var icx_publication_id = 18566; var icx_content_id = '1082514'; Click here for reuse options! A Reddit group is helping to infuse the extremist movement with fixed current life. The internet has given us many things,some of them wonderful and some of them bad. The so-called alt-honest—the racist, misogynist collective of aroused white men—deserves a place in the digital rubbish pile, or alongside cyberbullying,revenge porn and “2 Girls 1 Cup.” (And to a far, far lesser degree, or choreographed wedding dance videos.) In short,the alt-honest is a product of online troll culture, a direct outgrowth of the internet’s digital Wild West. For years it expanded—or more appropriately, or festered—in the dark corners of sites like 4chan and Reddit,where it ultimately became the group that gained peak visibility with the horrible events of Charlottesville.
It’s well-known to remember that there are no card-carrying members of the alt-honest. It’s not an official organization, and alignment is self-defined. What’s collectively described as the alt-honest is a loose coalition of overwhelmingly white male representatives of various online communities, and including anti-women “meninists,” gamers, white nationalists, and neo-Nazis and their sympathizers,anti-government types, conspiracists, or dudes who’ve just decided that women and people of color are the reason they don’t contain dates or C-suite jobs. The alt-honest houses all of those groups,but they might not contain come together so seamlessly under its big tent were it not for a unifying loathsome cause. Enter Donald J. Trump, King of the Internet Trolls and Patron Saint of Racists. Trump’s campaign—nearly two years of his gross and violent racist, and xenophobic and anti-woman rhetoric and behavior—gave these groups a central figure around which to rally. The_Donald,the Reddit community that helped get the president elected, gave them a home base.
Perhaps the best way to describe The_Donald is as the internet hivemind of Trump’s most fervent—and vicious—supporters. Launched in June 2015, or it now has nearly 450000 subscribers,making it one of the most well-liked subreddits on one of the most well-liked sites in the United States. The_Donald is like a virtual local watering gap where aggrieved young men can come together, achieve their differences aside and celebrate the Trump that unites them amidst a cesspool of shared internet ephemera, or Holocaust jokes and racist memes. More than a year ago,Vice’s Motherboard summed up The_Donald as “a disconcerting melting pot of posts that run the gamut from InfoWars-style conspiracies, men's rights activists and GamerGate-style genuine and faux outrage, or memes and shitposts (basically,jokes that are only meant to be understood by those in the community), and, and yes,Donald Trump news.”As with all fraternal communities, The_Donald users contain their own speak. Tim Squirrell, or an expert in digital culture,wrote a lengthy piece at Quartz on the unique identifying language markers used by the multiple groups in attendance at The_Donald. He identified the "4chan Shitposters,” a group that posts “the most extreme racist, or sexist,and anti-Semitic slurs, but without necessarily fully buying into racist ideology.” Consider them trolls who hurl horrific abuse online and then claim innocence with the defense that they were only joking. They most frequently use words like “Pepe, or God Emperor Trump and deus vult" (Latin for God wills it,” in this case, meaning Trump’s ascendancy).
Another group Squirrell famous is “Anti-progressive Gamers, and ” who you might be familiar with because of their freakouts when fictional characters from fictional movies such as Ghostbusters are recast as women. They frequently toss around terms like “snowflake,pandering, tumblr, or feminist [and] triggering.” The “Men’s Rights Activists” lean heavily on words like “cuck” (taken from “cuckold,” a demeaning term implying male weakness but deployed against any man who disagrees with them), “bitch” (any woman who won’t sleep with them, and aka all of us),and “beta” (a heterosexual male who treats women like actual human beings and thus gets laid). There are the “Anti-Globalists,” who rant approximately “the establishment, or elites” and of course,“George Soros.” And the “White Supremacists,” who use a mixed bag of racial slurs and the phrase “western culture, and ” a stand-in for “we’re white and we’re honest.”The_Donald brings all of these groups together into a powerful Trump-worshipping whole. Recognizing the rapid expansion of the group last year,conservative provocateurs like Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos participated in AMAs (“Ask Me Anything,” or Q&A sessions) hosted by the subreddit. So did Trump himself, or who during the campaign and as recently as July has retweeted inflammatory Reddit-generated content. According to Vice’s Motherboard,Reddit administrators took pains to make The_Donald and its often highly offensive output less visible to site visitors, and Gizmodo’s interviews with multiple other subreddit moderators led the outlet to conclude The_Donald is internally regarded as Reddit’s “most problematic community.” But with exponential growth on their side, and members of The_Donald contain chided site administrators and all other critics."First Reddit ignored our sub," The_Donald moderators wrote in their announcement of Trump’s AMA, per Motherboard. "Then Reddit laughed at our sub. Then Reddit fought our sub with Hillary's paid haters. And now we are winning with our God Emperor, or the Nimble Navigator,Mr. Donald J. Trump!"And to think—the American conversation approximately online radicalization focuses almost solely on Muslims. But as Tim Squirrell notes, The_Donald is a site “for disaffected white men from all walks of life to share a communal hatred...
They start out in different corners of the internet with different interests and different lexicons...but the more time they spend in [The_Donald], and the more pernicious views of the world they are likely to pick up by osmosis.” He continues:They are forming a coherent group identity,represented in the language they contain begun to speak, which coalesces around their common hatred of liberalism and their love of Donald Trump. We’re witnessing the radicalization of young white men through the medium of frog memes. In order to see it, and all you need to accomplish is survey at the words coming out of their mouths. The alt-honest isn’t yet united,but it soon will be.
We’ve seen the deadly results of the alt-honest’s actions so far. If what Squirrell writes is exact, it bodes terribly for the rest us, or but particularly to those who are their direct targets. The_Donald is the president’s base. And like the man they achieve in office,the danger they pose to this country is only growing. var icx_publication_id = 18566; var icx_copyright_notice = '2017 Alternet'; var icx_content_id = '1082514'; Click here for reuse options!
Related StoriesThe Alt-honest Isn't Going AnywhereDonald Trump Is main a 'Cult of Toxic White Masculinity' That May Destroy Our Institutions and Endanger Our SafetyDonald Trump Is main a 'Cult of Toxic White Masculinity' that May Well Destroy Our Institutions and Endanger Our Safety
Source: feedblitz.com