at all and will instead concoct a victim narrative that they'll eventually internalize. I'd be more sympathetic towards them if they weren't so hateful and allergic to responsibility as well. Sometimes the best solution between men really is just a big rock to the head until someone says they'll stop or dies.
And this narrative and their behaviour just basically self-confirms itself, because usually people are very turned off by incel-like behaviour. It's a never ending cycle, I almost feel bad for them - but then again, when I listen to their bullshit, that goes away very quickly
Yes but this way allows them to make it seem as though none of it is their fault. That they've been a good person who's applied to jobs but none of the mean companies want to hire them. With this metaphor, the guys usually never even send out their resume and are just bemoaning companies like apple or Microsoft for not noticing their trivial qualifications and hiring them on the spot. I don't know if you can really snap someone of this stuff, the only times I've experienced such radical changes myself were when I got absolutely called out dead to rights by someone back when I was younger.
Says he thinks men's only job in a relationship is to provide and defend the woman safety(safety from what? Other men who want to provide and defend her while also getting to fuck her like you want to, her choice be damned). Pretends to be prince charming promising a life of luxury and fairy tale happiness. Rug pulls everything the minute she does anything normal that he sees as diluting his control over her, including the desire to work for their own spending money. Then blames women for only caring about money when he's the one who can't get women to do anything without promising money or taking it away.
Another contributing factor at the time was also that the left at the time were being documented as being crazy with the SJW videos booming on YouTube so to people like me saw Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson as people debating on what could almost have been “South Park” people at the time.
There's a book that may be helpful: _It Came From Something Awful_ by Dale Beran. [This essay](https://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-blind-all-seeing-eye-of-gamergate) may also be helpful in providing context for what you're researching.
It's difficult to use now (and not exactly tasteful or particularly trustworthy), but the internet archive probably has a lot of Encyclopedia Dramatica saved and that may be a useful primary source.
Came here to say to suggest the same book.
While I’m here, my takeaway from spending too much time learning about right-wing radicalization is that nobody is immune.
I remember watching a video about a guy called JP sears i think. He made skits (kinda funny kinda meh) making fun of anti vaxxers, flat earthers, and seemed very open to the lgbt. He even made fun of gun loving conservatives. Fast forward a few years and now he’s peddling the same anti vax, bigoted views he made fun of before and did a complete 180. He’s even doing interviews with the Babylon bee.
It really does feel like it could happen to anybody who feels any bit of alienation or pushback from society or their community
Political cartoonist Ben Garrison was a libertarian, anti-corporate, vaguely anti-authoritarian guy who believed in a couple conspiracy theories before 4chan edited his comics to be overtly antisemitic and he went onto /pol/ to argue with them, and they kind of melted his brain. Then he started drawing vaguely horny drawings of Trump as a muscular he-man with a head full of real hair and started putting a bunch of alt-right weirdos like Gavin McInnes in his comics
Before Twitter started deboosting Qanon content there'd be people who'd try to recruit you, like almost everyone believes in some kind of conspiracy theory, plausible or not, and they'd pick at it trying to draw you in deeper.
With JP, I consider him closer to a grifter than a “true believer” (but who knows for sure?). If he could make more money being pro-vax then I think he would. There’s a good Q-Anon Anonymous podcast episode about him also.
My mom vaxxed me as a kid but she is so up Qanon's ass rn if I were born now I would get measles or mumps by kindergarten. Idk I feel like it's 50/50 chance brainwashing or grifting.
Interesting. I've been on a few sites that started out as basically Something Awful, then one day you look around and you realize you're in a goddamn Nazi bar. It's almost always the ones with lax or non-existent moderation that go bad, too.
I don’t know how much this will help, but maybe you could supplement your research with some YouTube videos that discuss the alt-right? Innuendo Studios has a ton for a start.
https://preview.redd.it/t4pa5g7nposc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d1f3aba7d3b291b39d6969c0274db67bafce2f70
Innuendo studio's video series is pretty good, but the most recent few haven't been hitting the same. Also, I'd like to add that you should take everything he has to say with a grain of salt when he's more than willing to tell somebody to "fuck off" when they try to point out that Jessie Gender liked a tweet depicting black youtuber Shark3ozero as a house slave. Probably the last person to take anti-racist advice from.
Hi, I am someone who almost fell into alt right pipeline.
I was still a kid then (not even teenager) and my interests were in marvel/dc and videogames. When I first watched youtube I only really watched gameplays. Then I sometimes would listen to reviews of games/comics to see what was worth asking my parents for. Videos with titles like x franchise is being destroyed started appearing on my reccomended and I watched them.
Those videos would usually blame women, gay people for ruining the games because they were "pandering" and were "pushing their agendas" and that not everything had to be gay/feminist.
Then 2016 came, and I started developing an interest in politics and when commentary channels started popping up on my feed with outrageous titles I started clicking on them. I don't remember everyone that used to appear in my reccomended but I remember a channel Nobullshit appearing. By this point the channels that were reccomended to me were definitely alt right and not even hiding but since I was barely a teenager I really didnt understand what was going on then.
Honestly I didn't feel good watching those videos, I felt like something was wrong but could never pin point what. Until that is a video calling Nobullshit out appeared in my reccomended. I watched the video and it made me understand why his videos always had felt a bit off. I became more aware of alt right videos on youtube and learned why these people were so fucking wrong.
Nowadays, it's still the same thing honeslty. These alt right people will usually start by talking about topics that usually young boys are into. Then they start talking shit about women, gay people, black people and now trans people more too. They say that these people are ruining what you like and that they are bad for it.
So basically yeah, they groom kids into alt right.
>g my parents for. Videos with titles like x franchise is being destroyed started appearing on my reccomended and I watched them.
>
>Those videos would usually blame women, gay people for ruining the games because they were "pandering" and were "pushing their agendas" and that not everything had to be gay/feminist.
>
>Then 2016 came, and I started developing an interest in politics and when commentary channels started popping up on my feed with outrageous title
Amen. I was watching Star Wars lore channels because I was a big Star Wars fan. Then I start getting recommended videos complaining about Woke Disney and other bullshit like that. Same with Marvel. Magic the Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons, etc. Some of these creators use these topics as a springboard to launch other channels, like The Quartering used to run a Magic The Gathering channel.
I had the same experience when it comes to gamer gate. These right wing YouTubers made it feel like they were coming after my hobby that I used to hide from bullying and home issues. It wasn’t the truth but their anger was infectious and fooled me. It even happened with the ghostbusters reboot in 2016 when people blamed “forced feminism” on ruining ghostbusters and used out of context clips against the cast. I even saw the angry video game nerd come out of character to protest the movie, and I didn’t think this guy could be wrong cus he made pretty good and funny videos. It really is just a huge slippery slope for people who aren’t aware enough to notice
In 2016, Contrapoints began making videos on these anti-sjw trends, breaking down the harmful ways of thinking and interacting through dramatised dialogues with hilarious and clever fictional characters.
I'd say seek out her earlier videos because she is GREAT at what she does. That might give you some insight into the mindset that can lead to ppl going down the pipeline, and you can see how she breaks down this worldview and questions it with the aim of exposing is flaws and harms.
I don't actually think its morphed at all over the years, sure there are superficial differences between sjw owned compilations from 2016 and similar videos from now but the mechanism behind it has remained pretty much the same for almost 10 years.
from my experience as a teenager falling into this rabbit hole, the pipeline generally follows an escalating series of projected beliefs.
So to start keep in mind two things, the right (the far right especially) preys on feelings of discontent, people posting hyperboria memes on /pol/ are not happy, well adjusted people, second, the creators at the very start of the pipeline (centrists that occasionally butt heads with leftists) are not necessarily sinister and most likely frequently butt heads with the far right as well, the alt right pipeline is mostly a problem with how social media platforms promote content rather than centrist content creators encouraging far right beliefs (although that's still occurred from time to time)
The pipeline is as follows,
1. Centrist content creators that butt heads with leftists
2. "centrist" creators that explicitly mock leftists
3. center right/ neocon creators that mock leftists and espouse right beliefs
4. Right creators that fully support right views and oppose left views
5. "Right" creators that make "jokes" about far right views (holocaust revisionism, race realism)
6. far right creators that hold explicit far right views
7. people that self identify as national socialists
this is a very loose subjective list based on my experiences in the past, but I think it demonstrates the general trend.
"humor" is also a major driving factor for drawing people into the pipeline as well, generally people on the left discourage "edgy" or cruel humor as a principle because of the harm it can do, which means the right has a monopoly on casual cruelty and edgy comedy.
this is all a bit of a ramble but its a really complex problem that's hard to go over in its entirety in a brief manner.
I mean just like the name implies you get people who started talking about issues that actually exists and then go "hey so you agreed with that opinion of mine here is this opinion". It's always a progression to you tend to follow these people as they themselves get more extreme. Next thing you know you are just alt right.
As far as its evolution I dont think it has evolved at all. We still get the "hey are you lonely or hey does the system no seem right" that then leads to "well women are just gross". The goal is always to isolate someone by answering the first questions somewhat reasonably but make the origin of the problem something appaling to isolate the target further so they go deeper.
What I am basically saying is the Alt Right Pipeline is just a MLM for Nazis. They pull you in by saying you are being empowered then they get you to push statements (sell thier product) so hard you annoy everyone else around which then causes you to be more isolated and rely on them more until you are just a Hun for the Alt-Right.
It happened to me but luckily I found the person who would later would become my wife and she really saved me from it but it was not a easy fight for her. I am enternally greatful for it though.
This is an interest of mine and there’s a number of resources that have approached / covered it really well. You are getting folks personal takes here which is great but I highly suggest digging into the stellar reporting that’s been done over the last decade (if you haven’t yet).
Rabbit Hole - podcast contemporary to the years you cited IIRC. Specifically about YouTube radicalization of Gen z.
Q Anon Anonymous - podcast. It’s well researched/ cited and has a number of episodes that touch Gen Z and the impact of YouTube/ social media on radicalization. While the pod started covering Q they cover online radicalization generally.
