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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:4chan] | [TOKENS: 48] |
Template talk:4chan Talk pages are where people discuss how to make content on Wikipedia the best that it can be. You can use this page to start a discussion with others about how to improve the "Template:4chan" page. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruhi_problem] | [TOKENS: 1368] |
Contents Superpermutation In combinatorial mathematics, a superpermutation on n symbols is a string that contains each permutation of n symbols as a substring. While trivial superpermutations can simply be made up of every permutation concatenated together, superpermutations can also be shorter (except for the trivial case of n = 1) because overlap is allowed. For instance, in the case of n = 2, the superpermutation 1221 contains all possible permutations (12 and 21), but the shorter string 121 also contains both permutations. It has been shown that for 1 ≤ n ≤ 5, the smallest superpermutation on n symbols has length 1! + 2! + … + n! (sequence A180632 in the OEIS). The first four smallest superpermutations have respective lengths 1, 3, 9, and 33, forming the strings 1, 121, 123121321, and 123412314231243121342132413214321. However, for n = 5, there are several smallest superpermutations having the length 153. One such superpermutation is shown below, while another of the same length can be obtained by switching all of the fours and fives in the second half of the string (after the bold 2): 123451234152341253412354123145231425314235142315423124531243512431524312543121345213425134215342135421324513241532413524132541321453214352143251432154321 For the cases of n > 5, a smallest superpermutation has not yet been proved nor a pattern to find them, but lower and upper bounds for them have been found. Finding superpermutations One of the most common algorithms for creating a superpermutation of order n {\displaystyle n} is a recursive algorithm. First, the superpermutation of order n − 1 {\displaystyle n-1} is split into its individual permutations in the order of how they appeared in the superpermutation. Each of those permutations are then placed next to a copy of themselves with an nth symbol added in between the two copies. Finally, each resulting structure is placed next to each other and all adjacent identical symbols are merged. For example, a superpermutation of order 3 can be created from one with 2 symbols; starting with the superpermutation 121 and splitting it up into the permutations 12 and 21, the permutations are copied and placed as 12312 and 21321. They are placed together to create 1231221321, and the identical adjacent 2s in the middle are merged to create 123121321, which is indeed a superpermutation of order 3. This algorithm results in the shortest possible superpermutation for all n less than or equal to 5, but becomes increasingly longer than the shortest possible as n increases beyond that. Another way of finding superpermutations lies in creating a graph where each permutation is a vertex and every permutation is connected by an edge. Each edge has a weight associated with it; the weight is calculated by seeing how many characters can be added to the end of one permutation (dropping the same number of characters from the start) to result in the other permutation. For instance, the edge from 123 to 312 has weight 2 because 123 + 12 = 12312 = 312. Any Hamiltonian path through the created graph is a superpermutation, and the problem of finding the path with the smallest weight becomes a form of the traveling salesman problem. The first instance of a superpermutation smaller than length 1 ! + 2 ! + … + n ! {\displaystyle 1!+2!+\ldots +n!} was found using a computer search on this method by Robin Houston. In September 2011, an anonymous poster on the Science & Math ("/sci/") board of 4chan proved that the smallest superpermutation on n symbols (n ≥ 2) has at least length n! + (n−1)! + (n−2)! + n − 3. In reference to the Japanese anime series The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, particularly the fact that it was originally broadcast as a nonlinear narrative, the problem was presented on the imageboard as "The Haruhi Problem": if you wanted to watch the 14 episodes of the first season of the series in every possible order, what would be the shortest string of episodes you would need to watch? The proof for this lower bound came to the general public interest in October 2018, after mathematician and computer scientist Robin Houston tweeted about it. On 25 October 2018, Robin Houston, Jay Pantone, and Vince Vatter posted a refined version of this proof in the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (OEIS). A published version of this proof, credited to "Anonymous 4chan poster", appears in Engen and Vatter (2021). For "The Haruhi Problem" specifically (the case for 14 symbols), the current lower and upper bound are 93,884,313,611 and 93,924,230,411, respectively. This means that watching the series in every possible order would require about 4.3 million years. On 20 October 2018, by adapting a construction by Aaron Williams for constructing Hamiltonian paths through the Cayley graph of the symmetric group, science fiction author and mathematician Greg Egan devised an algorithm to produce superpermutations of length n! + (n−1)! + (n−2)! + (n−3)! + n − 3. Up to 2018, these were the smallest superpermutations known for n ≥ 7. However, on 1 February 2019, Bogdan Coanda announced that he had found a superpermutation for n=7 of length 5907, or (n! + (n−1)! + (n−2)! + (n−3)! + n − 3) − 1, which was a new record. On 27 February 2019, using ideas developed by Robin Houston, Egan produced a superpermutation for n = 7 of length 5906. Whether similar shorter superpermutations also exist for values of n > 7 remains an open question. The current best lower bound (see section above) for n = 7 is still 5884. See also Further reading References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopping_cart_theory] | [TOKENS: 986] |
Contents Shopping cart theory The shopping cart theory is an Internet meme which judges a person's ethics by whether they return a shopping cart to its designated cart corral or deposit area. The concept became viral online after a 2020 Internet meme which posits that shopping carts present a litmus test for a person's capability of self-control and governance, as well as a way to judge one's moral character. Detractors of the theory have cited various reasons why returning a cart is unfavorable, with concerns about leaving children unattended as one of the more commonly referenced. Background Shopping carts are a common fixture in retailing environments. The theory is primarily based upon the fact that a majority of retailers have historically offered no incentive for customers to return a shopping cart to a cart corral after use, and no disincentive for not returning the cart. The cart return system in place at these retailers is fully voluntary, with no external incentive for or against returning the cart and is therefore, as proponents of the theory argue, a test of moral character. Alternatively, some retailers (particularly European retailers) have implemented cart deposits which involve customers inserting a coin to receive a cart for use while shopping. The coin is only then returned upon the customer returning the cart to the deposit. Other retailers have a cart corral system, which involve customers voluntarily returning the cart to a designated corral or deposit area. Online discussion The topic of customers returning their carts has been of discussion and debate online. In 2017, an article was published by anthropologist Krystal D'Costa in Scientific American, titled "Why Don't People Return Their Shopping Carts?" D'Costa listed the following reasons as why some choose to not return their carts: bad weather, the cart deposit being too far from one's parking spot, concerns about leaving children unattended, disability, the perception that it is a shop employee's job to return the carts, and the intent of leaving a cart for another to "easily pick up and use". D'Costa's article has been retrospectively referenced by media outlets when discussing the "shopping cart theory" meme, which originates from a 4chan post made in May 2020. According to the post, the shopping cart is "the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing". In addition to asserting that returning a cart to its designated deposit or rack is "objectively right" and widely considered appropriate, the post goes on to state that returning a cart is "the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it". Ultimately, the poster stated that the "shopping cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society." Media writers have written that the 4chan post circulated online in 2020, becoming popular on Reddit and other websites, while also becoming a point of debate. The concept went viral on Twitter after a user named Jared tweeted about it, sparking discussion on the platform. D'Costas later wrote that her Scientific American article had "struck a nerve"; on the magazine's Facebook page "some said they were afraid to leave children unattended, or struggled with a disability, or feared making someone's job obsolete". Lorraine Sommerfield of The Hamilton Spectator expressed conditional agreement with the theory, stating "stores should have lots of easily accessible cart corrals," and added that "some individuals may have mobility issues". Calling the original 4chan post "clinical", Nate Rogers of The Ringer cited its 2020 dating ("at the beginning of the pandemic") to suggest "it's surprisingly clear when shopping cart etiquette became a modern lightning-rod test of moral character," mentioning this time period as one in which "people were fiercely debating what they owed to their fellow citizens". The shopping cart theory has been referenced in a 2021 Politico article about a New Jersey legislation proposal that would fine shoppers for leaving carts in parking spots designated for disabled individuals. The YouTube channel "Cart Narcs", started by radio producer Sebastian Davis in 2020, is known for its videos where Davis confronts retail customers who leave their shopping carts in parking lots. In 2024, the shopping cart theory experienced further virality online after TikTok user Leslie Dobson explained why she does not return carts, defending her refusal to do so. A clinical and forensic psychologist, Dobson stated her concern of leaving her child unattended in order to return the cart. This reason was concurrent with a common reason mentioned by the 2017 Scientific American article. Dobson also stated her video was intentionally provocative, in hopes of garnering attention and raising awareness of child abduction. Dobson's video received over 11 million views and received considerable backlash, though she also received messages from users who agreed with her stance, stating they were too afraid to discuss their opinion online themselves. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_34] | [TOKENS: 620] |
Contents Rule 34 Rule 34 is an Internet meme which claims that some form of pornography exists concerning every possible topic. The concept is commonly depicted as fan art of normally non-erotic subjects engaging in sexual activity. It can also include writings, animations, images, GIFs and any other form of media to which the Internet provides opportunities for proliferation and redistribution. History The phrase Rule 34 was coined in an August 13, 2003 webcomic captioned, "Rule #34 There is porn of it. No exceptions." The comic was drawn by TangoStari (Peter Morley-Souter) to depict his shock at seeing Calvin and Hobbes parody porn. Although the comic faded into obscurity, the caption instantly became popular on the Internet. Since then, the phrase has been adapted into different syntactic versions and has even been used as a verb. A list of "rules of the Internet", created on the website 4chan, includes Rule 34 within a list of similar tongue-in-cheek maxims, such as Rule 63. In 2008, users on 4chan posted numerous sexually explicit parodies and cartoons illustrating Rule 34; in 4chan slang, pornography may be referred to as "rule 34" or "pr0nz". The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs claims that Rule 34 "began appearing on Internet postings in 2008". As Rule 34 continued spreading throughout the Internet, some traditional media began reporting on it. A 2009 Daily Telegraph article listed Rule 34 as the third of the "Top 10" Internet rules and laws. A 2013 CNN story said Rule 34 was "likely the most famous" Internet rule that has become part of mainstream culture. Fan fiction has parodied events such as the 2016 United States presidential election, the 2021 Suez Canal obstruction, and Brexit. Analysis According to researchers Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam, the maxim resonated with so many people because of its apparent truth to anyone who has browsed the Internet. Ogas said that following the 2009–2010 study, the consolidation of the porn industry onto large market share video aggregators has reduced the visibility of the niche market videos. The sites favor mainstream content directly by steering users towards it and indirectly by disadvantaging small producers who cannot afford strong anti-piracy measures, bringing into doubt the ability of the rule being able to keep up with market. Cory Doctorow concludes, "Rule 34 can be thought of as a kind of indictment of the Web as a cesspit of freaks, geeks, and weirdos, but seen through the lens of cosmopolitanism, bespeaks a certain sophistication—a gourmet approach to life." John Paul Stadler concluded that Rule 34 reflects the codification of paraphilias into social identity structures. Variations The original rule was rephrased and reiterated as it went viral on the Web. Some common permutations omit the original "No exceptions." Corollaries See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clop_(erotic_fan_art)] | [TOKENS: 1575] |
Contents Clop (erotic fan art) Supporting Antagonists Minor Equestria Girls Season 2 (2011–2012) Season 3 (2012–2013) Season 4 (2013–2014) Season 5 (2015) Season 6 (2016) Season 7 (2017) Season 8 (2018) Season 9 (2019) Music Games Other media Fan culture My Little Pony conventions Clop is erotic or pornographic fan art, fan fiction, fan films, fan games, and other fan labor based on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, and further generations of the My Little Pony franchise. The term clop, derived from a hoofbeat, also means masturbation in this context. An internal study within the fandom suggests that about 19% of bronies (My Little Pony fans) have engaged in "clopping." Critics who view it as a problematic aspect of the fandom fear that it might taint the reputation of the My Little Pony fan community as a whole. Etymology Clop is both an onomatopoeia and a pun or wordplay on the slang word fap, itself an onomatopoeia as well. Clop is also used as a verb, meaning to masturbate. Related terms include clopfic (a portmanteau of clop and fan fic) for erotic and slash fiction centered around My Little Pony characters, and clopper for a person who enjoys this type of material. History Clop is considered to be either a subset of brony fandom, furry fandom, or both. Compared to other types of fan art, clop features homosexual ships more prominently. The topic has received scholarly attention. Clopping (masturbating to clop) is frowned upon by some My Little Pony fans. However, in 2015, The Guardian reported that the /mlp/ brony community (the My Little Pony board of 4chan) saw not clopping as a form of heresy, and viewed having sex with a real person negatively. In July 2015, the most popular character in clop on Pornhub was Rainbow Dash, followed by Rarity and Pinkie Pie. Justin Mullis wrote that "the amount of [clop] continues to grow at an astounding rate". Popularity By 2013, the imageboard rule34.paheal.net hosted 53,731 sexually explicit images tagged My Little Pony; 49,419 of them featured characters from Friendship Is Magic. By 2015, the website hosted 64,889 sexually explicit images tagged My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, and by 2017, it hosted over 95,401. On the furry imageboard e621, over 82,469 images were tagged My Little Pony by 2015; by 2017, the number of such images had nearly doubled to 147,037. The Mane Six have been among the most frequently tagged characters on e621. Since 2011, Twilight Sparkle has been the most frequently tagged character, reaching 33,792 tagged images by March 2023.[better source needed] As of September 2025[update], Twilight Sparkle is the most frequently tagged character on e621 with over 38,000 images; Judy Hopps from Zootopia has the second most tags with over 37,500 images. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash are the third and fourth most tagged characters, respectively. As of September 2025[update], the My Little Pony imageboard Derpibooru hosts over 500,000 images tagged as "explicit". An example of clop is the Adobe Flash point-and-click adventure game Banned from Equestria (Daily) by Pokehidden. In recent years, the use of technology and artificial intelligence in clop has become popular within the brony fandom, such as using 15.ai for AI voice acting (e.g. in the explicit music video series Pony Zone). Demographics and geography According to internal studies undertaken by the brony fandom, 19.05% of bronies have engaged in clopping, but it is assumed that the percentage is larger. A 2015 survey by Pornhub revealed that most cloppers were millennials then between 18 and 24 years old, and men were 37% more likely to search for clop than women. In 2022, MEL magazine reported that male bronies who enjoyed clop represented "not a tiny minority," referencing a Twitter poll in which nearly half of brony respondents reported interest in clop. On Pornhub, clop was watched the most in Eastern Europe, with Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic being the top four consumers as of the survey date. Puerto Rico was fifth. Clopfics A clopfic is clop fan fiction. On Fimfiction, the central fandom repository for My Little Pony fan fiction, erotic stories are managed through a comprehensive content rating system: explicit sexual content is labeled with the "sex" tag. The Clopfics group on Fimfiction is the largest community on the site. The site also hosts several specialized erotic subgenres, such as Futaquestria, which features stories of futanari characters—female characters that possess male genitalia (often through magical means). The range of erotic content in these stories varies widely, from mild romantic encounters to explicit material featuring BDSM, non-consensual scenarios, and various fetishes. Reception Gianna Decarlo, a journalist for The Baltimore Sun, condemned clop as one of the problems of the My Little Pony fandom, calling the erotic art an "unstoppable force of sexual deviancy" from which "not even a simple Google search is safe." EJ Dickson of The Daily Dot wrote that clop enthusiasts were "black sheep in the community" of bronies, most of whom fear that cloppers will give the entire fandom a bad name. On a discussion on clop in Equestria Forums, an online brony forum, users argued that cloppers are not attracted to real-life horses but rather to "humanized ponies", emphasizing that the characters are perceived as sapient beings with human-like qualities rather than as animals. One user noted: "Being attracted to Rainbow Dash is a lot different than being attracted to a fucking horse. I’m sure very few people are looking at mlp porn thinking 'oh my god oh my god oh my god i want to put my dick inside a horsssee' it’s more like 'oh my god Dashie you're so fucking sexy I am willing to look past the fact that you’re a horse.'" Another user from the same discussion supported this perspective, noting that characters like Rainbow Dash "are perceived as people at a mental level" and possess humanized features that differentiate them from actual animals. In 2024, Helina Hartman of Rutgers University examined how the Mane Six are transformed and reinterpreted within the clop community. Hartman found that the original character designs of Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, and Fluttershy—which were created to embody positive feminine values and friendship—were systematically altered through processes of sexualization and masculinization. Hartman observed that the Mane Six's individual personalities and character traits, originally designed to represent elements of friendship, become secondary to their transformation into objects of sexual desire or symbols of masculine conquest. Hartman wrote that this reinterpretation strips away the characters' original feminist messaging and educational value and replaces their roles as positive role models for young girls with versions that reinforce traditional masculine dominance and heterosexual validation, which inverts the show's core themes of friendship and empowerment. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:/pol/_phenomena] | [TOKENS: 70] |
Category:/pol/ phenomena This category is for Internet phenomena originating on or closely related to /pol/. Subcategories This category has the following 3 subcategories, out of 3 total. Pages in category "/pol/ phenomena" The following 17 pages are in this category, out of 17 total. This list may not reflect recent changes. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:4chan_logo_clover.svg] | [TOKENS: 95] |
File:4chan logo clover.svg Summary Licensing File history Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time. File usage The following 39 pages use this file: Global file usage The following other wikis use this file: Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital camera or scanner used to create or digitize it. If the file has been modified from its original state, some details may not fully reflect the modified file. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soy_boy] | [TOKENS: 624] |
Contents Soy boy Soy boy is a pejorative term sometimes used in online communities to describe men perceived to be lacking masculine characteristics. The term bears many similarities and has been compared to the slang terms cuck (derived from cuckold), nu-male and low-T ("low testosterone") – terms sometimes used as insults for male femininity in the manosphere. The term is based on the presence of the phytoestrogen isoflavone in soybeans, which has led some to claim that soy products feminize men who consume them, although there is no evidence supporting the correlation between consumption of soy phytoestrogens and testosterone or estrogen levels or sperm quality. Biology Soy products contain high amounts of phytoestrogens. As they are structurally similar to estradiol (the major female sex hormone) and have activity at the estrogen receptor, early research suggested that it may act as an endocrine disruptor that adversely affects health. An article written in the 1970s claimed that soy could disrupt hormone balance which initially started the bad reputation.[unreliable source?] Since then, concerns have been raised that it may act as an endocrine disruptor that adversely affects health. The Harvard School of Health, however, notes that "there are many factors that make it difficult to construct blanket statements about the health effects of soy"; in the late 2010s and early 2020s a sizeable amount of research and scientific reviews further debunked claims. It is unclear if phytoestrogens have any effect on male physiology, with conflicting results about the potential effects of isoflavones (a kind of phytoestrogen) originating from soy. Some studies showed that isoflavone supplementation had a positive effect on sperm concentration, count, or motility, and increased ejaculate volume. Furthermore, while there is some evidence that phytoestrogens may affect male fertility, more recent reviews of available studies found no link, and instead suggests that healthier diets such as the Mediterranean diet might have a positive effect on male fertility. Several review studies have not found any effect of phytoestrogens on sperm quality or reproductive hormone levels. Neither isoflavones nor soy have been shown to affect male reproductive hormones in healthy individuals. Soy is rich in nutrients and likely to provide health benefits, especially when it replaces red or processed meat. Avoidance of red and processed meat was found to lower risk of developing erectile dysfunction. Higher soy intake is also associated with lower risk for prostate cancer. Studies show that plant-based diets do not compromise muscular strength. Usage The term is often used as an epithet by internet trolls. It often targets perceived vegans, progressives,[citation needed] and other groups. The term has also been used in online debates about the fashion appeal of cargo shorts, having a feminized and unathletic look, and an exaggerated smile called a "soy face" or "Soylent grin", a reference to a meal replacement shake (itself named as a reference to the 1973 dystopian film Soylent Green). See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_email_hack] | [TOKENS: 1973] |
Contents Sarah Palin email hack The Sarah Palin email hack occurred on September 16, 2008, during the 2008 United States presidential election campaign when vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal Yahoo! email account was subjected to unauthorized access. The hacker, David Kernell, obtained access to Palin's account by looking up biographical details, such as her high school and birthdate, and using Yahoo!'s account recovery for forgotten passwords. Kernell then posted several pages of Palin's email on 4chan's /b/ board. Kernell, who at the time of the offense was a 20-year-old college student, was the son of longtime Democratic state representative Mike Kernell of Memphis. Kernell was charged in October 2008 in federal court. After he was led into the court in leg irons and handcuffs, the judge released him on his own recognizance, pending trial. The incident was ultimately prosecuted in a U.S. federal court as four felony crimes punishable by up to 50 years in federal prison. The charges were three felonies: identity theft, wire fraud, and anticipatory obstruction of justice; and one optional as felony or misdemeanor: intentionally accessing an account without authorization. Kernell pleaded not guilty to all counts. A jury trial, featuring testimony of Sarah and Bristol Palin, as well as of 4chan founder Christopher Poole, began on April 20, 2010. The jury found Kernell guilty on two counts: the felony of anticipatory obstruction of justice and the misdemeanor of unauthorized access to a computer. On her Facebook page, Sarah Palin stated that she and her family were thankful the jury had rendered a just verdict. Kernell was sentenced on November 12, 2010, to one year plus a day in federal custody, followed by three years of supervised release. The sentencing judge recommended that the custody be served in a halfway house, but the Federal Bureau of Prisons sent him instead to a minimum security prison. He was released on November 23, 2011. In January 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit found Kernell's awareness of a possible future FBI investigation was enough to uphold a conviction on obstruction of justice. Incident Shortly after midnight on September 16, 2008, the private Yahoo! Mail account of Sarah Palin was cracked by a 4chan user. The hacker, known as "Rubico", claimed he had read Palin's personal e-mails because he was looking for something that "would derail her campaign." After reading through Palin's emails, Rubico wrote, "There was nothing there, nothing incriminating — all I saw was personal stuff, some clerical stuff from when she was governor." Rubico wrote that he used the Sarah Palin Wikipedia article to find Palin's birth date (one of the standard security questions used by Yahoo!) in "15 seconds." The hacker posted the account's password on /b/, an image board on 4chan, and screenshots from within the account to WikiLeaks. A /b/ user then logged in and changed the password, posting a screenshot of his sending an email to a friend of Palin's informing her of the new password on the /b/ thread. This man was criticized heavily by the /b/ community, for being a "white knight". However, he did not blank out the password in the screenshot. A multitude of /b/ users then attempted to log in with the new password, and the account was automatically locked out by Yahoo!. The incident was criticized by some /b/ users, one of whom complained that "seriously, /b/. We could have changed history and failed, epically." The hacker admitted he was worried about being caught, writing "Yes I was behind a proxy, only one, if this sh*t ever got to the FBI I was f**ked, I panicked, I still wanted the stuff out there ... so I posted the [information] ... and then promptly deleted everything, and unplugged my internet and just sat there in a comatose state." The hacker left behind traces of his activity. His IP address was logged at the proxy he used, CTunnel.com, and he also left his email address while posting to 4chan. Furthermore, the attacker revealed the original web address used by the proxy by leaving this information in the screenshot which according to experts can also help the investigation. 4chan's /b/ board is not archived, and posts are only retained for a short time. However, with the great interest surrounding the posts of Rubico, many, including the magazine Wired, archived the original posts. The email address left behind was then connected to David Kernell through various social networking profiles where it was used, though no official investigation took place at this time. Campaign response John McCain's campaign condemned the incident, saying it was a "shocking invasion of the governor's privacy and a violation of law". Barack Obama's spokesman Bill Burton called the hacking "outrageous". Federal investigation The FBI and Secret Service began investigating the incident and on September 20, it was revealed that they were questioning David Kernell, a 20-year-old economics student at the University of Tennessee and the son of Democratic Tennessee State Representative Mike Kernell from Memphis. The handle used by the hacker in a 4chan post appeared to identify him; however, the evidence was considered inconclusive due to the site's history of frequent pranks. The hacker's proxy service provided its logs, which pointed to Kernell's residence. FBI agents served a federal search warrant at David Kernell's apartment in Knoxville. Agents spent two hours taking pictures of everything inside his apartment. Kernell's three roommates were also subpoenaed and expected to testify the following week in Chattanooga. The obstruction of justice charge stems from an allegation by the FBI that Kernell attempted to erase evidence of the crime from his hard drive. Kernell's father told Wired that he was aware that his son was a suspect, but he did not ask him anything about it over concerns that he may have to testify in court. Indictment A second federal grand jury in Knoxville returned an indictment of Kernell on October 7, 2008. He was charged with violating 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(2)(C) and § 2701, or unlawful access to stored communications and intentionally accessing a computer without authorization across state lines, respectively. Kernell turned himself in the next day. Kernell pleaded not guilty. The court released Kernell on his own recognizance. Trial In October 2008, Kernell was brought into court in handcuffs and ankle shackles to plead not guilty to the hacking and was released on bond. The case went to trial eighteen months later, on April 20, 2010. On April 23, Sarah Palin testified for 44 minutes. Her daughter, Bristol, testified as well. Following the conclusion of testimony, Sarah said, "I think there need to be consequences for bad behavior." Verdict and sentence On April 30, 2010, David Kernell was found guilty on two of four counts: the felony of anticipatory obstruction of justice by destruction of records and found for the lower misdemeanor option of unauthorized access to a computer. The jury acquitted him of the charge of wire fraud. It was deadlocked on identity theft charge, so the judge declared a mistrial on that charge. In response, Palin issued a press release comparing the case to Watergate. Sarah Palin said the family was "thankful that the jury thoroughly and carefully weighed the evidence and issued a just verdict." The prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Weddle, who had sought an 18-month prison sentence for Kernell, promised a retrial on the identity theft charge should he be successful in his attempt at receiving a new trial. In November 2010, Kernell was sentenced to a year and a day of prison, preferably to be served in a halfway house, plus three years of probation, by U.S. District Judge Thomas Phillips, though he noted the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) could override his recommendations. However, the BOP, which makes the ultimate determination as to where federal prisoners serve their sentence, assigned Kernell to the minimum security prison at the Federal Correctional Institution, Ashland near Ashland, Kentucky. Jose Santana, the chief of the BOP's Designation and Sentence Computation Center, said that halfway houses are for convicts who have limited skills and/or limited support from their families. Because Kernell had the support of his family and had attended a university for three years, Santana argued that he does not need to be in a halfway house. Kernell was later relocated to a halfway house. Perpetrator David Christopher Kernell was the son of longtime Democratic state representative Mike Kernell of Memphis. Kernell won the Tennessee Open Scholastic Chess Championship in 2004, and graduated in 2006 from Germantown High School. After release from BOP custody, he returned to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville to finish an economics degree. He first volunteered his programming skills to Tennessee Voices for Children, a child advocacy nonprofit group. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 2014, Kernell participated in clinical research trials at the Cedars-Sinai Neurosciences Research Center in Los Angeles to help develop cures and treatments for other victims of MS. After moving to California, he developed facial recognition software that could identify children at risk of abuse. Kernell died on February 2, 2018, in Newport Beach, California, at the age of 30, from complications related to progressive MS. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbia_Strong] | [TOKENS: 2486] |
