Christchurch · 11:27am Mar 15th, 2019
Or read this angry rant here, instead.
So a mass shooting in New Zealand occurs. 49 dead, 20 seriously wounded by right wing mass shooters specifically citing the 'great replacement' racial science theory. This becomes an Australian story, because the shooter was an Australian emigrant.
So of course a senator from my state is making the news with their official statement.
The shooter livestreamed himself saying "Subscribe to PewDiePie", which made this UKIP tweet from just four days ago age faster than anything else I've ever seen.
I thought about updating the violence article, but it'd keep me too busy, and make me too sad.
Just know this has a lot of parallels with the Tree of Life shooting in November (Do you remember that happened? 11 dead, 7 wounded) which means that it's worth looking at the ideas here.
These people are following PewDiePie. I mean, a bit of this is a joke like blaming shootings on violent video games, but on the other hand if you literally mention him by name while murdering dozens of people, I have to take you slightly more seriously than I'd like.
Here's an abridged of PewDiePie's following list:
Who are these people that is inspiring PewDiePie?
Molyneux:
Lauren Southern has videos in the hundreds-of-thousands of views explaining the theories that are cited by both the Christchurch and the Tree of Life shooters:
She actually messed up the paperwork on an Australian visa a while ago. From the article:
The 23-year old Canadian has declared "Australia is at a crossroads" to retain its borders and in danger of becoming another victim of multiculturalism. [...]
The planned speaking tour alongside commentator Stefan Molyneux was publicised through a video on event host Axiomatic Media’s website.
In the video, Ms Southern warns Australians their way of life is under threat.
“Do you want to retain your culture, do you want to retain your borders, family, identity, or will the boats keep coming?” she stated.
“Will the no-go zones keep growing, and will you become another victim of multiculturalism?”
Brittany Pettibone, in a deleted tweet:
Have a few white kids = fight 'climate change'.
Have lots of white kids = stop whites from becoming a minority by 2042.
Choice is yours.
Pettibone has very strong ties to the alt-right, despite claiming that she herself isn't a racist. She co-hosted a webcast called Virtue of the West with British white supremacist Tara McCarthy, one of the most extreme racists on YouTube; its GoFundMe was taken down by the site as promoting hate speech.
Paul Joseph Watson... fuck, this one just feels like a cheap shot. You know this one right? Right?
Prison Planet is an InfoWars sister site. He shills Brain Force Plus pills and white nationalism. He's also a UKIP member - see above.
Ben Shapiro I'll summarize by saying it was one of his fans that did the Quebec mosque shooting. Rarified company.
Another person PewDiePie follows just tweeted this:
PewDiePie pleads innocence, even when he's crossposting and advertizing white supremacist Youtube channels
This is the creator with the largest subscriber count on Youtube, who enjoys official corporate sponsorship.
This isn't a condemnation of PewDiePie, so much as to emphasize something very important:
These people often don't advertize themselves for what they are so openly. But their art is influenced by their views, and PewDiePie, with his 90,000,000 subscribers, basically defines what we could even consider the mainstream.
And the mainstream is uncomfortably associated with killing in the name of white supremacy.
I've never watched any of his videos
I must be the only soul with internet who can claim this by now
As soon as that senator’s statement reached “However...” after the first sentence where he boldly said that murder was wrong, I knew things were taking an ugly turn, but damn...
That level of boldly open racist garbage is shocking to me, coming from a senator. And apparently it’s naive of me to think so, going by the PewDiePie thing and his baffling popularity.
This piece of crap basically said "they got what was coming to them". This man should be removed from office
It amazes me just how many people from so many corners of the world have taken view that it is ok to be publicly racist.
And ever day, that faith in humanity drops a little bit lower...
5028149
You and me both.
5028172
Where did you get that interpretation from?
5028176
From the words that said that the shooter said sub to pewdiepie on a live stream
5028177
What made you think
1) That the shooter was a religious extremist
2) That the meme was ever, in any way, wholesome
5028178
Ok, apparently i misread thinking the terrorist was a religious fanatic, and second, what exactly is unwholesome about 3 words saying to sub to someone?