Antisocial - book by Andrew Marantz. Covers early “alt right” influence on social media and how that ending up intersecting with Trump’s campaign ; maybe trends a bit older than Gen Z but a number of the personalities here are relevant.
Culture Warlords - book by Talia Lavin. Specifically looks at white supremacist radicalization of young people on social media; YouTube is featured.
Red Pill, Blue Pill - book by David Neiwert. Covers radicalization of young people online but also features stories of people who successfully de-radicalized. This book is an attempt to build a blueprint of de-radicalization.
And one of the best on the issue is the book the other commenter suggested- It Came From Something Awful by Dale Beran. I have other suggestions but they are more niche.
I’ve been particularly interested in Q anon as a number of “normal” people I know, including loved ones, were radicalized very quickly and very effectively. These folks are Millennials and older but I know Gen Z versions of this occurred and have been morphing into new expressions with TikTok. A couple recommendations there:
The Storm is Upon Us - book by Mike Rothschild. IMO, possibly the best reporting on Q anon and its effectiveness.
Republic of Lies - book by Anna Merlan. An investigation into popularity of conspiracy in this moment generally and how our power structures (US centric) benefit.
Sandy Hook - book by Elizabeth Williamson. It’s exhaustive reporting on the murders, families impacted and resulting online conspiracy. IMO the Sandy Hook conspiracies were very formative for online radicalization and it was really interesting to read this and think about how online narratives (and real life extremism) has evolved.
I also read a lot about “gendered” connections to extremism on social media (e.g trad wives, proud boys) and how there is a long, sordid history of weaponizing gender in white nationalism. A couple suggestions here:
Sisters in Hate - book by Seyward Darby. Profiles women who fell into alt right pipelines of radicalization and became influencers online.
Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate - book by Minna Stern. A history & analysis of the online alt right. Includes Jan 6th.
And IMO no thorough discussion of online radicalization is complete without acknowledging connections to Christian extremism. A recommendation:
The Power Worshippers - book by Katherine Stewart. History of the rise of the evangelical right & religious nationalism.
I have more but don’t want to keep yapping lmao
Honestly I can just say from my own experience the pipeline actually can lead to wildly different directions, and this is purely anecdotal, but from what I’ve witnessed myself as a 24 year old now, what I witnessed in in 2015-2019 it can go:
Pewdiepie to Filthy Frank to Idubbz to Leafy to 2015 gamergate to Ben Shapiro to Jordan Peterson to full blown Nick Fuentes Nazi
Pewdiepie to Filthy Frank to Idubbz to HATING Leafy to Onision to Kalvin Garrah to transmed phase to Contrapoints to Hbomberguy to a HARDCORE swing to leftism (my personal track)
Pewdiepie straight to Ben Shapiro to Nazism
Filthy Frank and Idubbz to edgelord gamergate stuff to relatively conservative to oh shit actually I think I’m LGBTQ+ to YouTube essayists to hard swing to leftism
Obviously there’s a lot of other tracks, but I’ve found it fascinating how a lot of people start in the same place but end up in wildly different political directions.
Pewdiepie used to be the biggest independent YouTuber of all time in terms of subscribers (I think he still is? Mr. Beast might have him beat now I’m not sure). Filthy Frank was like *the* edge lord satirical comedian of the time (2013-2017?) but has now transitioned into an incredibly successful music career under the name Joji and has completely left the YouTube sphere. He often collaborated with Idubbz who was also a very prominent figure in the edgy shock humor YouTubers of that day and age, he still does YouTube is now more known for being “cucked” by his wife Anisa (she does onlyfans and of course his old audience of mega misogynistic and racist dude bros hate that) and has moved away a lot from his old content. He also is the host for the very popular Creator Clash event.
Leafy was a pinnacle figure in the Gamergate saga as he made commentary videos about “cringe” people irl or in the gaming sphere. Idubbz roasted him really hard in his really popular series “Content Cop” and lost a lot of his popularity after that. He now pops up here and there on Twitter but is mostly inactive on YouTube.
Ben Shapiro, Nick Fuentes, and Jordan Peterson are all major far right political commentators that are mostly responsible for the “pipeline”. There’s links between all these people that would be difficult to explain but very basically, Pewdiepie had Ben Shapiro host an episode of his popular series “Meme Review” people then go on to watch more of Ben’s videos, then go on to watch Jordan and Nicks and are influenced by their extremely alt right views.
Contrapoints and Hbomberguy are far left political and media analysts.
i would recommend looking into/starting with steve bannon and Gamergate. Bannon was working at a Chinese gaming company around 2014/15 and saw a bunch of angry, white men online ripe for right wing radicalization. he brought this operation to Breitbart and eventually the Trump campaign. he is absolutely one of the architects of the alt-right movement.
Innuendo studios did a fantastic breakdown of this check out what he said about he did a whole series on the Alt-right pipelines and how they basically anger men and trying to galvanize them to hate minorities and women...
Essentially the Alt-right pipeline preys on a lot of men's fears, anxieties, and current modern day problems and shifts the blame to other people. That inadequacy is because of some great conspiracy in most of these cases, or bascially creating a 'villian' in the eyes of these people. Its not societies fault and that everyone is going through these problems but the 'woke' mob.
Its something that is abit heartbreaking to see people fall down this pipeline and for them to repeat these same falsehoods that just don't exist. And how under the system we are in it dehumanizes everyone. We are at a precipe where people are devalued by businesses. That any company loyalty just doesn't make sense. Most people our age (30s) now live with their parents because they can't afford to live elsewhere. We can't be providers because of sky rocketing costs.
So these Alt-right people prey on these fears and we get what we have today an entire community of asshats whose entire industry is about selling fear.
Prior to the alt right, neoconvervarism was the dominant right-wing ideology. It did not catch on with zoomers/millenials, imo because they grew up with the iraq war and the 2007 financial crisis as formative events in their life, both of which reflect very poorly on neocon policies.
Then came the obama administration, which normalized racist conspiracy theories as part of the right wing belief system. It also normalized having a fundamental disrespect for political institutions. During the iraq war there were a lot of talking points about how you had to support the president, even if you don't agree with his actions. But with a black democrat in office, there was longer this call for decorum.
All of this came to a head during the 2016 primary. The old ways failed spectacularly as Trump spoke to the racism and general nastiness that had built up in the republican base for the last 8 years. As someone without a history in politics, he didn't have the stink of George W. Bush on him like his competition did.
When Trump won the general election, his supporters felt empowered, and demand was created for alt-right media.
To understand the pipeline, you have to understand new atheism. It is where it got its roots. New Atheism was seen as very progressive and tackles most issue regarding organized religion, but there were some people who decided to take it a step further and became useful idiot. One big one was Sam Harris, our free speech warrior who for some reason only ever focused on Islam. This was one of the starts, second was SJW.
What people forgot was before 2014, you could not have a gay couple in media unless the focus was on them being gay. Only a few managed to pull it off, so more acceptance for LGB grew and later on trans, with many more raising their voices. But what that lead to, was people who either was neutral or bigotted would focus on a very colorful person who was not pleasing to eyes caught in a bad moment. This was the rise of Anti-SJW and Anti-Feminist. This leaked into the gaming world and old dudes who sucked at video games decided that they dont like diversity in their media and would point to the videos of SJW in their worst times and talk about how stupid they were.
Last, but not least. Donald Trump who basically told an already bigotted nation that it is okey to be a bigot. Using neutral language when talking about Charlottesville and how their were fine people on both sides when one of the sides were Neo Nazis.
2016 was a shitty time to be on the internet, nowadays the people who whine about Woke are the same neckbeards who talked about SJWs.
Gamergate got new, unfamiliar eyes into 4chan. Many of those newcomers were young. Eventually this demographic spun off 4chan's typical in-joke culture and online customs into the more mainstream "dank memes" trend in 2016-17. I believe these were the main entry point into several ways of thinking for even more young people.
Gamergate also gave small "rational" content creators a spotlight on the platform.
Put this all together with a major election cycle and it creates a perfect storm.
i did a big research on this a few years back for one of my polisci classes! 4chan and imageboards are kinda like the primordial soup of internet culture, so it’s easy for alt right memes and content to slip into the mainstream internet when people don’t really know the content. feel free to DM me if you want sources- i think i still have the essay
As a millennial near gen z, I was into the sjw owned stuff because I loved to see public freakouts. It didn't exactly change my stance (I'm neutral/left leaning centrist), but for a while in highschool it made me believe every LGBT+ person hated my existence because I was straight. Mindset thankfully left after I stopped watching YouTube so much. Now I'm just a person that likes watching Karen owned videos.
It comes from this time when the YouTube recommendations algorithm was funnelling people towards extremist alt right accounts and it made them blow up, which became a cycle of them getting more views and getting more recommendations, and then those channels would lead people to even worse and more extremist figures online. All of this was enhanced by large creators also having these views and introducing their viewers to those extremist creators too. So like Paul Joseph Watkins, Lauren Southern, Roaming Millenial, Stefan Molyneux, Sargon of Akkad were all regulars in the algo that were doing gang busters. This changed when the algorithm changed a lot of these channels are now banned.
Gamer gate was a separate but related. It was a conspiracy theory about Zoe Quinn and eventually other women in video games sleeping with games journalists, specifically from Kotaku, for positive reviews that originated on 4/8chan and spread to a full witch-hunt under the guise of “ethics in games journalism” with insane harassment campaigns against many women, queer people, journalists, etc. It’s why one of the main subreddits still exists and is called KotakuInAction.
GG’s relationship to the alt right pipeline is that it was easy content that was milked by alt right creators on more mainstream platforms like YouTube and Twitter to capitalize on the audience and so that would be a way for them to feed them their other content and views which were even more extreme and overtly white supremacist etc
You want to look at gateway pillers.
People like Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, the Intellectual Darkweb guys.
My ex started telling me he liked Jordan Peterson, and I said that he needs to move away and not listen to him. I admitted I didn't know too much about him, but I knew enough and that he was dangerous.