Contents Serbia Strong Serbia Strong is a nickname given to a Serb nationalist, anti-Croat and anti-Muslim propaganda music video from the Yugoslav Wars. The song has spread globally as an internet meme, including amongst far-right groups and the alt-right. The song was originally called "Karadžić, Lead Your Serbs" (Serbian: Караџићу, води Србе своје, romanized: Karadžiću, vodi Srbe svoje, pronounced [kâradʒitɕu vǒdi sr̩̂be svǒje]) in reference to the Bosnian Serb military leader and convicted war criminal Radovan Karadžić. It is also known as "God Is a Serb and He Will Protect Us" (Serbian: Бог је Србин и он ће нас чувати, romanized: Bog je Srbin i on će nas čuvati, pronounced [bôːɡ je sr̩̂bin i ôːn tɕe nas tʃǔːvati])[a] and "Remove Kebab". Background At the peak of the inter-ethnic wars of the 1990s that broke up Yugoslavia, a song called "Karadžiću, vodi Srbe svoje" (English: "Karadžić, Lead Your Serbs") was recorded in 1993. The song was composed as a morale boosting tune for Serbian forces during one of the wars. In the video of the song, the tune is performed by four males in Serbian paramilitary uniforms at a location with hilly terrain in the background. Footage of captured Muslim prisoners in wartime Serb-run internment camps are featured in a falsified version of the video which is popular on the Internet. Parts of the tune attempt to instill a sense of foreboding in their opponents with lines such as "The wolves are coming – beware, Ustashas and Turks". Derogatory terms are used in the song, such as "Ustashas" in reference to ultranationalist and fascist Croat fighters and "Turks" for Bosniaks, with lyrics warning that Serbs, under the leadership of Radovan Karadžić, were coming for them. The song's content celebrates Serb fighters and the wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić, who was on 24 March 2016 found guilty of genocide against Bosnian Muslims and crimes against humanity during the Bosnian War (part of the Yugoslav Wars). Karadžić was convicted of "persecution, extermination, deportation, forcible transfer, and murder in connection with his campaign to drive Bosnian Muslims and Croats out of villages claimed by Serb forces". On 20 March 2019, his appeal was rejected and his 40 year sentence was increased to life imprisonment. During the Bosnian War, the song was a marching anthem for nationalist Serb paramilitaries (revived "Chetniks"). The song has been rewritten multiple times in various languages and has retained its militant and anti-Bosnian themes. "Remove Kebab" is the name for the song used by the alt-right and other ultranationalist groups. Lyrics Од Бихаћа, до Петровца села, до Петровца села Српска земља, нападнута цијела, нападнута цијела Караџићу, води Србе своје, води Србе своје Нек' се види: никог се не боје, никог се не боје! Ој, Балије, хрватске Усташе, хрватске Усташе Не дирајте ви огњиште наше, ви огњиште наше Караџићу, води Србе своје, води Србе своје Нек' се види: никог се не боје, никог се не боје! Из Крајине кренули су вуци, кренули су вуци Чувајте се, Усташе и Турци, Усташе и Турци Караџићу, води Србе своје, води Србе своје Нек' се види: никог се не боје, никог се не боје! У одбрани свога српског рода, свога српског рода Боримо се, драга нам слобода, драга нам слобода Караџићу, води Србе своје, води Србе своје 𝄆 Нек' се види: никог се не боје, никог се не боје! 𝄇 Od Bihaća, do Petrovca sela, do Petrovca sela Srpska zemlja napadnuta cijela, napadnuta cijela Karadžiću, vodi Srbe svoje, vodi Srbe svoje Nek' se vidi: nikog se ne boje, nikog se ne boje! Oj, Balije, hrvatske Ustaše, hrvatske Ustaše Ne dirajte vi ognjište naše, vi ognjište naše Karadžiću, vodi Srbe svoje, vodi Srbe svoje Nek' se vidi: nikog se ne boje, nikog se ne boje! Iz Krajine krenuli su vuci, krenuli su vuci Čuvajte se, Ustaše i Turci, Ustaše i Turci Karadžiću, vodi Srbe svoje, vodi Srbe svoje Nek' se vidi: nikog se ne boje, nikog se ne boje! U odbrani svoga srpskog roda, svoga srpskog roda Borimo se, draga nam sloboda, draga nam sloboda Karadžiću, vodi Srbe svoje, vodi Srbe svoje 𝄆 Nek' se vidi: nikog se ne boje, nikog se ne boje! 𝄇 From Bihać, to the town of Petrovac, to the town of Petrovac The Serbian land is entirely attacked, is entirely attacked Karadžić, lead your Serbs, lead your Serbs Let it be shown: we are not afraid of anyone, we are not afraid of anyone! Oh, Balijas,[b] Croatian Ustašas, Croatian Ustašas Do not touch our homeland, our homeland Karadžić, lead our Serbs, lead our Serbs Let it be shown: we are not afraid of anyone, we are not afraid of anyone! From Krajina, the wolves have set off, the wolves have set off Beware, Ustašas and Turks, Ustašas and Turks Karadžić, lead our Serbs, lead our Serbs Let it be shown: we are not afraid of anyone, we are not afraid of anyone! In the defence of our Serbian race, our Serbian race We fight, for our dear freedom, for our dear freedom Karadžić, lead our Serbs, lead our Serbs 𝄆 Let it be shown: we are not afraid of anyone, we are not afraid of anyone! 𝄇 Internet popularity Between 2006 and 2008, numerous edits of the video were posted on the Internet. Throughout the 2000s, the video was parodied for its aggressively jingoistic nature. Meanwhile, a Turkish internet user parodied the sentiment of Serbian nationalists online, with a satirical incoherent rant beginning with "remove kebab" and ending with the claim that Tupac is alive in Serbia.[user-generated source?] Although the rant initially intended to parody racism, the origins were lost once it became a common phrase in alt-right discourse. The meme gained popularity amongst fans of Hearts of Iron IV and Europa Universalis IV, grand strategy computer games by Paradox Interactive, where it referred to the player aiming to defeat the Ottoman Empire or other Islamic nations within these games. The word "kebab" was eventually banned from Paradox Interactive's official forums due to frequent use by the alt-right and other ultranationalists. Shortly after the Christchurch mosque shootings, the meme was also banned from Reddit communities based around Paradox Interactive games. The meme also appeared in over 800 threads in the r/The_Donald subreddit. The song's popularity rose over time with radical elements of many right-wing groups within the West. The song is far more famous in the rest of the world than in the Balkans. The accordion player—speculated to be Novislav Ðajić, with this remaining unverified—has since become a widespread 4chan meme and is called "Dat Face Soldier" or the image itself as "Remove Kebab". Đajić himself had been convicted in Germany for his part in the murder of 14 people during the war, resulting in 5 years imprisonment and deportation to another country following his jail sentence in 1997. Academic research found that in a dataset obtained by scraping Know Your Meme in 2018, "Remove Kebab" constituted 1 of every 200 entries per community in a data set sampled for political memes. "Remove Kebab" was particularly common on Gab, an alt-tech social media platform known for its far-right userbase. More generally, through the underlying Islamophobic ideas, the video has helped to establish Serbian nationalist ideas in the global far right. On 29 May 2020, Chicago police radios were jammed with the song, during the George Floyd protests in the city. Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the Australian gunman in the Christchurch mosque shootings, had the phrase "Remove Kebab" written on one of his weapons. In his manifesto The Great Replacement (named after a far-right theory of the same name by French writer Renaud Camus), he describes himself as a "part-time kebab removalist". He also livestreamed himself playing the song in his car minutes before the shooting. Following the shootings, various videos of the song were removed from YouTube, including some with over a million views. Users quickly re-uploaded the tune, saying it was to "protest censorship". In an interview following the shooting, the main singer of the song, Željko Grmuša, said, "It is terrible what that guy did in New Zealand, of course I condemn that act. I feel sorry for all those innocent people. But he started killing and he would do that no matter what song he listened to." The song is still commonly used around far-right and alt-right circles as a meme promoting the Great Replacement conspiracy theory. See also Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chanology] | [TOKENS: 9668] |
Contents Project Chanology Anonymous Non-centralized leadership David Miscavige Project Chanology (also called Operation Chanology) was a protest movement against the practices of the Church of Scientology by members of Anonymous, a leaderless Internet-based group. "Chanology" is a portmanteau of "4chan" (the site where the project originated) and "Scientology". The project was started in response to the Church of Scientology's attempts to remove material from a highly publicized interview with Scientologist Tom Cruise from the Internet in January 2008. The project was publicly launched in the form of a video posted to YouTube, "Message to Scientology", on January 21, 2008. The video states that Anonymous views Scientology's actions as Internet censorship, and asserts the group's intent to "expel the church from the Internet". This was followed by distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS), and soon after, black faxes, prank calls, and other measures intended to disrupt the Church of Scientology's operations. In February 2008, the focus of the protest shifted to legal methods, including nonviolent protests and an attempt to get the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the Church of Scientology's tax-exempt status in the United States. Reactions from the Church of Scientology regarding the protesters' actions have varied. Initially, one spokesperson stated that members of the group "have got some wrong information" about Scientology. Another referred to them as "computer geeks". Later, the Church of Scientology started referring to Anonymous as "cyberterrorists" perpetrating "religious hate crimes" against the church. Detractors of Scientology have also criticized the actions of Project Chanology, asserting that they merely provide the Church of Scientology with the opportunity to "play the religious persecution card". Other critics such as Mark Bunker and Tory Christman initially questioned the legality of Project Chanology's methods, but have since spoken out in support of the project as it shifted towards nonviolent protests and other legal methods. Background The Church of Scientology has a history of conflict with groups on the Internet. In 1995, attorneys for the Church of Scientology attempted to get the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology (a.r.s.) removed from Usenet. This attempt backfired and generated a significant amount of press for a.r.s. The conflict with a.r.s led the hacker group Cult of the Dead Cow to declare war on the Church of Scientology. The Church of Scientology mounted a 10-year legal campaign against Dutch writer Karin Spaink and several Internet service providers after Spaink and others posted documents alleged to be secret teachings of the organization. The Church of Scientology's efforts ended in a legal defeat in a Dutch court in 2005. This series of events is often referred to as "Scientology versus the Internet". On January 14, 2008, a video produced by the Church of Scientology featuring an interview with the actor Tom Cruise was posted on YouTube. In the video, music from Cruise's Mission: Impossible films plays in the background, and Cruise makes various statements, including saying that Scientologists are the only people who can help after a car accident and that Scientologists are the authority on getting addicts off drugs. According to The Times, Cruise can be seen in the video "extolling the virtues of Scientology". The Australian newspaper The Daily Telegraph characterized Cruise as "manic-looking", "gush[ing] about his love for Scientology". The Church of Scientology asserted that the video material was "pirated and edited" and taken from a three-hour video produced for members of Scientology. YouTube removed the Cruise video from their site under threat of litigation. The website Gawker did not take down their copy of the Tom Cruise video, and other sites have posted the entire video. Lawyers for the Church of Scientology wrote to Gawker requesting the removal of the video, but Nick Denton of Gawker stated: "It's newsworthy and we will not be removing it." Project Chanology was formulated by users of the English-speaking imageboards 711chan.org and 4chan, the associated partyvan.info wiki, and several Internet Relay Chat channels, all part of a group collectively known as Anonymous, on January 16, 2008, after the Church of Scientology issued a copyright violation claim against YouTube for hosting material from the Cruise video. The effort against Scientology has also been referred to by group members as "Operation Chanology". A webpage called "Project Chanology", part of a larger wiki, is maintained by Anonymous and chronicles planned, ongoing and completed actions by project participants. The website includes a list of suggested guerrilla tactics to use against the Church of Scientology. Members use other websites as well to coordinate action, including Encyclopedia Dramatica and the social networking site Facebook, where two groups associated with the movement had 3,500 members as of February 4, 2008. A member of Anonymous told the Los Angeles Times that, as of February 4, 2008, the group consisted of "a loose confederation of about 9,000 people" who post anonymously on the Internet. A security analyst told The Age that the number of people participating anonymously in Project Chanology could number in the thousands: "You can't pin it on a person or a group of people. You've thousands of people engaged to do anything they can against Scientology." Members of Project Chanology say their main goal is "to enlighten the Church of Scientology (CoS) by any means necessary." Their website states: "This will be a game of mental warfare. It will require our talkers, not our hackers. It will require our dedicated Anon across the world to do their part." Project Chanology's stated goals include the complete removal of the Church of Scientology's presence from the Internet and to "save people from Scientology by reversing the brainwashing". Project Chanology participants plan to join the Church of Scientology posing as interested members in order to infiltrate the organization. Andrea Seabrook of National Public Radio's All Things Considered reported Anonymous was previously known for "technologically sophisticated pranks" such as spamming chat rooms online and "ordering dozens of pizzas for people they don't like". Ryan Singel of Wired appeared on the program on January 27, 2008, and told Seabrook that members of Anonymous were motivated by "the tactics the Church of Scientology uses to control information about itself" rather than the "controversial nature of Scientology itself". Activities Project Chanology began its campaign by organizing and delivering a series of denial-of-service attacks against Scientology websites and flooding Scientology centers with prank calls and black faxes. The group was successful in taking down local and global Scientology websites intermittently from January 18, 2008, until at least January 25, 2008. Anonymous had early success rendering major Scientology websites inaccessible and leaking documents allegedly stolen from Scientology computers. This resulted in a large amount of coverage on social bookmarking websites. The denial-of-service attacks on Scientology.org flooded the site with 220 megabits of traffic, a mid-range attack. Speaking with SCMagazineUS.com, a security strategist for Top Layer Networks, Ken Pappas said that he thought that botnets were involved in the Anonymous operation: "There are circles out there where you could take ownership of the bot machines that are already owned and launch a simultaneous attack against [something] like the church from 50,000 PCs, all at the same time". In response to the attacks, on January 21, 2008, the Scientology.org site was moved to Prolexic Technologies, a company specializing in safeguarding web sites from denial-of-service attacks. Attacks against the site increased, and CNET News reported that "a major assault" took place at 6 p.m. EST on January 24, 2008. Anonymous escalated the attack on Scientology on January 25, 2008, and on January 25, 2008, the Church of Scientology's official website remained inaccessible. On January 21, 2008, Anonymous announced its goals and intentions via a video posted to YouTube entitled "Message to Scientology", and a press release declaring "War on Scientology", against both the Church of Scientology and the Religious Technology Center. In the press release, the group stated that the attacks against the Church of Scientology would continue in order to protect freedom of speech and to end what they characterized as the financial exploitation of church members. The Tom Cruise video is referred to specifically at the start of the Anonymous YouTube video posting, and is characterized as a "propaganda video". The video utilizes a synthesized voice and shows floating cloud images using a time lapse method as the speaker addresses the leaders of Scientology directly: "We shall proceed to expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form [...]" The video goes on to state: "We recognize you as serious opponents, and do not expect our campaign to be completed in a short time frame. However, you will not prevail forever against the angry masses of the body politic. Your choice of methods, your hypocrisy, and the general artlessness of your organization have sounded its death knell. You have nowhere to hide because we are everywhere [...] We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us." By January 25, 2008, only four days after its release, the video had been viewed 800,000 times, and by February 8, 2008, had been viewed over 2 million times. Author Warren Ellis called the video "creepy in and of itself" and a "manifesto, declaration of war, sharp political film". In a different video posted to YouTube, Anonymous addresses news organizations covering the conflict and criticizes media reporting of the incident. In the video, Anonymous criticizes the media specifically for not mentioning objections by the group to certain controversial aspects of the history of the Church of Scientology, and cited past incidents including the death of Lisa McPherson: "We find it interesting that you did not mention the other objections in your news reporting. The stifling and punishment of dissent within the totalitarian organization of Scientology. The numerous, alleged human rights violations. Such as the treatment and events that led to the deaths of victims of the cult such as Lisa McPherson." Lisa McPherson was a Scientologist who died in 1995 under controversial circumstances. The Church of Scientology was held responsible and initially faced felony charges in her death. The charges were later dropped and a civil suit brought by McPherson's family was settled in 2004. This second video was removed on January 25, 2008, YouTube citing a "terms of use violation". Organizers of the February 10, 2008, Project Chanology protests against the Church of Scientology told the St. Petersburg Times the event was timed to coincide with the birthday of Lisa McPherson. In addition to DDoS attacks against Church of Scientology websites, Anonymous also organized a campaign on one of their websites to "begin bumping Digg", referring to an attempt to drive up Scientology-related links on the website Digg.com. On January 25, 2008, eight of the top ten stories on Digg.com were about either Scientology-related controversies or Anonymous and attempts to expose Scientology. Digg CEO Jay Adelson told PC World that Anonymous had not manipulated the site's algorithm system to prevent artificial poll results, stating: "They must have done a very good job of bringing in a diverse set of interests ... It just happened to hit a nerve that the Digg community was interested in." Adelson said two other instances which similarly have dominated the Digg main page in the past were the Virginia Tech Massacre in the aftermath of the incident and the "7/7" London bombings in 2005. Adelson commented on the popularity of Scientology theme within the Digg community: "In the history of Digg, there's no question that the topic of Scientology has been of great interest to the community ... I can't explain why." On January 29, 2008, Jason Lee Miller of WebProNews reported that a Google bomb technique had been used to make the Scientology.org main website the first result in a Google search for "dangerous cult". Miller wrote that Anonymous was behind the Google bomb, and that they had also tried to bump Scientology up as the first result in Google searches for "brainwashing cult", and to make the Xenu.net website first result in searches for "scientology". Rob Garner of MediaPost Publications wrote: "The Church of Scientology continues to be the target of a group called Anonymous, which is using Google bombs and YouTube as its tools of choice." In a February 4, 2008, article, Scientology spokeswoman Karin Pouw told the Los Angeles Times that Church of Scientology's websites "have been and are online." Danny McPherson, chief research officer at Arbor Networks, claimed 500 denial-of-service attacks had been observed on the Scientology site in the week prior to February 4, some of which were strong enough to bring the website down. Calling Anonymous a "motley crew of internet troublemakers", Wired blogger Ryan Singel said that, while attempting to bypass the Prolexic servers protecting the Church of Scientology website, users of a misconfigured DDoS tool inadvertently and briefly had targeted the Etty Hillesum Lyceum, a Dutch secondary school in Deventer. Another hacking group associated with the project, calling themselves the "g00ns", mistakenly targeted a 59-year-old man from Stockton, California. They posted his home telephone number, address and his wife's Social Security number online for other people to target. They believed that he was behind counter-attacks against Project Chanology-related websites by the Regime, a counter-hack group who crashed one of the Project Chanology planning websites. The group allegedly attempted to gain personal information on people involved in Project Chanology to turn that information over to the Church of Scientology. After discovering they had wrongly targeted the couple, one of the members of the g00ns group called and apologized. A new video entitled "Call to Action" appeared on YouTube on January 28, 2008, calling for protests outside Church of Scientology centers on February 10, 2008. As with the previous videos, the two-minute video used a synthesized computer voice and featured stock footage of clouds and sky. The video was accompanied by a text transcript with British English spelling. The video denied that the group was composed of "super hackers", stating: "Contrary to the assumptions of the media, Anonymous is not 'a group of super hackers.' ... Anonymous is everyone and everywhere. We have no leaders, no single entity directing us." The video said that Project Chanology participants include "individuals from all walks of life ... united by an awareness that someone must do the right thing." Specific controversies involving the CoS were cited in the video as the explanation for actions by Anonymous. In an email to CNET News, Anonymous stated that coordinated activities were planned for February 10, 2008, in many major cities around the world. Anonymous hoped to use "real world" protests to rally public opinion to their cause. According to the Associated Press, the protests were meant to draw attention to what the group refers to as a "vast money-making scheme under the guise of 'religion'". By January 30, 2008, 170 protests had been planned outside Church of Scientology centers worldwide. A video posted to YouTube called "Code of Conduct" outlined twenty-two rules to follow when protesting, and urged protestors to remain peaceful. On February 2, 2008, 150 people gathered outside a Church of Scientology center in Orlando, Florida to protest the organization's practices. Small protests were also held in Santa Barbara, California (during the Santa Barbara International Film Festival), and Manchester, England. Protesters in Orlando carried signs with messages "Knowledge is Free" and "Honk if you hate Scientology". According to WKMG-TV, the protesters called the Church of Scientology a "dangerous cult" and said the organization is responsible for crimes and deaths. The Orlando Sentinel reported that the protest was "part of a worldwide campaign by a group that calls itself Anonymous", and an unnamed organizer who spoke to the paper stated that the group was protesting "a gross violation of the right to see free church material", referring to the Tom Cruise video that was pulled from YouTube. Protesters at the demonstration wore masks, and said they were attempting to inform the public about what they believed to be "restrictions of free speech and profiteering through pyramid schemes" by the Church of Scientology. They asserted they were not protesting the doctrine of Scientology, but rather alleged actions of individual Scientologists. One protester stated that he had created a Facebook group to organize the protest, explaining "It started online with a group called Anonymous ... They got upset with Scientology because the church hides important documents that are supposed to be released to the public." On February 10, 2008, about 7,000 people protested in at least 100 cities worldwide. Within 24 hours of the first protest, a search for "Scientology" and "protest" on Google Blog Search returned more than 4,000 results and more than 2,000 pictures on the image-sharing site Flickr. Cities with turnouts of one hundred or more protesters included Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney, in Australia; Toronto in Canada; London in England; Dublin, Ireland; and Austin, Dallas, Boston, Clearwater, and New York City in the United States. 150 people protested at the Church of Scientology building in Sydney, Australia, carrying signs and wearing costumes. Participants were masked to maintain their anonymity and avoid possible retaliation from the Church of Scientology. Protesters chanted "Church on the left, cult on the right" (in reference to the Church that was beside the Church of Scientology building), "Religion is free" and "We want Xenu". Scientology staff locked down the building and set up a camera to record the event. After the protest in Sydney, a surge in online Internet traffic due to individuals attempting to view pictures from the protest crashed hundreds of websites when a server was overloaded. The Sydney protest was one of the first worldwide, and after the first images of the protest went online a surge in traffic drove the hosting company's bandwidth usage up by 900 percent. The hosting company Digitalis temporarily prevented access to hundreds of its clients' sites, and customer support representative Denis Kukic said the surge was unexpected: "We had no advance notice that there was going to be a sudden surge of traffic or that there would be more than 100 times the average traffic that this customer's website normally consumes." Masked protesters in Seattle, Washington, United States congregated in front of the Church of Scientology of Washington. Protesters were quoted as saying, "We believe in total freedom of belief. We have nothing against the people of Scientology, however the Church of Scientology has committed crimes. They're vehemently anti-opposition. Anyone who opposes them, must go down." A protester in Santa Barbara emphasized that their opposition was against the organization, not the belief system, and that they supported the Scientology split-off group known as the Free Zone. Protesters turned out in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania despite unusually cold weather. The masked crowd consisted mainly of college students, including some who had travelled from as far as Penn State University. Protesters in Boston, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Toronto, Edinburgh, London, and other cities worldwide, wore Guy Fawkes masks modeled after the 2005 film V for Vendetta. Guy Fawkes was an English Catholic executed for a 1605 attempt to destroy the House of Lords. In V for Vendetta, a rebel against a near-future fascist regime uses the mask in his public appearances and distributes many of its copies to the population to enable mass protests. The Boston Globe characterized usage of the Guy Fawkes masks as "an allusion to the British insurgent and a film depicting an antigovernment movement". Aaron Tavena of College Times wrote that the Guy Fawkes masks provided a "dramatic effect" to the protests, and Nick Jamison of The Retriever Weekly wrote: "During the February 10 protests, Anonymous was informative, Anonymous was peaceful, and Anonymous was effective. After seeing all of the pictures from the 10th with everyone in disguise, many sporting Guy Fawkes masks, I wanted to be a part of that." Scott Stewart of University of Nebraska at Omaha's The Gateway wrote: "Many participants sported Guy Fawkes masks to draw attention both to their identity as Anonymous and the Church of Scientology's abuse of litigation and coercion to suppress anti-Scientology viewpoints." The Internet meme Rickroll, where a link is given to a seemingly relevant website only to be directed to a music video of singer Rick Astley's pop single "Never Gonna Give You Up", has been used as a theme in the protests against Scientology. At February 10 protests in New York, Washington, D.C., London and Seattle, protesters played the song through boomboxes and shouted the phrase "Never gonna let you down!", in what The Guardian called "a live rick-rolling of the Church of Scientology". In response to a website created by Scientologists showing an anti-Anonymous video, Project Chanology participants created a website with a similar domain name with a video displaying the music video to "Never Gonna Give You Up". In a March 2008 interview, Astley said that he found the rickrolling of Scientology to be "hilarious"; he also said that he will not try to capitalize on the rickroll phenomenon with a new recording or remix of his own, but that he'd be happy to have other artists remix it. Following the protests, there were reports that YouTube was freezing the view counts on videos criticizing Scientology, including clips from the protests themselves, potentially preventing them from being displayed on YouTube's front page. Similarly, the original "Message to Scientology" video had received nearly 2.5 million views and yet failed to be featured as a "most-watched". The net neutrality activist group movieLOL strongly criticized YouTube for a "display of the decay of internet freedom". YouTube's official response stated: "There was an issue with video view counts not increasing that has now been resolved. The correct number of views should be displayed in the next 24 hours. Thanks for your patience." Jonathan Holmes, the presenter of the Australian watchdog program Media Watch, reported on two cases of media censorship of the protests. News.com.au pixelated a poster carried by a protester which was revealed, through a Today Tonight segment, to have displayed the word "CULT". The Advertiser erased Tom Cruise's name from a protest placard, rendering the placard's message meaningless, without informing its readers. The Advertiser's editor, Melvin Mansell, stated that the alteration had "slipped by" and that he was opposed to the publication of doctored photographs. According to NBC11, a woman from Anonymous contacted them and stated that protests were planned against Scientology each month through May 2008; and that a large protest was planned for two days after Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's birthday, March 15. Carlos Moncada of The Tampa Tribune reported that an "open letter to the press from Anonymous" was sent out via e-mail, and states that a protest is planned for March 15, 2008. The e-mail refers to the Ides of March: "We, too, wish to celebrate this event, albeit in our own special way ... Beware the Ides of March, Church of Scientology!" The March protests were titled "Operation Party Hard". Protests began in Australia on March 15, 2008, and were followed by protests in major cities worldwide including Brussels, London, Seattle, Phoenix, Manchester, and Los Angeles. Approximately 7,000 to 8,000 people protested in about 100 cities worldwide. The protests took place in locations in Australia, Europe, Canada, and the United States. Approximately 200 masked protesters gathered outside the Church of Scientology's headquarters in Adelaide, Australia. An anonymous spokesman told News.com.au that Scientology should lose its tax-exempt status. About 150 protesters came to the Yonge Street headquarters of Scientology in Toronto, Canada; sang "Happy Birthday" and chanted "we want cake". During the Los Angeles protests, a plane flew overhead trailing a large sign that read "Honk if you think Scientology is a cult." 150 protesters demonstrated in Clearwater, Florida, and a local organizer for Anonymous told The Tampa Tribune, "We feel that we have an obligation to educate the public about the things that have gone on and hopefully make the Church of Scientology understand that they have to change." Two people were arrested by DeKalb County, Georgia, police for using megaphones while stepping onto the surrounding street opposite of the church during a protest. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that five protesters were cited for "causing 'hazardous' or 'offensive' conditions", and that eight motorists were pulled over by police and ticketed for excessive use of horns, after they honked while driving past the protest. The American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International investigated the reaction of the police at the Atlanta protest. In contrast, a Los Angeles Police Department officer at the Los Angeles protest was widely praised after a video was uploaded to YouTube showing him acknowledging the demonstrators' right to protest and encouraging them to stay on the sidewalk for their own safety. Anonymous held its third international protest against Scientology on April 12, 2008. Named "Operation Reconnect", the protest focused on increasing awareness of the Church of Scientology's disconnection policy. Protesters around the world gathered in over 50 cities, including Toronto, London, Sydney, and Berlin. A subsequent international protest was planned for May 10, 2008, according to The University Register it was titled "Operation Battletoad Earth", and an additional protest was planned for June 2008. According to John DeSio of The Village Voice, the May 10, 2008 protests were referred to as "Operation : Fair Game : Stop", and National Nine News has reported that the full title of the May 10 protests is "Battletoad Earth: Operation Fairgame Stop". The May 10 date was chosen as May 9 is the anniversary of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. Over 400 people were present at the May 10, 2008, protests in cities in Australia. Wen Hsing, a member of Anonymous, commented to scopical.com.au about the Church of Scientology's denial of its "fair game" policy: "Even if the name 'fair game' is not in use, the Church of Scientology is an organization that continues to practice a vicious policy of retribution against perceived enemies, and it teaches its members that extreme measures are morally justified if they aid the Church." On May 10, a teenager who went to the protests in front of the Queen Victoria Street Church of Scientology in London was issued a court summons after being asked to take down a sign that read "Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult". Posting anonymously on a forum, the teenager stated "Within five minutes of arriving ... I was told by a member of the police that I was not allowed to use 'that word'". He said that the police told him he had 15 minutes to take down the sign. The teenager did not, citing a 1984 High Court ruling by Mr Justice Latey in which he described the Church of Scientology as a "cult" that was "corrupt, sinister and dangerous". The sign was then confiscated. Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, a human rights group, said that, "They will be banning words like 'war' and 'tax' from placards and demonstrations next. This is just barmy". On May 23, 2008, the legal action against the boy was dropped. A Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) spokesman said: "In consultation with the City of London Police, we were asked whether the sign was abusive or insulting. Our advice is that it is not abusive or insulting and there is no offensiveness (as opposed to criticism), neither in the idea expressed nor in the mode of expression." Anonymous also held a protest in Budapest, Hungary, at the same time and location as a program of the local Scientology church. A protest was held June 14, 2008 titled "Sea Arrrgh" (a satirical reference to the Church of Scientology's Sea Org). Protesters dressed up as pirates. According to Macquarie National News, members of Anonymous highlighted the controversial practices of the Sea Org, including what the protesters believe to be forced contracts where Scientologists work below a livable wage, that female Sea Org members who become pregnant are pressured to have abortions, and that children of families in the organization are made to perform difficult physical labor. An international protest held on July 12, 2008, titled: "Spy vs. Sci" highlighted the Church of Scientology's Office of Special Affairs. A press release by the group posed the question: "Why does something that describes itself as a religion need an intelligence agency that aggressively persecutes critics?" The group posted a video in early August 2008 calling for renewed activity in their protest efforts, and planned a subsequent international protest for August 16, 2008. About 35 protesters gathered twice in September 2008 during the first preview and premiere of Arthur Miller's play All My Sons. They encouraged Scientologist Katie Holmes, wife of Tom Cruise, to leave the Church. The most recent international organized protest was held October 18, 2008. Members of Anonymous dressed as zombies, and highlighted what they described as questionable deaths and suicides of Scientologists. The film Valkyrie, starring and produced by Tom Cruise, premiered in New York City on December 17. Entertainment reporter Roger Friedman noted that it was held "in the private screening room at the Time Warner Center. Not the Ziegfield [sic] or Loews Lincoln Square, where most premieres are held in public." The venue was chosen in part to minimize the exposure to Scientology protestors gathered at the Time Warner Center. There were also Scientology protests at the European premiere in Berlin, where one protester got his V for Vendetta mask autographed by Tom Cruise. Chanology participants shared the limelight with a person in a bunny suit protesting against the hero worship of Claus von Stauffenberg. On January 8, 2009, an 18-year-old male member of Anonymous ran into the New York Scientology building shirtless and covered with Vaseline, pubic hair, and toenail clippings. He then proceeded to toss books around and smear the mixture on objects in the building. The man, identified by police as Mahoud Samed Almahadin, was charged with burglary, criminal mischief, and aggravated harassment as hate crimes. Two weeks later, 21-year-old film student and Anonymous member Jacob Speregen was charged with aggravated harassment and criminal mischief as hate crimes after he filmed Almahadin carrying out his prank. According to his mother and the video, Speregen was filming the event from behind the barricade. Scientology critics Mark Bunker and Jason Beghe disagreed with the individual's actions. Anonymous organized a 12th global protest against Scientology for January 10, 2009, to coincide with the Chanology movement's first anniversary. On February 10, 2009, Anonymous released a statement: "Scientology operatives still continue to paint Anonymous in a negative light as a means of distracting attention from Scientology operations and attempting to discredit those who bring truth to the issues at hand. It just isn’t working." The group claimed credit for leaks of internal Scientology documents that appeared on the website WikiLeaks, and announced further global protests for subsequent weekends in February 2009. Members of Anonymous continued to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Chanology movement during February 2009, with protests held in locations including Hemet, California. On March 3, 2009, the Board of Supervisors in Riverside County, California, voted to approve an ordinance which restricts residential picketing there to 30 ft (9.1 m) or further from an individual's residence. The ordinance was originally introduced by Supervisor Jeff Stone, board chairman, in November 2008, and went through multiple changes. Critics of the ordinance stated that Stone proposed the measure due to favor for Scientology, which has its Hemet compound located in Riverside County. "The whole ordinance is tainted. The reasons behind it are tainted," said county resident Lirra Bishop. Stone stated the measure was intended for all residents of the county, though he cited protests at Scientology's Gold Base facility which houses residences and Scientology's Golden Era Productions as an example of why the ordinance is needed. Protesters at Gold Base have included members of Anonymous, and Scientology officials claimed they were "threatened with violence". Protesters told the Board of Supervisors that due to the lack of sidewalk near Gold Base, the anti-picketing ordinance would severely hamper the ability to protest outside the Scientology compound. After stating on October 17, 2008, that he would plead guilty to involvement in the January 2008 DDoS attacks against Church of Scientology websites, an 18-year-old self-described member of Anonymous entered a guilty plea related to hacking charges in May 2009. A release from the US Justice Department said that the individual, a resident of New Jersey, "participated in the attack because he considered himself a member of an underground group called 'Anonymous'". Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said that the Church of Scientology had cooperated in the investigation. The individual faced a sentencing scheduled for August 2009. In May 2009, members of Anonymous told WSMV-TV that they were bullied by off-duty security guards while protesting at a Scientology event in April in Nashville, Tennessee. According to WSMV-TV, a protester stated he was assaulted by three Scientology security guards while on public property, 400 yd (370 m) away from the Scientology building. The Church of Scientology had previously informed the security guards that the protesters were "dangerous people". A protester was issued three citations by the Scientology security guards, but these were all dismissed by the district attorney. On May 8, 2009, WSMV-TV reported that "laws appear to have been broken" in the manner in which the Scientology security guards handled the protesters. The Scientology security guards were not clearly identified as off-duty police officers, and permits for the Scientology event attended by the Anonymous protesters were for the wrong day. "The armed people from the other county are not identified police officers. You're looking for a problem", said John M. L. Brown, a Fraternal Order of Police attorney. On November 13, 2009, Independent Australian Senator Nick Xenophon used parliamentary privilege to accuse the Church of Scientology of being a criminal organization. A woman who stated she was a member of Anonymous told KNTV that the group has shifted strategy to activities which fight Scientology but are not deemed illegal by the United States government, including an attempt to get the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the Church of Scientology's 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. Another woman from Anonymous told Newsweek that the group plans to accomplish this through a lobbying campaign. United States tax authorities removed the Church of Scientology's tax-exemption status in 1967, stating that the organization's auditing techniques served as a for-profit operation for L. Ron Hubbard. In 1984, the United States Tax Court ruled that the Church of Scientology was guilty of "manufacturing and falsifying records to present to the IRS, burglarizing IRS offices and stealing government documents, and subverting government processes for unlawful purposes." The Church of Scientology's tax-exempt status in the United States was reinstated in 1993. A member of Anonymous calling herself "Envie" told Today Tonight that the group has longer-term plans against the Church of Scientology: "We are incredibly determined ... There are those of us who have been talking about plans for the next 12 to 18 months." A member of Anonymous calling herself "Sarah" spoke with Radar magazine about a letter-writing campaign: "We're sending letters to senators and congresspeople requesting that their tax-exempt status be looked at." Church of Scientology response In a January 25, 2008, statement, a spokesman for the Church of Scientology said, "These types of people have got some wrong information about us." In Toronto, a Canadian spokesperson for the Church of Scientology said she didn't "give a damn" if the group Anonymous was responsible for disrupting access to the Scientology site. Church spokeswoman Yvette Shank told Sun Media that she thought the Anonymous members were a "pathetic" group of "computer geeks". On January 26, 2008, CNET News reported that Karin Pouw, public affairs director for the Church of Scientology, did not address their specific request for a comment about the denial-of-service attacks but instead only stated that the Tom Cruise video on YouTube consisted of "pirated and edited" excerpts of Cruise from a 2004 Scientology event. On January 28, 2008, Radar Online reported that the Church of Scientology asked the U.S. Attorney General's office in Los Angeles, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Los Angeles Police Department to start a criminal investigation of possible criminal activity related to the DDoS attacks. Radar also reported that in statements to law enforcement the Church of Scientology emphasized its status as a religious organization in the United States in order to assert that the DDoS attacks can be classed as hate crimes. The day after the Church of Scientology complained to law enforcement about the DDoS attacks, one of the main Project Chanology sites was down, and a message on the site said that their site crashed due to attacks from Scientologists. Lee Sheldon of the Church of Scientology of Orlando and Lee Holzinger of the Church of Scientology of Santa Barbara issued similar statements regarding the February 2, 2008 protests in Florida and California, respectively. Both representatives also expressed concerns regarding the spread of "hate speech." The Church of Scientology released a statement regarding the February 10, 2008 worldwide protests, which was published February 7, 2008 in the St. Petersburg Times. In the statement, the Church of Scientology called the organizers of the protests "cyberterrorists." The statement also referred to the actions of members of Project Chanology as "hate crimes" and "religious bigotry", and in a media release said that the group is guided by Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf; one of the organizers of the protest responded to the latter allegation by stating: "I don't know where they got that from, but I don't think that's true considering that I am a capitalist and a Jew". Pat Harney, spokeswoman for the Church of Scientology in Clearwater, Florida told the St. Petersburg Times: "We are dealing with a worldwide threat ... This is not a light matter." The Church of Scientology posted a YouTube video claiming that Anonymous are "terrorists" and alleging that Anonymous is perpetrating "hate crimes" against the church. The video does not provide any evidence supporting their claims, and the FBI has not named any suspects for several of the threats mentioned. Anonymous has denied involvement in the more severe accusations. The church also released a DVD containing the YouTube video. The DVD called Anonymous a "dangerous" group and accused them of making threats against Scientology. Men claiming to be from the law firm Latham and Watkins delivered the DVD to family members of at least one person who protested. YouTube user "AnonymousFacts", which Radar Online described as an associate of Scientology, displayed the names and personal information of several supposed Anonymous members and accused the group of violent threats and terrorism. YouTube quickly took the video down and suspended the "AnonymousFacts" account. The Church of Scientology sought an injunction and a restraining order to prevent Anonymous from protesting on March 15, 2008, citing threats allegedly made by Anonymous. Both the injunction and the restraining order were denied. On March 31, 2008, Radar Online reported that representatives of law firms delivered legal letters to suspected Anons, often at their homes. The Church filed complaints of trespassing and criminal harassment against Boston organizer Gregg Housh, who was charged with disturbing an assembly of worship, disturbing the peace, and harassment. The District Attorney's office dropped the harassment charge, and Judge Thomas Horgan issued a continuance without finding for the remaining charges. In a May 8, 2008 appearance on CNN, Church of Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis said that Scientology was "dealing with ninety-six death threats, bomb threats, acts of violence, vandalism" from the group Anonymous. CNN's John Roberts responded, stating that the Federal Bureau of Investigation found nothing connecting Anonymous to the Church of Scientology's accusations of violence: "You are leveling these accusations at this group[;] the F.B.I., which is looking into it, says it has found nothing to connect [the] group 'Anonymous' with what you're talking about, or [with] death threats against members of the church[.] The F.B.I. at this point says [...] it has no reason to believe that charges would be leveled against this group." Reaction Andreas Heldal-Lund, founder of the Scientology-critical website and non-profit organization Operation Clambake, released a statement criticizing the digital assault against Scientology. Heldal-Lund commented, "People should be able to have easy access to both sides and make up their own opinions. Freedom of speech means we need to allow all to speak – including those we strongly disagree with. I am of the opinion that the Church of Scientology is a criminal organization and a cult which is designed by its delusional founder to abuse people. I am still committed to fight for their right to speak their opinion." He also stated that "Attacking Scientology like that will just make them play the religious persecution card ... They will use it to defend their own counter actions when they try to shatter criticism and crush critics without mercy." Mark Bunker, an Emmy Award-winning journalist and Scientology critic who runs the website XenuTV.com, posted a video to YouTube and asked Anonymous to tone down their campaign against the Church of Scientology. According to NPR's Morning Edition, Bunker has "become a revered voice to many members of Anonymous", and they refer to him as "Wise Beard Man". Bunker told Newsweek that he was pleased to see a large group of young individuals acting against Scientology, but stated he was also concerned for their safety: "I know the way Scientology works: they're going to get these people in trouble ... I'm very concerned about their safety, and I'm concerned about the Scientologists' safety, too." Bunker stated that he has received 6,000 emails from individuals who say they are part of Anonymous. Bunker attended the February 10, 2008 protest against Scientology in Los Angeles. Tory Christman, a critic of Scientology and former Scientologist from 1969 to 2000, stated she disapproved of illegal tactics but felt encouraged by the new influx of critics of Scientology. Christman told Morning Edition: "It feels like we've been out in this desert, fighting this group one-on-one by ourselves, and all of a sudden this huge army came up with not only tons of people, thousands of people, but better tools..." Scientology critic Arnaldo Lerma told the St. Petersburg Times he was impressed by a video of a protest against Scientology which took place in Orlando, Florida: "I've never seen anything like that before. This is incredible. I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it on a Web cam." In a February 4, 2008 appearance on the G4 television program Attack of the Show!, Mark Ebner, journalist and author of the book Hollywood, Interrupted, and Nick Douglas of Gawker.com commented on Project Chanology. Ebner stated that "Hacking their site is not really the best way to go about taking them (the Church of Scientology) down. Most critics you talk to want the Scientology site to be up there so that people who are interested can see the stupidity they have on the web and at the same time they can go – they are a few keystrokes from getting a thousand other opinions." Nick Douglas explained that the group decided to shift their strategy away from the attacks to Scientology websites: "Anonymous even decided that they were going to stop that attack, that it was a bad idea. It's the usual thing they used to do when they really hadn't had a thought out plan, and here they're realizing they actually have to figure out some real plan against a real enemy." University of Alberta professor Stephen A. Kent weighed in on the issue, and said "I think these disruptions probably are illegal. At the very least, they’re forms of harassment ... We now have three parties involved. Anonymous, Scientology and law enforcement." Kent stated that "The hacker community has been angry at Scientology for (their) attempts to block free speech on the Internet." Reaction to the denial of service attack on the Church of Scientology websites was mixed in message board forums for PC World. Some readers praised the actions of Anonymous, while others commented that the DDoS attacks bring more attention to Scientology. The Economist likened the DDoS attacks used by Project Chanology to "cyberwarfare techniques normally associated with extortionists, spies and terrorists", and referred to Anonymous as "internet activists". Dan Schultz of PBS's MediaShift Idea Lab commented that the movement "is a really fascinating case study of how current technologies and information dissemination via digital media can snowball into something that actually results in real world action". In a follow-up piece, Schultz discussed the tools used by digital media to achieve community impact, including lower barriers to entry and greater efficiencies through the use of information systems. Schultz wrote "For members of Anonymous I'm betting most of these things are already unspoken understandings", and pointed to their use of memes and cited the forums of the website enturbulation.org as an example of the group's ability to collaborate effectively to accomplish goals. In a May 8, 2008, report on the recent actions of Anonymous against Scientology, CNN reporter Kareen Wynter commented: "Legal experts say the church may be facing its biggest challenge yet – trying to protect its image, in a loosely policed medium seen by millions of people. In a July 2008 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Alan Moore had this to say about the use of the Guy Fawkes motif, adopted from his comic V for Vendetta: "I was also quite heartened the other day when watching the news to see that there were demonstrations outside the Scientology headquarters over here, and that they suddenly flashed to a clip showing all these demonstrators wearing V for Vendetta [Guy Fawkes] masks. That pleased me. That gave me a warm little glow." See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroyuki_Nishimura] | [TOKENS: 1177] |
Contents Hiroyuki Nishimura Hiroyuki Nishimura (西村 博之, Nishimura Hiroyuki; born 16 November 1976) is a Japanese internet entrepreneur. He founded the message board 2channel, and is an administrator of 4chan. He is also a self-help author and TV personality.: PT38 He is often known by his given name, hiroyuki (ひろゆき), which he uses, rendered intentionally in lowercase,[note 1] both as a pen name[biblio 1] and as a username. Until February 2013, he was a director of, and advisor to, Niwango, operator of the video-sharing service niconico. Christopher Poole, the founder of 4chan, formally announced on 21 September 2015, that he had sold the website to Nishimura. After a dispute with 2channel's hosting provider, Nishimura no longer administrates 2channel, but instead operates a competitor to it, 2ch.sc. Career Nishimura was born in Sagamihara, Kanagawa, but raised in Tokyo.[biblio 2][note 2] He founded Tokyo Access LP in 1998.[biblio 3][note 3] In May 1999, he opened 2channel while he was studying at the University of Central Arkansas. In June 2001, he founded Irregulars and Partners KK with Ichirō Yamamoto, which was involved in 2channel's management, but later left. He graduated with a degree in psychology from Chuo University in 2000.[biblio 2][note 2] In January 2007, Nishimura was an advisor to Skip-Up KK, CEO of Tokyo Plus KK, co-founder of Future Search Brazil (未来検索ブラジル) KK, and a director of Niwango, the company that launched Nico Nico Douga. He left his role at Niwango in February 2013. During 2008, 2ch generated an annual revenue upwards of ¥100 million for Nishimura. The site was also run by 300 "volunteer administrators" who received no pay. Nishimura justified this with the comment, "I don't think that's all that different from some dude who opens a convenience store in front of a train station. They can make a million yen a day." In August 2013, an accidental leak placed the credit card details of thousands of 2channel users into the public domain, and this event resulted in a series of lawsuits against the website. Around the same time, the anti-matome movement took place throughout 2channel, a controversial community development involving users protesting against "matome blogs" (まとめブログ) which specialize in summarizing 2channel threads, which were taking away site traffic. On 19 February 2014, Jim Watkins, as chairman of N.T. Technology, Inc., 2channel's domain registrar, seized 2channel's domain. He took full control over the website, relieved Nishimura of all power, and assumed the role of website administrator. Watkins claimed that Nishimura had failed to pay him money owed which led to the seizure as a way to cover Nishimura's debts, while Nishimura claimed that he had in fact paid everything owed and that the domain transfer was an illegal domain hijacking. In response, Nishimura created his own clone of 2channel at 2ch.sc [ja], scraping the contents of the entire 2channel website and updating 2ch.sc as new posts appeared on 2ch.net. In a Q&A session on 4chan shortly after becoming the site's owner, Nishimura claimed that 2channel was stolen by Watkins. In October 2017, Watkins renamed 2channel to 5channel and transferred it to Loki Technology Inc. to avoid legal complications. On 21 September 2015, he bought the website 4chan from Christopher Poole. The amount paid has not been disclosed, but The New York Times has reported that the sale was made possible with funds provided by three Japanese investors. Users on 4chan refer to him commonly as 'hiro' but also by the ethnic slur "gook moot", or the nickname "Jackie 4chan", "Hiroshima Nagasaki," or simply "hiroshimoot". Lawsuits Nishimura has lost a number of libel lawsuits which have led to him being assessed a considerable amount in penalties. In 2008, he told Wired he has no intention of paying, saying, "If the verdict mandates deleting things, I'll do it," but, "I just haven't complied with demands to pay money. Would a cell phone carrier feel responsible when somebody receives a threatening phone call?" Nishimura has filed a number of lawsuits against Jim Watkins in connection with his allegation that 2channel was illegally seized. He has attempted to repossess the domain both through WIPO's Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy and through the Japanese court system. Through the Japan Patent Office, Nishimura owns the trademark "2channel", though the WIPO refused to intervene on his behalf on account of that, suggesting the parties go to court instead as it was not, in its view, a case of "cybersquatting" but rather a "business dispute". Personal life Nishimura is married. As of May 2019, he lives in Paris, to which he moved in 2015. Bibliography Footnotes Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepe_the_Frog] | [TOKENS: 4317] |
Contents Pepe the Frog Pepe the Frog (/ˈpɛpeɪ/ PEP-ay) is a comic character and Internet meme created by cartoonist Matt Furie. Designed as a green anthropomorphic frog with a humanoid body usually wearing a blue t-shirt, Pepe originated in Furie's 2005 webcomic Boy's Club. The character became an Internet meme when his popularity steadily grew across websites such as Myspace, Gaia Online, and 4chan from 2008 onwards; by 2015, he had become one of the most popular memes on 4chan and Tumblr. Different types of Pepe memes include "Sad Frog", "Smug Frog", "Angry Pepe", "Feels Frog", and "You will never..." Frog; the most popular sentences associated to him are "Feels Good Man" (a quote from his original Boy's Club appearance, which became the character's catchphrase) and its opposite, "Feels Bad Man", meant to respectively express joy and sadness. Since 2014, "Rare Pepes" have been posted on the "meme market" as if they were trading cards. Although originally an apolitical character in Furie's works and its original internet popularity, Pepe was appropriated from 2015 onward as a symbol of the alt-right white nationalist movement. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) included Pepe in its hate symbol database in 2016, but said most instances of Pepe were not used in a hate-related context. Since then, Furie has expressed his dismay at Pepe being used as a hate symbol and has sued organizations for doing so; the history of Pepe and Furie's attempt to dissociate the character from the alt-right were covered in the 2020 documentary film Feels Good Man. In 2019, Pepe was used by protesters in the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests; conversely to its western political use, Pepe the Frog's symbolism in Hong Kong is not perceived as being connected with alt-right ideology, and was welcomed by Furie. Origin: Boy's Club "My Pepe philosophy is simple: 'Feels good man.' It is based on the meaning of the word Pepe: 'To go Pepe'. I find complete joy in physically, emotionally, and spiritually serving Pepe and his friends through comics. Each comic is sacred, and the compassion of my readers transcends any differences, the pain, and fear of 'feeling good'." Pepe the Frog was created by American artist and cartoonist Matt Furie in 2005. Its usage as an Internet meme came from his comic Boy's Club #1. The progenitor of Boy's Club was a zine Furie made on Microsoft Paint called Playtime, which included Pepe as a character. He posted his comic in a series of blog posts on Myspace in 2005. In the comic, Pepe is seen urinating in a toilet, having left the door open; when one of his friends asks him why he lowered his pants to urinate, Pepe simply answers: "feels good man" as his rationale. Furie took those posts down when the printed edition was published in 2006. As an internet meme Pepe was used in blog posts on Myspace in 2005 and became an in-joke on Gaia Online. In 2008, the page containing Pepe and the catchphrase was scanned and uploaded to 4chan's /b/ board, which has been described as the meme's "permanent home". The meme took off among 4chan users, who adapted Pepe's face and catchphrase to fit different scenarios and emotions, such as melancholy, anger, and surprise. "Feels bad, man", a sad variant of the frog's "feels good, man" catchphrase, also became associated with Pepe. Color was also added; originally a black-and-white line drawing, Pepe became green with brown lips, sometimes in a blue shirt. "Feels Guy", or "Wojak", originally an unrelated character typically used to express melancholy, was eventually often paired with Pepe in user-made comics or images. The "sad frog" variation entered usage on Tumblr by 2012. That same year, the "Smug Pepe" variant emerged. Versions of the meme appeared on Chinese social media, such as Baidu Tieba, as early as 2014. There, it has been known as shangxin qingwa (傷心青蛙), or "sad frog". In 2014, images of Pepe were shared on social media by celebrities such as Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj. As Pepe became more widespread, 4chan users began referring to particularly creative and unique variants of the meme as "rare Pepes". These images, sometimes as physical paintings, were sold on eBay and posted on Craigslist. 4chan users referred to those who used the meme outside the website as "normies" (or "normalfags"). Users from 4chan, Reddit, and elsewhere attempted to prevent mainstream usage of the meme by "making Pepe as shocking as possible". In 2015, Pepe was #6 on Daily News and Analysis's list of the most important memes and the most retweeted meme on Twitter. The Daily Intelligencer called it Tumblr's "Biggest Meme of 2015". According to Inverse, it was one of the most-reblogged memes on Tumblr in 2015. Use by the alt-right As early as 2015, a number of Pepe variants were created by Internet trolls to associate the character with the alt-right movement. Some of the variants produced by this had Nazi Germany, Ku Klux Klan, or white power skinhead themes. During the 2016 United States presidential election, the meme was connected to Donald Trump's campaign. In October 2015, Trump retweeted a Pepe representation of himself, associated with a video called "You Can't Stump the Trump (Volume 4)". Later in the election, Roger Stone and Donald Trump Jr. posted a parody movie poster of The Expendables on Twitter and Instagram titled "The Deplorables", a play on Hillary Clinton's controversial phrase "basket of deplorables", which included Pepe's face among those of members of the Trump family and other figures popular among the alt-right. Also during the election, various news organizations reported associations of the character with white nationalism and the alt-right. In May 2016, Olivia Nuzzi of The Daily Beast wrote that there was "an actual campaign to reclaim Pepe from normies" and that "turning Pepe into a white nationalist icon" was an explicit goal of some on the alt-right. In August 2016, Clinton denounced the alt-right in a speech. During the speech, a 4chan user who was liveblogging the event on the site audibly shouted "Pepe!" at the request of another user. In September 2016, an article published on Hillary Clinton's campaign website described Pepe as "a symbol associated with white supremacy" and denounced Trump's campaign for its supposed promotion of the meme. In 2020, social scientist Joan Donovan said of the Clinton campaign's decision to describe Pepe as an alt-right symbol, "If it weren't for Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2016 trying to [...] name Pepe as a signifier of the Alt-Right, that kind of recognition probably wouldn't have taken hold [...] In doing so, they showed how much of a newbie they were at what it essentially meant to be online, which in turn created a wave of media attention on which the Alt-Right was ready to coast." In an interview with Esquire, Furie said of Pepe's usage as a hate symbol, "It sucks, but I can't control it more than anyone can control frogs on the Internet". Fantagraphics Books, Furie's publisher, issued a statement condemning the "illegal and repulsive appropriations of the character". The Anti-Defamation League, an American organization opposed to antisemitism, included Pepe in its hate symbol database but wrote that most instances of Pepe were not used in a hate-related context. Writing in Time on October 13, 2016, Furie said that "I understand that it's out of my control, but in the end, Pepe is whatever you say he is, and I, the creator, say that Pepe is love." The next day, the ADL announced that it had partnered with Furie to launch the #SavePepe (or "Save Pepe") campaign, an attempt to associate the symbol with positivity. As part of that campaign, Furie collected hundreds of "positive or peaceful" versions of Pepe to store in an online "Peace Pepe Database of Love". On October 17, 2016, Furie published a satirical take of Pepe's appropriation by the alt-right movement on The Nib. This was his first comic for the character since he ended Boy's Club in 2012. In January 2017, in a response to "pundits" calling on Theresa May to disrupt Trump's relationship with Russia, the Russian Embassy in the United Kingdom tweeted an image of Pepe. White supremacist Richard B. Spencer, during a street interview after Trump's inauguration, was preparing to explain the meaning of a Pepe pin on his jacket when he was punched in the face, with the resulting video itself becoming the source of many memes. On May 6, 2017, on Free Comic Book Day, it was announced that Furie had killed Pepe off in response to the character's continued use as a hate symbol. However, in an interview with Carol Off on her show As It Happens Furie said that despite news of Pepe's death, he will eventually return: "The end is a chance for a new beginning ... I got some plans for Pepe that I can't really discuss, but he's going to rise from the ashes like a phoenix ... in a puff of marijuana smoke." Soon thereafter, Furie announced his intention to "resurrect" Pepe, launching a crowdfunding campaign for a new comic book featuring Pepe. In a July 2017 interview with The Outline, Furie spoke about the comic in which he "killed" Pepe the Frog. He said, "This comic was just kind of my own kind of art therapy and dealing with the fact that Trump got elected and the new twist on Pepe that ensued. I decided to lay him to rest. But really it was just a joke, and a way for me to deal with the weirdness that was happening." In June 2017, a proposed app and Flappy Bird clone called "Pepe Scream" was rejected from the Apple App Store due to its depiction of Pepe the Frog. The app's developer, under the name "MrSnrhms", posted a screenshot of his rejection letter on r/The Donald. The app is available on the Google Play Store. A children's book appropriating the Pepe character, The Adventures of Pepe and Pede, advanced "racist, Islamophobic and hate-filled themes", according to a federal lawsuit Furie filed. The suit was settled out of court in August 2017, with terms including the withdrawal of the book from publication and the profits being donated to the nonprofit Council on American-Islamic Relations. Initially self-published, the book was subsequently published by Post Hill Press. The book's author, a vice-principal with the Denton Independent School District, was reassigned after the publicity. Until September 2018, Social media service Gab used a Pepe-like illustration of a frog (named "Gabby") as its logo. The site is popular with the alt-right. In 2018, Furie succeeded in having images of Pepe removed from The Daily Stormer website. In January 2019, the video game Jesus Strikes Back: Judgment Day was released, which allows players to play as Pepe the Frog, among other figures, and murder various target groups including feminists, minorities, and liberals. In June 2019, Furie received a $15,000 out of court settlement in a copyright infringement case against Infowars and Alex Jones concerning unlicensed use of the image of Pepe the Frog on far-right themed posters. Furie stated that he would continue to "enforce his copyrights aggressively to make sure nobody else is profiting off associating Pepe the Frog with hateful imagery." "Kek", from "kekeke"/"ㅋㅋㅋ", a Korean-language onomatopoeia of laughter used similarly to "LOL", is the Korean equivalent of the English "haha". Since this is often used in StarCraft matches, Blizzard, StarCraft's developers, decided to reference it in World of Warcraft (2004): when a player of the Horde faction types "lol" using the /say messaging command, members of the opposing faction see it as "kek". A common misconception is that "kek" originated as a variation of "lel", itself a variation of "lol". During the 2016 United States presidential election, Kek became associated with alt-right politics. Kek is associated with the occurrence of repeating digits, known as "dubs", "trips", "quads", among other terms, in the sequential codes assigned to posts made on 4chan, as if he had the ability to influence reality through Internet memes. Online message boards such as 4chan first noted a similarity between Kek and Pepe. The phrase is widely used and 4chan users see Kek as the "'god' of memes". The phrase then became associated with the Egyptian deity Kek. "Esoteric Kekism" references the "Esoteric Hitlerism" of writer Savitri Devi. Esoteric Kekism, also called "the Cult of Kek", is a parody religion worshipping Pepe the Frog, which sprang from the similarity of the slang term for laughter, "kek", and the name of the ancient Egyptian frog god of darkness, Kek. This deity, in turn, was associated with Pepe the Frog on internet forums. The Internet meme has its origin on the internet message forum 4chan and other chans, and the board /pol/ in particular. Kek references are closely associated with Trump and the alt-right, and the Kek-Flag was spotted at the 2021 storming of the Capitol. In January 2025, Elon Musk briefly changed his username on X to Kekius Maximus, with a profile image of Pepe in Roman military dress, and sent up the value of the memecoin. Kekistan is a fictional country created by 4chan users that has become a political meme and online movement. The name is derived from "kek" and the suffix "-stan", a common Central Asian country suffix. Since late 2016, the satirical ethnicity of Kekistani has been used by U.S.-based alt-right protesters opposed to what they view as political correctness. These "Kekistanis" decry the supposed "oppression" of their people and troll counterprotesters by waving the "national flag of Kekistan" (modeled after the Nazi war flag, with the red replaced by green, the Iron Cross replaced by the logo for 4chan, and the swastika replaced by a rubric for KEK). The Kekistani flag was prominently displayed at the 2017 Berkeley protests in mid-April, and the Unite the Right rally in August 2017, and was carried by supporters of Donald Trump during the January 6 United States Capitol attack. Self-identified Kekistanis have created a fictional history around the meme, including the invasion and overthrow of other fictional countries such as "Normistan" and "Cuckistan". Kekistanis have also adopted Internet personality Gordon Hurd (in his "Big Man Tyrone" persona) as their president and the 1986 Italo disco record "Shadilay" as a national anthem. The record gained attention from the group in September 2016 because of the name of the group (P.E.P.E.) and art on the record depicting a frog holding a magic wand. A variation of Pepe known as "Groyper" or "Easter Toad" was used as early as 2015, and became popular in 2017. Groyper is depicted as a rotund green, frog-like creature with its chin resting on interlocked fingers. There is some disagreement around the specifics of Groyper: it has been described as a depiction of the Pepe character, a different character from Pepe but of the same species, or a toad. The Groyper meme is the namesake for Groypers, a loose group of white nationalist activists and followers of Nick Fuentes. Use in Hong Kong protests In August 2019, it was reported that various demonstrators at the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests were using Pepe as a "resistance symbol". Hong Kong protestors began to use depictions of Pepe the Frog as a symbol of liberty and resistance against the extradition bill and police brutality in the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests. New images of Pepe the Frog surfaced showing Pepe with an injured eye after a young female first aider had her eye injured by a projectile fired by police; the incident spurred a new protest campaign called "An eye for an eye". A sign with Pepe with an injured eye held by a young nurse with one eye covered gained international media attention. Furie responded in an email with a protester, stating "This is great news! Pepe for the people!". In the Hong Kong context, Pepe the Frog is not perceived as being connected with far-right ideology. Hong Kongers were also generally unaware that Pepe the Frog had been appropriated by the alt-right and white supremacists in the United States. Rare Pepe A rare Pepe or RarePepe is a variation on Pepe the Frog. The related Rare Pepe crypto project, created by various artists worldwide between 2016 and 2018, was based on the meme and traded as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) recorded on the CounterParty platform. A total of 1,774 official cards were released for the project across 36 series. In 2015, a subset of Pepe memes began to be referred to as "rare Pepes", with watermarks such as "RARE PEPE DO NOT SAVE", generally meaning that the artist had not previously posted the meme publicly. In April 2015, a collection of rare Pepe image files was listed on eBay, where it reached a price of $99,166 before being removed from the site. In September 2016, the first rare Pepes were mined as "on-chain collectible assets" on Bitcoin, pre-dating Ethereum-based NFTs. A Telegram chat group dedicated to discussing the Counterparty NFT was created shortly after. By 2017, a community had grown around the digital collectables, spurring developers to build platforms for the purpose of cataloging and exchanging these images, thereby creating the first crypto art market in 2016. On January 13, 2018, a live auction of rare Pepes took place in New York City, including one based on Homer Simpson which sold for $38,500, watched by representatives of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and Sotheby's Institute of Art in the audience. The buyer sold it three years later for $312,000. On October 26, 2021, a rare Pepe, PEPENOPOULOS, sold at a Sotheby's auction for $3.6m USD. This was one of the most expensive sale prices for non-fungible tokens. Among other icons, it was featured on a Fortune magazine cover dedicated to a special report about cryptocurrency. In March 2022, a buyer who spent $537,084 on a rare Pepe filed a lawsuit claiming fraudulent misrepresentation, alleging that only one copy was to be sold whereas 46 copies were subsequently given away, devaluing his investment. Two components, created simultaneously, both support each other to enable interaction and asset exchange among both contributors and market participants: Crypto artists used these resources to publish their work as digital tokens with a fixed circulation and then issued the art to collectors who then sold, traded, or stored their collections. Collectors use the "Rare Pepe Blockchain Trading" channel on the Telegram instant messaging platform to discuss with other collectors. Documentary A 2020 documentary, Feels Good Man, relates the story of Pepe's origins and co-option by the alt-right, and Furie's attempts to regain control over his creation. See also References Further reading |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickrolling] | [TOKENS: 7729] |
