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

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Unfortunately, the people who do have ideas are more explicitly racist figures like Richard Spencer (who famously gave a Nazi salute in honour of Trump at a conference), who are increasingly taking their activism into the offline world with rallies and violent campus protests.

Book Info". www.zero-books.net. Archived from the original on 2019-07-14 . Retrieved 2018-11-08. I also recommend these two podcasts where Ms. Nagle (and Ms. Frost in the 2nd one) discuss the book and related themes in the context of socialism. Really disappointed by this. I'm fascinated by internet subcultures and the seedy underbelly of the web. I'm deeply interested in politics. This book seemed like a slam-dunk. Worse still is the fact that Nagel also refers to some on the right as “anti-free speech,” (p. 66) when talking about the conservative culture wars that led up to the current political climate, but the context is completely different. Nagel describes those people correctly as anti-free speech because these people did, in fact, want to institute federal law restricting certain forms of speech, something that, to my knowledge, has not occurred in any meaningful way among those she characterizes as the “anti-free speech” left. The inconsistent framing of what it means to be anti-free speech that Nagel adopts ultimately serves to draw a false equivalence between the right and the left in this regard. Where the actions of one (the right) are explicitly and obviously anti-free speech (they wanted to censor pornography, e.g.), but the actions of the other are at best arguably so (seeing safe-spaces and campus deplatforming as actual violations of someone’s free speech is questionable).The writing is horrible from a technical viewpoint. Spelling mistakes, typos, and grammatical errors abound, some of which are egregious enough that they actually make the writing difficult to understand. She also fails to make a single citation throughout the entire book, which is a massive oversight. The yellow vest protesters revolting against centrism mean well – but their left wing populism won't change French politics". Independent.co.uk. 17 December 2018. Archived from the original on 7 May 2022. Nagle brings a lot of valuable research and firsthand reporting to helping people make sense of the various facets of the alt-right, but it wasn't nearly as compelling as I was expecting from a book about the internet communities that have emerged in the past decade. The best parts are the really detailed outlines of the various factions of the right's anti-feminist and white supremacist groups, as well as the philosophical explanations of the anti-moral subversive nature of 4chan. Angela Nagle’s Kill All Normies represents a break with the usual unwillingness to subject the amorphous left’s internet cultures and identity politics to the same degree of scrutiny as the right’s.

They were totally morally degenerate… but they were nihilistic about it. They didn’t have any politics other than some vague sense of being anti-establishment.”The rise of Milo, Trump and the alt-right are not evidence of the return of the conservatism, but instead of the absolute hegemony of the culture of non-conformism, self-expression, transgression and irreverence for its own sake – an aesthetic that suits those who believe in nothing but the liberation of the individual and the id, whether they’re on the left or the right.”

As Lasch understood, for progressive politics anti-moral transgression has always been a bargain with the devil, because the case for equality is essentially a moral one.” Nagle explained how the alt-right can be identified as clinging to its own brand of identity politics, sentimentalising whiteness and brotherhood to a utopian degree. Nagle draws a line through history from the 'culture wars' of the 1960s to those of today, arguing that the transgressive, countercultural spirit historically embodied by the anti-establishment left has been sublimated much more effectively by the modern right. She also undertakes an in-depth (though concise) review of the many, many factions of what is often sweepingly referred to as the alt-right, from 'chan culture' to the alternately pathetic and terrifying 'manosphere'. Not only is this pretty fascinating in itself, it also brings to light the serious theoretical and academic roots of certain strands of this movement – something often ignored by liberal pundits who concentrate instead on clutching their pearls at the outrageous antics of high-profile figures like Milo and Alex Jones. The idea of a handful of demagogues and professional trolls riling up people who essentially don't understand politics has been a common theme (deployed with varying levels of sensitivity) in analysis of the Trump and Brexit victories; Nagle's study shows this to be dangerously reductive. A common reference on the alt-right 'kek' started on 4chan and translated to 'lol' in comment boards on the multiplayer videogame World of Warcraft, while Pepe the Frog, originating in Matt Furie's Web comic Boy's Club, epitomizes online in-joke meme humor. Kek is also an ancient Egyptian deity represented as a frog-headed man while 'the Church of Kek' and 'praise Kek' refer to their ironic religion.

Nagle is incredibly brave to step forward to broach these matters, however tentatively. This burgeoning will, for honesty and a return to a structural, material analysis that it is so easy to forget exists when online, should be afforded the admiration it deserves. As did, a couple of years later, another major figure now associated with the alt-right: Donald Trump. The appeal of Trump to the online trolls made total sense. It is significant here too that, despite the constant accusations of ‘Cultural Marxism’ by the Trumpian online right, the countercultural aesthetics of anti-conformism in the US were later cultivated by the US government as part of a culture war against communism.” The Right is just as divided and self-sabotaging as the Left - conservatives and the alt-right are frequently enemies. Building on that, much of the influence that one might think to attribute to this strain of Tumblr-leftism is far more reasonably seen as the result of groups bringing their policies into line with more modern understandings of medicine. The Canadian bill C-16 is a good example of this, as is the state of New York’s effort to include more gender identities on official state forms. Both received widespread support from medical professionals and organizations, so it should hardly be surprising that they were enacted into law. Attributing this to the political success of a niche Tumblr subculture is therefore questionable.

MacDougald, Park (13 July 2017). "Where Did the Alt-Right Come From? This Book Finds Some Uncomfortable Answers". Intelligencer . Retrieved 6 November 2018. I thought I knew quite a bit about this topic already, but I learned so much from this book, particularly about the historical context of these movements. Thoroughly and enthusiastically recommended to anyone with an interest in the current political climate as it manifests in online culture. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Psychoanalytically, there is more than a small amount of projective identification taking place between them (wherein a projected fantasy of another group or person is so strong it forces them to succumb to it, similar to a self-fulfilling prophecy).

Further, at least if you are victim of the alt-right mob the left feels sorry for you, but when the new identitarians come after you, well, it was your fault for oppressing the poor lambs. Nagle, Angela (2017). Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and The Alt-Right. Zero Books. It should be clear that such a weighty accusation — that Sarkeesian and the journalists defending her are the embodiments of a “revived feminist movement trying to change the culture,” — requires more substantiation than Nagel provides, for she provides none other than that Sarkeesian did, in fact, create a series of videos critiquing video games, and that some journalists, did, in fact, defend her and the points she made. The leap from that state of affairs to these people exemplifying a concerted movement to change culture is not insignificant, and unfortunately, not one Nagel seems to attempt to bridge. Men’s liberation later grew apart from the feminist movement as second-wave feminism became increasingly antagonistic towards men, criticizing men as a whole in its rhetoric around rape and domestic violence.”