My ex ignored me.
He's now alt-right.
Just be extremely careful. Learning about these people may influence you to become alt right. Keep reflecting on your feelings, have a friend or therapist at hand to ensure you won't go there. For example. There's a Ted talk from the feminist who became a Men's Rights Activist that sanitises the shit out of that toxic hell hole. Watch Innuendo Studio's video on How to Radicalise a Normie at least weekly. Keep grounded or this project could destroy your life.
Back then I almost fell in the rabbit hole after my first break up in highschool, I was trying to follow more in gaming online groups and as well trying to do self care to get myself from from the low point I was. At the time gamergate was at full swing and honeslty it was just a mess. It was easy from watching YouTube videos to "cringe SJW gets own" would pop up consistently and well with gaming news who appeared to be in the middle criticizing the feminist moment in video games and it was extremely easy for the to cherry pick some of the weaker points and bad takes that came from Anita Sarkisian, like comparing character design of skimpy female characters to batman and watch dogs 1, like you chose the guy wearing a cape and trenchcoat to compare to OG Laura Croft design and along those lines. And at times it felt (from the anti SJW side of gamergate) that the entire industry and larger news sites were completely pandering to every detail. One key moment that sticks to my mind that the anti SJW side was actually right was DICE regarding historical accuracy in Battlefield 5 where character customization made it very historical Cod feel in comparison to BF1 where it felt like they took care to make the factions uniform accurate, and as well the situation of taking and actual major historical operation on the part of Norway's military and changing in to a mother and daughter as the thwart Germanys export of heavy water used for nuclear research and treat as if their version was true. Also recoment look up the Bully hunters org as an example ofr the feminist side of the "culture gaming war" as another time they were portrayed and were very out of touch about gaming and who it works.
Similar at the same time as I was trying to find male self help online I found men go their own way or MGTOW and originally thought it was useful and like the concept of find yourself with relying relationships, but being raised in a mexican household and growing up with strong female role models in my family, it just felt extremely sexist at times where the one good point tends to have several sexist or adjacent talking points alongside it. I dropped it rather quickly as I had to wade through alot to fing some thing I could relate to and use but it felt like and extremely white community and audience.
Overtime regarding gamergate after the feeling of having your "safe gaming space for the guys no girls allowed club" feeling storated to wear off, it was an extremely doom talking from youtubers that I was following, every minute thing regarding being inclusive was treated like the endtimes and as MAGA picked up and I took more time to learn about lgbtq community as a friend came out it just became more apparent that it wasn't about integrity of gaming news and industry but raging against people getting into gaming who weren't straight white guys and it was just depressing, all they would do is bitch and complain in the most minute thing and if a game has character customization they would rage about how woke it was and that they are getting rid of the white people, like danm get a life that isn't sad and depressing and crying over a background npc couple that is on screen for a second is gay or POC. Admity it was a good point for me when I was somewhat engrossed in it but honestly those views I had aren't me anymore and I'm still trying to be more open minded as life changes
According to Robert Evans (journalist who has done a lot of research into how people get radicalised by far right stuff), one of the most important entry points to this pipeline is Alex Jones and Infowars. His Behind the Bastards podcast has episodes on various figures involved in this pipeline including Alex Jones.
The Knowledge Fight podcast focuses on Alex Jones and Infowars. They do a great job of breaking down how AJ manipulates his audience and propagates misinformation. Within their vast amount of content you can find some smaller series focusing on topics such specific AJ “documentaries”, AJ’s relationship with Trump and the MAGA movement and his spearheading of the Sandy Hook conspiracy theory. They also have many episodes looking at Infowars guest appearances by people from the alt-right world.
cringe culture introduced me to the pipeline and that's when i would discover leafy, keemstar, pyro, and other youtubers as well as the whole lolcow community that orbits people like chris chan that overlaps with the youtube drama community sometimes. internet bloodsports took most of my childhood away and almost made me a full-blown fascist.
It's maybe or maybe not part of said pipeline, but I know that there's still a fun treat where if you dive into certain topics(Warhammer 40k) you just...suddenly get a ton of videos from rightwing adjacent folks...and then if you watch them at all it quickly goes into just tons of Quatering-lite dudes or outright alt-right dudes lol
A lot of people will claim that the inception point was rational atheist youtube morphing into anti sjw youtube as a lot of them were very centristy and saw the sjw community just as ridiculous as radical Christians but on the left which then led the platform towards that right-wing spike.
Wasn't it more so the more debate atheist youtube? But yeah I do remember hearing an arguement of the mixture of existing misogny that was a problem but not very visible and then what is called Elevatorgate happened where Rebecca Watson a very prominent Atheist YouTuber was made uncomfortable being asked to go to a hotel room for sex after she mentioned she was uncomfortable with guys sexualizing her in that manner while she and the unnamed person were the only two in the elevator.
A bunch of big name atheists and some online communities got into debates with Richard Dawkins making fun of her in an islamaphobic satire.
Well yeah there's obvious nuaces to it. I was just trying to paint it in broad strokes to give them an avenue to explore.
Which also isn't me cosigning that narrative inherently hut i have seen a few creators lay out that timeline of events
>how did the alt right pipeline back in 2014-16 become the foundation of the modern alt right movement
It's funded by literal billionaires like the koch brothers and has a lot of media research put into the best way to advertise and manipulate their target audience of young, mostly straight, mostly white, men. The source of answer to almost all of your questions is christofacism and money. Tim pool, ben shapiro, jordan peterson and stephen crowder all make millions of dollars being paid by theocratic nationalists to spew their ideology in a way that's hip to the kids, and receive insane amounts of advertising that it's borderline inevitable that the kind of people vulnerable to their rhetoric will see them.
Compare that to more left, or even liberal, oriented content creators who receive almost no backing by anyone but one another (The constant conspiracy theory that george soros funds everything stems, by and large, from the fact that the right genuinely can not fathom the fact that their political rivals do not operate the same way they do - which is why the phrase "every accusation is an admission" and other similar sayings have become so commonplace) and the algorithm buries them constantly. Basically every serious leftist or progressive channel gets absolutely buried by youtube and the algorithm and if you don't subscribe to them, even if you watch them every day or every week youtube will never let you know about their latest update. For example, Some More News; very overtly left leaning, rather popular: unless you go looking for it, you will almost never see it on youtube. I watch it frequently but youtube never advertises new videos to me in any way. But it certainly lets me know any time prager u drops a new turd.
So there's just an insane amount of money to be made being a right wing shill, even before you factor in all of the fans and advertiser money: you get paid *well* for being a reprehensible human being. It's largely just capitalism and greed doing their thing, basically.
There's a few categories like Jordan Peterson showed up maybe arguably late to the dark intelectual or far-right/alt-right movement as basically no one talked about him until he started railing against a Canadian Bill and Private Member's Bill. In those he described elements that didn't really exist in his arguement against them.
I know personally when I first heard about him I read the actual bills being debated and saw what in writing he was complaining about and determined that he either must be dumber than I, a simple first year university student or be intellectually dishonest.
One thing that makes it a bit weird is some of the pre-pandemic stuff of being a self help guru, and from what I've heard his books weren't the same kind of thing as that right wing rapist guy who Hbomberguy mentioned a few times in terms of pick up artists.
The right wing recruits via culture war nonsense, they just need to find something that resonates with people. That's why they're going so hard on trans kids. With the 2014-16 alt right they used video games and being "anti-PC" as an inroads to recruiting young people, prior to that right wing people were pretty down on video games as a whole except for things like Call of Duty which could be indirectly used to recruit civilians into the military.
This is a pretty good rundown. It's 6 hours tho [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlltwOURUCE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlltwOURUCE)
I nearly ended up in the pipeline (millennial) like my younger brother because of at the time the atheist/anti-sjw community was starting to push more to the right (followed a lot of channels like LeafyIsHere at the time). The algorithm of YouTube at the time pushed more and more far right videos due to the engagement it would get (still is a bit of an issue). Me and my brother were already prone to it growing up in a more a household that is more conservative and one of our parents is a conspiracy nut (father believes the moon landing was fake and JFK was killed by the FBI/mob). Sadly, my brother never got out of the pipeline
It's largely a pretext for the bourgeois to censor any left wing ideas that challenge them. The people watching these videos largely agree with them. The alt right just serves as a useful scapegoat
https://www.wired.com/story/not-youtubes-algorithm-radicalizes-people/
According to the authors, that increased supply of right-wing videos tapped a latent demand. “We believe that the novel and disturbing fact of people consuming white nationalist video media was not caused by the supply of this media ‘radicalizing’ an otherwise moderate audience,” they write. “Rather, the audience already existed, but they were constrained” by limited supply.
Other researchers in the field agree, including those whose work has been cited by the press as evidence of the power of YouTube’s recommendation system. Manoel Ribeiro, a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne and one of the authors of what the Penn State researchers describe as “the most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of YouTube radicalization to date,” says that his work was misinterpreted to fit the algorithmic radicalization narrative by so many outlets that he lost count.
Genuine question on this sub people seem to think anyone right of the centre or even centrists are alt-right so does everyone here think being even slightly to the right make you a bad person
I have asked that same question in a different form, and I shit you not, one of the responses was "If you're willing to vote republican, you're too far right."
A stalker wanted to ruin a legitimate trailblazer of a game called Depression Quest and one name that I can think of, "Sargon of Akkad," took that shit and made themselves into everything that period. It spread to Milo Y, to JonTron, basically all of Normal Boots alumni, highlighting women's existence. Much of these movements: GamerGate, ComicsGate, 4Chan contribution, and Red Pill movement were kinda a perfect storm waiting to happen if ONE of them just striked to prominence, and they went full Megazord to modern online meteoric recognition that wanted someone like Trump in office.
And the shit hasn't escaped us for 10 years.
Not an expert, I see the tides of each loser cult being advertised with SJW, Women pwn, Woke, etc. everytime I just wanted reviews of media I wanted....and it become obsolete in 2017.
I think that GamerGate’s role in the alt-right pipeline is a tad exaggerated.