Contents Rickrolling Rickrolling[a] is an Internet meme and prank involving the unexpected appearance of the 1987 hit song "Never Gonna Give You Up", performed by English singer Rick Astley, or its music video. The meme is a type of bait and switch, usually using a disguised hyperlink that leads to the music video instead of what was expected. The meme has also extended to using the song's lyrics in unexpected contexts or singing it during public events. After the origin of the meme in 2007 and the height of its popularity in 2008, rickrolling has become a very long-lived meme. Astley has seen his performance career revitalised by the meme's popularity. The meme grew out of a similar bait-and-switch trick called "duckrolling" that was popular on the 4chan website in 2006. Rickrolling originated on 15 May 2007, when 4chan user Shawn Cotter uploaded the "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video to YouTube and linked to it in place of the trailer for the video game Grand Theft Auto IV. It quickly became popular and spread to other Internet sites later that year. The meme gained mainstream attention in 2008 through several events, beginning with a campaign by the hacker group Anonymous to protest the Church of Scientology through rickrolling. Awareness of rickrolling increased after two events in April 2008: YouTube used the meme for its April Fools' Day event, and users of several websites voted for "Never Gonna Give You Up" in a poll for the New York Mets' rally song. The meme inspired videos remixing "Never Gonna Give You Up", including "BarackRoll", which combined the song with footage of Barack Obama. Astley was initially hesitant about using the meme to further his career; he declined to appear at the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards, in which an online vote had named him "Best Act Ever". He accepted the publicity by rickrolling the 2008 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade—seen by millions of television viewers—with a surprise performance of the song on the Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends's float. Use of rickrolling peaked in 2008, but it remained popular. Later perpetrators of the prank included United States Representative Nancy Pelosi in 2009, members of the Oregon Legislative Assembly in 2010, and the Twitter account of the White House in 2011. Anonymous again used rickrolling as a tactic against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in 2015. The rock band Foo Fighters featured surprise appearances by Astley to rickroll audiences in 2017, having previously used the meme to protest the Westboro Baptist Church. The prank was also conducted by sports stadiums, including that of the San Diego Padres in 2019. Rickrolling resurged in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic. By 2021, the official YouTube video of "Never Gonna Give You Up"—one of several uploads used for rickrolling—had been viewed over one billion times. History "Never Gonna Give You Up" is a song written by songwriting trio Stock Aitken Waterman and recorded by English singer Rick Astley. It appeared on his 1987 debut album Whenever You Need Somebody and was released as a single on 27 July of that year. It was a number one hit on several international charts, including the Billboard Hot 100 in the US, the ARIA Charts in Australia, and the UK Singles Chart, becoming the most popular single of the year in the UK. It is a dance-pop song with heavy use of synthesizers, catchy music, and repetitive lyrics: 122 sung in a baritone voice. It begins with a distinctive drum riff and a synthesizer melody, followed by the lines, "We're no strangers to love / You know the rules and so do I". The accompanying music video, Astley's first, was made in a single week, and Astley brought his own outfits. It features 21-year-old Astley performing the song while awkwardly dancing, wearing a trenchcoat and a coiffed hairstyle, alongside backup dancers wearing spandex and a bartender doing backflips. The song faded from popularity, being a common song on the radio for only about a year. It also received disapproval—with the television network VH1 listing it as one of the "50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs"—and its 1980s style fell out of fashion. The song's reputation was influenced by its 1980s-style composition, its unpolished music video, and a perceived incongruity between Astley's youthful appearance and his low-pitched vocals. "Never Gonna Give You Up" was Astley's most successful song; it was one of two, alongside "Together Forever", to reach number one on the Billboard chart. Astley initially retired in 1994, at the age of 27, as he wanted more time with his family. He returned to touring in 2004 to mild success. Internet memes originated in the 1990s, when they mostly involved humorous images. Video-based memes, such as viral videos, became popular in the 2000s as technology improved. Many memes originated on the imageboard website 4chan, which was also the origin of the hacker group Anonymous. On several websites, beginning in the late 1990s, users frequently posted bait-and-switch links that trolled readers by redirecting them to unexpected targets. These links often led to shock sites, which contained disturbing or graphic imagery. Trolling and bait-and-switch humour were popular on 4chan. Internet scholar Lee Knuttila wrote that bait-and-switch humour was a simple, fundamental element of the subculture of 4chan. According to Know Your Meme editor-in-chief Don Caldwell, rickrolling was the first bait-and-switch meme to gain mainstream popularity. Pre-dating the first rickroll, in August 2005, the sitcom It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia featured "Never Gonna Give You Up". In the episode, "Charlie Has Cancer", the character Dennis sings along to the song in his car. Another precursor of rickrolling occurred in 2006, when rural Michigan resident Erik Helwig called in to a local radio sports talk show and, instead of conversing with the DJs, played "Never Gonna Give You Up". Caldwell said there was no confirmation of whether it had inspired the 4chan use of the song, and Helwig said he did not claim to be the "founder" of the meme. YouTuber Harrison Renshaw listed both Helwig and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia as contributors to the popularity of the rickroll. The use of the song for rickrolling originated on 4chan. It was based on an earlier meme on the website known as "duckrolling", which originated in 2006. That year, the site's moderator, Christopher "moot" Poole, implemented a word filter replacing the word egg with duck as a gag. On one thread, where eggroll had become duckroll, an anonymous user posted an edited image of a duck with wheels, calling it a "duckroll".[b] According to video game historian Kate Willært, this image had been created in April 2005 by Gaming-Age Forums user Christian "ferricide" Nutt, inspired by a fellow user of the forums known as Duckroll. It caught on across 4chan, becoming the target of a hyperlink with an otherwise interesting title, with a user clicking through having been stated to be "duckrolled". In March 2007, the first trailer for the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto IV was released onto the Rockstar Games website. Viewership was so high that it crashed Rockstar's site. Several users helped to post mirrors of the video on different sites, but one user on 4chan linked to the "Never Gonna Give You Up" video on YouTube claiming to be the trailer, tricking numerous readers. Under the username cotter548, he uploaded the video, titled "Rickroll'D", on 15 May. The uploader was nineteen-year-old Shawn Cotter, a United States Air Force airman in South Korea; he publicly revealed his identity in an "ask me anything" post on Reddit in 2011, describing himself as "the one who inadvertently became the biggest troll on the internet". In a 2022 interview with Vice Media, he said the reason of using "Never Gonna Give You Up" was because he found an online list about songs that were popular in 1987, the year of his birth; he found the video funny and wanted it to be a meme. Cotter is generally considered the originator of the rickroll. The practice of rickrolling became popular within a few days and replaced duckrolling with links pointing to Astley's video. The term began showing up in Google search data the same month. Rickrolling became popular on YouTube, with videos featuring people lip-syncing to the song or rickrolling public events, as well as mashup videos. Many videos used the phrase, "You've been RickRolled." Participants in the meme were too young to remember the original song. The trend contributed to sales of "Never Gonna Give You Up"—beginning in late December 2007, it received over 1,000 downloads per week, reaching a peak of 2,500 in the week of 9 March 2008. The song was also included in the series Family Guy in 2007. Astley first became aware of rickrolling when he fell for the prank through a series of emails a US-based friend sent him during the early days of the phenomenon. Astley was on vacation and was confused until he called the friend, who explained the meme. The first rickroll to gain mainstream attention, in February 2008, targeted the Church of Scientology, which had been aggressively trying to remove videos critical of the church. The group Anonymous, as part of their Project Chanology to challenge these actions, protested at the Church's various headquarters by chanting the song and playing it on boomboxes. Several YouTube videos documented these events, including one in which the rickroller falsely described Astley as "some dead guy". Members of Anonymous also created a website that mimicked the URL of a Scientologist website denouncing Anonymous, instead playing a rickroll. In March 2008, two employees of the athletics department of Eastern Washington University, Pawl Fisher and Davin Perry, rickrolled a number of games by the collegiate basketball team. These performances had Perry dressing up as Astley from the video and lip-syncing to the music as a prank before the start of the game. Fisher filmed and edited these into a YouTube video that made it appear as a single rickroll interrupting a game. After the video received millions of views, it was covered by local television station KHQ as well as The New York Times. Fisher pranked New York Times reporter Evelyn Nussenbaum by claiming the video was a single, unedited rickroll; the newspaper published a retraction after KHQ reported that this was false. Popular blogs such as Gizmodo, Slashdot, and Boing Boing introduced the meme to larger audiences.: 123 Various Youtube uploads of the music video collectively reached 25 million views by April 2008, one of which, linked from the webpage yougotrickrolled.com, had 7 million views. Internet users also created lists of rickroll URLs, browser plugins that claimed to block rickrolls but actually caused them, and a Wikipedia article about the phenomenon. As potential victims of rickrolling began to suspect links, pranksters began to hide rickrolls within more complex videos, such as edited versions of scenes from popular media.: 122, 126, 135–137 The band Radiohead posted a rickroll claiming to be a download of their new album, In Rainbows, in March 2008. Astley first publicly spoke about rickrolling in a March 2008 interview with The Los Angeles Times, titled "Never Gonna Give You Up, Rick Astley", in which he said: I think it's just one of those odd things where something gets picked up and people run with it. But that is what's brilliant about the Internet....If this had happened around some kind of rock song, with a lyric that really meant something—a Bruce Springsteen [song], "God Bless America", or an anti-something kind of song, I could kind of understand that. But for something as—and I don't mean to belittle it, because I still think it's a great pop song—but it's a pop song, do you know what I mean? It doesn't have any kind of weight behind it, as such. But maybe that's the irony of it. — Rick Astley, The Los Angeles Times, "Never Gonna Give You Up, Rick Astley" Astley also said in the interview that he was not troubled by the phenomenon, stating that he found it "bizarre" and "weird", since he had not performed much lately, but he found the interest funny. The following month, a spokesperson for Astley's record label released a comment which showed that Astley's interest in the phenomenon had faded, stating, "I'm sorry, but he's done talking about Rickrolling". Despite this, the meme revived his career, and he continued to be asked about it years later. Astley overcame his initial annoyance about rickrolling after speaking with his daughter, who thought it was cool and told Astley that the joke was not about him. In a 2008 April Fools' joke, YouTube made all links to videos on the site's home page end up on the "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video. The coordinators of the prank had contacted Astley's record label, Sony BMG,[c] which had made its music available on the website two years earlier; according to label executive Sam Gomez, Astley had liked the idea. YouTube was one of several websites to independently pull such a prank, along with Sports Illustrated and LiveJournal. On that day, the YouTube video received 6.6 million views and 43,000 comments, while the song became the 77th most popular listing on Amazon Music. April Fools' Day strongly contributed to the meme's popularity. The following week, the New York Mets baseball team asked fans on the Internet what song they should use for their seventh-inning rally song for the upcoming season. "Never Gonna Give You Up" received five million write-in votes, driven by websites like YouTube and news aggregators Fark and Digg.: 250 The team considered the online vote hijacked: 250 and replaced it with an audience vote of the six most-voted songs during the first game of the season; the audience booed in response to "Never Gonna Give You Up".: 250 Rickrolling gained further mainstream awareness after the Mets event, with a SurveyUSA poll the same month estimating that at least 18 million US adults had been rickrolled, based on a sample of 959. Google Trends showed that the highest volume of searches about rickrolling occurred that month. By this time, "Never Gonna Give You Up" became one of the biggest viral videos or memes, with many online creators attempting to outdo other rickrolls.: 250 As the meme received mainstream media coverage, some people within the online subculture considered it to be the end of rickrolling; for example, moot was quoted by FOX News as saying that he was "very surprised" at the prank's use by mainstream websites and that he expected the meme to fade soon.: 94 A flash mob performed a rickroll at Liverpool Street Station, London, in April 2008. Another flash mob performed a rickroll in Baltimore the following month, organised by Facebook user Ryan Goff, which received coverage in the Baltimore Sun. Videos adapting the rickroll meme were popular during the 2008 United States presidential election.: 89 An August 2008 YouTube video by Hugh Atkin, titled "BarackRoll", was a mashup consisting of footage of Barack Obama dancing on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, paired with words spoken by Obama spliced to match the lyrics of "Never Gonna Give You Up".: 168 The video was acknowledged by The Ellen DeGeneres Show and by Astley, who called it his favourite use of the meme. Atkin also made a sequel titled, "John McCain Gets BarackRoll'd", using footage of a speech by John McCain, with "BarackRoll" edited onto a screen behind him while he stays silent. According to media scholar Carol Vernallis, the two "BarackRoll" videos reflect the popular conceptions of the two candidates: Obama is portrayed as a skilled singer who will "never give up", and a parallel is drawn between him and Astley as both appealed to both Black and White people, while McCain appears dull in contrast.: 90 "BarackRoll" followed a format of "Never Gonna Give You Up" mashup videos that used the word "roll" in the title to transparently indicate the connection to rickrolling.: 138 A similar video spliced clips from the series Mad Men to match the song. At the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards in November 2008, Astley was nominated for "Best Act Ever" at the MTV Europe Music Awards after the online nomination form was flooded with votes. Despite not being on the original shortlist of nominees, Astley was named the Best Act Ever with one hundred million votes—more than all other votes combined—effectively rickrolling the awards. On 10 October, Astley's website confirmed that an invitation to the awards had been received. On 6 November 2008, just hours before the ceremony were due to air, it was reported that MTV Europe did not want to give Astley the award at the ceremony, wanting instead to present it at a later date. Many fans who voted for Astley felt the awards ceremony failed to acknowledge him as a legitimate artist. Astley chose not to attend the ceremony, instead making a statement saying, "This is the first time I have been nominated for the EMAs and I would like to thank everyone who voted for me". Astley stated in an interview that he felt the award was "daft", but noted that "MTV were thoroughly rickrolled". By November 2008, the "Never Gonna Give You Up" video on YouTube had more than 20 million views, but Astley initially appeared indifferent to the newfound fame and was wary of trying to promote himself using the popularity of the meme. However, he agreed to make an appearance at the 2008 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade because Cartoon Network offered him a considerable payment for his performance and because his friends in America urged him to accept. Astley made a surprise appearance on a float of the Cartoon Newtork show Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. After the puppets singing on the float were cut off by a record scratch, Astley joined to lip-sync the song to the crowd and millions of television viewers, with a puppet saying, "I love rickrolling!": 89 According to design scholar Ursula Murray Husted, viewers unfamiliar with rickrolling would have considered it an ordinary parade appearance before the term "rickroll" was mentioned.: 172 That performance was the largest rickroll to date. It went viral on social media within minutes. The Daily Telegraph wrote that this appearance was "the pinnacle of Rickrolling" and "may have been the most widely-seen Rickroll ever". The Macy's parade made rickrolling more of a mainstream phenomenon and led many 4chan users to lose interest in it, feeling the joke had been exhausted.: 10, 123 It led to a wave of rickrolls outside of the Internet, including on radio and television.: 177–178 Two weeks after the parade,: 89 a user of the message board I Love Music, Grady Gillian, rickrolled other users with a file that appeared to be a leak of the upcoming Animal Collective album Merriweather Post Pavilion until played; viewers responded with both praise and harassment.: 89–90 When the United States Congress launched its YouTube account in January 2009, it posted a video of cats in the office of Representative Nancy Pelosi, which turned into a rickroll. The video was intended to promote the channel and was part of Pelosi's targeting of Internet users. Also in 2009, students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology conducted a rickroll by painting sheet music on a university building. Rickrolling continued to be popular after its peak in 2008, lasting much longer than other memes.: 75–76 In 2009, Astley wrote about 4chan founder moot for Time magazine's annual Time 100 issue, thanking him for the rickrolling phenomenon. Moot also acknowledged rickrolling in a 2010 TED Talk, saying it had revived interest in Astley. Although "Never Gonna Give You Up" had received hundreds of millions of views on YouTube as a result of the meme, one of the song's composers, Pete Waterman, said in April 2009 that he had received only £11 (equivalent to £16 in 2023). According to The Register, as of 2010[update], Astley had directly received only US$12 ($17 in 2025) in performance royalties from YouTube; Astley did not compose the song and received only a performer's share of the sound recording copyright. Sorry to hear that. Fiscal policy is important, but can be dry sometimes. here's something more fun: https://tinyurl.com/y8ufsnp #WHChat 27 July 2011 This WH correspondence briefing isn't nearly as entertaining as yesterday's. #TCOT #WHchat 27 July 2011 After the cultural saturation of rickrolling, it continued to be recognised positively.: 178–179 University of Oregon-based a cappella group On The Rocks posted a video of themselves singing "Never Gonna Give You Up" on the New York City Subway in March 2010; the video went viral and brought fame to the group. The same month, members of the Oregon state legislature, spearheaded by Jefferson Smith of the legislature's lower house, slipped snippets of the song's lyrics into speeches they gave on the floor of the legislature in 2011. Smith stitched together a video compilation of these snippets into the full song, posted on April Fools' Day. On 27 July 2011, the Twitter account of the White House, during a chat session run by staffer Brian Deese, posted a rickroll link in response to a user who had criticised the tone of the session's posts. The White House's rickroll contributed to the popularity of the meme.: 122 In 2015, members of Anonymous began rickrolling the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria by hacking into websites used to promote the group: 290 and spamming related hashtags.: 197 Reporter James Geddes wrote, "Until now, Rickrolling has generally been used as a harmless internet prank, but now it's being used in a war that has much bigger stakes," while Corey Charlton wrote that the prank was "giving ISIS a taste of its own medicine", as the group used social media tactics to unexpectedly spread its propaganda.: 290 Rickrolls continued to occur years after the meme's popularity had declined. Apple rickrolled consumers in 2015 by showing them the song's lyrics when they viewed the Apple Watch help page. At the 2016 Republican National Convention, Melania Trump, campaigning for her husband Donald Trump, said, "He will never, ever give up and ... never, ever let you down,": 143 which many viewers considered a rickroll. Speaking with The New Yorker, Astley said he found it plausible that the rickroll was intentional. Australia's ABC News later called this "the biggest political rickroll". The rock band Foo Fighters first performed a rickroll at an August 2015 concert in Kansas City, Missouri, using a truck to counterprotest a demonstration by the homophobic group Westboro Baptist Church.: 122 This mirrored the tactic used by Anonymous against Scientology. The Foo Fighters brought Astley on stage to rickroll the audience of a 2017 concert at the Summer Sonic Festival in Tokyo, mashing up "Never Gonna Give You Up" with "Smells Like Teen Spirit". As Astley recounted in his memoir, this performance had been unplanned as Astley, also performing at the festival, had been watching the Foo Fighters from backstage before being invited to join them. The Foo Fighters brought Astley for another rickroll in a concert in London the same year. In April 2018, the creators of the television drama Westworld, participating in a Reddit discussion, released a video that purported to be a spoiler guide for the entire second season in advance, but instead featured lead actress Evan Rachel Wood singing "Never Gonna Give You Up". While responses from Reddit users were mostly positive, the website Polygon wrote, "Westworld has finally killed the Rickroll". In the post-credits scene of Walt Disney Animation Studios' 2018 sequel film Ralph Breaks the Internet, a fake sneak peek of Frozen II suddenly switches to Ralph singing "Never Gonna Give You Up" and replicating Astley's dance from the original music video. Rickrolls also became popular at sports games. On 25 August 2019, the Boston Red Sox and the San Diego Padres played a Major League Baseball game at the Padres' stadium. During a mid-inning break, the Padres' scoreboard began to play "Sweet Caroline"—a tradition at Red Sox home games—but as the song approached the chorus, the videoboard suddenly switched to "Never Gonna Give You Up". On 13 October 2019, during the Sunday night NFL game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Los Angeles Chargers at the Chargers' stadium, the announcers played the beginning of the Styx song "Renegade", a standard at the Steelers' stadium, then switched to "Never Gonna Give You Up". Rickrolling saw a significant resurgence online in the 2020s, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Replying to a Reddit post by Astley in June 2020, a user, u/theMalleableDuck, claimed to have met Astley backstage when they were 12 years old, but instead posted a link to the song. Astley replied with a clapping emoji, implying that he had been tricked into clicking the link. The thread became the most upvoted post of 2020 on Reddit. In July 2021, the YouTube video for "Never Gonna Give You Up" reached 1 billion views, becoming the fourth 1980s song to do so; this had included 2.3 million views on the preceding April Fools' Day. Astley responded in a Twitter video, "That is mind-blowing. The world is a wonderful and beautiful place, and I am very lucky." He also celebrated the event by selling signed copies of the song on vinyl, which quickly sold out. In a 2021 episode of the sitcom Ted Lasso, "No Weddings and a Funeral", the character Rebecca prepares to give a eulogy but instead leads the attendees in singing "Never Gonna Give You Up", rickrolling them. Activist Greta Thunberg performed a rickroll during an October 2021 climate-action speech at the Climate Live concert in Stockholm in which she said, "We're no strangers to love", before being joined by another activist and singing the song and dancing to it; Astley tweeted that the video was "fantastic". Astley recreated the original video clip in a 2022 advertisement for the California State Automobile Association. Advertisements for the agency included QR codes to this clip to rickroll the viewers. In February 2025, in response to demands from the American public for the release of files related to the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, the Twitter account of Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee posted "#BREAKING: EPSTEIN FILES RELEASED" with a rickroll link. This post received a negative response from users, many of whom considered it inappropriate to joke about the subject, including Republican politician Anna Paulina Luna and right-wing activist Laura Loomer. The post was then deleted. Mechanism Rickrolling is a bait-and-switch joke in which the viewer clicks a link, expecting it to be something interesting—often involving sex, video games, or cats: 141 —but is instead brought to the song "Never Gonna Give You Up" or its video.: 59 : 122 This creates a humorous non-sequitur. In its original form, rickrolling simply involves the unaltered music video.: 290 While the music video is constant, the fake target of the link varies, thus making it an Internet meme.: 79 Like many memes, rickrolling is multimodal as it incorporates multiple elements—hypertext and a music video.: 59 According to an analysis by informaticists Alexander O. Smith, Jasmina Tacheva, and Jeff Hemsley, images associated with the meme show little variation as the intention is to be recognised an obvious rickroll.: 801 Unlike forms of humour used in most memes, rickrolling is a prank as it creates a situation that has a victim without serious harm. However, according to cultural scholars Joanna Nowotny and Julian Reidy, a rickroll is unlike a typical prank or hoax as it is not directed toward a specific victim, while also being less physical than most pranks and less serious than most hoaxes. Nowotny and Reid further state that an online prank like rickrolling may occur spontaneously, as a physical prank cannot, and the nature of online spaces allows victims to respond, a typical feature of hoaxes but not pranks.: 80–82 Rickrolling, like the Trollface, is a meme primarily used for trolling; in contrast with other forms of trolling, it is fun rather than offensive.: 2315, 2321 According to information scholars Madelyn Sanfilippo, Pnina Fichman, and Shannon Yang, forms of trolling such as rickrolling can create humour out of a reference recognised within a group, distinguishing it from non-trolling humour.: 24 According to design scholar Ursula Murray Husted, members of the ingroup who recognise the meme respond positively to it and introduce it to newcomers who fall for the prank.: 166–167, 180–181 As a meme that has had multiple waves of popularity for over a decade, rickrolling has evolved into various forms of humour that incorporate the same song.: 75–76 The term has been extended to the act of playing the song to interrupt a public event—as was the case with the Scientology rickrolling—which gives the meme a spatial component.: 8 Other videos inspired by rickrolling include mashups, cover versions, and remixes of "Never Gonna Give You Up".: 141 Rickrolling also entails a phrase-based meme with the use of the song's lyrics in creative contexts,: 87 such as in a conversation.: 2316 Several YouTube uploads of "Never Gonna Give You Up" are used for rickrolling. The official Rick Astley channel uploaded another version on 24 October 2009, its URL ending with the identifier "dQw4w9WgXcQ".: 369 Computer scientists Benoit Baudry and Martin Monperrus called this "the canonical rickroll URL", being the first result for the YouTube search string rick astley never gonna give you up.: 190 The earliest version of the video on YouTube was uploaded to YouTube by Cotter when the meme began. The website briefly removed this several times, including in February 2010 (which YouTube said was from the video being mistakenly reported), May 2012 (caused by an antivirus software), and July 2014 (which the company did not explain); in each case, it was restored within hours, but its removal received widespread online attention. By 2014, the original, unofficial upload had 70 million views, while the official upload had 84 million. Many cases of rickrolling have occurred on forums and on social media platforms such as Twitter and Vine.: 126 Another common way to rickroll is to use a QR code, as this hides the target until it is scanned. According to a study by Ada Lerner et al, users of the Scan app scanned codes leading to the "dQw4w9WgXcQ" URL over 1,600 times between May 2013 and March 2014. Authors of academic literature also include rickrolls, such as by placing them in footnotes.: 1382 Baudry and Monperrus documented such cases by searching Google Scholar for "dQw4w9WgXcQ" in 2022, finding 23 instances in which an author appeared to include the URL with the intent to rickroll.: 189–195 Analysis and impact Writing for MEL magazine, Brian VanHooker attributed the use of the song to its "randomness" and its status as a hit from the 1980s. Writing for The New Yorker, Michael Schulman said these factors and the catchiness of the song contribute to the meme's "Dadaist humor". Rickrolling is less negative than other pranks; unlike other media used in bait-and-switch humour, the song is inoffensive, allowing it to be used by many types of people in many situations as a friendly prank.: 182–183 Tumblr user deluxetrashqueen wrote, "Honestly, Rick Rolling is the best practical joke ever. Like, there's nothing offensive or mean spirited about it. It's just like 'Oops you thought there would be something else here but it's "Never Gonna Give You Up".' which isn't even a bad song.": 80 According to communication scholars Ryan M. Milner and Whitney Phillips, rickrolling is a form of Internet folklore based on a copyrighted work; as such, participants are an example of "poachers", as defined by Michel de Certeau, whose cultures rely on the property of others. According to Milner, rickrolling is a meme that appeals to those within Internet culture but also uses elements that resonate with the general public, comparing it to Doge, a meme incorporating a picture of a dog.: 83 Writing for Mashable, Chloe Bryan called rickrolling "universal" as it can easily be adapted to different contexts. According to sociolinguist Danielle H. Heinrichs, some rickrolls blend humour with another genre, which she compares to the folkloric motif of the multifaceted trickster.: 1382 Communication scholar Eric Harvey interprets rickrolling as making fun of the act of clicking a link for instant gratification.: 89 Cultural scholar Tracey Potts wrote, "it is easy to see pop culture as one giant rickroll, a cultural bait-and-switch where, regardless of what we select or click on, we end up back with more of the same".: 143 The meme had a positive impact on Astley's career, introducing a new group of fans to his music. He said it caused him to like "Never Gonna Give You Up" after "15 years of not singing it" and played a role in the reestablishment of his music career—which included the 2016 album 50, his first in over a decade, which reached number one on the UK Album Chart. In a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone, Astley said of the meme, "It's done me a lot of good, probably. The thing is it's not personal to me, even though I know it is me and it's my name in the title of Rickrolling. It's that video that I'm in, it's that song that's mine, but it could have been anybody." Quoted in the Associated Press in 2022, he said, "The video and the song have drifted off into the ether and become something else, and I'm ever so grateful for it." After performing at Glastonbury Festival 2023, Astley said this would not have been possible "without my old songs and without the Rickrolling thing with its own little universe". The Observer writer Barbara Ellen stated the same year that the meme gave Astley an image of being cool, unlike most late-career musicians. Blogger David Griner of Adfreak.com said in 2008 that rickrolling was the "perfect example of a viral video because the definition of one is something that gets out and is uncontrollable". Mashable's Bryan wrote in 2017 that, although the rickroll is no longer popular, this works in favour of the prank as victims do not expect it. Caldwell of Know Your Meme said in 2020, "It seems like the volume of memes these days means that none of them have any longevity, but for Rickrolling, it's such an old meme that it's like an 'old-school' Internet reference. It's nostalgic." Cotter expressed this sentiment in the description of his YouTube upload: "as long as trolls are still trolling, the Rick will never stop rolling". See also Notes References External links |
