kamikadse161

Dokumentation des Aufrufs von “antifa againts antisemitism” gegen die Handala-Demo in Leipzig am 17.1. (Original-URL: https://www.instagram.com/antifa_against_antisemitism/p/DTQOVzHjX2H/)

+++ 🚂 Gemeinsame Anreise aus Dresden am 17.01. nach Leipzig-Connewitz +++

📍 Treffpunkt: Hbf, Burger King ⏰ Uhrzeit: 8:45

Stand together against the backlash in the Radical Left – 44. Antifa goes to Connewitz!

Für den 17. Januar rufen sich als „palästinasolidarisch“ verstehende, autoritäre Gruppen zu Aktionen gegen linke Projekte in Leipzig-Connewitz auf. LinXXnet, das Conne Island und selbst Jule Nagel werden dabei gezielt markiert – unter dem Applaus extrem rechter Akteur*innen, die u.a. vor zehn Jahren den Stadtteil angriffen.

Diese Entwicklung ist kein Zufall. Sie ist der ideologische Ausdruck autoritärer, dichotomer Weltanschauung, das in simplen Gut-/Böse-Logiken denkt, nach Eindeutigkeit sucht, Differenz negiert und letztlich auf Ausgrenzung, Bekämpfung und Vernichtung hinausläuft. Eng damit verbunden – und konsequenter Ausdruck dessen – ist ein grassierender, vor allem israelbezogener Antisemitismus: u.a. von offener Solidarität mit der Hamas über die Dämonisierung Israels als allmächtiges, unnatürliches Gebilde bis hin zu Erzählungen über reale oder fiktive „Eliten“, die angeblich die Welt steuern. Genau hier zeigen sich die ideologischen Überschneidungen mit extrem rechten Weltanschauungen – weshalb der Zuspruch durch Akteur*innen wie die „Freien Sachsen“ keine Überraschung, sondern folge richtig ist.

Dabei geht es diesen Gruppen nicht um reale Solidarität mit den Menschen in Gaza. Organisationen wie Handala, Young Struggle oder Students for Palestine instrumentalisieren den Nahostkonflikt, um antisemitismuskritische, undogmatische linke Räume anzugreifen und damit ihre autoritäre Welterklärung durchzusetzen. Bundesweit geraten linke Schutzräume wie das Conne Island, die Rote Flora oder das ://about blank ins Visier aggressiver Kampagnen – ihre Existenz wird dabei bewusst bedroht, wenn nicht sogar aktiv bekämpft.

Connewitz ist, wie die Gruppe Florida formulierte ein hart erkämpfter Schutzraum im braunen Sachsen: ein Ort der Zuflucht, der Auseinandersetzung und der solidarischen Kontroverse. Ein Stadtteil vieler Stimmen. Genau diesem Connewitz wollen wir den Rücken stärken – gegen autoritäre Vereinnahmung, Feindmarkierung und Eskalation.

👉🗓️ Deshalb fahren wir am 17.01. gemeinsam nach Connewitz und unterstützen unsere Genoss*innen vor Ort. Zeig dich solidarisch – komm mit!

am Freitag, den 5.12. haben auch in Dresden viele Schüler_innen gegen die Einführung der Wehrpflicht protestiert. Ort der zentralen Kundgebung war der Postplatz, die organisatorische Regie führte in Dresden sichtbar die “Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterjugend” SDAJ. Aber auch andere politische Gruppen waren anwesend: Flyer wurden auch verteilt vom Roten Baum (Partei die Linke), von der “Kommunistischen Organisation” KO, vom “Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht” BSW, von der “Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität” BüSo. Ansonsten gab es da Menschen mit Fahnen der “Freien Arbeiter*innen Union” FAU, Menschen mit Schildern des “Internationalistischen Zentrums” IZ, es gab aber auch Leute die eins gelegentlich bei den montaglichen Dresdner Fascho-Umzügen von Marcus Fuchs & Co. schon sehen konnte und Interviews des Youtube-Faschokanals “Deutschlandkurier”.

Flyerschau

Die SDAJ verteilte ein Heftchen, welches die Wehrpflicht in ihr Schema der Welterkärung einpasst, z.B. zur “Sicherung der Vormachtstellung des westlichen Imperialismus”, aber auch organisatorische Tangenten dazu mitbearbeitet wie “Gewerkschaftsbasis und Friedenskampf” – ob es diese Position ist, welche die FAU-Menschen angesprochen hat?

Der Flyer von der KO wird direkt geschichtsrevisionistisch. Eine Chronologie, welche mit Rosinenpickerei versucht darzustellen wie Russland – und irgendwie die ganze Welt – von der NATO kriegerisch bedroht wird, macht Georgien dafür verantwortlich, von Russland überfallen worden zu sein. Ebenso stellt sich die Agression gegen die Ukraine seit 2014 dar, die sich bei der KO wie eine Parallelrealität liest. In der Aussenperspektive fast schon lustig: der Milliardär, Terrorfinanzier und ehemalige Diktator von Lybien Ghadaffi ist bei ihnen übrigens ein Freiheitskämpfer gegen die USA.

Das BSW empfiehlt den Schüler_innen ab 17 sich zu einer Kaserne zu begeben und sich freiwillig mustern zu lassen um im Anschluss den Kriegsdienst formell verweigern zu können.

Die Propaganda der BüSo – den Älteren eine vielleicht aus den 90ern und 00ern noch bekannte Querfrontsekte – versucht ihre üblichen Punkte an das Thema anzupassen. Unscharfe, nach Antiimperialismus klingende Formulierungen, die oberflächlich vielleicht China huldigen, knüpfen ein bisschen an die abstrakte Friedensrhetorik der 80er Jahre an, dies könnte auch am Alter der Sektenfürstin liegen.

Wer ist warum da?

Warum die Schüler_innen da sind, ist sehr einfach zu verstehen: sie haben einen genuinen Grund, sich gegen die Wehrpflicht zu stellen: sie sind von ihr direkt betroffen.

Warum autoritäre marxistische Gruppen wie die SDAJ und die KO auflaufen ist der gleiche Grund wie warum rechte Gruppen wie BSW oder Büso da auftauchen: die einen wollen im Aussenbild davon profitieren dass da ein grosser Protest war den sie mindestens teilweise vereinnahmen konnten – Punkt für SDAJ, vielleicht auch für PdL und BSW mit Interviews im Lokalfernsehen – zum anderen bieten sie den anwesenden Jugendlichen eine Interpretation der Gesamtsituation an, welche direkt auf ein Weltbild hinausläuft. Sie sind also da, um Sympathisant_innen zu gewinnen.