5028183
That would be what this blog post is about! The far right see PewDiePie as a good entrypoint to indoctrination into white nationalism: "Subscribe to PewDiePie" is white nationalist advertising.
5028157 One thing George RR Martin got absolutely right was nothing anybody says before the word 'but' counts. In this case, the word 'however' has the same context.
The fact that the nut case followed Shapiro and Peterson is meaningless. Those two were tossed onto the list just to smear their names. I've listened to hours of their lectures and speeches without hearing even a flicker of encouragement for anybody to go out and commit a massacre such as this. What they are is *prominent* and by therefore adding them to the list, the author (of the list) hopes to glom onto some of that fame for his own by provoking them into mentioning him.
There is no pile of bodies so high that some politician will not scale it in order to make a speech.
PewDiePie had nothing to do with this, not really. The shooter isn’t some far right extremist, or some far left extremist, or some racial extremist, or anything like that. He’s a blackpilled nihilist whose only interest is making the entire system collapse. Everything about the attack, from what was said in the livestream to what was written in the manifesto, is tailor-made to create social division along already contentious issues. We aren’t faced with a fascist or a communist; we’re faced with the Joker.
Thank God for our corrupt politicians and our corporate media who will jump at anything that might increase their wealth and power; they have given this murderer exactly what he wanted.
5028190
Ben Shapiro:
i.redd.it/tk0e6gvu70g21.jpg
pbs.twimg.com/media/D1rScK6W0AEccTn.jpg
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The Quebec City shooty's search history placed him at the top:
i.redd.it/tu4ucghqcrf21.jpg
And this shooter carved the Quebec City shooter's name into his rifle. You can see it on the stream.
Jordan Peterson might not go the racism route, but he definitely provides a lot of argumentation for 'evolutionary biology' theories he's wholly unqualified to talk about. Here he is giving credibility to Molyneux's racist takes, ala Charles Murray.
Not related to racism:
coinsh.red/p/31944245_1280006252133914_3125965639995359232_o.jpg
And tweets like this
Nathan J Robinson did a long takedown of him
I..
I thought this was gonna be about that senator, cause he's a piece of shit but then you tried to connect it to pewdiepie.
I'm just gonna leave this video, as he'll explain this better.
https://m.5028204
Although some would deem it hypocritical, I would appreciate a source that doesn't just call everything "fucking retarded" and treat it as self evident. It doesn't address anything I've said here, regardless.
Ye gods that senator. That would be too much even in the US, and we’re pretty darn awful. You’re not supposed to say things like that openly, you’re just supposed to THINK it...
5028218
You guys just got John Cornyn quoting Mussolini with the threats that led to the mass murder of socialists
Link to tweet clarifying he meant it like that
5028222
Yeah but most people don’t know or care where quotes come from. It’s not that some people wouldn’t agree with a senator saying that and more wouldn’t be in the ‘well tsk that’s a bit much but he raises a good point’ camp. They’d just think he was RUDE.
But waiting for the blood to dry would imply people's lives are more important than scoring political points by inciting future attacks...
5028161
It's almost like there are people in positions of authority around the world posturing that this is okay.
Weird
5028247
Yeah the rise of authoritarian right wing leaders has really been on the rise of late. We can only hope that some of them get taken down a peg.
5028157
I'm a total outsider to it, so I have to naively wonder how much of PDP's popularity is sport-related. Like, people who watch gridiron don't care if Michael Vick tortured dogs specifically because he's very good at the sportball game.
It wouldn't make any more sense to me, but neither does sport fandom's acceptance of somepony who suspended wounded dogs by hooks and beat them with chains until they finally died.
It's been known that PewDiePie was a closeted Nazi / white supremacist for quite some time. I've literally never met a Swede online who wasn't.
5028149
Me either.
5028250
Yeah no sportball fans despise Michael Vic.