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Contents Gamergate Gamergate or GamerGate (GG) was a loosely organized misogynistic online harassment campaign motivated by a right-wing backlash against feminism, diversity, and progressivism in video game culture. It was conducted using the hashtag "#Gamergate" primarily in 2014 and 2015.[a] Gamergate targeted women in the video game industry, most notably feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian and video game developers Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu.[b] Gamergate began with an August 2014 blog entry called "The Zoe Post" by Quinn's ex-boyfriend, which falsely insinuated that Quinn had received a favorable review because of Quinn's sexual relationship with a games journalist. The blog post was spread to 4chan, where many users had previously disparaged Quinn's work. This led to a campaign of harassment against Quinn, coordinated through anonymous message boards such as 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit. The harassment campaign expanded to target Sarkeesian, Wu, and others who defended Quinn, and included doxing, rape threats, and death threats. Gamergate proponents ("Gamergaters") claimed to be promoting ethics in video game journalism and protecting the "gamer" identity in opposition to "political correctness"[c] and the perceived influence of feminism and so-called social justice warriors on video game culture. Proponents alleged there was a conspiracy between journalists and video game developers to focus on progressive social issues such as gender equality and sexism. Such claims have been widely dismissed as trivial, baseless, or unrelated to actual issues of ethics in gaming and journalism. Several commentators in the mass media dismissed the ethics complaints as a deliberate cover for the ongoing harassment of Quinn and other women. Gamergaters frequently denied any such harassment took place, falsely claiming it to be manufactured by the victims. Gamergate has been described as a culture war over cultural diversification, artistic recognition, feminism in video games, social criticism in video games, and the social identity of gamers.[d] Supporters stated that it was a social movement. However, as a movement Gamergate had no clearly defined goals, coherent message, or official leaders, making it difficult to define. Gamergate led figures both inside and outside the gaming industry to focus on methods of addressing online harassment, ways to minimize harm, and prevent similar events.[e] Gamergate has been viewed as contributing to the alt-right and other right-wing movements. History In 2013, Zoë Quinn, an independent game developer, released Depression Quest, a text-focused game designed to convey the experience of depression through a series of fictional scenarios, based in part on Quinn's own experience with the illness. The game received positive reviews in the gaming media and from mental health professionals, but faced backlash online from gamers who disliked its departure from typical game formats emphasizing violence and skill and who opposed "political" intrusions into gamer culture. Quinn was subjected to several months of harassment after its release, including rape and death threats. Quinn documented the harassment they[f] received and spoke openly to the media about it, which led to more pronounced abuse against them such as the posting of their home address online. They cancelled future public appearances and ultimately fled their house out of fear for their safety. The controversies and events that would come to be known as Gamergate began in August 2014 as a personal attack on Quinn, incited by a blog post by Quinn's former boyfriend, Eron Gjoni. Called "The Zoe Post",[g] it was a lengthy, detailed account of their relationship and breakup that included copies of personal chat logs, emails, and text messages. The blog falsely implied that Quinn received a favorable review of Depression Quest in exchange for a sexual relationship with Nathan Grayson, a reporter for the gaming websites Kotaku and Rock Paper Shotgun. Gjoni later said that he had "no evidence" of a sexual conflict of interest on Quinn's part.[h] Grayson never actually reviewed any of Quinn's games, and his only Kotaku article mentioning them was published before their relationship began. Nonetheless, as reported by The Daily Dot, gamers online used Gjoni's blog to accuse Quinn, without evidence, of trading sex for professional advancement. A link to the blog was posted to 4chan, where many users had previously been highly critical of Depression Quest, which led to renewed attacks on Quinn. After Gjoni's blog post, Quinn and their family were subjected to a virulent and often misogynistic harassment campaign. Online attackers of Quinn at first used the label "Quinnspiracy", later adopting the hashtag "#Gamergate" after it was coined by the actor Adam Baldwin on August 27, 2014,[i] whose nearly 190,000 Twitter followers helped the spread of the hashtag. Right-wing journalist Milo Yiannopoulos popularized the hashtag on Breitbart News, becoming one of the most prominent voices of Gamergate and the antifeminist movement more broadly. Harassment of Gamergate targets was coordinated via IRC, spreading rapidly over imageboards and forums like 4chan and Reddit. Less than four months after Gamergate began, Quinn's record of threats they had received had grown 1,000-fold. At a conference Quinn said, "I used to go to game events and feel like I was going home ... Now it's just like ... are any of the people I'm currently in the room with ones that said they wanted to beat me to death?" One anonymous 4chan user threatened to give them "a crippling injury that's never going to fully heal". Commentators both inside and outside the video game industry condemned the attacks against Quinn. The attacks included doxing (researching and broadcasting personally identifiable information about an individual) and hacking of their Tumblr, Dropbox, and Skype accounts; they were again subjected to rape and death threats. Quinn again fled their home to stay with friends. Quinn wrote that "the Internet spent the last month spreading my personal information around, sending me threats, hacking anyone suspected of being friends with me, calling my dad and telling him I'm a whore, sending nude photos of me to colleagues, and basically giving me the 'burn the witch' treatment". Gamergate expanded to include renewed harassment of prominent feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian, who had previously been a target of online harassment in 2012 due in part to her YouTube video series Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, which analyzes sexist portrayals of women. After a new episode of Tropes vs. Women was released on August 24, 2014, Sarkeesian received rape and death threats, and private information including her home address was leaked; she was compelled to flee her home. At the XOXO arts and technology conference in Portland, Oregon, she said, in regard to the accusations that high-profile women were making up the threats against them, that "one of the most radical things you can do is to actually believe women when they talk about their experiences". "The perpetrators", Sarkeesian went on to say, "do not see themselves as perpetrators at all ... They see themselves as noble warriors". Sarkeesian canceled an October 2014 speaking appearance at Utah State University (USU) after the school received three anonymous threats, the second of which claimed affiliation with Gamergate. The initial threat proposed that "a Montreal Massacre style attack will be carried out against the attendees, as well as the students and staff at the nearby Women's Center", alluding to the École Polytechnique massacre, a 1989 mass shooting motivated by antifeminism. The threat also said that "I have at my disposal a semi-automatic rifle, multiple pistols, and a collection of pipe bombs". USU's president and provost released a joint statement saying that USU, in consultation with state and federal law enforcement agencies, had assessed that there was no credible threat to students, staff, or the speaker. Requests for additional security measures were declined because of Utah's open carry laws, leading to the cancellation. The threats drew the attention of mainstream media to the Gamergate situation. Nick Wingfield of The New York Times referred to the threat as "the most noxious example of a weeks long campaign to discredit or intimidate outspoken critics of the male-dominated gaming industry and its culture". The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigated the threat to attack Sarkeesian and other Gamergate-related threats. The investigations, which were plagued with jurisdictional issues, ultimately closed with the FBI failing to identify the perpetrators of some threats and declining to prosecute others. In mid-October 2014, Brianna Wu, another independent game developer and co-founder of video game studio Giant Spacekat, saw her home address and other identifying information posted on 8chan as retaliation for mocking Gamergate. Wu then became the target of rape and death threats on Twitter and elsewhere. After contacting police, Wu fled her home with her husband, saying she would not allow the threats to intimidate her into silence. Wu announced a US$11,000 reward for information leading to a conviction for those involved in her harassment, and set up a legal fund to help other game developers who have been harassed online. As of April 2016, Wu was still receiving threats in such volume that she employed full-time staff to document them. In August 2021, The Washington Post described Wu as "a vocal proponent of forgiveness" for those harassers "who apologize and show they have grown" despite the extensive harassment she endured. However, "insults and continued harassment" still outnumbered apologies "10-to-1". As a result of the harassment, Wu said that she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Gamergate supporters subjected others to similar harassment, doxing, and death threats. Those who came to the victims' defense were ridiculed as "white knights", or "social justice warriors" (SJWs); this characterization was intended, according to Heron, Belford and Goker, to neutralize any opposition by questioning their motives. The term "social justice warrior" emerged as the favored term of Gamergate proponents to refer to their opponents, resulting in its pejorative use becoming mainstream. Shortly after the Gamergate hashtag was coined, video game developer Phil Fish had his personal information, including various accounts and passwords, hacked and publicly posted in retaliation for defending Quinn and attacking their detractors. The hacks and doxing also exposed documents relating to Fish's company, Polytron. As a result, Fish left the gaming industry and put Polytron up for sale, calling the situation "unacceptable" and saying, "it's not worth it". Harassment related to Gamergate continued for several months after the onset of the controversy. Two critics of Gamergate were targets of attempted "swatting"—hoaxed reports to emergency services intended to provoke a SWAT team response at the target's home. The Guardian reported that both swatting attempts were coordinated through the "baphomet" subforum of 8chan. After the initial rush of threats that caused her to flee her home, Wu documented receiving roughly 45 death threats by April 2015; Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen offered up to a $10,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of those who made the threats. Wu's studio, Giant Spacekat, withdrew from the Expo Hall of PAX East 2015. Wu cited security concerns, lack of confidence in the management and their failure to return calls. Actress and gamer Felicia Day wrote a blog post about her concerns over Gamergate and her fear of retaliation if she spoke against it. Almost immediately her home address and phone number were posted online, leading to harassing letters and phone calls. Actor Wil Wheaton and former NFL player Chris Kluwe also posted criticisms of Gamergate. Stephen Colbert questioned why men like Kluwe had not been threatened by Gamergate, noting that the targets were almost entirely women. Gamergate's harassment was coordinated primarily through anonymous message boards such as 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit, particularly the "KotakuInAction" (KiA) subreddit. Ars Technica reported that a series of 4chan discussion logs suggests that Twitter sockpuppet accounts were used to popularize the Gamergate hashtag. Early Gamergate internet relay chat (IRC) discussions focused on coordinating the harassment of Quinn by using astroturf campaigns to push attacks against her into mainstream view, while initial organizers attempted to cultivate a palatable narrative for public consumption, internally focusing on personal grudges against Quinn and aggressive sexual imagery. Gamergaters circulated a blacklist of publications along with email templates and phone scripts to use in lobbying companies to pull advertisements from sites critical of Gamergate. Media scholar Torill Mortensen wrote in Games and Culture that Gamergate's structure as an anonymous swarm allowed it to create an environment where anyone who criticized it or became its target was at risk, while allowing them to avoid individual responsibility for harassment. There has been considerable discussion of self-policing and the responsibility supporters of Gamergate share when the hashtag is used for harassment. A number of websites have blocked users, removed posts, and created policies to prevent their users from threatening Quinn and others with doxing, assault, rape and murder, and planning and coordinating such threats. In September 2014, 4chan founder and then-head administrator Christopher Poole banned all discussion of Gamergate on the site as more attacks occurred, leading to Gamergate supporters using 8chan as their central hub. Many Gamergate supporters have denied that the harassment took place, or falsely accused victims of fabricating the evidence. Gamergate supporters have used the term "Literally Who" to refer to victims of harassment such as Quinn, saying they are not relevant to Gamergate's goals and purposes. Several commentators have decried the use of such terminology as dehumanizing and said that discussions on Gamergate forums often focus on those referred to as "Literally Who". By September 24, 2014, over one million Twitter messages incorporating the Gamergate hashtag had been sent. A Newsweek and Brandwatch analysis found more than two million Twitter messages between September and October 2014. Software developer Andy Baio also produced an analysis of #Gamergate tweets showing a discussion that was polarized between pro- and anti-Gamergate factions. One quarter of the tweets sampled were produced by users new to Twitter, most of whom were pro-Gamergate. Demographics While the number of Gamergate supporters is unclear, in October 2014, Deadspin estimated 10,000 supporters based on the number of users discussing Gamergate on Reddit. Katherine Cross, a sociologist, game critic and target of harassment from Gamergate, noted that "For a long time, Gamergate adamantly resisted that [far right] characterization", adding that "They said that notions that they were conservatives were slander and dismissed them. They posted straw polls that they've taken in KiA that demonstrate this. I've said time and time again that that largely means nothing." Vice News noted that "The obvious problem here is that th[ese are] unscientific internet poll[s], which can be easily gamed by a community that often games polls." and that "the threads on [r/KotakuinAction] tell a different story. On February 8, for example, all the off-topic threads had a clear, far-right bent, claiming that Facebook is censoring crimes committed by immigrants, complaining about college professors who criticize Trump, and more. In the eyes of Gamergaters fighting against 'political correctness' doesn't necessarily conflict with liberal politics, but I also couldn't find any threads that could be construed as liberal." Vice News also noted that "while the majority of Gamergaters resent the affiliation [of alt-right], many of the movement's leading figures, who were right wing pundits before Gamergate, have graduated from rallying against political correctness in games to supporting Trump and the alt-right.", including Mike Cernovich and Milo Yiannopoulos. Organization The series of events that came to be known as Gamergate has been described as "torturously complex". As a movement, it had no official leaders or clearly defined agenda. Because of its anonymous membership, lack of organization and leaderless nature, sources differ as to the goals or mission of Gamergate and defining it has been difficult. Frank Lantz of NYU's Game Center wrote that he could not find "a single explanation of a coherent Gamergate position". Christopher Grant, editor-in-chief of Polygon, told the Columbia Journalism Review: "The closest thing we've been able to divine is that it's noise. It's chaos ... all you can do is find patterns. And ultimately Gamergate will be defined—I think has been defined—by some of its basest elements." The decentralized nature of Gamergate allowed it to defy attempts at discourse and to define its agenda. This decentralization allowed for a long-term, focused campaign against consistent targets. Kyle Wagner of Deadspin argues that "By design, Gamergate is nearly impossible to define. It refers, variously, to a set of incomprehensible Benghazi-type conspiracy theories about game developers and journalists; to a fairly broad group of gamers concerned with corruption in gaming journalism; to a somewhat narrower group of gamers who believe women should be punished for having sex; and, finally, to a small group of gamers conducting organized campaigns of stalking and harassment against women." and that "This ambiguity is useful, because it turns any discussion of this subject into a debate over semantics." Wagner describes Gamergate as "a fascinating glimpse of the future of grievance politics". As the threats expanded, international media focused on Gamergate's violent, misogynistic element and its inability to present a coherent message. Bob Stuart, in The Daily Telegraph, reported that "Gamergate has since swelled into an unwieldy movement with no apparent leaders, mission statement, or aims beyond calling out 'social justice warriors'. ... When members of the games industry are being driven from their houses and jobs, threatened, or abused, it makes Gamergate's claim that it is engaged in an ethical campaign appear laughable." The campaign's focus broadened to take on other targets in the news media, as with Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker Media. Jesse Singal, in New York, stated that he had spoken to several Gamergate supporters to try to understand their concerns, but found conflicting ideals and incoherent messages. Singal observed Gamergate supporters making a constant series of attacks on Quinn, Sarkeesian, and other people, while frequently stating that Gamergate "is not about" them. Chris Ip of the Columbia Journalism Review said that Gamergate supporters espousing critiques of ethics in journalism could not be separated from harassers. With anyone able to tweet under the hashtag and no single person willing or able to represent the hashtag and take responsibility for its actions, Ip said it is not possible for journalists to neatly separate abusers from those seeking reasonable debate. Jon Stone, as quoted in The Week, said that "[Gamergate] readjusts and reinvents itself in response to attempts to disarm and disperse its noxiousness, subsuming disaffected voices in an act of continual regeneration, cycling through targets, pretexts, manifestoes, and moralisms". Polygon's Grant said that as of October 2014, Gamergate had remained amorphous and leaderless so that the harassment can be conducted without any culpability. Gamergaters attacked gaming websites that criticized Gamergate and gaming websites that expressed support for diversity in gaming culture, including Kotaku, Game Developer, Ars Technica, Polygon, and Gawker. While organized through anonymous message boards such as 4chan and Reddit, Gamergate harassment was most prominent on Twitter. Michael Salter, then a University of Western Sydney criminologist, writes that Twitter's design and architecture was "highly conducive" to such abuse campaigns, allowing Gamergaters to overwhelm users' ability to individually block the large numbers of fake or "sockpuppet" accounts used to send abusive and harassing messages. Twitter was criticized for its inability to respond quickly and prevent harassment over the service. Within the United States, Twitter and other social media sites are not liable for content posted by third-parties of their service under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (1996), and so have no legal obligation to police malicious content such as harassment and threats. Brianna Wu, shortly after becoming a target of harassment, stated that Twitter facilitated harassment by the ease with which anyone could make a new account even after having an earlier account blocked, and challenged the service to improve its responsiveness to complaints. Robinson Meyer of The Atlantic said Gamergate is an "identity crisis" for Twitter, and by not dealing with harassing users, the platform is failing to protect victims. Early on during Gamergate, software developer Randi Harper started the "Good Game Auto Blocker" or "ggautoblocker", an expanding list of known Twitter accounts that were tied to the Gamergate hashtag which could be automatically blocked, therefore reducing the degree of harassment received. In November 2014, Twitter announced a collaboration with the non-profit group "Women, Action & the Media" (WAM), in which users of Twitter can report harassment to a tool monitored by WAM members, who would forward affirmed issues to Twitter within 24 hours. The move, while arising in the wake of the Gamergate harassment, was due to general issues of the harassment of women on the Internet. In May 2015, WAM reported that of 512 reported harassment instances by the tool during the month of November 2014, 12% of those were tied to the Gamergate controversy based on the ggautoblocker list, with most harassment occurring from single-instance accounts targeting a single person. Early in the controversy, posters on 4chan focused on donating to a group called The Fine Young Capitalists (TFYC), which had been embroiled in a dispute with Quinn over a women-only game development contest that Quinn had organized. TFYC sponsored a video game design contest for women in 2014. They were created by a partnership between Colombian media developer Autobótika and Canadian organization Empowered Up. It was founded with the goal of helping women and other underrepresented groups get involved in video game design. Its founder is Matthew Rappard, who is the only member who is publicly identified. Advocating donations to help TFYC create the game, posters on 4chan's politics board argued that such donations would make them "look really good" and would make them "PR-untouchable". For their donations, TFYC allowed 4chan to create a character to be included in the game. The result was "Vivian James", a character designed to appear like an ordinary female gamer; her name is meant to sound like "video games". The colors of her striped purple and green hooded sweatshirt represent a viral 4chan meme known as "daily dose", which depicted a character from the anime Dragon Ball Z sexually assaulting another character. Allegra Ringo of Vice called her "a character masquerading as a feminist icon for the express purpose of spiting feminists". To respond to widespread criticism of Gamergate as misogynistic, posters on 4chan created a second Twitter hashtag, #NotYourShield, intended to show that Gamergate was not about opposition to feminism or wanting to push women out of gaming. Many of the accounts used to tweet the tag were sockpuppets that had copied their avatars from elsewhere on the Internet; the methods used to create it have been compared to #EndFathersDay, a hoax manufactured on 4chan using similar methods. Quinn said that in light of Gamergate's exclusive targeting of women or those who stood up for women, "#notyourshield was, ironically, solely designed to be a shield for this campaign once people started calling it misogynistic". Arthur Chu wrote that the hashtag was an attempt to discourage allies from supporting the people being attacked by Gamergate. Gamergate supporters were critical of the wave of articles calling for diversity that followed the initial outbreak of the controversy, interpreting them as an attack on games and gamer culture. Gamergaters responded with a coordinated email campaign that demanded advertisers drop several involved publications; in a five-step 'war plan' against organizations that offended them, a Gamergate posting described how they would choose from a list of target organizations, pick a grievance from a list others had compiled, and send a form letter containing it to an advertiser. Intel reacted to this by withdrawing an ad campaign from Game Developer in October 2014. After a number of game developers criticized Intel for this, arguing that it could have a chilling effect on free speech and that it amounted to supporting harassment, Intel apologized, ultimately resuming advertising on Game Developer in mid-November. Gamergate became associated with the "Sad Puppies" and "Rabid Puppies" during 2015 Hugo Awards for science fiction writing. These groups organized voting blocs to promote overlapping slates that dominated the 2015 Hugo Award nominations, though they failed to win the awards. The campaign was described as a backlash against the increasing racial, ethnic, and gender diversity in science fiction. Members of the blocs said that they sought to counteract what they asserted was a focus on giving awards based on the race, ethnicity, or gender of the author or characters rather than quality, and bemoaning the increasing prominence of what they described as 'message' fiction with fewer traditional "zap gun" science-fictional trappings. By 2018, the Sad Puppies had diminished visibility, and Quinn's 2017 memoir Crash Override was nominated for the 2018 Hugo Award for Best Related Work (for non-fiction works related to science fiction or fantasy). Purpose and goals The most active Gamergate supporters or "Gamergaters" said that Gamergate was a movement for ethics in games journalism, for protecting the "gamer" identity, and for opposing "political correctness" in video games and that any harassment of women was done by others not affiliated with Gamergate.[j] They argued that the close relationships between journalists and developers demonstrated a conspiracy among reviewers to focus on progressive social issues. These conspiracy theories particularly focused on the positive reception to games such as Depression Quest and Gone Home, which feature unconventional gameplay and stories with social implications. Observers in the media have largely rejected these claims as baseless and malicious. Chris Ip of the Columbia Journalism Review wrote that "many criticisms of press coverage by people who identify with Gamergate ... have been debunked" and concluded that "at core, the movement is a classic culture war". Writing in Vox, Emily VanDerWerff said that "[e]very single question of journalistic ethics Gamergate has brought up has either been debunked or dealt with". According to Leigh Alexander, then editor-at-large of Game Developer, the ethics concerns were a conspiracy theory, albeit a sincere one; Alexander writes that there is nothing unethical about journalists being acquainted with those they cover and that meaningful reporting requires journalists to develop professional relationships with sources. Ars Technica, Vox, and Wired, among others, stated that discussions of gender equality, sexism and other social issues in game reviews present no ethical conflict.[k] Several writers who attempted to understand Gamergate's motivations concluded that, rather than relating to purported issues with gaming journalism ethics, Gamergate represented an effort to suppress opposing views. Salter writes that "mass media had a decisive role in evaluating the competing claims of Gamergate and its critics, and ultimately dismissing Gamergate as a misogynist abuse campaign". Screenshots of 4chan boards, collected and published by Quinn, suggested that complaints about ethics in games journalism were invented post hoc by Gamergaters to distract critics from their ongoing abuse of Quinn. Jay Hathaway wrote at Gawker that this strategy emerged once Gamergaters found that harassing Quinn about their sexual history was unlikely to win the campaign support; according to Hathaway, IRC chat logs showed that "the [Gamergate] movement was focused on destroying Zoë Quinn first, reforming games reporting second". Other commentators argued that Gamergate had the potential to raise significant issues in gaming journalism, but that the wave of misogynistic harassment and abuse associated with the hashtag had poisoned the well, making it impossible to separate honest criticism from sexist trolling. Visible support for Gamergate in the form of tweets, online videos, and blogs seldom involved discussion of ethics, but often featured misogynistic and/or racist commentary. The targets were mainly female game developers, academics, and writers. Researchers at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University described Gamergate as a "vitriolic campaign against Quinn that quickly morph[ed] into a broader crusade against alleged corruption in games journalism" which involved considerable abuse and harassment of female developers and game critics. Concerns have also been raised when juxtaposing the behavior of Gamergate supporters with their claimed message. Dr. Kathleen Bartzen Culver, a professor and media ethics expert at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, wrote that while Gamergate supporters claimed to be interested in journalism ethics, their "misogynistic and threatening" behavior belied this claim. "Much of the conversation—if I can even call it that—has been a toxic sludge of rumor, invective, and gender bias. The irony comes from people who claim to be challenging the ethics of game journalists through patently unethical behavior." After analyzing a sample of tweets related to Gamergate, Newsweek concluded that it was primarily about harassment rather than ethics, stating that the sample "suggests that ... contrary to its stated goal, Gamergate spends more time tweeting negatively at game developers than at game journalists". Casey Johnston wrote for Ars Technica that, based on logs from the 4chan users who initially pushed Gamergate into the spotlight, the goal behind the hashtag campaign was to "perpetuate misogynistic attacks by wrapping them in a debate about ethics". An academic analysis of a week's worth of public posts tagged with #Gamergate found that the issue publics involved were not "only or even primarily" concerned with ethics in gaming journalism. In an interview with Anita Sarkeesian in The Guardian, Jessica Valenti said that "the movement's much-mocked mantra, 'It's about ethics in journalism'" was seen by others as "a natural extension of sexist harassment and the fear of female encroachment on a traditionally male space". Sarkeesian asked, "if this 'movement' was about journalism, why wasn't it journalists who had to deal with a barrage of rape and death threats?" Wu told The Boston Globe that the ethics claims were "a pretext" and described Gamergate as "an actual hate group ... they're upset and threatened by women who are being very outspoken about feminism". Gamergate has been criticized for focusing on women, especially female developers, while ignoring many large-scale journalistic ethics issues. Alex Goldman of NPR's On the Media criticized Gamergate for targeting female independent ("indie") developers rather than AAA games publishers, and said claims of unethical behavior by Quinn and Sarkeesian were unfounded. In Wired, Laura Hudson found it telling that Gamergate supporters concentrated on impoverished independent creators and critics, and nearly exclusively women, rather than the large game companies whose work they enjoyed. Vox writer Emily VanDerWerff highlighted an essay written by game developer David Hill, who said that corruption, nepotism, and excessive commercialism existed in the gaming industry, but that Gamergate was not addressing those issues. Adi Robertson, of The Verge, commented on the long-standing ethical issues gaming journalism has dealt with, but that most Gamergate supporters did not seem interested in "addressing problems that don't directly relate to feminist criticism or the tiny indie games scene". Feminist Media Studies described Gamergate as "a convenient way for a loose coalition of frustrated geeks, misogynists, alt-righters, and trolls to coalesce around a common idea—that popular culture was 'overly concerned' with a particular kind of identity politics—even if their tactics and actual motivations for participating were varied." Social, cultural, and political impact Observers have generally described Gamergate as part of a long-running culture war against efforts to diversify the traditionally male video gaming community, particularly targeting outspoken women. They cite Gamergate supporters' frequent harassment of female figures in the gaming industry and its overt hostility toward people involved in social criticism and analysis of video games. The Washington Post's digital culture writer Caitlin Dewey said that "Whatever Gamergate may have started as, it is now an Internet culture war" between predominantly female game developers and critics advocating for greater inclusion, and "a motley alliance of vitriolic naysayers" opposed to such changes. Vox said that Gamergate supporters were less interested in criticizing ethical issues than in opposition to social criticism and analysis of video games and in harassment of prominent women. Ars Technica quoted early members as saying that they had no interest in video games and were primarily interested in attacking Quinn. Gamergate has been described as being driven by antifeminist ideologies. Some supporters have denied this, but acknowledge that there are misogynistic voices within Gamergate. Antonsen, Ask, and Karlstrom wrote in Nordic Journal of Science and Technology Studies "in the case of #gamergate, it is the explicit goal of many of the participants to exclude groups of people, particularly women, from the debate and from the game industry and limit women's rights as citizens." Jon Stone, writing in The Guardian, called it a "swelling of vicious right-wing sentiment". Commentators such as Stone, Liana Kerzner, and Ryan Cooper have said that the controversy is being exploited by right-wing voices and by conservative pundits who had little interest in gaming. Chrisella Herzog states that in addition to violent sexism, Gamergate has virulent strains and violent sentiments of homophobia, transphobia, anti-Semitism, racism, and neo-Nazism. Gamergate supporters also promoted the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory. Quinn said the campaign had "roped well-meaning people who cared about ethics and transparency into a pre-existing hate mob", and urged industry publishers and developers to condemn the hashtag. They further asked those Gamergate supporters who had any earnest discussion about ethics to move away from the "Gamergate" tag. Gamergate is often considered to be a reaction to the changing cultural identity of the "gamer". As video games grew in mainstream popularity during the 1990s, a "gamer" identity emerged among predominantly young, male, heterosexual players, and the types of games designed to appeal to them. Over the years, the growing popularity of games expanded that audience to include many who did not fit the traditional gamer demographic, particularly women. Games with artistic and cultural themes grew in popularity, and independent video game development made these games more common, while mobile and casual games expanded the scope of the industry beyond the traditional gamer identity. The games most popular with typical "gamers", often featuring explicit violence along with exaggerated gender stereotypes, were joined by a more diverse set of games that included gay, lesbian, and transgender themes. "Indie" gaming blogs and websites were created to comment on these developments, in contrast to the more established gaming press, which was traditionally dependent on the games industry itself. The media-studies scholar Adrienne Massanari writes that Gamergate is a direct response to such changes in video-game content as well as changes in the demographics of players. Surveys by the Entertainment Software Association in 2014 and 2015 showed that video-game players were between 44% and 48% female, with an average age of thirty-five. This broader audience began to question some assumptions and tropes that had been common in games. Shira Chess and Adrienne Shaw write that concern over these changes is integral to Gamergate, especially a fear that sexualized games aimed primarily at young men might eventually be replaced by less sexualized games marketed to broader audiences. Gamergaters often dismiss such games and their more diverse, casual group of players as being not "real" games or gamers. Alyssa Rosenberg of The Washington Post said that some of Gamergaters' concerns were rooted in a view of video games as "appliances" rather than art, that should be reviewed based on feature checklists rather than traditional artistic criteria. Chris Suellentrop of The New York Times criticized resistance to innovative uses of the gaming medium, and the belief that increased coverage and praise of artistic games like Gone Home would negatively affect blockbuster games such as Grand Theft Auto V. Gamergate is particularly associated with opposition to the influence of so-called social justice warriors in the gaming industry and media, who are perceived as a threat to traditional gaming culture. As the video-game market grew more diverse, cultural critics became interested in issues of gender representation and identity in games. One prominent feminist critic of the representation of women in gaming is Anita Sarkeesian, whose Tropes vs. Women in Video Games project is devoted to female stereotypes in games. Her fundraising campaign and videos were met with hostility and harassment by some gamers. Further incidents raised concerns about sexism in video gaming. Prior to August 2014, escalating harassment prompted the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) to provide support groups for harassed developers and to begin discussions with the FBI to help investigate online harassment of game developers. In an interview on Comedy Central's program The Colbert Report, Sarkeesian said she believes women are targeted because they are "challenging the status quo of gaming as a male-dominated space". In late August 2014, shortly after the initial accusations against Grayson and harassment of Quinn, several gaming sites published opinion essays on the controversy that focused on the growing diversity of gaming and the mainstreaming of the medium, some of which included criticism of sexism within gamer culture. These so-called "gamers are dead" articles were seen as part of a conspiracy to undercut traditional gamer identity and were used by participants to rally support for Gamergate. One of these articles, published on Game Developer and written by Leigh Alexander, was titled "'Gamers' don't have to be your audience. 