Das Angebot der organisierten Kadergruppen an Leute, die sich an das unübersichtliche Feld sehr linker Bewegung erst noch gewöhnen, ist Orientierung. Die Welt wird in einen einfachen Pseudokampf gegen “die da oben” aufgeteilt, welcher gesellschaftliche Konflikte verschleiert und echte Kritik erschwert. Und an genau der Stelle ergibt sich die Gelegenheit für die Querfront: so einen Pseudokampf haben Rechte auch. Die Schuldigen werden manchmal anders benannt, eins selbst aber ist auf der Seite der “Guten” weil eins sich irgendwie “unten” fühlt.

Was genau treibt eigentlich sich als anarchistische oder antiautoritäre Linke Verstehende dazu, sich da einfach dazuzustellen? Wie ist es so als Anarchist_in ohne eigene Botschaft direkt neben Leuten zu stehen, in deren Organisationen es genügend Menschen gibt welche die militärischen Morde des Bolschewismus an Anarchist_innen immer noch richtig finden? Wie fühlt es sich an als Klatschvieh für welche zu erscheinen, die zwar den einen Imperialismus verteufeln, zu den anderen aber schweigen oder sie verschleiern? Wo waren ein paar solidarische Leute, welche das Faschoteam abdrängen oder der Kundgebung verweisen?

Antiautoritäre Linke haben keine eigene Position zu Wehrpflicht und Militarismus artikuliert. Sie haben offensichtlich auch keine Kritik an autoritären Linken. Eine ungute Wiederholung vom 1. September diesen Jahres, als antiautoritäre Linke – ebenfalls ohne eigene Message oder Kritik – gemeinsam mit Autoritären gegen Militarismus demonstrierten.

Und autoritäre Linke, welche als Organisateur_innen auftreten, haben sehr offensichtlich kein Interesse an Abgrenzung zu Rechten oder gar Antifaschismus.

Ich als antiautoritärer Linker würde mir wünschen, dass Linke mehr auf ihre Prinzipien schauen als darauf, einem wohligen Bewegungsgefühl hinterherzujagen. Dazu würde gehören, autoritäre Querfronten zwischen Pazifist_innen und Unterstützer_innen eines militärisch expandierenden Staates zu kritisieren genauso wie welche zwischen linken und rechten vermeintlichen Kritiker_innen des Kapitalismus.

danke an ein paar Menschen für frühzeitige Kritik an diesem Rant

“selektiv lesen” ?

1

der Eroberungskrieg gegen die Ukraine – eher die darauf folgenden Streite – haben bei mir den Verdacht ausgelöst, dass ältere linke Gewissheiten wie eins Krieg und Militär betrachtet untauglich sind, eine Position zur Lage zu formulieren welche am Ende den zumindest mir wichtigen (kultur-)linken Werten wie Solidarität, Antifaschismus, Wahrhaftigkeit genügt.

ich hatte mich dem Ganzen zuerst praktisch genähert: für mich war intuitiv klar, dass aus linker, aus anarchistischer Sicht eins sich an Support gegen die sofort entstandene massive Not beteiligt.

später schien es dann notwendig zu begründen dass eins für Initiativen wirbt, welche sich nicht ausschliesslich mit der Flucht vor dem heranziehenden Militär befassten, sondern teilweise sich mit Freiwilligen und Material militärisch beteiligten. das war so nicht vorgesehen im linken Weltbild.

noch später fingen die spezifisch deutschen innen-aussenpolitischen Debatten an, auf der einen Seite gabs den Spagat rhetorisch anzuerkennen, wer hier grad einen Imperialismus macht aber Vorschläge, dass und wie dem Einhalt zu gebieten sei auf Symbolismus zu begrenzen. oder andersrum ganz wilde Vorschläge welche in Atomwaffenprogrammen für Deutschland gipfelten.

2

ich bin kürzlich auf “Die deutsche Linke muß anerkennen, nunmehr Opposition in einer Großmacht zu sein.” gestossen, ein Interview mit Moishe Postone welches 1992 im Schatten des Irak-Kriegs geführt wurde. darin sagt er:

“Ich denke, der Golfkrieg hätte von den Linken als ein Moment der Selbstreflexion genutzt werden sollen. Er stellte fühere politische Deutungsmuster in Frage. Die traditionell antiimperialistische Haltung war bemüht, die jeweilige politische Gegenkraft zu unterstützen. Beim Golfkrieg wurde zwar gesagt: wir sind nicht für Saddam Hussein. Aber das Problem wurde nicht konsequent durchdacht: Was heißt es, wenn sich ein durchaus imperialistischer Krieg gegen einen Lokalfaschisten richtet? Das ist ein Dilemma, das reflektiert werden mußte. Es war nicht einfach zu klären, welche eigenen Handlungen richtig waren, sondern es kam zunächst darauf an, diese zwei Seiten zur Sprache zu bringen. Daß das Baath-Regime in Bagdad eine faschistische Regierung darstellte, bedeutet nicht dass George Bush einen antifaschistischen Krieg geführt hat. Wer aber andererseits über das Regime Saddam Hussein schweigt, impliziert damit, es sei von dieser Seite irgendwie doch ein antiimperialistischer Krieg gewesen – und das war es nicht.”

für den Ukraine-Überfall muss eins diese Gedanken noch eine Windung weiter schrauben: JA KLAR erfüllte die Ukraine hier auch eine Platzhalter-Rolle für die NATO. Putin ist – mindestens in der Tendenz seines Staatsumbaus – ein Faschist, sich gegen die Invasion zu wehren hat eine antifaschistische Komponente. die Möglichkeiten freien linken Handelns sind unter den Bedingungen russischer Herrschaft unendlich viel kleiner. das Motiv, gegen die NATO zu kämpfen scheint eine grosse Anziehungkraft für manche Linke zu haben, so dass das altlinke Muster des antiimperialistischen Underdogs zu greifen scheint, für eine regionale Großmacht, die dort weder sich selber noch irgendwen anders befreit.

und es ist nicht die NATO, welche direkt im Krieg mit Russland wäre. die Russische Förderation hat von den mit der NATO gemeinsamen Grenzen sehr viele ihrer Einheiten und fast alle materiellen Reserven abgezogen. Russland ist sich sehr sicher, nicht von der NATO angegriffen zu werden.

nach dem dritten Jahrestag der Invasion ist die Situation auch anders: hatte “der Westen” bisher der Ukraine gerade so die Unterstützung geliefert, welche ihr ermöglicht hat den russischen Vormarsch aufzuhalten, weil es im Interesse der im Bündnis stärkeren Staaten war, dass Russland möglichst viel von seinem Militär und seiner Wirtschaft verschleisst, hat sich de facto über Nacht geändert, wer hier grad mit wem gemeinsam agiert.