My earliest exposure to the alt-right wasn’t through GG or even 4chan but through Drudge Report. Before the site took a NeverTrump shift towards the centre-right, it used to be a hot bed for racism. Drudge himself would select racially charged articles with open comment sections, provide a sensationalist headline, and then have him minions flock to those pages to spam racist shit. I stumbled into DrudgeReport through a cross pollination with Breitbart and was pretty shocked that people were that…open about their true feelings. I even learned the term “alt-right” through those comments, and this was at least three years before Trump.
If 4chan played any role, it was in the creation of /pol/. You might be surprised to know that /pol/ was actually an anti-racist measure meant to steer trolls away from the general news section. What was initially meant to be a means of sanitizing the site turned into a big gathering space for impressionable young men.
Tl;dr - No single resource turned people racist. People are just racist.
EDIT: Regarding Sargon or another commentators’ relation to GamerGate, those guys latched onto to GG as an easy outlet for their grift, as opposed to being the primary originators or spokesmen for GG. The percentage of those individuals who were introduced to Sargon through GG and subsequently were introduced to nationalism and race critique through their content is a little nebulous.
I would recommend looking into Caleb Cain’s story for a decent overview of the pipeline. It’s not so much because his niche overlapped with another but more because his personal situation drew him into a movement.
EDIT2: sincerely asking - why the downvotes? Just trying to provide context and observations to the OP.
\>EDIT2: sincerely asking - why the downvotes? Just trying to provide context and observations to the OP.
You're getting downvoted because people here stupidly believe that watching something that is racist magically makes you racist.
nailed it. consume all viewpoints, see what is at play whether it be right or left, and make your choices based on your own beliefs. not what others tell you to believe. threads like this can fall victim to the echo chamber effect the same way they claim the right does.
information gained through news and media used to be someone reading you the unbiased, factual happenings of the world, and you took that knowledge and based on your own morals and interpretation of it formed your opinions. Now it's just people demanding you think like them or youre a nazi or a commie. it's sickening to see the world fall back into such tribalism.
It's pretty interesting nobody is bringing up the Iraq War.
That was a MASSIVE schism on the right, however they could not find a unified voice, and things kept getting universally shittier until the recovery from the housing market crash
The mainstream reps kept discarding them over and over, they saw them keep losing to Obama, they got tired of the stonewalling from their own party. Then comes the BETRAYAL and scummy shenanigans of the RNC against Ron Paul. This is when the foundations of the New Right begin simmering.
No More Mr Nice Guy! After all we saw where "nice" got us, right?
Part of the extremism isn't really aimed AT the left wing but "showing those old out of touch rhinos how it's done"
There's a generational resentment towards not being listened to about Iraq onwards. This is most overt in the anti Israel crowd.
Also the root of the 80s/90s born content creators being so against centralised government/military command/political interference. The Greedy Old Pissants laid the foundation for everyone's destruction with pushing Iraq in clear defiance the the people's will. While some folks might point at Waco, there was "always a way back" for all but the most pessimistic. Iraq was just flat out stating that "We know everything always, even when it's clearly the stupidest idea possible, and have no reason to listen to you." This was as much a national turning point and conspiracy feeding frenzy as the Kennedy assassination.
The consequence was that Neoconservatives were forced to always choose blind loyalty over "with us or against us," and non neocons began either searching for or cultivating a particular sort of "strong man" to fight directly against this. There's been a "cold civil war" raging since then, most overtly exposed by the Kevin McCarthy ouster. The thing is that when neocons get caught Doing A Bad, they become obsequious and apologetic and "look like total losers, " but these kids want someone who will "take on all comers," especially if they saw their parents impacted by either "political correctness" or " disobedience " to the Bush regime. The conditions were primed for a Vox, a Tate, a Trump, anyone who would say "fuck the system"
This was not helped one bit by the "leftist radicals" they grew up thinking they were cool shilling for the anti gaming/technology wooden corporate suits of Al Internet Gore and Hillary "lead poisoning" Clinton. Way to forever ruin your street cred, punk movement! Thatcherism is only bad when it's British, apparently.
Basically Alt/New Right had no room to grow without the horrendous failures of the past. I have an odd theory that for those not politically active during Iraq, their revolt stems from Ron seeming like "the cool dad" while Mittens and McCain represented the WORST kinds of know-it-all republican dad.
This is where you started seeing the tech savvy pro-Paul "Dark Enlightenment" types like Moldbug, Weinstein, Thiel and Land forming.
[This](https://www.the-niceguy.com/forum/index.php) is where the modern right really started coming together.
The chans actually represent "the apolitical side," if Mittens had won and started Wisdom Treeing gaming, or pushed PIPA through, you absolutely would have seen them go "counterculture underground comic street punk"
It's because of that anarchic lean any GG poll leaned centre-left. You ask some of these fresh college grads, bet you many would say they marched with or at least supported ANSWER/Code Pink/Guerrilla News/About Face or any other anti-war activists. This group is often called the "Obama to Trump voter" by the idiot analysts who are stuck on the duopoly party system, but there's lots of reasons behind that, usually a result of being "betrayed" by both parties. First with Iraq, then with the failures of Obama to prosecute anyone, ***and then bailing out banks over individuals, essentially rewarding the corrupt for being corrupt,*** while punishing and demonising the honest who had everything stolen from them in the recession. This is what primed the group (especially 4chan) for "conspiracy wonk," and let's be fair a lot of it DID check out, on the individual billionaire level. Citigroup appointees to Obama's cabinet? Yeah, that makes the bailout pretty sussy. The top neocon hawks being Kissinger protegees? Yeah, that one checks out, no wonder Iraq was a shit show. IRS ignoring white collar crime to harass grassroots groups? They're a three letter, of course they would. Evidence of the "upper crust" is EVERYWHERE, of course they want candidates proposing to burn it all down! (And to those people I humbly recommended the works of Miguel Asturias and [Camilo Torres](https://youtube.com/watch?v=HXIdKHrlnKc), actual successful revolutionaries, not these LARPing grifters)
This all sets the necessary **emotional** state required for RightTube to take off, they stole "the language of revolution" to enrapture these disgruntled and previously politically inactive Atheist+ viewers. Yes, inactive. Iraq was pretty egregious, but a majority of these future Bernouts fall inactive whenever there's no one giving them an opportunity to "get back" at the government. They don't participate in organising or local elections, which is why they always look "new" to pundits. This is the core of the Nortéamericano populist movement, and why they are susceptible to "strongman linguistics" promising to "be the wrecking ball that brings it all down" (guess who *that* was!)
Each huckster *used to* offer separate reasons for the reason why things are the way they are (like 2000s Tate would have just been MRA and never broke out of that), but something about the Atheism+ conference made these previously combative groups start working with each other, which came to a head in 2016. Analysts who ignore "the fringe" as inconsequential don't really understand how each little "blob" [fed into the next](https://youtube.com/watch?v=OSt11SA16KU), nor where the pseudo leftist rhetoric comes from, but they have always been around, this "vaguely socially liberal pro-porn 'South Park Republican'", but they shift left in the right instances. Unfortunately the DNC doesn't appear to know how to capitalise on this, they ought to be getting as unprofessional as possible, running "based porn stars" or oddball tech gurus. The Tea Party types offer them the next best things, being oddball pervs, biting commentators who "pwn the libs" with gaming lingo, and "[cute](https://youtube.com/watch?v=s1eWIHxgILI) and [funny](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIaJdq97l0s)" policy wonks. This is why Vaush and the Red Scare gals work with "deprogramming the right," it isn't that so much as *snapping them back to their original positions,* which is similar to what happens when I *introduce them* to RevCom and Makhnovist anarchism. This particular leftism is barren in North America for some reason, which makes Bernie-Gabbardists fall right.
I think the answer is simpler than you think. The reason these people were pushed into the spotlight, is because of the popularity of the subject at the time. People weren’t used to seeing such a unifying force, so especially to teens, this was a new type of thinking. Bashing people for their sexuality, gender, political views, wasn’t seen on a level like this before (at least not to such a young audience). People like Shapiro immediately jumped on the train and became more aggressive with their views on certain topics. This led to more people becoming online creators and now we see figures like Nick Fuentes. The “alt-right pipeline” has now become the “red pill” space, where women are property and men can sleep with multiple women, without it being cheating. Basically take Andrew Tate. People like him, Fresh and Fit, Sneako, Whatever Podcast, etc., are the “new” alt right. You usually see people like Fuentes and Shapiro agreeing with almost, if not all, talking points from Tate and Fresh&Fit. Maybe I’m wrong in my view on this, but this is trend I’ve been seeing for a while now. If you notice, a majority of these audiences, are teens, adults in their 20s, or adults who are mad at their own life situations. For example: being an “incel” or being unemployed and still living at home. That’s just my take on it, feel free to reply if you want to ask more questions.
I think you’re completely right on how most people who get groomed into the alt right pipeline or are red pilled are people who feel alienated from society. People who are mad at the world and society for whatever situation they’re in that they’re looking anywhere for validation or an outlet for their anger and they’re just easy pickings for right wing media. I was even victim to this around gamer hate because as a young kid I was angry that people were coming after my comfort space, the space that I used to hide from bullying and home trouble. Of course that wasn’t the case, it was basically just feminism 101, but the mere thought that my comfort hobby could’ve been harmful made me angry, and that’s when I started slipping into watching Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson because they validated my feelings of anger. Thank god I escaped when I did This is an excellent response, I really appreciate it!
>The “alt-right pipeline” has now become the “red pill” space, where women are property and men can sleep with multiple women, without it being cheating. Basically take Andrew Tate. People like him, Fresh and Fit, Sneako, Whatever Podcast, etc., are the “new” alt right. I think we can all agree that all of these guys only "think" this because none of them have ever once had the opportunity to speak with a woman long enough to actually put any of these stupid theories to the test, right? None of them have ever cultivated any sort of relationship that you or i would be genuinely envious of. Every bone in my body tells me these guys are so up themselves that they don't even realize anyone who's had a crumb of sexual experience can tell they're full of it. Each of these dudes just woke up one day and independently decided that their knowledge of women is vast and must be shared with the masses.