'Gamers' are over". Writing for Paste, L. Rhodes said the antagonism in the Gamergate controversy was a result of the industry seeking to widen its customer demographic instead of focusing on core gamers, which Rhodes says "is precisely what videogames needed". Brendan Keogh of Overland stated that Gamergate "does not represent a marginalised, discriminated identity under attack so much as a hegemonic and normative mainstream being forced to redistribute some of its power". Gamergate has been described as an expression of sexism and misogyny within gaming culture; its main themes are opposition to feminism and so-called "social justice warriors", who are perceived as a threat to traditional video games. Women's greater visibility in the gaming industry has seen a corresponding rise in gendered harassment and intimidation directed at them. Among mainstream journalists, the harassment campaign that became known as Gamergate is considered emblematic of this surge of online misogyny. According to Sarah Kaplan of The Washington Post, "sexism in gaming is a long-documented, much-debated but seemingly intractable problem", and became the crux of the Gamergate controversy. Jaime Weinman, writing in Maclean's, said, "[w]hether it was supposed to be or not, GamerGate is largely about women". Discussing Gamergate on her ESPN blog, Jane McManus compared the misogyny that women in the gaming industry experience to that faced by the first women entering sporting communities. In October 2015, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described issues like Gamergate and misogyny in video games as "something that we need to stand clearly against". Sexism and misogyny had been identified as problems in the video game industry and online community prior to the events of Gamergate. Sarkeesian considered that the Internet has a "boys'-locker-room feel" to it, with male users trying to show off to each other which causes escalating cases of harassment in situations like Gamergate. In March 2014, game designer Cliff Bleszinski wrote a blog post commenting on the "latent racism, homophobia and misogyny" that existed within the online gaming community. In a November 2014 interview with Develop, Wu said the game industry "has been a boys' club for 30 years", and that the common portrayal of women as "sex symbols and damsels in distress" in video games has led to the players taking the same attitudes. Brendan Sinclair, writing for GamesIndustry.biz, stated that the events of the Gamergate controversy were "reprehensible and saddening" and "this industry has some profound issues in the way it treats women". Many commentators have said that the harassment associated with Gamergate springs from this existing well of deep-seated misogyny, and that it was merely brought to the fore by the anonymity of the Internet. Lisa Nakamura, a professor of digital studies at the University of Michigan, wrote that Gamergate "showed the world the extent of gaming's misogyny". In an interview with the BBC, Quinn stated that "[b]efore [Gamergate] had a name, it was nothing but trying to get me to kill myself, trying to get people to hurt me, going after my family. ... There is no mention of ethics in journalism at all outside of making the same accusation everybody makes towards any successful woman; that clearly she got to where she is because she had sex with someone." Danielle Citron of the University of Maryland wrote that the intent of this type of harassment is to demean the victim, make them doubt their own integrity, and to redefine the victim's identity in order to "fundamentally distort who she is". Targets of Gamergate supporters have overwhelmingly been women, even when men were responsible for the supposed wrongdoings. Writing in The New Yorker, Simon Parkin observed that Quinn was attacked while the male journalist who was falsely accused of reviewing their work favorably largely escaped, revealing the campaign as "a pretense to make further harassment of women in the industry permissible". In The New York Times, Chris Suellentrop said that a petition sought to have a female colleague fired for criticizing the portrayal of women in Grand Theft Auto V, while he and many other male critics raised similar concerns but did not face similar reprisals. Most commentators have described Gamergate as consisting largely of white males, though some supporters have said that it includes a notable percentage of women, minorities and LGBT members. Critics of the movement have described it as a kind of misogynistic terrorism. Writing in The Week, Ryan Cooper called the harassment campaign "an online form of terrorism" intended to reverse a trend in gaming culture toward increasing acceptance of women, and stated that social media platforms need to tighten their policies and protections against threats and abuse. Speaking on Iowa Public Radio, academic Cindy Tekobbe said the harassment campaign was intended to drive women from public spaces and intimidate them into silence. Prof. Joanne St. Lewis of the University of Ottawa stated that Gamergate's harassment and threats should be considered acts of terrorism as the perpetrators seek to harm women and to prevent them from speaking back or defending others. Though Newsweek reported that the FBI had a file regarding Gamergate, no arrests have been made nor charges filed, and parts of the FBI investigation into the threats had been closed in September 2015 due to a lack of leads. Former FBI supervisory special agent for cybercrimes, Tim Ryan, stated that cyberharassment cases are a low priority for authorities because it is difficult to track down the perpetrator and they have lower penalties compared to other crimes they are tasked to enforce. In June 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled in Elonis v. United States that harassing messages sent online are not necessarily true threats that would be prosecutable under criminal law and, according to Pacific Standard, this poses a further challenge in policing Gamergate-related harassment. However, the Court's decision also suggested that if threats made over social media were found to be true threats, they should be treated the same as threats made in other forms of communication. Wu has expressed her frustration over how law enforcement agencies have responded to the threats that she and other women in the game industry have received. On public release of the FBI's case files on Gamergate, Wu said she was "livid", and that "Only a fraction of information we gave the FBI was looked into. They failed on all levels." The lack of legal enforcement contributes towards the harassers' ability to maintain these activities without any risk of punishment, according to Chrisella Herzog of The Diplomatic Courier; at worst, harassers would see their social media accounts suspended but are able to turn around to register new accounts to continue to engage. U.S. Representative Katherine Clark, one of whose constituents was Brianna Wu, called for a stronger response from law enforcement to online abuse, partly as a result of advocacy by the women targeted by Gamergate. On March 10, 2015, Clark wrote a letter to the House Appropriations Committee asking it to call on the Justice Department to crack down on the harassment of women on the internet, saying the campaign of intimidation associated with Gamergate had highlighted the problem. She asked the U.S. Department of Justice to "prioritize" online threats against women, saying, "We do not think this a harmless hoax. We think this has real-life implications for women". Clark also hosted a Congressional briefing on March 15, along with the Congressional Victims' Rights Caucus to review issues of cyberstalking and online threats; during the briefing, Quinn spoke of her experiences with Gamergate, which an executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence described during the hearing as "an online hate group ... which was started by an ex-boyfriend to ruin [Quinn's] life". On May 27, the United States House of Representatives formally supported Clark's request for increased measures to combat online abuse against women, explicitly pressing for more investigations and prosecutions by the Department of Justice. On June 2, Rep. Clark introduced the "Prioritizing Online Threat Enforcement Act of 2015" to Congress. The bill would have allocated more funding for the FBI to employ additional agents to enforce laws against cyberstalking, online criminal harassment, and threats. Two years later, in June 2017, Rep. Clark introduced the "Online Safety Modernization Act of 2017" with co-sponsors Reps. Susan Brooks (Indiana) and Pat Meehan (Pennsylvania), which combined several of Clark's previous bills. The bill focused on penalizing "cybercrimes against individuals", including doxing, swatting, and sextortion, as well as granting $20 million for law enforcement training to help tackle such crimes, and $4 million to establish the National Resource Center on Cybercrimes Against Individuals in order to study and collect statistics and information related to these crimes. Gaming industry response The harassment of Quinn, Sarkeesian, Wu, and others led prominent industry professionals to condemn the Gamergate attacks for damaging the video gaming community and the public perception of the industry. Vanity Fair's Laura Parker stated that the Gamergate situation led those outside of the video game industry to be "flooded with evidence of the video-game community as a poisonous and unwelcoming place", furthering any negative views they may have had of video games. Independent game developer Andreas Zecher wrote an open letter calling upon the community to take a stand against the attacks, attracting the signatures of more than two thousand professionals within the gaming industry. Many in the industry saw the signatures "as proof that the people sending vicious attacks at Quinn and Sarkeesian weren't representative of the video game industry overall". Writing for The Guardian, Jenn Frank described the tactics used in the harassment campaign and the climate of fear it generated through its attacks on women and their allies, concluding that this alienating and abusive environment would harm not only women but also the industry as a whole. Frank herself received significant harassment for writing this article, and announced an intention to quit games journalism as a result. Games designer Damion Schubert wrote that Gamergate was "an unprecedented catastrof**k [sic]", and that silencing critiques of games harms games developers by depriving them of feedback. Several video game developers, journalists, and gamers from across various gender, racial, and social backgrounds adopted new Twitter hashtags, such as #INeedDiverseGames, #StopGamergate2014 and #GamersAgainstGamergate, to show solidarity with the people targeted by the harassment and their opposition to the reactionary messages from Gamergate supporters. The Electronic Frontier Foundation characterized Gamergate as a "magnet for harassment", and notes the possible financial risk for companies dealing with it on social media platforms. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) issued a statement condemning the harassment, stating that "[t]here is no place in the video game community—or our society—for personal attacks and threats". ESA president Mike Gallagher, speaking at the June 2015 Electronic Entertainment Expo, clarified that the ESA did not become more involved as they felt it was an argument that was outside their industry and their involvement would have been disruptive, but praised the efforts to counter harassment that will benefit the industry in the future. At BlizzCon 2014, Blizzard Entertainment president and co-founder Mike Morhaime denounced recent harassment; blaming a "small group of people [who] have been doing really awful things" and "tarnishing our reputation" as gamers. He called on attendees to treat each other with kindness and demonstrate to the world that the community rejects harassment. His statements were widely interpreted as referring to Gamergate. CEOs of both the American and European branches of Sony Computer Entertainment, Shawn Layden and Jim Ryan respectively, said the harassment and bullying were absolutely horrific and that such inappropriate behavior would not be tolerated at Sony. The Swedish Games Industry issued a statement denouncing the harassment and sexism from Gamergate supporters. In 2016, Nintendo of America denounced Gamergate, calling it "an online hate campaign" and that "Nintendo firmly rejects the harassment of individuals in any way". Responses to Gamergate have encouraged the video game industry to review its treatment of women and minorities, and to make changes to support them.[l] Intel, following its accidental involvement in Gamergate, pledged more than $300 million to help support a "Diversity in Technology" program with partners including Sarkeesian's Feminist Frequency organization and the IGDA, aimed at increasing the number of women and minorities in the industry. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich stated in announcing the program that "it's not good enough to say we value diversity, and then have our industry not fully represent". Electronic Arts (EA) COO Peter Moore said the controversy made EA pay more attention to diversity and inclusion, telling Fortune "[i]f there's been any benefit to Gamergate, ... I think it just makes us think twice at times". Speaking about Gamergate harassment to the Seattle Times, IGDA executive director Kate Edwards said, "Gaming culture has been pretty misogynistic for a long time now. There's ample evidence of that over and over again ... What we're finally seeing is that it became so egregious that now companies are starting to wake up and say, 'We need to stop this. This has got to change.'" The Electronic Entertainment Expo 2015 included markedly more female protagonists in these new games, as well as more visible presence by women at the event. Some commentators characterized this as a response to Gamergate and a rejection of the misogynistic Gamergate harassment. The game Batman: Arkham Knight, released in 2015, references Gamergate with the hashtag #CrusaderGate, which the Riddler uses to unsuccessfully try to rally the Internet against Batman; bemoaning its failure, the Riddler describes those who use the hashtag as "idiotic and easily roused rabble". Representation in media "Intimidation Game", an episode of the crime television series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, portrays a fictionalized version of Gamergate, including a character whom some observers said resembled Sarkeesian and whose story seemed based on those of women subject to the harassment campaign. The 2015 documentary film GTFO analyzed issues of sexism and harassment in video gaming. The film's director, Shannon Sun-Higginson, stated Gamergate was "a terrible, terrible thing, but it's actually symptomatic of a wider, cultural, systemic problem". The Gamergate situation was covered as part of a larger topic of online harassment of women in the June 21, 2015, episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. The impact of the Gamergate controversy on Brianna Wu was the subject of the March 16, 2016, episode of The Internet Ruined My Life. In October 2021, Mind Riot Entertainment announced that a fictional series based on Gamergate co-created and co-written by Wu and J. Brad Wilke was in production. The series will focus on the origins of the controversy through the lens of multiple, fictional people in the game industry such as executives, journalists, and indie developers and their subsequent reactions. On March 8, 2022, it was announced that Norman Lear and Brent Miller will be executive producers. Reducing online harassment In January 2015, Quinn and Alex Lifschitz created the Crash Override Network, a private group of experts who provide free support and counsel to those that have been harassed online, including as a result of Gamergate, and to work with law authorities and social media sites in response to such threats. Software developer Randi Harper founded a similar group, the Online Abuse Prevention Initiative, a non-profit organization that also seeks to provide aid to those harassed online. Anita Sarkeesian was named as one of Time magazine's list of the 30 most influential people on the Internet in March 2015, and later in the magazine's Top 100 Most Influential People of 2015, in recognition of her role in highlighting sexism in the video game community in the wake of the Gamergate controversy. She was also highlighted as one of Cosmopolitan's fifty "Internet's Most Fascinating" in a 2015 list due to her efforts to curb online harassment. An online abuse panel (itself the subject of controversy) at the 2016 SXSW festival said that there was no technological solution to the problem of harassment given human nature; although policy changes have been made, the larger issue is more societal than platform-specific. Referring to the discussion at SXSW in a speech for Women's History Month, then-U.S. President Barack Obama said that "We know that women gamers face harassment and stalking and threats of violence from other players. When they speak out about their experiences, they're attacked on Twitter and other social media outlets, even threatened in their homes." Obama urged targets of harassment to speak out, praising the courage of those who had resisted online harassment. "And what's brought these issues to light is that there are a lot of women out there, especially young women, who are speaking out bravely about their experiences, even when they know they'll be attacked for it". Legacy The people targeted by Gamergate have continued to be attacked in right-wing media and on men's rights websites, have been forced to limit their public appearances and social media activity, and continue to express frustration with the lack of action taken against their harassers. Despite the continued problems, some observers have argued that the video game industry has become more diverse and open to women since Gamergate began. Some figures and tactics associated with Gamergate went on to become components of the alt-right, which featured in the 2016 United States presidential election[m] and in other more targeted harassment campaigns, such as Learn to Code in early 2019. Some commentators have argued that Gamergate helped elect Donald Trump as US president in 2016 and assisted other right-wing to far-right movements;[n] Alyssa Rosenberg called Trump "the Gamergate of Republican politics" in an opinion article for The Washington Post in 2015. Trump's strategist Steve Bannon remarked that through Milo Yiannopoulos, who rose to fame during Gamergate as the technology journalist for Breitbart News (a news website Bannon co-founded), he had created a generation and an "army" that came in "through Gamergate ... and then get turned onto politics and Trump". According to Axios, in the 2022 book Meme Wars, Joan Donovan, research director at Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, argued that Gamergate served as "the key template that the far right and former President Trump's MAGA movement have used to organize online", noting that during Gamergate, "online mobs deployed techniques and tactics that were later taken up by the Trumpist right, including the use of memes, false allegations and coordinated harassment." Donovan also argued that "similar techniques are being used to intimidate and harass entire groups of people, most prominently transgender youth and adults." The alt-right's emergence was marked by Gamergate. According to the journalist David Neiwert, Gamergate "heralded the rise of the alt-right and provided an early sketch of its primary features: an Internet presence beset by digital trolls, unbridled conspiracism, angry-white-male-identity victimization culture, and, ultimately, open racism, anti-Semitism, ethnic hatred, misogyny, and sexual and gender paranoia". Gamergate politicized many young people, especially males, in opposition to the perceived culture war being waged by leftists. Through their shared opposition to political correctness, feminism, and multiculturalism, chan culture built a link to the alt-right. By 2015, the alt-right had gained significant momentum as an online movement. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Gamergate is "a manifestation of the so-called 'men's rights movement' that had its origins on the Web site 4chan." The Southern Poverty Law Center described Gamergate as an example of male supremacy. Gamergate has been compared to the far-right political conspiracy theory QAnon. Claire Goforth of The Daily Dot argued that Gamergate helped give birth to QAnon: "Each movement, in its inception, tapped into the collective force of the army of trolls who frequent anonymous message boards. Their tactics are an outgrowth of an online subculture where no prejudice is too shocking, no attack too vicious, no accusation too egregious." and "Like Gamergate, QAnon is toxic and alluring because it clothes trolls and conspiracy theorists in the armor of righteousness. Their chosen enemies' faults are an absolute evil that needs to be excised. Nothing else matters when that's the ultimate goal." Goforth also noted that "While Gamergate was confined to the web, QAnon has crawled out of the screen." Kate Knibbs of Wired called Gamergate "proto-QAnon", saying that both are "ideologically incoherent and loosely organized, seeping across chan boards, forums, and social platforms" and that "it was impossible to tell exactly how many people actually believed what they were saying and how many were trolling." In 2015, Yasmin Kafai, the Chair of the Teaching, Learning, and Leadership division at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education (Penn GSE), said that "What Gamergate has changed is not the situation for women and minorities in gaming, but it has changed the public perception". In 2016, Sarah Jeong of The Washington Post compared the Pizzagate conspiracy theory to Gamergate, calling both a "time the darker parts of the Internet have delivered up sustained, orchestrated harassment on the back of a convoluted nest of lies." and claimed that "If we took 'Gamergate' harassment seriously, 'Pizzagate' might never have happened". In May 2017, Sean Murray of TheGamer argued that "The most important thing that Gamergate did was bring the online harassment of women into the public consciousness. That alone is something to be thankful for, but many people went above and beyond." In July 2017, Katherine Cross of The Daily Beast compared the CNN Blackmail controversy with Gamergate, claiming that "Many of the same tactics and major players that made names for themselves in GamerGate—from Mike Cernovich to Weev—are being used to push a wide-scale harassment campaign against CNN." In July 2018, Kishonna Gray, a communication and gender studies researcher, argued that "Gaming culture and games companies have been complicit in the abuse. There's no way that GamerGate could have had the power that it did have without that historical practice of diminishing women. The game industry weaponized GamerGate." Also in July 2018, Vox said that Gamergate's "success" "gave many on the extreme right a template for how to attack their perceived enemies" and that "The methods deployed in this ground-zero Gamergate event have since become standard practice for internet mobs wishing to attack seemingly anyone they believe to be a foe." As of 2018, "Not only are Gamergate supporters still active, but its most visible advocates seem to be thriving in the age of President Trump." In January 2019, Talia Lavin of The New Republic said that Gamergate was "a public test of weapons online trolls would use to inflict hell on anyone who they perceived as enemies" and that "Its tactics have only grown in sophistication in the intervening years." In a retrospective for Slate in August 2019, Evan Urquhart wrote that Gamergate was still active on Reddit and that its members continue to harass journalists. However, Urquhart also commented that Gamergate had not stopped socially-conscious games journalism, efforts to increase diversity in games, or individuals like Quinn and Sarkeesian. In a retrospective for The New York Times, Charlie Warzel said that "Gamergate is occasionally framed as a battle for the soul of the internet between a diverse, progressive set and an angry collection of white males who feel displaced. And it is that, too. But its most powerful legacy is as proof of concept of how to wage a post-truth information war." In a retrospective for TechCrunch, Jon Evans stated that the mainstream media had not learned how to combat Gamergate-like strategies and criticized coverage from The New York Times in particular. In a retrospective for NPR, Audie Cornish said that Gamergate "was a warning and a demonstration of how bad actors could abuse the power of social networks to achieve malicious ends." In a retrospective for Polygon in December 2019, Sarkeesian said that "GamerGate's real goals were expressed in the explicit racism, sexism, and transphobia of the memes the movement generated, and the posts its supporters wrote on the message boards where they organized and strategized. Later, the flimsiness of the 'ethics in games journalism' pretense would become a mocking meme signifying a bad faith argument. It would almost be funny, if GamerGate hadn't done so much harm, and caused so much lasting trauma." Sarkeesian also criticized the video game industry's response to Gamergate, saying that "The game industry's silence was shameful". In a retrospective for Vox in January 2020, Aja Romano stated that police, businesses, and social media platforms are still susceptible to Gamergate-like tactics and that they would have to change in order to keep victims safe. Romano also stated that "[Gamergate's] insistence that it was about one thing (ethics in journalism) when it was about something else (harassing women) provided a case study for how extremists would proceed to drive ideological fissures through the foundations of democracy: by building a toxic campaign of hate beneath a veneer of denial." In September 2020, Kate Knibbs of Wired compared the backlash to the 2020 film Cuties with Gamergate, claiming that people were "using tactics favored by Gamergate like review bombing, online harassment, and calls for boycotts." In the aftermath of the 2021 United States Capitol attack, Brianna Wu said that "everything I tried to get the FBI to act on in the aftermath of GamerGate has now come true ... We told people that if social media companies like Facebook and Reddit did not tighten their policies about these communities of organized hate, that we were going to see violent insurrection in the United States ... We told people that these communities were organizing online for violence and extremism. That, unfortunately, has proven to be true." Donovan said that key figures in Gamergate worked to raise online fury ahead of the attack. In August 2021, Jen Golbeck, a computer scientist and professor at the University of Maryland, said that "The important lasting, lingering impact of [Gamergate] was it was one of the first grass-roots campaigns of harassment that had no real consequences for the people who did it". In October 2021, Andrew Paul of Input magazine said that Gamergate "is largely considered one of the biggest influences for today's spread of misinformation, unhinged online conspiracy movements, and right-wing reactionary trends." and that "Some of the most effective methods of weaponizing memes got their start within the Gamergate movement, along with doxxing tactics and harassment strategies." In April 2022, David Emery of Snopes.com said that Gamergate is "considered by many a watershed event in the ascendancy of extremist personalities and tactics to online prominence" and that "Gamergate is regarded as emblematic of the deeply rooted sexist and reactionary attitudes observed not only in the male-dominated gaming industry of that time, but across the internet at large." Also in April, Caroline Sinders, a research fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said that "Gamergate, for a lot of people, for mainstream culture, was the introduction to what doxxing is". In May 2022, Elle Reeve of CNN said that Gamergate resulted in a "massive wave of young people enter[ing] what had been an old man's world of White nationalism." Also in May, Katherine Denkinson of The Independent compared the backlash against Amber Heard and her supporters in her then-ongoing trial against Johnny Depp with Gamergate, claiming that "the anti-Amber train has been expertly commandeered by the alt-right.", while noting that Gamergate "was quickly co-opted by the alt-right to promote anti-feminist rhetoric." In November 2022, Brendan Sinclair of GamesIndustry.biz argued that Gamergate was a test to see "how much pushback a decentralized hate movement" would receive from the video game industry and condemned the industry's response to Gamergate as "Decry[ing] the tactics instead of the motivation". Sinclair attributed the video game industry's poor response to Gamergate and other forms of harassment "to cowardice and greed, a reluctance to take sides in any kind of argument lest they alienate potential customers", as well as the industry's inability to properly treat "abuse and misogyny within its own ranks". Sinclair also noted that "in the years since Gamergate, we've seen a new golden age for conspiracy theories, disinformation and harassment campaigns, and unapologetic fascism and racism as mainstream political views." Also in November 2022, Stacey Henley of TheGamer argued that "Gamergate has been one of the biggest lightning rods in political recruitment of the internet era, perhaps the single-largest. What's crucial is that the people involved never cared about Gamergate in the first place. [...] All they cared about was being abusive to women." Henley also argued that "The blackpill movement, AKA the incels, also has deep roots in Gamergate." Henley concluded his article by saying that "For a campaign that wanted to take politics out of gaming, Gamergate has injected gaming deep into the veins of our politics." In June 2023, Alyssa Mercante of Kotaku argued that "Gaming was ripe for [Gamergate]", as the marginalization of women in games and the game industry, "[coupled] with the lack of safeguards for women and other vulnerable groups on social platforms and it's not surprising that the industry became a nexus of very bad behavior." Mercante also argued that video game conventions in particular continue to be "hotbeds of sexualized abuse". Also in June 2023, Miles Klee of Rolling Stone compared contemporary backlash against "woke" corporations, such as Activision Blizzard celebrating Pride Month, to the backlash against "social justice warriors" during Gamergate. David DePape, who had attacked Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi's husband, in October 2022, asserted in his trial that part of his turn to the far-right was his involvement with Gamergate. In March 2024, the online backlash to narrative development studio Sweet Baby Inc. was compared to Gamergate by media outlets, being dubbed "Gamergate 2.0" by The Week, Wired, and The Verge. See also Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groypers] | [TOKENS: 4036] |