nun sieht es so aus, als ob die USA die NATO links liegen lassen und die Ukraine schnell mal eben erpressen wollen. ein Youtuber hat mal gesagt: “States don't have friends, they have interests”. nie war das klarer als heute.

die neue Situation macht deutlich, was die europäischen Staaten entlang der russischen Grenze schon angedeutet haben: wenn Europa nicht in eine russische und eine us-amerikanische Einflusssphäre geteilt werden will, die mitten durch die EU verläuft, braucht es umgehend eine gemeinsame Militärstrategie.

dies schreibe ich aus voller linker Überzeugung: die EU hat eine Zeitlang Nationalismen der Einzelstaaten hervorragend eingebremst. sie hat – mit der Hilfe der NATO – gezeigt, dass Konflikte entspannt und an einer Menge Stellen unterhalb der militärischen Auseinandersetzung gehalten werden. wenn aus der EU heraus jetzt demnächst kein starkes Signal kommt, dass europäische (das wird nicht formal als “EU” beginnen) Staaten gegenseitig für sich einstehen, werden auch die Konflikte im Kosovo, in Zypern und – sobald die russische Armee sich erholt hat – in Moldawien und Georgien wieder losgehen.

das ändert gar nichts an der Motivation, mit Leuten solidarisch zu sein, die unter Bedingungen die ihnen aufgezwungen sind versuchen partikulare linke Nischen zu verteidigen, zu etablieren und allgemein Möglichkeiten linker Organisierung zu finden.

3

wie kann denn nun eine Sicht auf die Lage aussehen die mich zufriedenstellt? der Streit für oder wider den Support von, seien wir ehrlich, im grossen Ganzen nicht sonderlich einflussreichen linken Organisationen ist da auch nicht sonderlich relevant. Leute können ihre Solidarität gern auch anderweitig denen zukommen lassen, die sie nötig haben, es gibt derer mehr als derzeit Solidarität in egal welcher Form geleistet wird. es kommt aber schon auf die inhaltliche Begründung an, spezifische Solidarität gegebenenfalls zu entziehen.

“Die Frage, ob die deutschen Linken für oder gegen den Krig waren, ist weniger wichtig, als die Frage wie sie dafür oder dagegen waren. Die Herausbildung einer Opposition gegen die sich entwickelnde Großmacht ist ein Lernprozeß. Es kommt darauf an, ob die Argumentationen einen Beitrag zu diesem Lernprozeß geleistet haben”

ich adaptiere mir dieses Fragment so: eine Betrachtung des Bestehenden ist nur dann bedenkenswert, wenn es seine Positionierungen in den verschiedenen Diskurskonstellationen erkennen kann. dann kann eins das entstehende Modell auch anhand dieser kritisieren. ich sehe diese “Großmacht”-Situationen – welche jede für sich eine andere Hierarchie herausbilden:

  • die unmittelbare Verantwortung für die Durchführung dieses Krieges. ich behaupte kein Mensch der auf diesen Text kommt bezweifelt dass die bei Russland liegt

  • das geopolitische Gruppierung von Akteuren, welche diesen Krieg beeinflussen (NATO, EU, USA, China etc). aus meiner Sicht ist es richtig und wichtig, gegenüber jeder dieser Parteien einen kritischen Blick zu haben. wir können uns nicht leisten, ein “Freund meines Freundes”/“Feind meines Feindes”-Bild zu zeichnen. all diese Gebilde haben eigene Interessen, die sie konsequent verfolgen. em Ende sind “wir” nur deren Verfügungsmasse

  • die Position der Leute in der Entscheidung, Solidarität zu leisten vs. der Position welche sie potenziell empfangen. hier wirds interessant. ich behaupte, es existiert eine Hierarchie zwischen Westeuropa und Osteuropa, die sich widerspiegelt im Verhältnis westeuropäischer Linker und Anarchist_innen und ihrer Genoss_innen in Osteuropa. nicht so sehr im individuellen Aufeinandertreffen, wohl aber in einer mitteleuropa-zentrischen Betrachtung. was “europäisch” ist, wird historisch dominiert von EU und dem transatlantischen Verhältnis DE/EU-USA. die Sicht von Menschen in Osteuropa, die schon länger auch ne differenziertere Sicht auf Russland haben, kam bis zum Februar 2022 gar nicht unter deutschen Linken und Anarchist_innen vor. und auch seit dem gewinnt sie nur langsam an Einfluss.

die Sicht der deutschen Öffentlichkeit ist dominiert von nationalistischen Positionierungen. die dominante war bisher eine transatlantisch geprägte, mit der deutschen Besonderheit der unspezifisch vorsichtigen Zurückhaltung, wenns um Solidarität geht. wie sich das mit der geänderten Lage entwickelt, wird sich erst noch zeigen.

4

Militär. deutsche Linke haben, historisch begründet, eine Bäh-Bäh-Reaktion zu Militär. ich meine damit, dass sie sehr schnell auf zwei, drei Standardformeln kommen, welche ihr Verhältnis definieren, die üblicherweise keine weitere Erklärung bedürfen. ich würde gern diese Üblichkeit angreifen. nicht weil ich Militär für was geiles halte, sondern (auch) weil diese Begründungen von keine_rm di_er nicht eh schon überzeugt sind akzeptiert werden. und, wichtiger, weil die Begründung ein paar Layer mehr braucht als die politische Konstellation der Nachkriegsordnung zu reflektieren.

ich versuch mal den Beginn von sowas. von links die Gesellschaft umzubauen findet Militär vor. das Militär in einem spezifischen Land einfach abzuschaffen wird weder dazu führen, dass es weltweit weniger Militär gibt, noch dass Kriege weniger werden. andersrum führt ein einzelnes Land einfach hochzurüsten – noch dazu Deutschland – nicht dazu, dass anderswo weniger Militär ist, oder dass Kriege weniger werden. eine beschissene Situation.

was senkt den Bedarf an Militär? die Aussicht darauf, dass die Eskalation von Konflikten ins Militärische wenig Erfolg hat, bzw. dass die Kosten für einen Militäreinsatz die Kosten für eine nichtmilitärische Bearbeitung eines Konflikts von vornherein stark überwiegen.

im aktuellen Beispiel läuft die militärische Eskalation bereits. die Ukraine ist in weiten Teilen ihrer Gesellschaft bereit, ihre Verteidigung aufrecht zu halten, solange sie materiell dazu in der Lage sind. die Kosten die Waffen jetzt einfach niederzulegen sind aus Sicht der allermeisten Ukrainer_innen zu hoch: Verlust der relativen Freiheit, der Lebensgrundlage, der Identität, der individuellen Sicherheit und der Lebensweise.