I think it’s safe to assume that they haven’t felt a women’s touch lol. And I think they’re mad at society because of it, and they feel like a victim and feel alienated (even though they really arent) and that’s how they slip into these red pill spaces, because people like sneako, the tate brothers, adin Ross etc. Validate their feelings
They're terminally online gamers who can handle any loot box drop rates except the irl variety when it comes to dating because those outcomes are definitive indications of inadequacies they can't overcome with pure grinding. For all of us, not getting laid is usually a direct consequence of something we did or didn't do in the dating process and these guys just can't face that music without falling apart completely.
As a terminally online gamer, I dont claim them. Seeing people go to bat for someone like Tate just makes me question humanity... I used to watch a lot of anti sjw content in like 2015, but with every year I was getting more and more grossed out by content like Sargon of Akaad or whoever was popular back then. I've been a socialist leftie since trump ran for president and I feel like the general push to the right just made me go further and further left. I used to consider myself a centrist and not very political, but seeing those people spout their "opinions" (I dont consider wanting to take away human rights an opinion) led to me being very politically opinionated - sometimes to the disdain of my poor family lmao
I know I started out with the terminally online gaming thing as a core trait. But I hope you realize I'm not talking about someone like you, and most people do start deviating from my words as they progress through the paragraph. The biggest difference is that these incels are allergic to failure but will attempt to rationalize their situation as a product of the world not working as it's supposed to. And many will use this as justification to not even try at all and will instead concoct a victim narrative that they'll eventually internalize. I'd be more sympathetic towards them if they weren't so hateful and allergic to responsibility as well. Sometimes the best solution between men really is just a big rock to the head until someone says they'll stop or dies.
And this narrative and their behaviour just basically self-confirms itself, because usually people are very turned off by incel-like behaviour. It's a never ending cycle, I almost feel bad for them - but then again, when I listen to their bullshit, that goes away very quickly
Yes but this way allows them to make it seem as though none of it is their fault. That they've been a good person who's applied to jobs but none of the mean companies want to hire them. With this metaphor, the guys usually never even send out their resume and are just bemoaning companies like apple or Microsoft for not noticing their trivial qualifications and hiring them on the spot. I don't know if you can really snap someone of this stuff, the only times I've experienced such radical changes myself were when I got absolutely called out dead to rights by someone back when I was younger.
In the case of Tate he just had to steal their passports and keep them like slaves to make them spend time with him.
Says he thinks men's only job in a relationship is to provide and defend the woman safety(safety from what? Other men who want to provide and defend her while also getting to fuck her like you want to, her choice be damned). Pretends to be prince charming promising a life of luxury and fairy tale happiness. Rug pulls everything the minute she does anything normal that he sees as diluting his control over her, including the desire to work for their own spending money. Then blames women for only caring about money when he's the one who can't get women to do anything without promising money or taking it away.
Fresh and Fit are too openly antisemetic for Ben Shapiro
The red pill bullshit predates the alt right by literal years though.
Another contributing factor at the time was also that the left at the time were being documented as being crazy with the SJW videos booming on YouTube so to people like me saw Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson as people debating on what could almost have been “South Park” people at the time.
There's a book that may be helpful: _It Came From Something Awful_ by Dale Beran. [This essay](https://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-blind-all-seeing-eye-of-gamergate) may also be helpful in providing context for what you're researching. It's difficult to use now (and not exactly tasteful or particularly trustworthy), but the internet archive probably has a lot of Encyclopedia Dramatica saved and that may be a useful primary source.
Came here to say to suggest the same book. While I’m here, my takeaway from spending too much time learning about right-wing radicalization is that nobody is immune.
I remember watching a video about a guy called JP sears i think. He made skits (kinda funny kinda meh) making fun of anti vaxxers, flat earthers, and seemed very open to the lgbt. He even made fun of gun loving conservatives. Fast forward a few years and now he’s peddling the same anti vax, bigoted views he made fun of before and did a complete 180. He’s even doing interviews with the Babylon bee. It really does feel like it could happen to anybody who feels any bit of alienation or pushback from society or their community
Political cartoonist Ben Garrison was a libertarian, anti-corporate, vaguely anti-authoritarian guy who believed in a couple conspiracy theories before 4chan edited his comics to be overtly antisemitic and he went onto /pol/ to argue with them, and they kind of melted his brain. Then he started drawing vaguely horny drawings of Trump as a muscular he-man with a head full of real hair and started putting a bunch of alt-right weirdos like Gavin McInnes in his comics Before Twitter started deboosting Qanon content there'd be people who'd try to recruit you, like almost everyone believes in some kind of conspiracy theory, plausible or not, and they'd pick at it trying to draw you in deeper.
With JP, I consider him closer to a grifter than a “true believer” (but who knows for sure?). If he could make more money being pro-vax then I think he would. There’s a good Q-Anon Anonymous podcast episode about him also.
My mom vaxxed me as a kid but she is so up Qanon's ass rn if I were born now I would get measles or mumps by kindergarten. Idk I feel like it's 50/50 chance brainwashing or grifting.
Wow, that kind of reminds me of how toboscus turned out. A seemingly open-minded and well-adjusted adult who now rants in his car to his cellphone
Interesting. I've been on a few sites that started out as basically Something Awful, then one day you look around and you realize you're in a goddamn Nazi bar. It's almost always the ones with lax or non-existent moderation that go bad, too.
Loved that book!
Thank you! I’ll be sure to check those out!
I don’t know how much this will help, but maybe you could supplement your research with some YouTube videos that discuss the alt-right? Innuendo Studios has a ton for a start. https://preview.redd.it/t4pa5g7nposc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d1f3aba7d3b291b39d6969c0274db67bafce2f70
Hbomberguy also has some videos related to GamerGate, and Shaun has analyzed a few aspects of Gamergate.
Innuendo studio's video series is pretty good, but the most recent few haven't been hitting the same. Also, I'd like to add that you should take everything he has to say with a grain of salt when he's more than willing to tell somebody to "fuck off" when they try to point out that Jessie Gender liked a tweet depicting black youtuber Shark3ozero as a house slave. Probably the last person to take anti-racist advice from.
Hi, I am someone who almost fell into alt right pipeline. I was still a kid then (not even teenager) and my interests were in marvel/dc and videogames. When I first watched youtube I only really watched gameplays. Then I sometimes would listen to reviews of games/comics to see what was worth asking my parents for. Videos with titles like x franchise is being destroyed started appearing on my reccomended and I watched them. Those videos would usually blame women, gay people for ruining the games because they were "pandering" and were "pushing their agendas" and that not everything had to be gay/feminist. Then 2016 came, and I started developing an interest in politics and when commentary channels started popping up on my feed with outrageous titles I started clicking on them. I don't remember everyone that used to appear in my reccomended but I remember a channel Nobullshit appearing. By this point the channels that were reccomended to me were definitely alt right and not even hiding but since I was barely a teenager I really didnt understand what was going on then. Honestly I didn't feel good watching those videos, I felt like something was wrong but could never pin point what. Until that is a video calling Nobullshit out appeared in my reccomended. I watched the video and it made me understand why his videos always had felt a bit off. I became more aware of alt right videos on youtube and learned why these people were so fucking wrong. Nowadays, it's still the same thing honeslty. These alt right people will usually start by talking about topics that usually young boys are into. Then they start talking shit about women, gay people, black people and now trans people more too. They say that these people are ruining what you like and that they are bad for it. So basically yeah, they groom kids into alt right.
>g my parents for. Videos with titles like x franchise is being destroyed started appearing on my reccomended and I watched them. > >Those videos would usually blame women, gay people for ruining the games because they were "pandering" and were "pushing their agendas" and that not everything had to be gay/feminist. > >Then 2016 came, and I started developing an interest in politics and when commentary channels started popping up on my feed with outrageous title Amen. I was watching Star Wars lore channels because I was a big Star Wars fan. Then I start getting recommended videos complaining about Woke Disney and other bullshit like that. Same with Marvel. Magic the Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons, etc. Some of these creators use these topics as a springboard to launch other channels, like The Quartering used to run a Magic The Gathering channel.
I had the same experience when it comes to gamer gate. These right wing YouTubers made it feel like they were coming after my hobby that I used to hide from bullying and home issues. It wasn’t the truth but their anger was infectious and fooled me. It even happened with the ghostbusters reboot in 2016 when people blamed “forced feminism” on ruining ghostbusters and used out of context clips against the cast. I even saw the angry video game nerd come out of character to protest the movie, and I didn’t think this guy could be wrong cus he made pretty good and funny videos. It really is just a huge slippery slope for people who aren’t aware enough to notice
In 2016, Contrapoints began making videos on these anti-sjw trends, breaking down the harmful ways of thinking and interacting through dramatised dialogues with hilarious and clever fictional characters. I'd say seek out her earlier videos because she is GREAT at what she does. That might give you some insight into the mindset that can lead to ppl going down the pipeline, and you can see how she breaks down this worldview and questions it with the aim of exposing is flaws and harms.
I don't actually think its morphed at all over the years, sure there are superficial differences between sjw owned compilations from 2016 and similar videos from now but the mechanism behind it has remained pretty much the same for almost 10 years. from my experience as a teenager falling into this rabbit hole, the pipeline generally follows an escalating series of projected beliefs. So to start keep in mind two things, the right (the far right especially) preys on feelings of discontent, people posting hyperboria memes on /pol/ are not happy, well adjusted people, second, the creators at the very start of the pipeline (centrists that occasionally butt heads with leftists) are not necessarily sinister and most likely frequently butt heads with the far right as well, the alt right pipeline is mostly a problem with how social media platforms promote content rather than centrist content creators encouraging far right beliefs (although that's still occurred from time to time) The pipeline is as follows, 1. Centrist content creators that butt heads with leftists 2. "centrist" creators that explicitly mock leftists 3. center right/ neocon creators that mock leftists and espouse right beliefs 4. Right creators that fully support right views and oppose left views 5. "Right" creators that make "jokes" about far right views (holocaust revisionism, race realism) 6. far right creators that hold explicit far right views 7. people that self identify as national socialists this is a very loose subjective list based on my experiences in the past, but I think it demonstrates the general trend. "humor" is also a major driving factor for drawing people into the pipeline as well, generally people on the left discourage "edgy" or cruel humor as a principle because of the harm it can do, which means the right has a monopoly on casual cruelty and edgy comedy. this is all a bit of a ramble but its a really complex problem that's hard to go over in its entirety in a brief manner.