Contents Groypers The Groypers, or the Groyper Army, are a far-right group loosely defined as the followers, fans, or supporters of political activist and online streamer Nick Fuentes. They are named after a variant of Pepe the Frog, an Internet meme. Groypers have attempted to introduce their politics into mainstream conservatism in the United States by various means, and participated in the January 6 United States Capitol attack as well as the protests leading up to it. They have also targeted other conservative groups and individuals whose agendas they view as contrary to the true meaning of "America First". The Groyper movement has been described as racist, nativist, fascist, sexist, homophobic, antisemitic, Islamophobic and an attempt to rebrand the alt-right movement. It has also been called accelerationist. What was later dubbed "The Groyper War" began in the fall of 2019, when Fuentes launched a social media campaign targeting Turning Point USA's "Culture War" college tour, led by Charlie Kirk. Enraged by the firing of a Fuentes ally as well as other political conflicts, Groypers disrupted college events by asking provocative questions about immigration, Israel, and LGBT rights, in an attempt to challenge mainstream conservative figures like Kirk, Donald Trump Jr., and Ben Shapiro, whom they labeled "Conservative Inc." The war gained traction after a November 2019 UCLA event where Trump Jr. was cut short by Groyper heckling. Fuentes expanded the movement by forming America First Students in January 2020. In February 2021, the Groyper movement splintered between Fuentes and Patrick Casey over fears of infiltration by federal informants and doxing at the 2021 America First Political Action Conference. America First Students founder Jaden McNeil joined in support of Fuentes and accused Casey of disloyalty, but later broke ties with Fuentes himself. In August 2024, Fuentes initiated "Groyper War 2", a digital campaign pressuring Donald Trump's presidential campaign to adopt his stances, mainly by using memes as a form of trolling or edgelording. Background and ideology Nick Fuentes's followers, initially known as "Nickers", began to be known as Groypers by 2019. Groypers are named after a cartoon amphibian named "Groyper", a variant of the Internet meme Pepe the Frog. Groyper is a rotund, green, frog-like creature often depicted sitting with its chin resting on interlocked fingers. Groyper is variously said to be a depiction of Pepe, a different character from Pepe but of the same species, or a toad. The Groyper meme was used as early as 2015 and became popular in 2017. In 2018, a group of computer scientists studying hateful speech on Twitter observed the Groyper image being used frequently in account avatars among accounts identified as "hateful" in their dataset. The researchers observed that the profiles tended to be anonymous and collectively tweeted primarily about politics, race, and religion. They also found that the users were not "lone wolves" and could be identified as a community with a high network centrality. The same year, Right Wing Watch reported that Massachusetts congressional hopeful Shiva Ayyadurai had created a campaign pin featuring a variation of the Groyper image, which RWW described as an attempt to appeal to far-right activists on 4chan, Gab, and Twitter who had adopted the meme. Groypers are very active online, particularly on Twitter, and have engaged in targeted harassment. Financial Times has reported that many Groypers use "deceptively anodyne" Twitter biographies, describing themselves in terms that downplay their extremism, like "Christian conservative". In April 2020, The Daily Dot reported that Fuentes and other Groypers had begun to move to TikTok, where they streamed live and used the "duet" feature to respond to Trump supporters. Groypers particularly targeted one left-wing teenage girl for harassment, first on TikTok and then on other platforms. Fuentes and some other Groyper accounts were banned from TikTok shortly after the Daily Dot article was published. Groypers present themselves as defenders of "traditional values", American nationalism and Christian conservatism shaped by Catholicism. Their ideology diverges sharply from mainstream American conservatives, including the Republican Party. Rather than conserving inherited institutions or practicing prudence and incremental reform, Groypers advance a racialized politics that appeal to xenophobia and resentment. They criticize mainstream conservative organizations as insufficiently nationalist and pro-white, and employ tactics of entryism and radicalization such as gradually introducing their targets to increasingly extreme ideas. Fuentes has said, "We are the right-wing flank of the Republican Party". He has summarized his political ambitions by saying, "We have got to be on the right, dragging [Republicans] kicking and screaming into the future... Into a truly reactionary party". In 2022, Fuentes advocated a "white uprising" to bring Donald Trump back to power and "never leave" and for the U.S. to "stop having elections" and abolish Congress. But less than a year after Trump was reelected, Fuentes said "Trump 2.0 has been a disappointment in literally every way but nobody wants to admit it." He criticized Trump's support of Israel, failure to release the Epstein Files, and offer of student visas to Chinese nationals, among other things. Groypers are widely recognized as a white nationalist, antisemitic, and homophobic movement. According to Katherine Dee, for Groypers, "fealty" to Fuentes is more important than ideology, as Groypers are a "fairly loose" group lacking "clear ideological" boundaries. "I think that Nick Fuentes is among the best examples of 'politics as fandom' that exists", Dee said. Fuentes has said he has been "oppressed" by "the Jews" and blamed the Jewish community for antisemitism, claiming that matters "tend to go from zero to sixty" and that "the reason is them". He has said that matters would get "a lot uglier" for their community if they do not begin to support "people like us". According to the Anti-Defamation League, Groypers blame the mainstream conservative movement as well as the political left for what they view as "destroying white America". They oppose immigration and globalism. Groypers support "traditional" values and Christianity and oppose feminism and LGBTQ rights. Groypers' questions often focus on United States–Israel relations, immigration policy, affirmative action, and LGBTQ conservatives. They regularly use antisemitic dog whistles, including questions about the USS Liberty incident and references to the "dancing Israelis" conspiracy theory alleging Israeli involvement in the September 11 attacks. After the assassination of Charlie Kirk in 2025, various online conspiracy theories tied the Groypers to the assassination. Fuentes immediately condemned the shooting and asked his supporters not to "take up arms", saying the situation felt "like a nightmare". Groyper War In September 2019, Ashley St. Clair, a "brand ambassador" for the conservative student group Turning Point USA, was photographed at an event featuring several allegedly white nationalist and alt-right figures, including Fuentes, Jacob Wohl, and Anthime Gionet, better known as "Baked Alaska". After Right Wing Watch brought the photographs to its attention, TPUSA issued a statement that it had severed ties with St. Clair and condemned white nationalism as "abhorrent and un-American". At the 2019 Politicon convention, Fuentes tried to attend several Turning Point events featuring Charlie Kirk, including waiting in line to take photos with Kirk and attempting to attend Kirk's debate with Kyle Kulinski of The Young Turks. Security repeatedly prevented him from approaching Kirk, and Fuentes accused Kirk of suppressing him to avoid a confrontation, as Fuentes had grown critical of Kirk's positions, which he said were too weak. In the fall of 2019, Kirk launched a college speaking tour with TPUSA titled "Culture War", featuring himself and guests such as Rand Paul, Donald Trump Jr., Kimberly Guilfoyle, Lara Trump, and Dan Crenshaw. In retaliation for St. Clair's firing and the Politicon incident, Fuentes began organizing a social media campaign asking his followers to go to Kirk's events and ask provocative and controversial leading questions about his stances on immigration, Israel, and LGBT rights to expose Kirk as a "fake conservative". At a Culture War event hosted by Ohio State University on October 29, 11 out of 14 questions were asked by Groypers. They included "Can you prove that our white European ideals will be maintained if the country is no longer made up of white European descendants?" They asked Kirk's co-host Rob Smith, a gay, black Iraq War veteran, "How does anal sex help us win the culture war?" Fuentes's social media campaign against Kirk became known as the "Groyper Wars". Kirk, Smith, and others at TPUSA, including Benny Johnson, began calling the questioners white supremacists and antisemites. Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin wrote an article for American Greatness attacking Kirk's immigration policies, particularly his stance that immigrants who graduate from U.S. universities should receive green cards. After defending Fuentes and his followers, Malkin was fired as a speaker for Young America's Foundation, a rival organization to Turning Point whose events Groypers had also targeted. Malkin later called herself a mother figure to and leader of the Groypers. Another Turning Point USA event the Groypers targeted was a promotional event for Donald Trump Jr.'s book Triggered, featuring Trump, Kirk, and Guilfoyle at the University of California, Los Angeles in November 2019. Anticipating further questions from Fuentes's followers, it was announced that the event's Q&A portion had been canceled, which led to heckling and boos from the mostly pro-Trump audience. The disruptions forced the event, originally scheduled to last two hours, to end after 30 minutes. The Groyper Wars earned widespread media attention after the UCLA incident with Trump Jr. Chadwick Moore of Spectator USA commented that the ordeal revealed deep divisions within the American right among young voters, particularly Generation Z. Moore claimed this divide was due to the Groypers' viewing Kirk and others in the mainstream conservative movement as "snatching the baton and appointing themselves the guardians of 2016's spoils", despite holding beliefs that Fuentes and his followers believe conflict with Trump's "Make America Great Again" agenda. Another Spectator author, Ben Sixsmith, claimed that Turning Point's unwillingness to respond to controversial questions and use of insults to dismiss its critics revealed the organization's hypocrisy after having "promoted themselves as the debate guys". Groypers' targets for heckling quickly expanded beyond Kirk and TPUSA to other mainstream conservative groups and individuals, which they sometimes collectively call "Conservative Inc.", including Young America's Foundation and its student outreach branch Young Americans for Freedom, which included such speakers as Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire and Jonah Goldberg of The Dispatch. In December 2019, outside a venue where a TPUSA event was being held, Fuentes crossed paths with Shapiro, who was on his way to the event with his wife and children. Fuentes confronted him over his past public speaking comments. Shapiro refused to acknowledge him. Fuentes faced widespread condemnation from politicians and various pundits—including Nikki Haley, Meghan McCain, Sebastian Gorka, Megyn Kelly, and Michael Avenatti—for confronting Shapiro while he was with his family. Addressing the increase in attention to the far right due to Kirk's aggressive questioning, Shapiro gave a speech at Stanford University in which he attacked Fuentes (without naming him) and his followers as essentially a rebranded version of the alt-right. In December 2019, Fuentes held the Groyper Leadership Summit in Florida. A small group attended in person, and others joined via livestream. The event was held at the same time and in the same city as TPUSA's Student Action Summit (SAS); Groypers argued with SAS attendees outside their venue, and Fuentes, Patrick Casey, and some Groypers were removed from the SAS venue after attempting to enter. At the Groyper Leadership Summit, Fuentes, Casey, and former InfoWars contributor Jake Lloyd spoke about the Groypers' strategy and ideology. In January 2020, Groyper and former leader of Kansas State University's TPUSA chapter Jaden McNeil formed the KSU organization America First Students. The group, which shares a name with Fuentes's America First podcast, was conceived at the Groyper Leadership Summit, and Groyper leaders have helped promote it. The America First Students organization, which says it formed "in defense of Christian values, strong families, closed borders, and the American worker", is considered to promote the Groyper movement. In February 2020, Fuentes spoke at several events held as rival events to the Conservative Political Action Conference. One of these, hosted by the online publication National File, featured Fuentes, Alex Jones of InfoWars, and Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes. Fuentes hosted the first annual America First Political Action Conference, which included such speakers as Patrick Casey, former Daily Caller author Scott Greer, and Malkin. January 6 United States Capitol attack Groypers were present at the January 6 United States Capitol attack and prominent among those who participated in the early waves of attack on the Capitol. Exact numbers are not known, but several were arrested. In February 2021, the Anti-Defamation League reported that it had identified ten Groypers or related white supremacists involved in the riots. Fuentes and Casey were on the Capitol steps and celebrated the temporary disruption of Congress, but have not been charged. Both were subpoenaed by the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack in January 2022 for their role in planning the attack. Groyper War 2 In August 2024, Fuentes began a "digital war" against Trump's presidential campaign, which he dubbed "Groyper War 2", referencing his followers' activities in 2019. In response to Trump's poor polling, Fuentes began calling on his followers to "bring the energy with memes, edits, replies, and trolls" aimed at pressuring Trump's campaign to adopt further-right positions on race and immigration, as well as urging Trump to fire his campaign advisors Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles. In addition to directing his followers to make their demands trend on X and Truth Social, Fuentes threatened to "escalate pressure in the real world", urging followers to withhold their votes and protest Trump rallies in battleground states. A senior researcher for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue speculated that Fuentes's "crude" attempts at platform manipulation could be a blueprint for more sophisticated actors, such as hostile states, to engage in foreign election interference due to the lack of enforcement actions taken by X and Truth Social in response to Fuentes's brief influence campaign. Shortly after initiating this effort, Fuentes took credit for Trump's rehiring of Corey Lewandowski as a senior campaign advisor. An anonymous source cited by The Washington Post claimed that Fuentes was making it "far more difficult for Trump" to make changes to his campaign "if it looks like he's responding to the groypers". Political activism The Groyper movement has mostly failed to gain political traction, often being disavowed by the politicians it has attempted to support. Congressman Paul Gosar, the keynote speaker at Fuentes's AFPAC II in 2021, disavowed Fuentes and his followers the next day while addressing CPAC. At AFPAC III in 2022, several political figures Fuentes claimed were slated to speak, including Arizona gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake and former acting Director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Thomas Homan, did not attend and disavowed the event upon learning of Fuentes's views. The conference's keynote speaker, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, later said she did not know who Fuentes was and, upon learning of his views, condemned him. One of the candidates Fuentes endorsed in the 2022 midterms who later disavowed his endorsement was Joe Kent, who ran in Washington's 3rd congressional district. In response to Kent's disavowal, Fuentes began organizing an online campaign against him, and although Kent ultimately won the Republican nomination, defeating incumbent Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler, he narrowly lost to Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in the general election. A few Republicans supported Perez as a result of both the questioning of Kent's past and the motives of right-wing voters and influencers such as Fuentes; Perez also gained mainstream Republican support by flipping on issues such as abortion. Of the AFPAC III speakers who did not rescind their support for Fuentes, only two ran for major office: Lieutenant Governor of Idaho Janice McGeachin and Arizona State Senator Wendy Rogers. Rogers won a competitive primary that year and was reelected, but she was censured for her remarks at the conference calling for political violence. McGeachin, who ran for governor of Idaho that year, lost the primary to incumbent Governor Brad Little by a 20-point margin. Fuentes and the Groyper movement later supported Laura Loomer's candidacy for Florida's 11th congressional district in 2022. On the night of the primary, Fuentes attended Loomer's election watch party, and they were filmed sharing a toast as results came in that seemed to suggest Loomer would defeat incumbent Congressman Daniel Webster; Loomer toasted "to the hostile takeover of the Republican Party". When additional results came in confirming Loomer's loss to Webster by 7 points, she claimed without evidence in a speech to her supporters that her loss was due to voter fraud. In late 2022 and early 2023, the Groyper movement shifted away from its longtime position of supporting Trump and instead began promoting Kanye West's presidential campaign. West brought Fuentes to a dinner at Mar-a-Lago with Trump, which generated significant controversy and raised Fuentes's profile; Trump later disavowed Fuentes, saying he was not initially aware of Fuentes's views. West's campaign soon included Milo Yiannopoulos, Ali Alexander, and Rumble streamer Sneako. Many Groypers, including fellow streamers on Fuentes's website Cozy.tv, began using their platforms to promote West's antisemitic views. Two Cozy streamers, Dalton Clodfelter and Tyler Russell, began streaming themselves harassing students at college campuses with a table display reading "Ye is Right—Change my Mind", a slogan that derived from a college tour by right-wing commentator Steven Crowder. Jewish student groups and allies frequently protested these events, playing music on loudspeakers and chanting to drown out the streamers' speeches. The planned college tour was canceled after less than a month when Clodfelter lost the funding for both the tour and the Rumble channel associated with it. On May 4, 2023, it was reported that West had fired Fuentes and Alexander, the latter of whom had become embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal involving young men and underage boys, and rehired Yiannopoulos, who had since split from Fuentes and was the first person to leak the allegations against Alexander, despite initially denying the rumors on an episode of InfoWars. References Further reading |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory] | [TOKENS: 5218] |
Contents Pizzagate conspiracy theory "Pizzagate" is a conspiracy theory that went viral during the 2016 United States presidential election cycle, falsely claiming that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) had discovered a pedophilia ring linked to members of the Democratic Party while searching through Anthony Weiner's emails. It has been extensively discredited by a wide range of organizations, including the Washington, D.C. police. The personal email account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign chair, was hacked in a spear-phishing attack in March 2016. WikiLeaks published his emails in November 2016. Proponents of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory falsely claimed the emails contained coded messages that connected several high-ranking Democratic Party officials and U.S. restaurants with an alleged human-trafficking and child sex ring. One of the establishments allegedly involved was the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, D.C. Members of the alt-right, conservative journalists and others who had urged Clinton's prosecution over her use of an unrelated private email server spread the conspiracy theory on social media outlets such as 4chan, 8chan, Reddit and Twitter. In response, a man from North Carolina traveled to Comet Ping Pong to investigate the conspiracy and fired a rifle inside the restaurant to break the lock on a door to a storage room during his search. In addition, the restaurant's owner and staff received death threats from conspiracy theorists. Pizzagate is generally considered a predecessor to the QAnon conspiracy theory. It also generated another offshoot conspiracy theory, called Frazzledrip, which involved Hillary Clinton participating in the ritual murder of a child. Pizzagate resurged in 2020, mainly due to QAnon, and again in 2026 during the release of the Epstein files. While initially it was spread by only the far-right, it has since been spread by users on TikTok "who don't otherwise fit a right-wing conspiracy theorist mold: the biggest Pizzagate spreaders on TikTok appear to otherwise be mostly interested in topics of viral dance moves and Black Lives Matter". The conspiracy theory has developed and become less partisan and political in nature, with less emphasis on Clinton and more on an alleged worldwide elite of child sex-traffickers. Origins October 30, 2016 On October 30, 2016, a Twitter account posting white supremacist material which said it was run by a Jewish New York lawyer falsely claimed that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) had discovered a pedophilia ring linked to members of the Democratic Party while searching through Anthony Weiner's emails. Throughout October and November 2016, WikiLeaks had published John Podesta's emails. Proponents of the conspiracy theory read the emails and alleged they contained code words for pedophilia and human trafficking. Proponents also claimed that Comet Ping Pong, a pizzeria in Washington, D.C., was a meeting ground for Satanic ritual abuse. Deriving its name from the Watergate scandal, the story was later posted on fake news websites, starting with Your News Wire, which cited a 4chan post from earlier that year. The Your News Wire article was subsequently spread by pro-Trump websites, including SubjectPolitics.com, which added the claim that the NYPD had raided Hillary Clinton's property. The Conservative Daily Post ran a headline claiming the Federal Bureau of Investigation had confirmed the conspiracy theory. According to the BBC, the allegations spread to "the mainstream internet" several days before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, after a Reddit user posted a Pizzagate "evidence" document. The original Reddit post, removed some time between November 4 and 21, alleged the involvement of Comet Ping Pong: Everyone associated with the business is making semi-overt, semi-tongue-in-cheek, and semi-sarcastic inferences towards sex with minors. The artists that work for and with the business also generate nothing but cultish imagery of disembodiment, blood, beheadings, sex, and of course pizza. The story was picked up by other fake news websites like InfoWars, Planet Free Will and The Vigilant Citizen, and was promoted by alt-right activists such as Mike Cernovich, Brittany Pettibone and Jack Posobiec. Other promoters included David Seaman, former writer for TheStreet.com, CBS46 anchor Ben Swann, basketball player Andrew Bogut, and Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson, as well as the German edition of The Epoch Times, a far-right Falun Gong-associated newspaper. On December 30, as Bogut recovered from a knee injury, members of /r/The Donald community on Reddit promoted a false theory that his injury was connected to his support for Pizzagate. Jonathan Albright, an assistant professor of media analytics at Elon University, said that a disproportionate number of tweets about Pizzagate came from the Czech Republic, Cyprus and Vietnam, and that some of the most frequent retweeters were bots. Members of the Reddit community /r/The_Donald created the /r/pizzagate subreddit to further develop the conspiracy theory. The sub was banned on November 23, 2016, for violating Reddit's anti-doxing policy after users posted personal details of people connected to the alleged conspiracy. Reddit released a statement afterwards, saying, "We don't want witchhunts on our site". After the ban on Reddit, the discussion was moved to the v/pizzagate sub on Voat, a now-defunct Reddit clone dedicated to far-right content. Some of Pizzagate's proponents, including David Seaman and Michael G. Flynn (Michael Flynn's son), evolved the conspiracy into a broader government conspiracy called "Pedogate". According to this theory, a "satanic cabal of elites" of the New World Order operates international child sex trafficking rings. By June 2020, the conspiracy theory found renewed popularity on TikTok, where videos tagged #Pizzagate were reaching over 80 million views (see relevant section). In Turkey, the allegations were reported by pro-government newspapers (i.e., those supportive of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan), such as Sabah, A Haber, Yeni Şafak, Akşam and Star. The story appeared on Turkey's Ekşi Sözlük website and on the viral news network HaberSelf, where anyone can post content. These forums reposted images and allegations directly from the since-deleted subreddit, which were reprinted in full in the state-controlled press. Efe Sozeri, a columnist for The Daily Dot, suggested Turkish government sources were pushing this story to distract attention from a child abuse scandal there in March 2016. Harassment of restaurant owners and employees As Pizzagate spread, Comet Ping Pong received hundreds of threats from the theory's believers. The restaurant's owner, James Alefantis, told The New York Times: "From this insane, fabricated conspiracy theory, we've come under constant assault. I've done nothing for days but try to clean this up and protect my staff and friends from being terrorized." Some adherents identified the Instagram account of Alefantis and pointed to some of the photos posted there as evidence of the conspiracy. Many of the images shown were friends and family who had liked Comet Ping Pong's page on Facebook. In some cases, imagery was taken from unrelated websites and purported to be Alefantis' own. The restaurant's owners and staff were harassed and threatened on social media websites, and the owner received death threats. The restaurant's Yelp page was locked by the site's operators citing reviews that were "motivated more by the news coverage itself than the reviewer's personal consumer experience". Several bands who had performed at the pizzeria also faced harassment. For example, Amanda Kleinman of Heavy Breathing deleted her Twitter account after receiving negative comments connecting her and her band to the conspiracy theory. Another band, Sex Stains, had closed the comments of their YouTube videos and addressed the controversy in the description of their videos. The artist Arrington de Dionyso, who once had painted a mural at the pizzeria that had been painted over several years before the controversy, described the campaign of harassment against him in detail, and said of the attacks in general, "I think it's a very deliberate assault, which will eventually be a coordinated assault on all forms of free expression." The affair has drawn comparisons with the Gamergate harassment campaign. Pizzagate-related harassment of businesses extended beyond Comet Ping Pong to include other nearby D.C. businesses such as Besta Pizza, three doors down from Comet; Little Red Fox cafe; bookstore Politics and Prose; and French bistro, Terasol. These businesses received a high volume of threatening and menacing telephone calls, including death threats, and also experienced online harassment. The co-owners of Little Red Fox and Terasol filed police reports. Brooklyn restaurant Roberta's was also pulled into the hoax, receiving harassing phone calls, including a call from an unidentified person telling an employee that she was "going to bleed and be tortured". The restaurant became involved after a since-removed YouTube video used images from their social media accounts to imply they were part of the hoax sex ring. Others then spread the accusations on social media, claiming the "Clinton family loves Roberta's". East Side Pies, in Austin, Texas, saw one of its delivery trucks vandalized with an epithet, and was the target of online harassment related to their supposed involvement in Pizzagate, alleged connections to the Central Intelligence Agency and the Illuminati. The Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated Pizzagate-related threats in March 2017 as part of a probe into possible Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Criminal responses Edgar Maddison Welch, a 28-year-old man from Salisbury, North Carolina, arrived at Comet Ping Pong and fired three shots from an AR-15-style rifle that struck the restaurant's walls, a desk and a door on December 4, 2016. Welch later told police that he had planned to "self-investigate" the conspiracy theory. Welch saw himself as the potential hero of the story—a rescuer of children. He surrendered after officers surrounded the restaurant and was arrested without incident; no one was injured. Welch told police he had read online that the Comet restaurant was harboring child sex slaves and that he wanted to see for himself if they were there. In an interview with The New York Times, Welch later said that he regretted how he had handled the situation but did not dismiss the conspiracy theory, and rejected the description of it as "fake news". Some conspiracy theorists speculated the shooting was a staged attempt to discredit their investigations. Welch was charged with one count of "interstate transportation of a firearm with intent to commit an offense" (a federal crime) on December 13, 2016. According to court documents, Welch attempted to recruit friends three days before the attack by urging them to watch a YouTube video about the conspiracy. He was subsequently charged with two additional offenses, with the grand jury returning an indictment charging him with assault with a dangerous weapon and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. Following a plea agreement with prosecutors, Welch pleaded guilty to the federal charge of interstate transport of firearms and the local District of Columbia charge of assault with a dangerous weapon on March 24, 2017. Welch also agreed to pay $5,744.33 for damages to the restaurant. U.S. District Judge (and future U.S. Supreme Court justice) Ketanji Brown Jackson sentenced Welch to four years in prison on June 22, 2017. At the sentencing hearing, Welch apologized for his conduct and said he had been "foolish and reckless". On March 3, 2020, Welch was transferred to a Community Corrections Center (CCC); he was released on May 28. On January 4, 2025—eight years after the initial incident at Comet Ping Pong—two police officers from Kannapolis, North Carolina, pulled over Welch's vehicle at a traffic stop over an outstanding warrant for his arrest for a felony probation violation (Welch was a passenger in the vehicle). When they attempted to arrest him, he pulled out a gun and refused orders to drop it, and the officers shot him. Welch died two days later. On January 12, 2017, Yusif Lee Jones, a 52-year-old man from Shreveport, Louisiana, pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana to making a threatening phone call to Besta Pizza, another pizzeria on the same block as Comet Ping Pong, three days after Welch's attack. He said he threatened Besta to "save the kids", and "finish what the other guy didn't". The city of Portsmouth, England, experienced its own version of Pizzagate when the Scottish owner of a vaping business was targeted in what the Sunday Times called a "xenophobic campaign" in 2018. This lasted six months. The main culprit, Oliver Redmond, was prosecuted and sentenced to five months in prison. Judge William Mousley QC also imposed a three-year restraining order and was quoted as follows: "Mr Cheape said he saw 15 to 20 screenshots a day regarding him, his partner, and his business. It was described as a paedophile grooming operation, and the suggestion was made that the children were in the basement of the store, and he described that you were passing information on to his suppliers that he was a paedophile and that there was an international investigation involving Mr Cheape." Comet Ping Pong suffered an arson attack when a fire was started in one of its backrooms on January 25, 2019. Employees quickly extinguished the blaze, and nobody was injured. The perpetrator escaped, but was arrested a few days later while climbing a fence at the Washington Monument and tied to the arson via security footage. He had posted a video referencing QAnon prior to the arson. On April 26, 2020, he was sentenced to four years in prison. Debunking The conspiracy theory has been widely discredited and debunked. It has been judged to be false after detailed investigation by the fact-checking website Snopes.com and The New York Times. Numerous news organizations have debunked it as a conspiracy theory, including The New York Observer, The Washington Post, The Independent, The Huffington Post, The Washington Times, the Los Angeles Times, Fox News, CNN and the Miami Herald. The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia characterized the matter as "fictitious". Much of the purported evidence cited by the conspiracy theory's proponents had been taken from entirely different sources and made to appear as if it supported the conspiracy. Images of children of family and friends of the pizzeria's staff were taken from social media sites such as Instagram and claimed to be photos of victims. The New York Times published an article that analyzed the theory's claims on December 10, 2016. They emphasized that: No alleged victims have come forward, and no physical evidence has been found. Responses In an interview with NPR on November 27, 2016, Comet Ping Pong owner James Alefantis referred to the conspiracy theory as "an insanely complicated, made-up, fictional lie-based story" and a "coordinated political attack". Syndicated columnist Daniel Ruth wrote that the conspiracy theorists' assertions were "dangerous and damaging fake allegations" and that they were "repeatedly debunked, disproved and dismissed". Despite the conspiracy theory being debunked, it continued to spread on social media, with over one million messages using hashtag #Pizzagate on Twitter in November 2016. Stefanie MacWilliams, who wrote an article promoting the conspiracy on Planet Free Will, was subsequently reported by the Toronto Star as saying, "I really have no regrets and it's honestly really grown our audience". Pizzagate, she said, is "two worlds clashing. People don't trust the mainstream media anymore, but it's true that people shouldn't take the alternative media as truth, either". On December 8, 2016, Hillary Clinton responded to the conspiracy theory, speaking about the dangers of fake news websites. She said, "The epidemic of malicious fake news and fake propaganda that flooded social media over the past year, it's now clear that so-called fake news can have real-world consequences". A poll conducted by Public Policy Polling on December 6–7, 2016, asked 1,224 U.S. registered voters if they thought Hillary Clinton was "connected to a child sex ring being run out of a pizzeria in Washington DC." Nine percent of respondents said they believed she was connected, 72% said they did not, and 19% were not sure. A poll of voters conducted on December 17–20 by The Economist/YouGov asked voters if they believed that "Leaked e-mails from the Clinton campaign talked about pedophilia and human trafficking – 'Pizzagate'." The results showed that 17% of Clinton voters responded "true" while 82% responded "not true"; and 46% of Trump voters responded "true" while 53% responded "not true". Academic Roger Lancaster likened the impact of Pizzagate to the Satanic panic of the 1980s: at the time, hundreds of daycare workers were falsely accused of abusing children. After the Comet Ping Pong shooting, Alex Jones of InfoWars backed off from the idea that the D.C. pizzeria was the center of the conspiracy. On December 4, InfoWars uploaded a YouTube video that linked Pizzagate to the November 13 death of a sex-worker-rights activist. The video falsely claimed that she had been investigating a link between the Clinton Foundation and human trafficking in Haiti. It speculated she had been murdered in connection with her investigation. According to the activist's former employer, family and friends, her death was in fact a suicide and she was not investigating the Clinton Foundation. By December 14, Infowars had removed two of its three Pizzagate-related videos. In February 2017, Alefantis' lawyers sent Jones a letter demanding an apology and retraction. Under Texas law, Jones was given a month to comply or be subject to a libel suit. In March 2017, Alex Jones apologized to Alefantis for promulgating the conspiracy theory, saying: "To my knowledge today, neither Mr. Alefantis, nor his restaurant Comet Ping Pong, were involved in any human trafficking as was part of the theories about Pizzagate that were being written about in many media outlets and which we commented upon." InfoWars also issued a correction on its website and Jones said, "I want our viewers and listeners to know that we regret any negative impact our commentaries may have had on Mr. Alefantis, Comet Ping Pong, or its employees. We apologize to the extent our commentaries could be construed as negative statements about Mr. Alefantis or Comet Ping Pong, and we hope that anyone else involved in commenting on Pizzagate will do the same thing." In the days leading up to the 2016 election, Michael Flynn, then a close supporter of Donald Trump and later Trump's National Security Advisor, posted multiple tweets on Twitter containing conspiratorial material regarding Hillary Clinton and her staff. They alleged that John Podesta drank the blood and bodily fluids of other humans in Satanic rituals, which Politico says "soon morphed into the '#pizzagate' conspiracy theory involving Comet Ping Pong". On November 2, 2016, Flynn tweeted a link to a story with unfounded accusations and wrote, "U decide – NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc ... MUST READ!" The tweet was shared by over 9,000 people, but was deleted from Flynn's account sometime during December 12–13, 2016. After the shooting incident at Comet Ping Pong, Michael Flynn Jr., Michael T. Flynn's son and also a member of Trump's transition team, tweeted: "Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it'll remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many 'coincidences' tied to it." On December 6, 2016, Flynn Jr. was forced out of Trump's transition team. Spokesman Jason Miller did not identify the reason for his dismissal, however, The New York Times reported that other officials had confirmed it was related to the tweet. Developments within QAnon Pizzagate became a pillar of the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, which emerged in 2017 and incorporated its beliefs. QAnon, which has been likened in the media to "Pizzagate on steroids", and a "big-budget sequel" to Pizzagate, linked the child trafficking ring to a nefarious worldwide conspiracy. It also developed Pizzagate's claims by adding the concepts that the sexual abuses are part of Satanic rituals and that the abusers murder the children to "harvest" the adrenochrome from their blood, which they then use as a drug or as an elixir to remain youthful. A related conspiracy theory known as "Frazzledrip" (sometimes spelled "Frazzled.rip") emerged in 2018, claiming that an "extreme snuff film" was recovered from Anthony Weiner's stolen laptop and was circulating on the dark web. According to that story, the file named "Frazzled.rip" was hidden in a folder called "life insurance" in Weiner's computer: the video contained in that file was said to show Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin raping and murdering a young girl, drinking her adrenochrome-rich blood in a Satanic ritual, and "tak[ing] turns wearing the little girl's face like a mask". Purported frames from the video circulated to back these claims: according to Snopes, some of these images came from a YouTube video originally posted on April Fools' Day 2018, and a photo which was said to show Huma Abedin wearing a mask had been taken from the website of a Washington, D.C. Indian restaurant and portrayed the owner of that establishment. Hundreds of videos on YouTube promoted these false statements, and the claims were still circulating internationally within QAnon groups two years later in 2020. In 2020, as the broader QAnon movement became an international phenomenon, Pizzagate also gained new traction and became less U.S.-centric in nature, with videos and posts on the topic in Italy, Brazil, Turkey and other countries worldwide each gaining millions of views. This new iteration is less partisan; the majority of the (mostly teenage) promoters of the #PizzaGate hashtag on TikTok were not right-wing, and support the Black Lives Matter movement. It focuses on an alleged global elite of child sex-traffickers, ranging from politicians to powerful businesspeople and celebrities such as Bill Gates, Tom Hanks, Ellen DeGeneres, Oprah Winfrey and Chrissy Teigen. Justin Bieber's 2020 song "Yummy" was alleged to be about the conspiracy theory, and rekindled support for the theory during the year. The conspiracy theory gained traction when Venezuelan YouTuber DrossRotzank made a video about Bieber's music video and its alleged references to Pizzagate. Rotzank's video gained 3 million views in two days and led "Pizzagate" to become a trending topic on the Spanish-language Twitter. Adherents of the theory also believe that Bieber gave a coded signal admitting as such in a later Instagram Live video, where he touched his hat after being asked to do so in the chat if he was a victim of Pizzagate (however, there is no indication that Bieber saw this comment). In April 2020, a documentary promoting Pizzagate, Out of Shadows, was made by a former Hollywood stuntman and released on YouTube. TikTok users began promoting both Out of Shadows and the alleged Bieber association until the #PizzaGate hashtag was banned by the company. The New York Times said in June 2020 that posts on the platform with the #PizzaGate hashtag were "viewed more than 82 million times in recent months", and Google searches for the term also increased in that time. They also reported that "In the first week of June, comments, likes and shares of PizzaGate also spiked to more than 800,000 on Facebook and nearly 600,000 on Instagram, according to data from CrowdTangle ... That compares with 512,000 interactions on Facebook and 93,000 on Instagram during the first week of December 2016. From the start of 2017 through January of 2020, the average number of weekly PizzaGate mentions, likes and shares on Facebook and Instagram was under 20,000". In August 2020, Facebook temporarily suspended use of the "#savethechildren" hashtag, when used to promote elements of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and QAnon. The improper use of the hashtag caused protests from the unrelated NGO Save the Children. The Pizzagate Massacre (originally titled Duncan), a dark satire film inspired by the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and Edgar Maddison Welch's shooting of Comet Ping Pong, was released on VOD in November 2021. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_Lynn_Coplin] | [TOKENS: 10939] |