aus Sicht der EU würde damit die Wahrscheinlichkeit steigen, bald in einem nächsten Krieg zu stecken: die Eroberungsstrategie wäre für Russland zwar vermutlich deutlich teurer als initial erwartet, aber sie wird auch als Kitt gebraucht, das Land innenpolitisch zusammenzuhalten. aus Sicht der russischen Regierung sind die Kosten für eine friedliche Koexistenz mit allen Nachbarstaaten derzeit unüberschaubar: der strategische Fokus auf den Bedarf an militärischem Vorgehen verkleistert all die Brüche und Widersprüche in der russischen Förderation.

für die europäischen Staaten ist klar, dass sie sich auf die USA nicht verlassen können. für Linke in europäischen Staaten sollte klar sein, dass das Heil nicht in der Nation zu finden ist. dass internationale Sicherheit daraus entsteht, über Staaten hinweg zusammenzuarbeiten – auch militärisch. es wird auch an Linken sein, ihre Regierungen zu überzeugen, dass dies der Weg der geringeren Kosten ist.

danke an @[email protected] für wichtige Gedanken

selektiv lesen:

Immer mal wieder lese ich einen älteren Essay oder Aufruf und finde dass Teile davon Gedanken zur aktuellen Lage wecken. Ich denke dann gar nicht unbedingt, dass der gesamte Text anwendbar oder zutreffend wäre, und beschäftige mich mit den anderen Teilen nicht.

Mir sind die Gedanken, die als Tangenten zu dem Text entstehen dann wichtiger, sie können auch für sich stehen. Das Ursprungsstück markiert die Stichwortgeber_in.

(this is part of a series, originally by @[email protected], linked together there: https://rant.li/kamikadse161/online-far-right)

Content Warning for all kinds of fascist symbols, and fascist bigotry like explicit antisemitism, racism, misogyny, glorification of violence and so on in the provided examples

Which brings us to the latest attempt at disingenuously ironic symbol theft by radical alt-right white supremacists, fresh out of the 4chan oven.

Meet the “Gender Star.”

Where did the “Gender Star” meme come from?

Well, first you have to remember that alt-right white supremacists consider capital-N Nazis to be tech illiterate, boorish boomers.

The alt-right hates the Jews, the left, and the capital-N Nazis.

The “gender star” trolls all three.

So where did this come from?

Well, today in 4chan, someone logged on to post a Star of David version of the Nazi flag and say, “we need to strategize a meme campaign to expose the REAL Nazis who are trying to eliminate the whites.”

See, on the internal 4chan board level, the idea is to create an epic troll of the the capital-N Nazis, by claiming that actually, the party and symbols they hold so dear are actually the product of the people they hate most: the Jews.

These capital-N Nazis fell for it almost immediately. Meanwhile, other alt-right white supremacists piled on to the troll.

Soon, in a new thread, the suggested meme emerges, complete with an an antifa stamp to lend an air of authenticity.

There's some workshopping.

The capital-N Nazis continue to be mad, so the alt-right white supremacists are already accomplishing their internal board troll goal.

The original poster ponders doing a less obvious version to take to Twitter.

How epic would it be for alt-right white supremacists to pose as antifa and own the libs by turning ✡ into the next👌, right?

On its surface, it's a joke.

Really, though, it's an alt-right white supremacist project through and through, with serious political objectives.

Objective 1: Weaken external political opponents.

By posing as antifascist researchers, distributing the meme under that guise, and revealing the hoax, they undermine the credibility of real antifascist researchers (and those who amplify that research)

Objective 2: Confuse & anger internal opponents.

Alt-right white supremacists consider capital-N Nazis threats to the mainstreaming of white supremacy.

They also know they aren't the brightest crayons in the box.

They want Nazis confused and arguing internally about this meme.

Objective 3: inflict cultural violence on Jewish people.

This is the cruelest part of this meme.

Its core goal is to give white supremacists ownership of the primary sacred symbol of Judaism.

Its goal is to make the symbol of Jewish identity unusable, make Jews invisible.

Make no mistake: the goal of this attempt at theft is nothing less than a forray into visual cultural genocide.

It is an attempt to enact a very real kind of erasure of Jewishness.

That's what the original poster means when he says, “this will be a big one.”

And radical alt-right white supremacists like the Proud Boys are all too eager to implement to make this “big one” happen.

All the while disingenuously maintaining their pretense of irony.

All the while keeping their plausible deniability intact.

Because that's the insidious way that alt-right white supremacy tries to have its nazi cake and eat it, too.

(/thread)

(this is part of a series, originally by @[email protected], linked together there: https://rant.li/kamikadse161/online-far-right)

Content Warning for all kinds of fascist symbols, and fascist bigotry like explicit antisemitism, racism, misogyny, glorification of violence and so on in the provided examples

SIGH.

Here's Trump flashing the white👌 sign today while saying some racist shit.

I guess I'm going to talk about the disingenuous irony in memetic warfare today after all.

So let's talk about the 👌 sign, y'all.

This is a continuation of a thread on coded white supremacist language, where it comes from, and how to spot it.

Consider it your nazi-to-English dictionary.

It starts here.

On the chans, the term “memetic warfare” gets used with the sort of disingenuous irony you'd expect of the far right.

For example, one of the most popular post series on 8chan's /pol/ is all about making memes that glorify the Christ Church shooter.

They're trying to be funny edgelords, but they're also very much trying to make meme content like this, that they can share and use to communicate the idea that mass shooters of Muslims are heroes.

“Memetic warfare” has its roots in old 4chan raid culture, when one 4chan forum (often the proudly racist trolls at /b/) would “raid” another board, shitposting low-quality troll content in an effort to overwhelm and freak out the target forum.

Raid culture expanded beyond 4chan and into other forum websites and even comment sections of news sites.

White supremacists co-opted raid culture, using it to spread their ideology of hate through mass shitposting and spamming.

Memetic warfare “ops” (or “missions”) have their roots in both the prank humor and raid culture of the chans.

The idea is for white supremacists to work together on social media to spread the idea that some benign phrase or symbol is racist, or vice versa.

Here's a thread I did about a failed attempt at a memetic warfare “ops” by 8channers, where they were attempting to convince the internet that the Star of David was a transphobic symbol from the far right.

Channers (known as “anons,” since all posters on these forums post under the name “anonymous”) will build and workshop these memes together, trying to craft disinformation believable enough to go viral.

The proto-campaign for these ops was a 2017 white supremacist 4chan mission to widely disseminate the phrase “it's okay to be white” as “proof of concept” that such an, ahem, “harmless” phrase would provoke backlash

Leaving aside the question of whether the phrase in and of itself is “harmless” (it isn't), “it's okay to be white” immediately became a marker of white supremacy because it was white supremacists tweeting and posting and flyering and stickering the phrase everywhere.