5028199
this post really says a lot about our society
Haven't seen a single one of Pewdiepie's videos and he already annoys me. While I do respect the fact that he's trying to beat T-Series(because I hate those guys, too), everything else he has ever done is just for attention. I don't, nor will I ever support Pewdiepie.
5028248
Authoritarian leaders period are on the rise lately, and it's not really a surprise. Corporate media companies run sensational stories that enrage viewers specifically because it makes them money (the corporate media activists who run the stories do it because it gets them praise and validates their worldview). Making the argument that power should be concentrated in a central authority is very, very easy to do when you don't think that power is going to be wielded against you, thus the calls for censorship and control over alternative media platforms like YouTube from the corporate media; they don't believe that the censorious power they support will be used to silence them, despite history showing us that this has always been the case.
5028270
Unfortunately, none of what it says is very good. It is wise to distrust powerful institutions, whether a government, a corporation, a military, a labor union, a church, or even a family. Once they reach a certain size and level of influence, they invariably take on a life of their own, and will always seek to protect their own interests first, just like any other entity.
We are past the event horizon; this is not going to end without a major and serious civil conflict — of what form, I cannot say — and that wound will be entirely self-inflicted.
I dislike Pewdiepie, but I do not think he is in any way responsible for or linked to this horrific event.
I read the shooter's manifesto. It's clear this man wanted to cause divides and start having people shift blame everywhere. He spouted memes repeatedly in his manifesto. "Subscribe to Pewdiepie" is just another meme he spouted with full intention of shifting the conversation towards whether or not Pewds is responsible for this in some way, and his plan worked. I've seen dramatically more conversation about Pewd's involvement or responsibility than I have seen about the actual event and those affected by it. This played out exactly how the shooter predicted it would and wanted it to.
Yeah, Pewds isn't the best guy, and I dislike him greatly, but I can't reasonably think he shares any blame in this.
That letter makes feel actually ill.
5028401
Yep
5028267
A lot of them don't like him, but I remember polls where most sports fans wanted him to return.
5028195 Don't forget Petersen is also the "if we don't provide women to young men, they'll get violent, and it'll be our fault for not arranging for them to be sexually serviced!" guy.
5028276 How in god's name is Youtube an "alternative" media platform and not, itself, an enormous bastion of corporate mediahood? It's owned and operated by one of the biggest corporations on the planet!
And you know what, I'm gonna come out and say it: YouTube should do a better job of controlling its content. If I owned a media platform and it were infested by Nazis and racists, I would seek to expel them. Generally speaking, I regard the position of "let's make money by distributing Nazi propaganda" to be a deeply contemptible one; it shouldn't be illegal, but it for damn sure should open you up to opprobrium.
5028423
It’s an alternative media platform because it doesn’t do much to control content beyond disallowing illegal activity, and attempting to stop that wherever it can. Anyone can put a video on YouTube, and because anyone can put a video on YouTube, narratives and information that aren’t controlled by corporate media can live there and be shared. Stories the corporate media won’t cover get shared. Minority voices get shared. LGBT voices get shared. Nonwhite voices get shared. If YouTube controls content, then only corporate and governmental voices will get shared.
That’s all I’m going to say on the matter here; I’ve done more than enough to sidetrack the discussion on this blog entry away from the actual hosted content (I seem to do this a lot). You all know how to reach me if you need to.
5028423
I’d say that distributing nazi propaganda and similar actually SHOULD be illegal. Same with providing them a venue without at least making an effort to remove them.
5028190
Sorry to beat a dead horse on this one, but I wasn't particularly satisfied with my Jordan Peterson remark before and just found this
preview.redd.it/r5f6cnx9jdm21.png?width=608&auto=webp&s=2b3ec6b29c03734ea65d64a4fad42afa6f60704c
5028606 You do realize at all of these speaking tours, the fans line up about thirty deep for step up, take your picture, move to the next person photos, of which he's done probably tens of thousands by now. It's one of the reasons 'Gotcha' photos of presidents and questionable campaign contributors bear little weight, because the sheer numbers dwarf any meaning behind the individuals. (wonder who that guy on the right is)
5028586 5028423 And yet *defining* just exactly what constitutes speech you don't like and think should be banned is a sticky wicket. For example, you can be banned from Twitter for simply telling anybody who claims to be a journalist 'learn to code' Three words, and you're out. I for one would prefer to err on the side of free speech. The First Amendment (here, at least) exists to protect speech others may find offensive, because (quite obviously) there is no need for any protection of speech that *nobody* finds offensive.