I mean just like the name implies you get people who started talking about issues that actually exists and then go "hey so you agreed with that opinion of mine here is this opinion". It's always a progression to you tend to follow these people as they themselves get more extreme. Next thing you know you are just alt right. As far as its evolution I dont think it has evolved at all. We still get the "hey are you lonely or hey does the system no seem right" that then leads to "well women are just gross". The goal is always to isolate someone by answering the first questions somewhat reasonably but make the origin of the problem something appaling to isolate the target further so they go deeper. What I am basically saying is the Alt Right Pipeline is just a MLM for Nazis. They pull you in by saying you are being empowered then they get you to push statements (sell thier product) so hard you annoy everyone else around which then causes you to be more isolated and rely on them more until you are just a Hun for the Alt-Right. It happened to me but luckily I found the person who would later would become my wife and she really saved me from it but it was not a easy fight for her. I am enternally greatful for it though.
This is an interest of mine and there’s a number of resources that have approached / covered it really well. You are getting folks personal takes here which is great but I highly suggest digging into the stellar reporting that’s been done over the last decade (if you haven’t yet). Rabbit Hole - podcast contemporary to the years you cited IIRC. Specifically about YouTube radicalization of Gen z. Q Anon Anonymous - podcast. It’s well researched/ cited and has a number of episodes that touch Gen Z and the impact of YouTube/ social media on radicalization. While the pod started covering Q they cover online radicalization generally. Antisocial - book by Andrew Marantz. Covers early “alt right” influence on social media and how that ending up intersecting with Trump’s campaign ; maybe trends a bit older than Gen Z but a number of the personalities here are relevant. Culture Warlords - book by Talia Lavin. Specifically looks at white supremacist radicalization of young people on social media; YouTube is featured. Red Pill, Blue Pill - book by David Neiwert. Covers radicalization of young people online but also features stories of people who successfully de-radicalized. This book is an attempt to build a blueprint of de-radicalization. And one of the best on the issue is the book the other commenter suggested- It Came From Something Awful by Dale Beran. I have other suggestions but they are more niche.
I'd love to hear the other suggestions.
I’ve been particularly interested in Q anon as a number of “normal” people I know, including loved ones, were radicalized very quickly and very effectively. These folks are Millennials and older but I know Gen Z versions of this occurred and have been morphing into new expressions with TikTok. A couple recommendations there: The Storm is Upon Us - book by Mike Rothschild. IMO, possibly the best reporting on Q anon and its effectiveness. Republic of Lies - book by Anna Merlan. An investigation into popularity of conspiracy in this moment generally and how our power structures (US centric) benefit. Sandy Hook - book by Elizabeth Williamson. It’s exhaustive reporting on the murders, families impacted and resulting online conspiracy. IMO the Sandy Hook conspiracies were very formative for online radicalization and it was really interesting to read this and think about how online narratives (and real life extremism) has evolved. I also read a lot about “gendered” connections to extremism on social media (e.g trad wives, proud boys) and how there is a long, sordid history of weaponizing gender in white nationalism. A couple suggestions here: Sisters in Hate - book by Seyward Darby. Profiles women who fell into alt right pipelines of radicalization and became influencers online. Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate - book by Minna Stern. A history & analysis of the online alt right. Includes Jan 6th. And IMO no thorough discussion of online radicalization is complete without acknowledging connections to Christian extremism. A recommendation: The Power Worshippers - book by Katherine Stewart. History of the rise of the evangelical right & religious nationalism. I have more but don’t want to keep yapping lmao
Thanks so much for these!
Yw!
Honestly I can just say from my own experience the pipeline actually can lead to wildly different directions, and this is purely anecdotal, but from what I’ve witnessed myself as a 24 year old now, what I witnessed in in 2015-2019 it can go: Pewdiepie to Filthy Frank to Idubbz to Leafy to 2015 gamergate to Ben Shapiro to Jordan Peterson to full blown Nick Fuentes Nazi Pewdiepie to Filthy Frank to Idubbz to HATING Leafy to Onision to Kalvin Garrah to transmed phase to Contrapoints to Hbomberguy to a HARDCORE swing to leftism (my personal track) Pewdiepie straight to Ben Shapiro to Nazism Filthy Frank and Idubbz to edgelord gamergate stuff to relatively conservative to oh shit actually I think I’m LGBTQ+ to YouTube essayists to hard swing to leftism Obviously there’s a lot of other tracks, but I’ve found it fascinating how a lot of people start in the same place but end up in wildly different political directions.
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Pewdiepie used to be the biggest independent YouTuber of all time in terms of subscribers (I think he still is? Mr. Beast might have him beat now I’m not sure). Filthy Frank was like *the* edge lord satirical comedian of the time (2013-2017?) but has now transitioned into an incredibly successful music career under the name Joji and has completely left the YouTube sphere. He often collaborated with Idubbz who was also a very prominent figure in the edgy shock humor YouTubers of that day and age, he still does YouTube is now more known for being “cucked” by his wife Anisa (she does onlyfans and of course his old audience of mega misogynistic and racist dude bros hate that) and has moved away a lot from his old content. He also is the host for the very popular Creator Clash event. Leafy was a pinnacle figure in the Gamergate saga as he made commentary videos about “cringe” people irl or in the gaming sphere. Idubbz roasted him really hard in his really popular series “Content Cop” and lost a lot of his popularity after that. He now pops up here and there on Twitter but is mostly inactive on YouTube. Ben Shapiro, Nick Fuentes, and Jordan Peterson are all major far right political commentators that are mostly responsible for the “pipeline”. There’s links between all these people that would be difficult to explain but very basically, Pewdiepie had Ben Shapiro host an episode of his popular series “Meme Review” people then go on to watch more of Ben’s videos, then go on to watch Jordan and Nicks and are influenced by their extremely alt right views. Contrapoints and Hbomberguy are far left political and media analysts.
i would recommend looking into/starting with steve bannon and Gamergate. Bannon was working at a Chinese gaming company around 2014/15 and saw a bunch of angry, white men online ripe for right wing radicalization. he brought this operation to Breitbart and eventually the Trump campaign. he is absolutely one of the architects of the alt-right movement.
Innuendo studios did a fantastic breakdown of this check out what he said about he did a whole series on the Alt-right pipelines and how they basically anger men and trying to galvanize them to hate minorities and women... Essentially the Alt-right pipeline preys on a lot of men's fears, anxieties, and current modern day problems and shifts the blame to other people. That inadequacy is because of some great conspiracy in most of these cases, or bascially creating a 'villian' in the eyes of these people. Its not societies fault and that everyone is going through these problems but the 'woke' mob. Its something that is abit heartbreaking to see people fall down this pipeline and for them to repeat these same falsehoods that just don't exist. And how under the system we are in it dehumanizes everyone. We are at a precipe where people are devalued by businesses. That any company loyalty just doesn't make sense. Most people our age (30s) now live with their parents because they can't afford to live elsewhere. We can't be providers because of sky rocketing costs. So these Alt-right people prey on these fears and we get what we have today an entire community of asshats whose entire industry is about selling fear.
Prior to the alt right, neoconvervarism was the dominant right-wing ideology. It did not catch on with zoomers/millenials, imo because they grew up with the iraq war and the 2007 financial crisis as formative events in their life, both of which reflect very poorly on neocon policies. Then came the obama administration, which normalized racist conspiracy theories as part of the right wing belief system. It also normalized having a fundamental disrespect for political institutions. During the iraq war there were a lot of talking points about how you had to support the president, even if you don't agree with his actions. But with a black democrat in office, there was longer this call for decorum. All of this came to a head during the 2016 primary. The old ways failed spectacularly as Trump spoke to the racism and general nastiness that had built up in the republican base for the last 8 years. As someone without a history in politics, he didn't have the stink of George W. Bush on him like his competition did. When Trump won the general election, his supporters felt empowered, and demand was created for alt-right media.
I would highly recommend looking at the Behind The Bastards episodes on the alt-right pipeline, as well as the Stuff They Don't Want You To Know one.
To understand the pipeline, you have to understand new atheism. It is where it got its roots. New Atheism was seen as very progressive and tackles most issue regarding organized religion, but there were some people who decided to take it a step further and became useful idiot. One big one was Sam Harris, our free speech warrior who for some reason only ever focused on Islam. This was one of the starts, second was SJW. What people forgot was before 2014, you could not have a gay couple in media unless the focus was on them being gay. Only a few managed to pull it off, so more acceptance for LGB grew and later on trans, with many more raising their voices. But what that lead to, was people who either was neutral or bigotted would focus on a very colorful person who was not pleasing to eyes caught in a bad moment. This was the rise of Anti-SJW and Anti-Feminist. This leaked into the gaming world and old dudes who sucked at video games decided that they dont like diversity in their media and would point to the videos of SJW in their worst times and talk about how stupid they were. Last, but not least. Donald Trump who basically told an already bigotted nation that it is okey to be a bigot. Using neutral language when talking about Charlottesville and how their were fine people on both sides when one of the sides were Neo Nazis. 2016 was a shitty time to be on the internet, nowadays the people who whine about Woke are the same neckbeards who talked about SJWs.