That didn't stop disingenuous assholes like Tucker Carlson from handwringing as though anyone objecting to the phrase was practically advocating white genocide. (Source: Wikipedia)

Neo-nazis & other more traditional hate groups eagerly adopted the phrase, cementing it in the white supremacist lexicon.

And— wouldn't you know it?— ADL did a little digging and discovered the phrase had actually been an explicit white power and Klan slogan all along.

While “it's okay to be white” was the first successful campaign explicitly rooted in memetic warfare principles, it found its inspiration in the messy origins of that symbol Trump flashed today: the “white power” incarnation of the 👌 sign.

The 👌 sign's first explicit association with whiteness came from a far right vine personality, who flashed it as an example in a video titled, “white guys be like.”

Soon he and his nazi buddy Milo were flashing it all the time at Trump events.

(Images: KnowYourMeme)

By December 2016, far right troll and distant Obama relative was flashing it in imitation of alt-right Pepe memes, possibly not knowing that Milo and his friend had popularized it as a sly reference to whiteness and white victory in the form of Trump.

By mid-February 2017, liberal media sources were reporting the 👌 sign's racist connotations in the context of Trumpworld.

The right mocked the idea, pointing to other folks who had used the sign in other contexts in the past. (Images: KYM)

At the end of February, 4chan users launched the mission that would lead to and inspire future mimetic warfare ops like “it's okay to be white,” “gender star,” and “the honkler.”

They called it Operation O-KKK.

(Image: KYM)

The idea was simple: flood social media with claims that the 👌 symbol represented “WP” for “white power.”

It was already a symbol explicitly linked to whiteness and Trump's racist agenda, so it wasn't a hard message to sell.

Not only that, but actual nazis began to make a point of using it, culiminating with batshit nazis Mike Cernovich and Cassandra Fairbanks flashing it AT A PHOTO OP AT THE WHITE HOUSE.

So 👌 as a far right symbol began as a Milo-popularized in-joke about Trump and white superiority and took off with the alt-right.

Liberal media called it racist, right wing media pretended that was absurd, and Reddit capitalized on that controversy to make it UNDENIABLY racist.

Reddit did its job: real nazis like Fairbanks and Cernovich picked it up and the violent white supremacist Proud Boys adopted it as practically a hello wave.

When the Christ Church shooter made his first public appearance post-massacre, he made sure to flash it, too.

Crypto-nazis (nazis using coded symbols to indicate their beliefs while denying their nazism) have chosen this symbol because it was once so benign, so innocuous that it would be laughable on its face to read anything sinister into it.

Even as they use it to indicate their white supremacism to other white supremacists, they'll tell you it's a troll, a joke you fell for.

Haha, they made you think it was a symbol for white supremacy, but here's Obama flashing it in 2012!

Don't you feel stupid now?

Except, it is actually a symbol for white supremacism, now.

And this disingenuous irony allows them to maintain plausible deniability, to avoid accountability. It allows right wing “journalists” to feign ignorance or disbelief.

And all the while, they're saying, “I'm a nazi” right in front of you, then either laughing in your face that you “fell for it” or laughing behind your back that you thought it was just an 👌 sign.

That's what Trump is doing with America right now, when he flashes this sign.

He knows what he's doing, making a gesture first popularized by a barely-crypto nazi who literally accepts sieg heils in place of applause at karaoke and kept popular by white supremacist thugs.

Trump knows exactly what he's doing.

He couldn't be shouting “I'M A FUCKING FASCIST” any louder unless he literally shouted “I'm a fucking fascist.

That's what he's saying.

We should listen.

(/thread for now- next segment will cover more coded nazi words originating in the chans)

(this is part of a series, linked together there: https://rant.li/kamikadse161/online-far-right)

Content Warning for all kinds of fascist symbols, and fascist bigotry like explicit antisemitism, racism, misogyny, glorification of violence and so on in the provided examples

(thread)

This is part 4 of a thread on the coded language the alt-right uses to identify as and talk like nazis right under our noses.

If you want to read from the beginning, here's where this sewage masterclass starts off.

Today we're going to talk about the toxic waste dump that is the bulk of 4chan and the entirety of 8chan.

Let's start with 4chan.

4chan is the brainchild of a then-fifteen year-old online forum user named Christopher Poole, who had a dream.

Poole's dream was to create an anime/manga discussion board in the spirit of the Japanese Futaba Channel (“2chan”), which housed similar forum content.

4chan rapidly expanded past content related to anime, with discussion boards of all sorts.

One of the most legendary/infamous forums on 4chan is/was /b/, the “random” channel.

/b/ quickly earned a reputation of being the asshole of the internet, a title it richly deserved.

/b/ and its users (who charmingly call themselves “/b/tards”) evolved a culture of shitposting (posting low-quality, trollish posts) and meme-heavy content.

/b/ users insisted they were ideology-free and only in it for the lulz, that any and all of their standard virulently misogynistic, homophobic, and racist content existed not to promote misogyny, homophobia, or racism, but to mock anyone who might take it seriously.

Sound familiar? /b/ really is the cultural grandparent of the alt-right. A lot of that disingenuous “haha you think I'm racist? You fell for it! You took my ironic shitpost trolling seriously!” response you get when you call the alt-right out for doing racist shit comes from /b/.

/b/ culture— which increasingly spilled into forum culture at large. 4chan posts are anonymous— users call each other anons— so to create and sustain a sense of ongoing community, they really had to develop a deep and specific coded language to show who belonged & who didn't.

If you were up on the coded language and norms, you were accepted by the other veterans.

If your post demonstrated that you were clueless, you got deemed a “newf*g” and told to “lurk moar.”

That's pretty consistent across 4cham culture still today.

One activity anons on /b/ took particular glee in was raids. They'd go to other 4chan forums, deliberately shitpost content they knew would be deeply offensive to each particular forum's membership, trying to derail and destroy the conversations and culture of the victim forum.

Not shockingly, they found that left, liberal, and progressive forums were expecially likely to respond strongly to white supremacist and other fucked up content, making them ideal raid targets.

A lot of /b/ culture was just competing to see who could shitpost most offensively, which meant it was home to some of the most disturbingly racist, violent, misogynist, and homophobic material available online.

So you had to be able to at least tolerate that shit.

Those elements together— disgusting extreme right content, a particular pleasure in trolling the libs— made /b/ a very appealing place for both white supremacists looking to fit in and white supremacists looking to recruit.

It's really important to understand that while /b/ is a hotbed of reactionary right wing shitposting, it's also, in theory, militantly non-ideological.