5028201 Thank you for confirming my statement. If there were any indications of Shapiro or Peterson calling out for this kind of violence in the (literally) thousands of hours worth of their words online, it would be front and center 24/7 on every media outlet. Even if 1/100th of 1 percent of their stuff called for violence, it would be treated as their sole reason for existing, much like Ann Coulter's statement after 9/11 is treated as her entire legacy.
As is quite obvious by his actions and words, this is a nut who wants to incite violence between every group he can. I'm not playing his sick game.
5028621
Ben Shapiro states
1) Islam, and thus all muslims, are at war with the West
2) They are a growing number, and whites are at risk
3) If there are innocent Muslims, they're only covering for the radicals in their midst, of which there are many.
He does not explicitly say; "The only solution is to murder them". He doesn't have to - it's the logical conclusion one reaches if they believe the previous three steps. They tell you to your face, in their manifestos and their court testimonies, that they do this to incite racial tensions and to start race wars.
I lurk alt-right chats and unfortunately read some of their literature. This is absolutely a call to violence: Ignoring it doesn't make it go away or change that the people you are listening to are radicalizing others to commit violent acts of terrorism. You can't ignore that there's basically an attack like this every two months now.
But somehow the same people saying that it's reasonable to say Islam is a religion of terror, and to associate all muslims with terrorists, say that when a white supremacist says that white supremacy is his motivator and kills dozens of people, tell us to ignore everything he says, not give them the attention they want. All without apologizing for the dehumanizing attacks against muslims and immigrants that motivated these attacks.
They were just four nuts - three men and a woman - who coincidentally shared a media feed with the lone nuts who shot up the mosques, synagogues, black churches, black supermarkets, yoga studios, send pipe bombs,
It's happening in a complete vacuum that random nutterstry to stab muslim schoolchildren on trains
There are young men out there murdering black homeless people to practice starting the upcoming race war, and it has nothing to do with any of these people peddling "great replacement" theory, or saying that some races are definitely inferior to others.
Am I honestly supposed to take it in good faith that they are all isolated incidents, all these literally hundreds of murders that share the same motivations, follow the same 'influencers', subscribe to the same Youtube channels, all of which are peddling the information that ends up in their manifestos?
Just because Shapiro doesn't personally call for violence, he espouses views that logically lead to violence, and are taken as a call to action by violent people. And there's no 'gotcha' moment when Peterson sees those big letters on a shirt, but will still pose with his arm wrapped around the man's shoulders. Nobody held him at gun point to do that.
5028621
I dont think it’s particularly difficult to say that advocating for racially or religiously motivate violence, for example, should be illegal. It’s the same as laws against shouting fire in a theater. And the logistical concerns are the same as, say, making discrimination in hiring illegal. Heck you can use existing laws against terrorism, since they’re promoting an ideology that IS directly linked to terrorism.
And I really do think it matters as a matter of public safety. Because it doesn’t matter that the majority rightly find these people disgusting and advocating monstrous policies. It lets them find each other, and grow their number. And even a very small number of violent extremists can cause tremendous damage.
There’s a saying, that the only thing a free society needs to be intolerant of is intolerance. Because otherwise evil people will use the excuse to destroy it. I think these people and their ideas have no legitimate place in society.
The fact that you're taking this tragedy as an opportunity to attack Pewdiepie of all people and connect them to a mass murder frankly makes you ignorant at best and disgustingly malicious at worst. This blog post helps precisely nobody except whoever wants to profit off the hysteria. Like, incidentally, the shooter.