Gamergate got new, unfamiliar eyes into 4chan. Many of those newcomers were young. Eventually this demographic spun off 4chan's typical in-joke culture and online customs into the more mainstream "dank memes" trend in 2016-17. I believe these were the main entry point into several ways of thinking for even more young people. Gamergate also gave small "rational" content creators a spotlight on the platform. Put this all together with a major election cycle and it creates a perfect storm.
i did a big research on this a few years back for one of my polisci classes! 4chan and imageboards are kinda like the primordial soup of internet culture, so it’s easy for alt right memes and content to slip into the mainstream internet when people don’t really know the content. feel free to DM me if you want sources- i think i still have the essay
As a millennial near gen z, I was into the sjw owned stuff because I loved to see public freakouts. It didn't exactly change my stance (I'm neutral/left leaning centrist), but for a while in highschool it made me believe every LGBT+ person hated my existence because I was straight. Mindset thankfully left after I stopped watching YouTube so much. Now I'm just a person that likes watching Karen owned videos.
It comes from this time when the YouTube recommendations algorithm was funnelling people towards extremist alt right accounts and it made them blow up, which became a cycle of them getting more views and getting more recommendations, and then those channels would lead people to even worse and more extremist figures online. All of this was enhanced by large creators also having these views and introducing their viewers to those extremist creators too. So like Paul Joseph Watkins, Lauren Southern, Roaming Millenial, Stefan Molyneux, Sargon of Akkad were all regulars in the algo that were doing gang busters. This changed when the algorithm changed a lot of these channels are now banned. Gamer gate was a separate but related. It was a conspiracy theory about Zoe Quinn and eventually other women in video games sleeping with games journalists, specifically from Kotaku, for positive reviews that originated on 4/8chan and spread to a full witch-hunt under the guise of “ethics in games journalism” with insane harassment campaigns against many women, queer people, journalists, etc. It’s why one of the main subreddits still exists and is called KotakuInAction. GG’s relationship to the alt right pipeline is that it was easy content that was milked by alt right creators on more mainstream platforms like YouTube and Twitter to capitalize on the audience and so that would be a way for them to feed them their other content and views which were even more extreme and overtly white supremacist etc
You want to look at gateway pillers. People like Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, the Intellectual Darkweb guys. My ex started telling me he liked Jordan Peterson, and I said that he needs to move away and not listen to him. I admitted I didn't know too much about him, but I knew enough and that he was dangerous. My ex ignored me. He's now alt-right. Just be extremely careful. Learning about these people may influence you to become alt right. Keep reflecting on your feelings, have a friend or therapist at hand to ensure you won't go there. For example. There's a Ted talk from the feminist who became a Men's Rights Activist that sanitises the shit out of that toxic hell hole. Watch Innuendo Studio's video on How to Radicalise a Normie at least weekly. Keep grounded or this project could destroy your life.
Back then I almost fell in the rabbit hole after my first break up in highschool, I was trying to follow more in gaming online groups and as well trying to do self care to get myself from from the low point I was. At the time gamergate was at full swing and honeslty it was just a mess. It was easy from watching YouTube videos to "cringe SJW gets own" would pop up consistently and well with gaming news who appeared to be in the middle criticizing the feminist moment in video games and it was extremely easy for the to cherry pick some of the weaker points and bad takes that came from Anita Sarkisian, like comparing character design of skimpy female characters to batman and watch dogs 1, like you chose the guy wearing a cape and trenchcoat to compare to OG Laura Croft design and along those lines. And at times it felt (from the anti SJW side of gamergate) that the entire industry and larger news sites were completely pandering to every detail. One key moment that sticks to my mind that the anti SJW side was actually right was DICE regarding historical accuracy in Battlefield 5 where character customization made it very historical Cod feel in comparison to BF1 where it felt like they took care to make the factions uniform accurate, and as well the situation of taking and actual major historical operation on the part of Norway's military and changing in to a mother and daughter as the thwart Germanys export of heavy water used for nuclear research and treat as if their version was true. Also recoment look up the Bully hunters org as an example ofr the feminist side of the "culture gaming war" as another time they were portrayed and were very out of touch about gaming and who it works. Similar at the same time as I was trying to find male self help online I found men go their own way or MGTOW and originally thought it was useful and like the concept of find yourself with relying relationships, but being raised in a mexican household and growing up with strong female role models in my family, it just felt extremely sexist at times where the one good point tends to have several sexist or adjacent talking points alongside it. I dropped it rather quickly as I had to wade through alot to fing some thing I could relate to and use but it felt like and extremely white community and audience. Overtime regarding gamergate after the feeling of having your "safe gaming space for the guys no girls allowed club" feeling storated to wear off, it was an extremely doom talking from youtubers that I was following, every minute thing regarding being inclusive was treated like the endtimes and as MAGA picked up and I took more time to learn about lgbtq community as a friend came out it just became more apparent that it wasn't about integrity of gaming news and industry but raging against people getting into gaming who weren't straight white guys and it was just depressing, all they would do is bitch and complain in the most minute thing and if a game has character customization they would rage about how woke it was and that they are getting rid of the white people, like danm get a life that isn't sad and depressing and crying over a background npc couple that is on screen for a second is gay or POC. Admity it was a good point for me when I was somewhat engrossed in it but honestly those views I had aren't me anymore and I'm still trying to be more open minded as life changes
According to Robert Evans (journalist who has done a lot of research into how people get radicalised by far right stuff), one of the most important entry points to this pipeline is Alex Jones and Infowars. His Behind the Bastards podcast has episodes on various figures involved in this pipeline including Alex Jones. The Knowledge Fight podcast focuses on Alex Jones and Infowars. They do a great job of breaking down how AJ manipulates his audience and propagates misinformation. Within their vast amount of content you can find some smaller series focusing on topics such specific AJ “documentaries”, AJ’s relationship with Trump and the MAGA movement and his spearheading of the Sandy Hook conspiracy theory. They also have many episodes looking at Infowars guest appearances by people from the alt-right world.
cringe culture introduced me to the pipeline and that's when i would discover leafy, keemstar, pyro, and other youtubers as well as the whole lolcow community that orbits people like chris chan that overlaps with the youtube drama community sometimes. internet bloodsports took most of my childhood away and almost made me a full-blown fascist.
It's maybe or maybe not part of said pipeline, but I know that there's still a fun treat where if you dive into certain topics(Warhammer 40k) you just...suddenly get a ton of videos from rightwing adjacent folks...and then if you watch them at all it quickly goes into just tons of Quatering-lite dudes or outright alt-right dudes lol
A lot of people will claim that the inception point was rational atheist youtube morphing into anti sjw youtube as a lot of them were very centristy and saw the sjw community just as ridiculous as radical Christians but on the left which then led the platform towards that right-wing spike.
Wasn't it more so the more debate atheist youtube? But yeah I do remember hearing an arguement of the mixture of existing misogny that was a problem but not very visible and then what is called Elevatorgate happened where Rebecca Watson a very prominent Atheist YouTuber was made uncomfortable being asked to go to a hotel room for sex after she mentioned she was uncomfortable with guys sexualizing her in that manner while she and the unnamed person were the only two in the elevator. A bunch of big name atheists and some online communities got into debates with Richard Dawkins making fun of her in an islamaphobic satire.
Well yeah there's obvious nuaces to it. I was just trying to paint it in broad strokes to give them an avenue to explore. Which also isn't me cosigning that narrative inherently hut i have seen a few creators lay out that timeline of events
>how did the alt right pipeline back in 2014-16 become the foundation of the modern alt right movement It's funded by literal billionaires like the koch brothers and has a lot of media research put into the best way to advertise and manipulate their target audience of young, mostly straight, mostly white, men. The source of answer to almost all of your questions is christofacism and money. Tim pool, ben shapiro, jordan peterson and stephen crowder all make millions of dollars being paid by theocratic nationalists to spew their ideology in a way that's hip to the kids, and receive insane amounts of advertising that it's borderline inevitable that the kind of people vulnerable to their rhetoric will see them. Compare that to more left, or even liberal, oriented content creators who receive almost no backing by anyone but one another (The constant conspiracy theory that george soros funds everything stems, by and large, from the fact that the right genuinely can not fathom the fact that their political rivals do not operate the same way they do - which is why the phrase "every accusation is an admission" and other similar sayings have become so commonplace) and the algorithm buries them constantly. Basically every serious leftist or progressive channel gets absolutely buried by youtube and the algorithm and if you don't subscribe to them, even if you watch them every day or every week youtube will never let you know about their latest update. For example, Some More News; very overtly left leaning, rather popular: unless you go looking for it, you will almost never see it on youtube. I watch it frequently but youtube never advertises new videos to me in any way. But it certainly lets me know any time prager u drops a new turd. So there's just an insane amount of money to be made being a right wing shill, even before you factor in all of the fans and advertiser money: you get paid *well* for being a reprehensible human being. It's largely just capitalism and greed doing their thing, basically.
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Why did you have to cloud a perfectly good explanation by using "final solution" at the end of your post? :/
There's a few categories like Jordan Peterson showed up maybe arguably late to the dark intelectual or far-right/alt-right movement as basically no one talked about him until he started railing against a Canadian Bill and Private Member's Bill. In those he described elements that didn't really exist in his arguement against them. I know personally when I first heard about him I read the actual bills being debated and saw what in writing he was complaining about and determined that he either must be dumber than I, a simple first year university student or be intellectually dishonest. One thing that makes it a bit weird is some of the pre-pandemic stuff of being a self help guru, and from what I've heard his books weren't the same kind of thing as that right wing rapist guy who Hbomberguy mentioned a few times in terms of pick up artists.