Any glimmer of sincerity would get piled on and mocked mercilessly.

Which brings us to /pol/, a forum that was created to be sort of a quarantine zone for 4chan right wing extremism.

/pol/ quickly became a primordial stew of /b/'s overt, shock value far right content and the sincere racism of committed and sincere white supremacists.

For a long time, 4chan (and /b/ and /pol/ in particular) was an internet oasis for “edgier,” younger, more ironic white supremacy (as opposed to sincere and very boomer Stormfront).

Nu-misogynists like incels and gamergaters, meanwhile, flocked to Reddit, creating their own niche, extreme culture with strong influences from 4chan board culture.

The real cunning of Steve Bannon wasn't that he created this audience; it's that he identified it, named its disparate elements “alt-right,” and marketed to it as a whole by hiring experienced purveyors of board culture's trademark disingenuous irony (Milo, for example).

His strategy was simple, and similar to but very slightly more subtle than Andrew Anglin's strategy on Daily Stormer.

The key was for authors to use an ironic tone to deliver the far right and white supremacist talking points Bannon wanted delivered.

That ironic tone gave everyone- Breitbart, Bannon, the author, the reader- plausible deniability. The idea was to ease readers into a place of saying “well that's just ironic racism, not real racism” while also, over time, gradually considering and adopting the talking point.

As the irony became less deniable in the forums, deplatforming cries grew stronger, especially as news outlets began to trace mass murderers like Elliot Rodgers and Dylan Roof back to forum and especially 4chan.

Not great for ad revenue.

As Reddit cleaned house (some) in response to Gamergate and 4chan began to impose (slightly) more stringent rules in hopes of better monetizing itself, a moderate percentage of displaced extremist anons increasingly found their way to a third site: 8chan.

8chan was started in direct opposition to what its founder saw as 4chan's increasing authoritarianism re: content rules.

On 8chan, you can't get caught posting DMCA-violating material or child porn.

Anything else goes.

It's the Wild West, but with nazis instead of cowboys.

One other forum site in the competition is Neinchan.

Where 2chan & 4chan referenced “channel” numbers and 8chan (technically pronounced “infinite chan”) is supposed to suggest infinite possibility, Neinchan's name is a hat tip to the Third Reich.

Neinchan is up and down a lot. As 8chan users increasingly complain that feds and “civnats” (see earlier thread) are taking over 8chan, Neincham is often suggested as the next home for the true white supremacist faithful, but connectivity issues have mostly thwarted that exodus.

I know that was a lot of background for the middle of a terminology thread, so thanks for bearing with me. You really have to have a bare minimum of board history knowledge to contextualize a lot of the chan-specific verbal and visual vocabulary.

So in this section of this ongoing thread, we've covered /b/, /b/trds, /pol/, newfgs, anons, lulz, lurk moar, shitposting, & chans.

That sets us up to talk about the way the chans produce “memetic warfare” like “it's okay to be white,” white power 👌 sign, & the honkler.

(/thread), for now.

Tune in for memetic warfare next time- it's bound to be depressing!

(this is part of a series, linked together there: https://rant.li/kamikadse161/online-far-right)

Content Warning for all kinds of fascist symbols, and fascist bigotry like explicit antisemitism, racism, misogyny, glorification of violence and so on in the provided examples

(thread)

This is part 3 of a thread on the coded language and symbols used by nazis and especially alt-right nazis online to get away with being nazis and peddling violent white supremacism right under our noses.

You can find the first and second portions of this thread here— the first part focuses more on classically nazi-specific stuff, the second portion is more about the alt-right. (https://rant.li/kamikadse161/part-ii-honkler-clownworld-incels-pilling-npc-gamergate)

Today, if I can hold my nose long enough, I'm going to try and plow through some more alt-right stuff, a little ethnonationalism, and some miscellaneous grab bag white supremacist sewage.

Picking up where we left off, let's start with Kekistan, the fictional alt-right country beloved by white supremacist trolls.

This is the Kekistani flag, complete with the 4chan clover logo in its upper-left corner.

The first thing to know about the Kek flag is that it is explicitly modeled on the original Nazi flag. It's not exactly hard to see the similarities.

Kekistan is closely linked to Pepe the Frog, a crypto-nazi favorite (crypto-nazis = nazis who won't outright admit to being nazis).

“Kek” is an old gamer version of “lol.” Part of the, ahem, rich mythology of Kekistan is its roots in the ancient worship of a frog god named Kek.

It's also probably not a coincidence that “Kek” sounds disconceringly like “k*ke.”

Kekistan trolling is peak alt-right disingenuous irony— it's explicitly grounded in nazi imagery, but crypto-nazis play it off like it's an elaborate troll of SJWs.

Since we're talking about fake nations, we might as well dip into the wastepond of online European “ethnonationalists.”

One favorite symbol for these Euro-nazis is Greco-Roman statuary, a la the old flyer/sticker campaigns by Identity Evropa (now American Identity Movement).

For obvious reasons, this kind of symbolism is extremely popular with European nazis, although American nazis will use it, too.

I focus mostly on American violent white supremacism, so this is just broad strokes here, but this sort of European-style crypto-nazism seems very strongly associated with the far right ethno-nationalist “Identitarianism” sweeping Europe right now.

One very popular phrase among these Euro-nazis is “Great Replacement.” It's a conspiracy theory about a plot to replace the “indigenous” European population with black and brown (and especially Muslim) immigrants, a plot supposedly concocted by the Jews.

“Great Replacement” conspiracy theory is pretty much interchangeable with the American “white genocide” conspiracy theory concocted by nazi felon David Lane, which posits that the Jews are conspiring to destroy white America through immigration, miscegnation, and racial violence.

When you see violent white supremacists like Richard Spencer and the Charlottesville tiki torch nazis chanting “Jews will not replace us” (or the crypto-nazi “you will not replace us”), they're referencing nazi Great Replacement/white genocide conspiracy theory.

After antifascists leaked Identity Evropa's chats showing them to be actual literal nazis, they steered away from Euro-nazi symbolism and rebranded as wholesome American nazis under AmIM.

They still keep “Identitarianism” in their principles, though, which is a dead giveaway.

American Identity Movement still only accepts whites and explicitly talks about white rights and white genocide, but that isn't enough for the hardcore 8chan nazis who reject crypto-nazism as “optics cucking”— betraying white supremacy by playing to mainstream sensibilities.

These hardcore nazis reserve even more scorn for the violent white supremacist Proud Boys, who espouse “western chauvinism,” meaning if you're willing to champion “white culture” and say super-racist shit they'll let you in, even if you're brown or black.