5028659
If you watch the shooting livestream, you'll see a moment where he runs down a woman with his car while blasting Running in the 90s.
These people are being radicalized by their Twitter and their Youtube feeds. It's not a blazing hot take, they'll tell you that themselves.
PewDiePie has streamed himself paying desperate people $5 to hold up a giant Death to Jews sign. Whoops. He promoted a neo-Nazi's youtube channel. Oh no. He has "heated gamer moments" and shouts the n-word when he gets mad on stream. Oops!
He uses "gay," "retard," and "autistic" as playful insults. He makes plenty of rape jokes. He makes those things seem normal.
It helps to look at the context he's coming from, and what he sees as normal, *because that's what normal is now*.
Even if he's not promoting the people I listed above directly, he's mainstreaming these jokes, and these things. By definition, anything he does is mainstream, because he *is* the mainstream.
When we're literally seeing people meme their way into mass shootings, it's useful to look at why they're memeing him, and why mass murderers are telling you to subscribe to his channel.
Sure, he probably did it as a joke. But he also wrote "remove kebab" on his rifle as a joke, and shot people with it for the meme.
5028621
Twitter and/or Youtube banning or not banning people is not and CANNOT be a free speech issue, because both those platforms are privately owned and controlled. Not just them, either. Knighty applies speech-based litmus tests for posting on FimFiction, some of which would be wildly illegal if the government tried to impose them, and none of those are free speech violations either.
None of that makes how, when, and why any person or group banning (or promoting) speech-based viewpoints something that's either automatically laudable or that should automatically be condemned. But in the private sphere, as opposed to the public policy sphere, saying "well, free speech" is kind of a dodge. People and organizations can, and should, be judged on what they say and do, and judging people based on who they associate with and in what context is something we've all done, will continue to do, and is not wrong.
5028718
From your reply and all the other comments here, one thing is absolutely clear: There is a division among us in what all of this means. We all have our own life experiences and observations that are informing us on how we make sense of what has happened.
That’s ok.
That’s normal.
Despite all this, there is one thing that all of us can agree on: A wolf came into the flock in Christchurch, and innocent people were murdered.
That really is the last thing I will add here.
5028761
You said he wasn't a far-right or racial extremist.
Vlade just provided an overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary.
Your response can't be "let's agree to disagree", or just end it on "let's just agree people died".
If it is true these people are being radicalized, then ignoring that means returning to the status quo - which means these people will continue to be radicalized. And considering all the mosques, black churches and synagogues that were the targets of mass shootings last year, then allowing that status quo means accepting these murders as normal.
Vlade's provided evidence that it is true. That means just ignoring this makes the next one inevitable - getting attention is a bonus, and not the driving motivation.
5028666
The internet is not responsible because it's accessible. The person who says the word "Nazi" is not responsible for the person who eventually becomes a Nazi because they heard the word. Blaming a madman's capability to shoot 49 people to death on Youtube is as irrational as saying Dungeons and Dragons makes people Satan worshippers. You are shifting blame away from the actual perpetrator and the actual crime to chase some kind of insane witch hunt.
5028777
preview.redd.it/fhf1ifz9ohm21.jpg?width=960&auto=webp&s=fa2ef80c795ffeae945d75d7fd49fc422061b953
The above post is partially my fault and I am 100% okay with that.
5028777
Then Hitler's not responsible for the actions of Germany because he spoke into a microphone in front of a large crowd. How is he to blame for the actions of his nation? They didn't *have* to listen to him!
Seriously. Stop trying to proliferate the idea that you cannot be ideologically motivated and kill 49 people, when ideological motivations are how movements such as fascism gain momentum. He didn't just decide to kill 49 people because he went crazy. Sane, rational actors are capable of the worst possible things.
5028790
I'm not sure what stereotyping me as a "weird nerd" was supposed to accomplish, but if it was supposed to make me want to stop talking because you're an intractable and condescending twat, it worked. I'm still sad you're using this event to hawk views for your blog on a My Little Pony fansite mere hours after it happened, but you do you.