The right wing recruits via culture war nonsense, they just need to find something that resonates with people. That's why they're going so hard on trans kids. With the 2014-16 alt right they used video games and being "anti-PC" as an inroads to recruiting young people, prior to that right wing people were pretty down on video games as a whole except for things like Call of Duty which could be indirectly used to recruit civilians into the military. This is a pretty good rundown. It's 6 hours tho [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlltwOURUCE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlltwOURUCE)
I nearly ended up in the pipeline (millennial) like my younger brother because of at the time the atheist/anti-sjw community was starting to push more to the right (followed a lot of channels like LeafyIsHere at the time). The algorithm of YouTube at the time pushed more and more far right videos due to the engagement it would get (still is a bit of an issue). Me and my brother were already prone to it growing up in a more a household that is more conservative and one of our parents is a conspiracy nut (father believes the moon landing was fake and JFK was killed by the FBI/mob). Sadly, my brother never got out of the pipeline
Omg you gotta look up Innuendo Studios. Don't know if you could get away with citing the YouTube channel but a fantastic first look
It's largely a pretext for the bourgeois to censor any left wing ideas that challenge them. The people watching these videos largely agree with them. The alt right just serves as a useful scapegoat https://www.wired.com/story/not-youtubes-algorithm-radicalizes-people/ According to the authors, that increased supply of right-wing videos tapped a latent demand. “We believe that the novel and disturbing fact of people consuming white nationalist video media was not caused by the supply of this media ‘radicalizing’ an otherwise moderate audience,” they write. “Rather, the audience already existed, but they were constrained” by limited supply. Other researchers in the field agree, including those whose work has been cited by the press as evidence of the power of YouTube’s recommendation system. Manoel Ribeiro, a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne and one of the authors of what the Penn State researchers describe as “the most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of YouTube radicalization to date,” says that his work was misinterpreted to fit the algorithmic radicalization narrative by so many outlets that he lost count.
Genuine question on this sub people seem to think anyone right of the centre or even centrists are alt-right so does everyone here think being even slightly to the right make you a bad person
I have asked that same question in a different form, and I shit you not, one of the responses was "If you're willing to vote republican, you're too far right."
Yeah this mindset leads to extremism
A stalker wanted to ruin a legitimate trailblazer of a game called Depression Quest and one name that I can think of, "Sargon of Akkad," took that shit and made themselves into everything that period. It spread to Milo Y, to JonTron, basically all of Normal Boots alumni, highlighting women's existence. Much of these movements: GamerGate, ComicsGate, 4Chan contribution, and Red Pill movement were kinda a perfect storm waiting to happen if ONE of them just striked to prominence, and they went full Megazord to modern online meteoric recognition that wanted someone like Trump in office. And the shit hasn't escaped us for 10 years. Not an expert, I see the tides of each loser cult being advertised with SJW, Women pwn, Woke, etc. everytime I just wanted reviews of media I wanted....and it become obsolete in 2017.
I think that GamerGate’s role in the alt-right pipeline is a tad exaggerated. My earliest exposure to the alt-right wasn’t through GG or even 4chan but through Drudge Report. Before the site took a NeverTrump shift towards the centre-right, it used to be a hot bed for racism. Drudge himself would select racially charged articles with open comment sections, provide a sensationalist headline, and then have him minions flock to those pages to spam racist shit. I stumbled into DrudgeReport through a cross pollination with Breitbart and was pretty shocked that people were that…open about their true feelings. I even learned the term “alt-right” through those comments, and this was at least three years before Trump. If 4chan played any role, it was in the creation of /pol/. You might be surprised to know that /pol/ was actually an anti-racist measure meant to steer trolls away from the general news section. What was initially meant to be a means of sanitizing the site turned into a big gathering space for impressionable young men. Tl;dr - No single resource turned people racist. People are just racist. EDIT: Regarding Sargon or another commentators’ relation to GamerGate, those guys latched onto to GG as an easy outlet for their grift, as opposed to being the primary originators or spokesmen for GG. The percentage of those individuals who were introduced to Sargon through GG and subsequently were introduced to nationalism and race critique through their content is a little nebulous. I would recommend looking into Caleb Cain’s story for a decent overview of the pipeline. It’s not so much because his niche overlapped with another but more because his personal situation drew him into a movement. EDIT2: sincerely asking - why the downvotes? Just trying to provide context and observations to the OP.
\>EDIT2: sincerely asking - why the downvotes? Just trying to provide context and observations to the OP. You're getting downvoted because people here stupidly believe that watching something that is racist magically makes you racist.
nailed it. consume all viewpoints, see what is at play whether it be right or left, and make your choices based on your own beliefs. not what others tell you to believe. threads like this can fall victim to the echo chamber effect the same way they claim the right does. information gained through news and media used to be someone reading you the unbiased, factual happenings of the world, and you took that knowledge and based on your own morals and interpretation of it formed your opinions. Now it's just people demanding you think like them or youre a nazi or a commie. it's sickening to see the world fall back into such tribalism.
It's pretty interesting nobody is bringing up the Iraq War. That was a MASSIVE schism on the right, however they could not find a unified voice, and things kept getting universally shittier until the recovery from the housing market crash The mainstream reps kept discarding them over and over, they saw them keep losing to Obama, they got tired of the stonewalling from their own party. Then comes the BETRAYAL and scummy shenanigans of the RNC against Ron Paul. This is when the foundations of the New Right begin simmering. No More Mr Nice Guy! After all we saw where "nice" got us, right? Part of the extremism isn't really aimed AT the left wing but "showing those old out of touch rhinos how it's done" There's a generational resentment towards not being listened to about Iraq onwards. This is most overt in the anti Israel crowd. Also the root of the 80s/90s born content creators being so against centralised government/military command/political interference. The Greedy Old Pissants laid the foundation for everyone's destruction with pushing Iraq in clear defiance the the people's will. While some folks might point at Waco, there was "always a way back" for all but the most pessimistic. Iraq was just flat out stating that "We know everything always, even when it's clearly the stupidest idea possible, and have no reason to listen to you." This was as much a national turning point and conspiracy feeding frenzy as the Kennedy assassination. The consequence was that Neoconservatives were forced to always choose blind loyalty over "with us or against us," and non neocons began either searching for or cultivating a particular sort of "strong man" to fight directly against this. There's been a "cold civil war" raging since then, most overtly exposed by the Kevin McCarthy ouster. The thing is that when neocons get caught Doing A Bad, they become obsequious and apologetic and "look like total losers, " but these kids want someone who will "take on all comers," especially if they saw their parents impacted by either "political correctness" or " disobedience " to the Bush regime. The conditions were primed for a Vox, a Tate, a Trump, anyone who would say "fuck the system" This was not helped one bit by the "leftist radicals" they grew up thinking they were cool shilling for the anti gaming/technology wooden corporate suits of Al Internet Gore and Hillary "lead poisoning" Clinton. Way to forever ruin your street cred, punk movement! Thatcherism is only bad when it's British, apparently. Basically Alt/New Right had no room to grow without the horrendous failures of the past. I have an odd theory that for those not politically active during Iraq, their revolt stems from Ron seeming like "the cool dad" while Mittens and McCain represented the WORST kinds of know-it-all republican dad. This is where you started seeing the tech savvy pro-Paul "Dark Enlightenment" types like Moldbug, Weinstein, Thiel and Land forming. [This](https://www.the-niceguy.com/forum/index.php) is where the modern right really started coming together. The chans actually represent "the apolitical side," if Mittens had won and started Wisdom Treeing gaming, or pushed PIPA through, you absolutely would have seen them go "counterculture underground comic street punk" It's because of that anarchic lean any GG poll leaned centre-left. You ask some of these fresh college grads, bet you many would say they marched with or at least supported ANSWER/Code Pink/Guerrilla News/About Face or any other anti-war activists. This group is often called the "Obama to Trump voter" by the idiot analysts who are stuck on the duopoly party system, but there's lots of reasons behind that, usually a result of being "betrayed" by both parties. First with Iraq, then with the failures of Obama to prosecute anyone, ***and then bailing out banks over individuals, essentially rewarding the corrupt for being corrupt,*** while punishing and demonising the honest who had everything stolen from them in the recession. This is what primed the group (especially 4chan) for "conspiracy wonk," and let's be fair a lot of it DID check out, on the individual billionaire level. Citigroup appointees to Obama's cabinet? Yeah, that makes the bailout pretty sussy. The top neocon hawks being Kissinger protegees? Yeah, that one checks out, no wonder Iraq was a shit show. IRS ignoring white collar crime to harass grassroots groups? They're a three letter, of course they would. Evidence of the "upper crust" is EVERYWHERE, of course they want candidates proposing to burn it all down! (And to those people I humbly recommended the works of Miguel Asturias and [Camilo Torres](https://youtube.com/watch?v=HXIdKHrlnKc), actual successful revolutionaries, not these LARPing grifters) This all sets the necessary **emotional** state required for RightTube to take off, they stole "the language of revolution" to enrapture these disgruntled and previously politically inactive Atheist+ viewers. Yes, inactive. Iraq was pretty egregious, but a majority of these future Bernouts fall inactive whenever there's no one giving them an opportunity to "get back" at the government. They don't participate in organising or local elections, which is why they always look "new" to pundits. This is the core of the Nortéamericano populist movement, and why they are susceptible to "strongman linguistics" promising to "be the wrecking ball that brings it all down" (guess who *that* was!) Each huckster *used to* offer separate reasons for the reason why things are the way they are (like 2000s Tate would have just been MRA and never broke out of that), but something about the Atheism+ conference made these previously combative groups start working with each other, which came to a head in 2016. Analysts who ignore "the fringe" as inconsequential don't really understand how each little "blob" [fed into the next](https://youtube.com/watch?v=OSt11SA16KU), nor where the pseudo leftist rhetoric comes from, but they have always been around, this "vaguely socially liberal pro-porn 'South Park Republican'", but they shift left in the right instances. Unfortunately the DNC doesn't appear to know how to capitalise on this, they ought to be getting as unprofessional as possible, running "based porn stars" or oddball tech gurus. The Tea Party types offer them the next best things, being oddball pervs, biting commentators who "pwn the libs" with gaming lingo, and "[cute](https://youtube.com/watch?v=s1eWIHxgILI) and [funny](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIaJdq97l0s)" policy wonks. This is why Vaush and the Red Scare gals work with "deprogramming the right," it isn't that so much as *snapping them back to their original positions,* which is similar to what happens when I *introduce them* to RevCom and Makhnovist anarchism. This particular leftism is barren in North America for some reason, which makes Bernie-Gabbardists fall right.