The hardcore nazis will call white supremacists like Proud Boys, AmIM, and MAGA voters “civnats,” short for civic nationalists. It's a mocking term for those who focus on the supposed superiority of white culture rather than outright declaring the supremacy of white blood.

(The “civnat” nazis usually respond to the nickname by calling the “fuck optics” nazis “wignats,” as I described earlier.)

While we're on the topic of white blood “nationalism,” let's detour for a second into the land of dairy.

Remember a while back when nazis made drinking/bathing themselves in milk sort of the white supremacist version of the ice bucket challenge?

That's rooted in blood nazism.

The whole milk thing comes out of a bizarro chan theory that the ability to digest lactose (which most folks of European descent have, and which a lot of non-whites don't possess) is somehow proof of genetic superiority.

So, nazis performatively drink milk, now.

And while we're on the topic of ethno-nationalism, another word nazis have taken (proving again the Snyder Rule of the Internet: nazis ruin everything) is “fren,” a cute internet term for “friend” that they've backcroymed to stand for “far right ethno-nationalist.”

“Frens” are “cozy” with each other.

Fascists do love to hang with their frens.

In fact, the word “fascist” comes from the word “fasces,” meaning a sticks bundled together into one big stick that's harder to break, representing a united military front.

Fasces are a popular symbol for violent white supremacists, and were on display in Charlottesville on the shields of members of violent hate gang Vanguard America.

The man who murdered Heather Heyer with his car in Charlottesville (below) was photographed holding such a shield.

Ben Franklin's “Join or Die” snake is another popular symbol for white supremacist unity. In the Charlottesville poster below, you can see various white supremacist org logos in the different body pieces.

It's also very popular with 3%er militia extremists.

3%ers (or III%ers, or threepers) are a militia group in the far right Patriot Movement. Their name is a reference to the supposed 3% of American colonists that supposedly took up the arms against the British.

They're also very fond of “Molon Labe” and Punisher skull imagery.

The violent brown shirt white supremacist Proud Boys have a whole aesthetic of their own: Ed Harvey-esque lettering, a cock logo (pointing West, for “western chauvinism”), black-yellow Fred Perry shirts (a reference to British skinhead wars), the Fred Perry laurel symbol.

Proud boys love making cereal references, an allusion to their practice of jumping in members as they recite cereal brand names.

They have some cute sayings, too: “Proud of your boy” (#pyob), “west is best,” “uhuru” (an ironically-appropriated African nationalist slogan).

Proud boys also love their disingenuously ironic white power “ok” signs, which... well, I'll save that for the next installment in this thread series, where I'll get into white supremacist board culture and “memetic warfare.”

/thread for now!

Next segment of this ongoing thread starts here, focusing on chan culture (sorry, got ahead of myself promising memetic warfare— that'll be the following segment, scout's honor)

(this is part of a series, linked together there: https://rant.li/kamikadse161/online-far-right)

Content Warning for all kinds of fascist symbols, and fascist bigotry like explicit antisemitism, racism, misogyny, glorification of violence and so on in the provided examples

(thread, cont.)

This is a continuation of a thread about radical white supremacist symbolism and language!

This portion mostly covers more recent alt-right signifiers— you can find the classic, more capital-N nazi specific signifiers starting here:

Nothing says white supremacist alt-right like pepe the frog.

Pepe— like a lot of alt-right symbolism— is a “nazis are why we can't have nice things” internet casualty.

Originally an innocent cartoon character, he is now pretty much exclusively a white supremacist mascot.

A more recent and explicitly racist variant on Pepe, the Honkler, started popping up a few months ago.

There's a loooot going on with the Honkler.

His origin story is an 8chan “op” (more about “ops” down-thread) to turn a benign symbol- the rainbow- into a toxic, racist symbol.

The Honkler's signature phrase is “Honk, honk” because, a) clown noses, and more importantly b) Honk Honk = HH = “heil hitler.”

The honkler rainbow-appropriation is also explicitly a troll of LGTBQ community.

The Honkler was created with the “(((clownworld)))” in mind. Echoes (“((( )))”) are a way of labeling Jewishness.

“Clownworld” is a notion that we live in anti-white, Jew-controlled world that is so totally absurd that you can do/kill/rape whoever, because nothing matters.

Clownworld is often depicted as 🤡🌎.

Clowns are those who have taken the “honk pill”/“rainbow pill” (more on __pilling in a sec). They've “woken up” to the absurdity of reality, sort of like Meursault killing the Arab in “The Stranger,” but with a rainbow wig and rubber nose.

Non-clowns are basically the dumb, expendable sheep.

The “clown” attitude is, kill non-clowns in mass numbers, rape them, vote for them because they promise $1000 UBI a month and the world is an absurd and unsalvageable mess so you might as well get some free money, whatever.

I mentioned “optics” before, and it's a favorite point of discussion among white supremacists.

They'll endlessly debate if it's possible to build a mainstream-friendly nazi movement and whether they should put away swastikas and stop mass murdering to become mainstream-friendly.

Flags and gleaming marble European statuary and smiling white children and running for office are “good optics.”

The crypto-Nazi American Identity Movement (formerly Identity Europa) are the most successful standard-bearers of this approach, which isn't saying much.

Nazis that believe in “optics,” like American Identity Mvmt (AmIM) are crypto-nazis.

They claim not to be nazis, but they won't let non-whites join and spend a lot of time talking internally about the “JQ,” aka the Jewish Question, aka “should they be murdered or just exiled.”

Following in crypto-nazi Steve Bannon's footsteps, AmIM and its ilk encrypt explicit nazi concepts into dogwhistle language.

“Jew” becomes “globalist.”

“Zionist Occupied Government” becomes “globalism.”

“White ethnostate” advocacy becomes nationalist “identitarianism.”

Although AmIM frequently tries to recruit on 8chan's white supremacist /pol/, the nazis there pretty universally can't stand them.

They consider AmIM to be “optics cucks”— sellouts too afraid to be their true selves, self-neutered sellouts bending to the norms of clownworld.

AmIM and other pro-optics folks call those “fuck optics” guys “wignats, aka “wigger nationalists,” meaning swaggering, over-performative white nationalist, after the problematic late 90's portmanteau “wigger,” meaning a white person over-performatively trying to act black.

Optics debates on 8chan usually take the form of “should we commit mass murder” and/or “should we commit mass murder and try to pin it on the Jews so we don't look bad.”

“Optics” debates are why the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter posted “screw your optics” to announce his plans.

You can see that AmIM are trying to use Americana/flag branding to push the idea of a white ethnic American identity (as Identity Evropa they tried to build American identity pride explicitly European ancestry, but it pretty easy to decrypt as nazi and pretty much fizzled).

The Proud Boys are crypto-nazis, too, but they've been much more successful at disgusing their nazism by a) assuming a tone of disingenuous irony and claiming that anyone calling them racist just has no sense of humor, and b) using blue line encryption.

Here in Philly, the Proud Boys veey effectively rode the Blue Lives Matter movement (itself a racist reaction to post-Ferguson Black Lives Matter organizing), branding their debut rally—a reaction to local Abolish ICE activism— as a pro-cop event.

Blue line encryption is distinctively alt-right; traditionally white supremacists have been quite hostile to law enforcement.

It's a canny move; by explicitly identifying with the police at rallies, they insulate themselves from police violence and encourage it against antifa.

Okay, back to the “screw optics” wignats. This is a good time to point out that these guys tend to exist at somewhere near the center of the incel/white supremacist/gamergate dark triad Venn diagram.

Incels are involuntary celibates. They're part of an extreme corner of anti-woman MRA (men's rights activists) that explicitly believe that rape should be legal and women should be involuntary breeding machines.

MRAs are the source of the term “redpilling,” after the red pill that wakes up Neo in the matrix.

“Redpilling” originally meant “waking up” to the MRAs' sexist worldview, which is basically, men are oppressed and women are shallow, dumb creatures who shouldn't have agency.

Incels are MRAs who believe that thanks to not-hot-enough genes, they are “betas” doomed to lose the breeding race to dumb but hot “Chads” and perish as virgins, and they should probably kill themselves.

Coming around to this very dark and defeatist mindset is “blackpilling.”

Blackpilled incels believe a just society would recognize their brains & force hot, fertile women to have sex with them in order to ensure a brainy future.

They know it won't, though, so they might as well off themselves and maybe some others as punishment, a law “Saint Elliot.”

“Cuck” means cuckold. It's an incel term for betas like them who are fooled into marrying and supporting an attractive woman but ultimately left sexless as she breeds with alpha Chads, forcing him to support Chad offspring.

Incel terminology has always had a racially eugenic flavor, and “cuck” is a good example.

It's rooted in the extremely racist cuckold porn genre, a fetish category where beta white men watch their wives get impregnated by large and virile stereotypical black men.

Incels are racist, eugenicist, extremely concerned with breeding, pro-mass murder, and really into pseudo-evolutionary theory, which makes them prime candidates for white supremacist race science adoption. It's not a shock that there's so much cross-pollination.

So “redpilling” has become a term for just generally waking up to the “real” feminist/Jewish conspiracy theory world, & “blackpilling” has come to mean generally realizing everything is hopeless and you might as well kill yourself & take out some women and/or Jews along the way.

Incels, incidentally, take their pilling very seriously, & some aren't thrilled with the “fuck it, the world's a hopeless joke, might as well have fun trollng it” joyful nihilism of clownworld “honkpilling.”

Some worry it might be a psy-op against black pill mass murder-suicide.

(Side note: how great of an algorithmic troll is that incel page viagra ad? 🤣)

When it comes to speaking of blackpill-inspired mass murder-suicide, the virgins from gamergate have made their own vocab contributions here.

There's “in Minecraft,” which 8channers tag onto their mass murder fantasies like frat boys saying “no homo.”

8channers will make detailed suggestions of the best tactics for mass murder to those contemplating executing such “bans from Minecraft,” and think ending those provocations with “in Minecraft” undoes any legal culpability on their part (fun fact: it doesn't).

NPC memes are another gamergate special.

NPCs are non-player characters in video games. They mindlessly spit out what they've been programmed to say.

If you're not blackpilled, or at least redpilled, you're an NPC and fair game for mass murdering.

White supremacist 8channers especially like to debate the virtues of killing “the villagers,” after the NPCs in Minecraft, which racists argue look Jewish.

The “villagers” mean the Jews, but also loyalists to the “ZOG” government.

This is taking a lot longer than I thought, so I'll pick up this thread later— I haven't even gotten to Kekistan, frens, milk, or the ok sign yet.

So much sewage, so little time.

Next installment of the thread starts here.

First stop: Kekistan.

(this is part of a series, linked together there: https://rant.li/kamikadse161/online-far-right)

Content Warning for all kinds of fascist symbols, and fascist bigotry like explicit antisemitism, racism, misogyny, glorification of violence and so on in the provided examples

original first tweet

(thread)

It's easy to miss nazi/“alt-right” signifiers are if you aren't swimming in this cesspool all the time.

So this is going to be a running thread on what to watch for, with a special emphasis on vocabulary and symbols that should make you suspicious.

Let's start with a classic and a new variant: 88 and “HH” phrases like “honk honk.”

They mean “heil hitler.” H is the 8th letter of the alphabet, thus 88.

“Honk honk” is associated with the honkler and is often used “ironically” by alt-right trolls.

a honkler image and text:

14, or 14 Words- short for “we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

It's most common paired with 88 (heil hitler) as 1488.

tweet with a pepe avatar and @ containing

The echo ((( ))) is used by nazis to imply Jewishness online, as in (((George Soros))).

A lot of Jewish folks have reclaimed it, btw, so seeing it on someone's user name often means they are defying nazis, not sympathizing with them.

“Sheckels” are both an ancient and contemporary Israeli currency.

White supremacists use “sheckels” to talk about Jewish money, and in particular the supposed secret Jewish monetary support they claim their opponents receive.

8chan calls top posts “King of the sheckles.”

“ZOG” is short for Zionist Occupied Government” which is what white supremacists, especially nazis, call the US government (because they believe it is controlled by Jews, a la the “classic” anti-semitic conspiracy book “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”)

“6 million” is a reference to the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. It's often used “ironcially” by Holocaust deniers, like this Texan Proud Boy here.

Zyklon B was the gas used in concentration camp showers. It's a common “ironic” reference point in the alt-right.

Just kind of... runes and viking shit in general should be a red flag?

They don't automatically mean the person is a nazi, but nazis love them some runes— these ones in particular.

I'll highlight a couple, but if anyone wants to name more obscure ones I'll rt into the thread.

The othala rune is basically a crypto-swastika. When I say “nazi” I'm usually just talking about racist fascists in general, but actual capital N-Nazi neo-nazi groups often use othala as a stand-in for the swastika for “optics” reasons (more on optics later).

The life rune is another one of those Nazi-lifted runes. The original Nazis used it in connection with their mythology of a pure aryan/norse volk (folk), so you'll see it connected to that notion a lot.

“Volk,” btw, is another capital-N Nazi favorite. It references that idea of pure aryan race (volk), and it's an especially popular reference for performative tradwives like Volkmom, who was part of that couple who vandalized an Indiana synagogue with swastikas.