Contents 4chan 4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, including video games, television, literature, cooking, weapons, music, history, technology, anime, physical fitness, politics, and sports, among others. Registration is not available, except for staff, and users typically post anonymously. As of 2022[update], 4chan receives more than 22 million unique monthly visitors, of whom approximately half are from the United States. 4chan was created as an unofficial English-language counterpart to the Japanese imageboard Futaba Channel, also known as 2chan, and its first boards were originally used for posting images and discussion related to anime. The site has been described as a hub of Internet subculture, its community being influential in the formation and popularization of prominent Internet memes, such as lolcats, Rickrolling, rage comics, wojaks, Pepe the Frog, as well as hacktivist and political movements, such as Anonymous and the alt-right. 4chan has often been the subject of media attention as a source of controversies, including the coordination of pranks and harassment against websites and Internet users, and the posting of illegal and offensive content as a result of its lax censorship and moderation policies. In 2008, The Guardian summarized the 4chan community as "lunatic, juvenile [...] brilliant, ridiculous and alarming". Background The majority of posting on 4chan takes place on imageboards, on which users have the ability to share images and create threaded discussions. As of August 2022[update], the site's homepage lists 75 imageboards and one Flash animation board. Most boards have their own set of rules and are dedicated to a specific topic, including anime and manga, video games, music, literature, fitness, politics, and sports, among others. Uniquely, the "Random" board—also known as /b/—enforces few rules. In 2008, 4chan was one of the Internet's busiest imageboards, according to the Los Angeles Times. 4chan's Alexa rank was 853 in March 2022, though it has been as high as 56. It is provided to its users free of charge and consumes a large amount of bandwidth; as a result, its financing has often been problematic. Poole has acknowledged that donations alone could not keep the site online, and turned to advertising to help make ends meet. However, the explicit content hosted on 4chan has deterred businesses who do not want to be associated with the site's content. In January 2009, Poole signed a new deal with an advertising company; in February 2009, he was $20,000 in debt, and the site was continuing to lose money. The 4chan servers were moved from Texas to California in August 2008, which upgraded the maximum bandwidth throughput of 4chan from 100 Mbit/s to 1 Gbit/s. Unlike most web forums, 4chan does not have a registration system, allowing users to post anonymously. Posting is ephemeral, as threads receiving recent replies are "bumped" to the top of their respective board and old threads are deleted as new ones are created. Any nickname may be used when posting, even one that has been previously adopted, such as "Anonymous" or "moot". In place of registration, 4chan has provided tripcodes as an optional form of authenticating a poster's identity. As making a post without filling in the "Name" field causes posts to be attributed to "Anonymous", general understanding on 4chan holds that Anonymous is not a single person but a collective (hive) of users. Moderators generally post without a name even when performing sysop actions. A "capcode" may be used to attribute the post to "Anonymous ## Mod", although moderators often post without the capcode. In a 2011 interview on Nico Nico Douga, Poole explained that there are approximately 20 volunteer moderators active on 4chan.[note 1] 4chan also has a junior moderation team, called "janitors", who may delete posts or images and suggest that the normal moderation team ban a user, but who cannot post with a capcode. Revealing oneself as a janitor is grounds for immediate dismissal. Gianluca Stringhini, an associate professor at Boston University College of Engineering, said in August 2024, "The only moderation on the platform appears to be for clearly illegal content, such as child pornography. Everything else remains untouched." 4chan has been the target of occasional denial of service attacks. For instance, on December 28, 2010, 4chan and other websites went down due to such an attack, following which Poole said on his blog, "We now join the ranks of MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, et al. - an exclusive club!" History The site was launched as 4chan.net on October 1, 2003, by Christopher Poole, a then-15-year-old student from New York City using the online handle "moot". Poole had been a regular participant on Something Awful's subforum "Anime Death Tentacle Rape Whorehouse" (ADTRW), where many users were familiar with the Japanese imageboard format and Futaba Channel ("2chan.net"). When creating 4chan, Poole obtained Futaba Channel's open source code and translated the Japanese text into English using AltaVista's Babel Fish online translator.[note 1] After the site's creation, Poole invited users from the ADTRW subforum, many of whom were dissatisfied with the site's moderation, to visit 4chan, which he advertised as an English-language counterpart to Futaba Channel and a place for Western fans to discuss anime and manga. At its founding, the site only hosted one board: /b/ (Anime/Random).[note 1] Before the end of 2003, several new anime-related boards were added, including /h/ (Hentai), /c/ (Anime/Cute), /d/ (Hentai/Alternative), /w/ (Wallpapers/Anime), /y/ (Yaoi), and /a/ (Anime). In the early days of the website, Poole hosted meetings from 2005 to 2008 in various locations to promote it, such as Otakon, that popularized some of the first 4chan-related memes. Additionally, a lolicon board was created at /l/ (Lolikon), but was disabled following the posting of real-life child pornography and ultimately deleted in October 2004, after threats of legal action. In February 2004, GoDaddy suspended the 4chan.net domain, prompting Poole to move the site to its current domain at 4chan.org. On March 1, 2004, Poole announced that he lacked the funds to pay the month's server bill, but was able to continue operations after receiving a swarm of donations from users. In June 2004, 4chan experienced six weeks of downtime due to PayPal suspending 4chan's donations service after receiving complaints about the site's content. Following 4chan's return, several non-anime related boards were introduced, including /k/ (Weapons), /o/ (Auto), and /v/ (Video Games). In 2008, nine new boards were created, including the sports board at /sp/, the fashion board at /fa/ and the "Japan/General" (the name later changed to "Otaku Culture") board at /jp/. By this point, 4chan's culture had altered, moving away from the "early, more childish," humour, as evident by the likes of Project Chanology; trolling underwent a so-called "golden age" that took aim at American corporate media. In January 2011, Poole announced the deletion of the /r9k/ ("ROBOT9000") and /new/ (News) boards, saying that /new/ had become devoted to racist discussions, and /r9k/ no longer served its original purpose of being a test implementation of xkcd's ROBOT9000 script. During the same year, the /soc/ board was created in an effort to reduce the number of socialization threads on /b/. /r9k/ was restored on October 23, 2011, along with /hc/ ("Hardcore", previously deleted), /pol/ (a rebranding of /new/) and the new /diy/ board, in addition to an apology by Poole where he recalls how he criticized the deletion of Encyclopedia Dramatica and realized that he had done the same.[citation needed] In 2010, 4chan had implemented reCAPTCHA in an effort to thwart spam arising from JavaScript worms. By November 2011, 4chan made the transition to utilizing Cloudflare following a series of DDoS attacks. The 4chan imageboards were rewritten in valid HTML5/CSS3 in May 2012 in an effort to improve client-side performance. On September 28, 2012, 4chan introduced a "4chan pass" that, when purchased, "allows users to bypass typing a reCAPTCHA verification when posting and reporting posts on the 4chan image boards"; the money raised from the passes to go towards supporting the site. On January 21, 2015, Poole stepped down as the site's administrator, citing stress from controversies such as Gamergate as the reason for his departure. On September 21, 2015, Poole announced that Hiroyuki Nishimura had purchased from him the ownership rights to 4chan, without disclosing the terms of the acquisition. Nishimura was the former administrator of 2channel between 1999 and 2014, the website forming the basis for anonymous posting culture which influenced later websites such as Futaba Channel and 4chan; Nishimura lost 2channel's domain after it was seized by his registrar, Jim Watkins due the latter's alleged financial difficulties. Wired later reported that Japanese toy manufacturer Good Smile Company, Japanese telecommunication Dwango, and Nishimura's company Future Search Brazil may have helped facilitate Nishimura's purchase, with anonymous sources telling the publication that Good Smile obtained partial ownership in the website as compensation. In October 2016, it was reported that the site was facing financial difficulties that could lead to its closure or radical changes. In a post titled "Winter is Coming", Hiroyuki Nishimura explained, "We had tried to keep 4chan as is. But I failed. I am sincerely sorry", citing server costs, infrastructure costs, and network fees. On November 17, 2018, it was announced that the site would be split into two, with the work-safe boards moved to a new domain, 4channel.org, while the NSFW boards would remain on the 4chan.org domain. In a series of posts on the topic, Nishimura explained that the split was due to 4chan being blacklisted by most advertising companies and that the new 4channel domain would allow for the site to receive advertisements by mainstream ad providers.[better source needed] All boards returned to the 4chan.org domain in December 2023 for unknown reasons, and 4channel.org now redirects to 4chan.org. In a 2020 interview with Vice Media, several current or past moderators spoke about what they perceived as racist intent behind the site's management. They alleged that a managing moderator, known online as RapeApe, was attempting to use the site as a recruitment tool for the alt-right, and that Nishimura was "hands-off, leaving moderation of the site primarily to RapeApe." Neither Nishimura nor RapeApe responded to these allegations. Far-right extremism has been reported by public authorities, commentators and civil society groups as connected, in part, to 4chan, an association that had arisen by 2015. According to 4chan's filings to the New York Attorney General's Office, 4chan signed an agreement to pay RapeApe $3,000 a month for their services in 2015. By May 2022, that fee had risen to $4,400 a month. The submitted documents also revealed RapeApe lamenting that 4chan was "getting the shaft" over the Buffalo terrorist attack and his attempt to persuade the advertising platform Bid.Glass to reverse their exit from the website. On April 14, 2025, 4chan was hacked by an anonymous user who later announced the hack on soyjak.party, a rival imageboard website with origins related to 4chan. Source code and user logins of those who registered with emails were apparently acquired by the user and leaked online. Additionally, the deleted /qa/ board was restored. On soyjak.party, information purporting to be from the hack was released, claiming "admin" level access, a lack of updates to the site since 2016, and identities of admins, among other claims. One of the last known posts made on 4chan before it was taken down was the "Chicken jockey!" quote, taken from A Minecraft Movie. In the days following the attacks, 4chan and Nishimura's official Twitter accounts released statements confirming that they would work to fix security vulnerabilities and return at a later date. The site returned on April 25. Due to its temporary unavailability, some users took to the site's Downdetector page, using its comment section as a temporary replacement for the website. Poole concealed his real-life identity until it was revealed on July 9, 2008, in The Wall Street Journal. Prior to that, he had used the alias "moot". In April 2009, an open Internet poll conducted by Time magazine voted Poole as the world's most influential person of 2008. The results were questioned even before the poll completed, as automated voting programs and manual ballot stuffing were used to influence the vote. 4chan's interference with the vote seemed increasingly likely, when it was found that reading the first letter of the first 21 candidates in the poll spelled out a phrase containing two 4chan memes: "mARBLECAKE. ALSO, THE GAME." On September 12, 2009, Poole gave a talk regarding 4chan's reputation as a "Meme Factory" at the Paraflows Symposium in Vienna, Austria, which was part of the Paraflows 09 festival, themed Urban Hacking. In this talk, Poole mainly attributed this both to the anonymous system and to the lack of data retention on the site ("The site has no memory."). In April 2010, Poole testified in the trial United States of America v. David Kernell as a government witness, explaining the terminology used on 4chan to the prosecutor, ranging from "OP" to "lurker", as well as the nature of the data given to the FBI as part of the search warrant, including how users can be uniquely identified from site audit logs. Notable boards The "random" board, /b/, follows the design of Futaba Channel's Nijiura ("Random") board. It was the first board created, and has been described as 4chan's most popular board, accounting for 30% of site traffic in 2009. Gawker's Nick Douglas summarized /b/ as a board where "people try to shock, entertain, and coax free porn from each other." /b/ has a "no rules" policy, except for bans on certain illegal content, such as child pornography, invasions of other websites (posting floods of disruptive content), and under-18 viewing, all of which are inherited from site-wide rules. The "no invasions" rule was added in late 2006, after /b/ users spent most of that summer "invading" Habbo Hotel. The "no rules" policy also applies to actions of administrators and moderators, which means that users may be banned at any time, for any reason, including for no reason at all. Due partially to its anonymous nature, board moderation is not always successful—indeed, the site's anti-child pornography rule is a subject of jokes on /b/. Christopher Poole told The New York Times, in a discussion on the moderation of /b/, that "the power lies in the community to dictate its own standards" and that site staff simply provided a framework. The humor of /b/'s many users, who refer to themselves as "/b/tards", is often incomprehensible to newcomers and outsiders, and is characterized by intricate inside jokes and dark comedy. Users often refer to each other, and much of the outside world, as fags. They are often referred to by outsiders as trolls, who regularly act with the intention of "doing it for the lulz", a corruption of "LOL" used to denote amusement at another's expense. A significant amount of media coverage is in response to /b/'s culture, which has been characterized as adolescent, crude and spiteful, with one publication writing that their "bad behavior is encouraged by the site's total anonymity and the absence of an archive". Douglas cited Encyclopedia Dramatica's definition of /b/ as "the asshole of the Internets [sic]". Mattathias Schwartz of The New York Times likened /b/ to "a high-school bathroom stall, or an obscene telephone party line", while Baltimore City Paper wrote that "in the high school of the Internet, /b/ is the kid with a collection of butterfly knives and a locker full of porn." Wired describes /b/ as "notorious". Each post is assigned a post number. Certain post numbers are sought after with a large amount of posting taking place to "GET" them. A "GET" occurs when a post's number ends in a special number, such as 12345678, 22222222, or every millionth post. A sign of 4chan's scaling, according to Poole, was when GETs lost meaning due to the high post rate resulting in a GET occurring every few weeks. He estimated /b/'s post rate in July 2008 to be 150,000–200,000 posts per day. The My Little Pony board, /mlp/, titled as Pony, is dedicated to discussion of the animated television series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and its associated fandom. Created on February 16, 2012, the board was established by Poole in response to the growing popularity of pony-related content flooding other boards, particularly /co/ and /b/. Along with the board's creation, Poole implemented "Global Rule 15" (GR15), which banned pony content outside of a few select boards, directing all such discussions to /mlp/. The board became home to the "brony" fandom on 4chan, though many users on /mlp/ reject this label, preferring self-deprecating terms like horsefuckers or ponyfags. Notable events include a 2013 Q&A with Friendship Is Magic creator Lauren Faust and the board's temporary merger with /pol/ on April 1, 2017, creating "/mlpol/". Despite the original series ending in 2019, /mlp/ continues to maintain an active community. The board has been the subject of academic research regarding masculinity and online identity, particularly in a 2017 ethnographic study published in the journal Sexualities that examined how users construct collective identity around their interest in the show and its characters. The music board, /mu/, is dedicated to the discussion of music artists, albums, genres, and instruments. Described as "4chan's best kept secret" and a "surprisingly artistic side of 4chan", /mu/ is used by users to share their music interests with similar minds and discover "great music they would never have found otherwise" with many moments of insightful candor that can affirm or challenge their own musical tastes. The board has gained notoriety for earnestly focusing upon and promoting challenging and otherwise obscure music. Some common genres discussed on /mu/ include shoegaze, experimental hip hop, witch house, IDM, midwest emo, vaporwave, and K-pop. There is a significant overlap between user bases of /mu/ and music site Rate Your Music. The board's culture has inspired many online music communities and meme pages on social media that emulate /mu/'s posting style. Publications such as Pitchfork and Entertainment Weekly noted the board played a significant role in popularizing various music artists, such as Death Grips, Neutral Milk Hotel, Car Seat Headrest, and Have a Nice Life. Prominent music critic Anthony Fantano began his career on /mu/ and developed a significant following there. Some artists, like Zeal & Ardor and Conrad Tao, admitted to posting their music anonymously on /mu/ to get honest feedback, as well as find inspiration from the board. In particular, Zeal & Ardor said their sound, which mixes black metal with spirituals, came from suggestions by two users. Andrew W.K. did a Q&A with the board's users in 2011, causing the servers to crash from the increased traffic. Death Grips seeded various clues on /mu/ in 2012 about their then-upcoming albums The Money Store and No Love Deep Web. A rendition of "Royals" by Lorde appeared on /mu/ in 2012 before its official release, although she denied ever writing on the board in 2014. Singer Lauren Mayberry shared on Twitter in 2015 a link to a thread on /mu/ about her band's song "Leave a Trace" to showcase what online misogyny looks like. An alleged unreleased Radiohead song, titled "Putting Ketchup in the Fridge" and "How Do You Sit Still", was initially reported as genuine by NME and Spin until CNN revealed it was a hoax promoted by the board's users. The board has been acknowledged for sharing rare music recordings and unreleased materials, as well as finding albums thought to be lost. Notable examples include the works of Duster, D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L by Panchiko, and All Lights Fucked on the Hairy Amp Drooling by Godspeed You! Black Emperor. This was described by NPR as resembling "a secret club of preservationists obsessed with the articulation of a near-dead language". The board has attracted further attention for various projects done by its users. A group called The Pablo Collective posted a 4-track remix album of Kanye West's The Life of Pablo titled The Death of Pablo to /mu/, claiming it was based on a recurring dream from one of the board's users. A role-playing game based on Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, designed with help from the board's users, received coverage from Polygon and Pitchfork. /pol/ ("Politically Incorrect") is 4chan's political discussion board. A stickied thread on its front page states that the board's intended purpose is "discussion of news, world events, political issues, and other related topics." /pol/ was created in October 2011 as a rebranding of 4chan's news board, /new/, which was deleted that January for a high volume of racist discussion. Although there had previously been a strong left-libertarian contingent to 4chan activists, there was a gradual rightward turn on 4chan's politics board in the early-mid 2010s, with the fundamentalist approach to free speech contributing. The board quickly attracted posters with a political persuasion that later would be described with a new term, the alt-right. Media sources have characterized /pol/ as predominantly racist and sexist, with many of its posts taking an explicitly neo-Nazi bent. The site's far-reaching culture of vitriolic and discriminatory content is "most closely associated" with /pol/, although only it features predominant Alt-Right beliefs; /pol/, like other boards, has been prominent in the dissemination of memes, in cases, featuring coordination to disperse Alt-Right sentiments. /pol/ "increasingly became synonymous with 4chan as a whole". The Southern Poverty Law Center regards /pol/'s rhetorical style as widely emulated by white supremacist websites such as The Daily Stormer; the Stormer's editor, Andrew Anglin, concurred. /pol/ was where screenshots of Trayvon Martin's hacked social media accounts were initially posted. The board's users have started antifeminist, homophobic, transphobic, and anti-Arab Twitter campaigns. Many /pol/ users favored Donald Trump during his 2016 United States presidential campaign. Both Trump and his son, Donald Trump Jr., appeared to acknowledge the support by tweeting /pol/-associated memes. Upon his successful election, a /pol/ moderator embedded a pro-Trump video at the top of all of the board's pages. /r9k/ is a board that implements Randall Munroe's "ROBOT9000" algorithm, where no exact reposts are permitted. It is credited as the origin of the "greentext" rhetorical style which often center around stories of social interactions and resulting ineptness. By 2012, personal confession stories of self-loathing, depression, and attempted suicide began to supersede /b/-style roleplaying, otaku, and video game discussion. It became a popular gathering place for the controversial online incel community. The "beta uprising" or "beta rebellion" meme, the idea of taking revenge against women, jocks and others perceived as the cause of incels' problems, was popularized on the subsection. The perpetrator of the Toronto van attack referenced 4chan and an incel rebellion in a Facebook post he made prior to the attack, while praising self-identified incel Elliot Rodger, the killer behind the 2014 Isla Vista killings. He claims to have talked with both Harper-Mercer and Rodger on Reddit and 4chan and believes that he was part of a "beta uprising", also posting a message on 4chan about his intention the day before his attack. /sci/ is 4chan's science and mathematics board. On September 26, 2011, an anonymous user on /sci/ posted a question regarding the shortest possible way to watch all possible orders of episodes of the anime The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya in nonchronological order. Shortly after, an anonymous user responded with a mathematical proof that argued viewers would have to watch at least 93,884,313,611 episodes to see all possible orderings. Seven years later, professional mathematicians recognized the mathematical proof as a partial solution to a superpermutations problem that was unsolved for 25 years. Australian mathematician Greg Egan later published a proof inspired by the proof from the anonymous 4chan user, both of which are recognized as significant advances to the problem. /soc/ is 4chan's not-safe-for-work social board. It was launched in January 2011 after site founder Christopher Poole approved requests to move "rate my looks", webcam and other social threads off the high-traffic /b/ board into a dedicated space. Threads on /soc/ commonly feature "rate me" selfie evaluations and location-based posts intended to organize meet-ups. Posters frequently swap social media handles or Discord servers despite 4chan's usual emphasis on anonymity. On July 21, 2023, an anonymous user posted a link to a self-made free and open source dating app in a /soc/ thread, initially advertising it as an "experimental matchmaking algorithm".[citation needed] In May 2024, the app went viral, briefly outranking mainstream apps including eHarmony on Google Play's "Top for $0" dating category despite the app's creator stating "it was only meant to be a meme app". Mashable dubbed it "the 4chan dating app", describing it as "an amalgamation of other, better dating apps like Grindr and OkCupid." /v/ is 4chan's video games board. The board has spawned multiple Internet memes, most notably the NPC Wojak in 2016 (derived from the gaming term non-player character to describe those who do not think for themselves or make their own conscious decisions). The "paranormal" board, /x/, is dedicated to discussing topics regarding unexplained phenomena, the supernatural, and non-political conspiracy theories. /x/ was initially launched in January 2005 as 4chan's general photography board; in February 2007, it was repurposed as a paranormal-themed board. Many of the earliest creepypastas (Internet horror-related legends) were created on /x/. The idea of the Backrooms gained popularity thanks to a thread on /x/ created on 12 May 2019, where the users were asked to "post disquieting images that just feel 'off'." There, the first photo depicting the Backrooms was uploaded and another user commented on it with the first story about the Backrooms, claiming that one enters the Backrooms when they "noclip out of reality in the wrong areas". After the 4chan post gained fame, several Internet users wrote horror stories relating to the Backrooms. Many memes were created and shared across social media, further popularizing the creepypasta. American model Allison Harvard first gained notoriety in 2005 as an Internet meme on the /x/ board where she became known as Creepy Chan. Known for her large eyes and peculiar interests like fascination with blood, photos she posted on her blog were widely circulated on the board. She gained mainstream notoriety in 2009 and again in 2011 by appearing on America's Next Top Model. She would visit /x/ after new episodes of America's Next Top Model would air to see what was being written about her and participate in the discussions. The SCP Foundation, a fictional secret organization documented by the collaborative writing wiki project of the same name, originated on /x/ in 2007, when the first SCP file, SCP-173, was posted by an anonymous user. Initially a stand-alone short story, many additional SCP files were created shortly after; these new SCPs copied SCP-173's style and were set within the same fictional universe. A stand-alone wiki was created in January 2008 on the EditThis wiki hosting service to display the SCP articles. The EditThis website did not have moderators, or the ability to delete articles. Members communicated through individual article talk pages and the /x/ board. /x/ was the first place where the 2015 viral video 11B-X-1371 was posted. The board also contributed to investigating and popularizing the controversial Sad Satan video game. Internet culture "[A] significant and influential element of contemporary internet culture", 4chan is responsible for many early memes and the site has received positive attention for its association with memes. This included "So I herd u liek mudkipz" [sic], which involved a phrase based on Mudkip, a creature from the Pokémon franchise, and which generated numerous YouTube tribute videos, and the term "an hero" [sic] as a synonym for suicide, after a misspelling in the Myspace online memorial of seventh grader Mitchell Henderson. 4chan and other websites, such as the satirical Encyclopedia Dramatica, have also contributed to the development of significant amounts of leetspeak. A lolcat is an image combining a photograph of a cat with solecistic text intended to contribute humour, widely popularized by 4chan in the form of a weekly post dedicated to them and a corresponding theme. In 2005, the installment of a word filter which changed "egg" to "duck", and thus "eggroll" to "duckroll", across 4chan led to a bait-and-switch meme in which users deceitfully linked to a picture of a duck on wheels. This was then modified into users linking to the music video for Rick Astley's 1987 song "Never Gonna Give You Up". Thus, the "rickroll" was born. A link to the YouTube video of Tay Zonday's song "Chocolate Rain" was posted on /b/ on July 11, 2007, and then subsequently circulated by users, becoming a very popular internet meme. The portion of the song in which Zonday turns away from the microphone, with a caption stating "I move away from the mic to breathe in", became an oft-repeated meme on 4chan and inspired remixes. Fellow YouTuber Boxxy's popularity was also due in part to 4chan. In his American incarnation, Pedobear is an anthropomorphic bear child predator that is often used within the community to mock contributors showing a sexual interest in children. Pedobear is one of the most popular memes on non-English imageboards, and has gained recognition across Europe, appearing in offline publications. It has been used as a symbol of pedophilia by Maltese graffiti vandals prior to a papal visit. 4chan has been labeled as the starting point of the Anonymous meme by The Baltimore City Paper, due to the norm of posts signed with the "Anonymous" moniker. The National Post's David George-Cosh said it has been "widely reported" that Anonymous is associated with 4chan and 711chan, as well as numerous Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels. Through its association with Anonymous, 4chan has become associated with Project Chanology, a worldwide protest against the Church of Scientology held by members of Anonymous. On January 15, 2008, a 4chan user posted to /b/, suggesting participants "do something big" against the Church of Scientology's website. This message resulted in the Church receiving threatening phone calls. It quickly grew into a large real-world protest. Unlike previous Anonymous attacks, this action was characterized by 4chan memes including rickrolls and Guy Fawkes masks. The raid drew criticism from some 4chan users who felt it would bring the site undesirable attention. The adult fandom and subculture dedicated to the children's animated television series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic began on the "Comics & Cartoons" (/co/) board of 4chan. The show was first discussed with some interest around its debut in October 2010. The users of /co/ took a heightened interest in the show after a critical Cartoon Brew article was shared, resulting in praise for its plot, characters, and animation style. Discussion of the show extended to /b/, eventually to a point of contention. Discussion then spread forth to communities external to 4chan, including the establishment of the fan websites, causing the show to reach a wider audience across the internet. On July 30, 2014, an anonymous user made a reply in a thread on the board /pol/ "Politically Incorrect" of 4chan, criticizing modern art in an ironic fashion, saying: Art used to be something to cherish Now literally anything could be art This post is art. — Anonymous Less than an hour later the post was photographed off the screen and framed by another user who posted another reply in the thread with a photo of the framed quote. Later the user, after endorsement by other anonymous users in the thread, created an auction on eBay for the framed photo which quickly rose to high prices, culminating in a price of $90,900. Pajeet, or Jeet is an invented term for Indian people, particularly adherents of Hinduism and Sikhism, originating on 4chan in 2015. Controversies and harassment incidents According to The Washington Post, "the site's users have managed to pull off some of the highest-profile collective actions in the history of the Internet." Users of 4chan and other websites "raided" Hal Turner by launching denial-of-service attacks and prank calling his phone-in radio show during December 2006 and January 2007. The attacks caused Turner's website to go offline. This cost thousands of dollars of bandwidth bills according to Turner. In response, Turner sued 4chan, 7chan, and other websites; however, he lost his plea for an injunction and failed to receive letters from the court. KTTV Fox 11 aired a report on Anonymous, calling them a group of "hackers on steroids", "domestic terrorists", and collectively an "Internet hate machine" on July 26, 2007. Slashdot founder Rob Malda posted a comment made by another Slashdot user, Miang, stating that the story focused mainly on users of "4chan, 7chan and 420chan". Miang claimed that the report "seems to confuse /b/ raids and motivational poster templates with a genuine threat to the American public", arguing that the "unrelated" footage of a van exploding shown in the report was to "equate anonymous posting with domestic terror". On July 10, 2008, the swastika CJK unicode character (卐) appeared at the top of Google's Hot Trends list—a tally of the most used search terms in the United States—for several hours. It was later reported that the HTML numeric character reference for the symbol had been posted on /b/, with a request to perform a Google search for the string. A multitude of /b/ visitors followed the order and pushed the symbol to the top of the chart, though Google later removed the result. Later that year, the private Yahoo! Mail account of Sarah Palin, Republican vice presidential candidate in the 2008 United States presidential election, was hacked by a 4chan user. The hacker posted the account's password on /b/, and screenshots from within the account to WikiLeaks. A /b/ user then logged in and changed the password, posting a screenshot of him sending an email to a friend of Palin's informing her of the new password on the /b/ thread. However, he forgot to blank out the password in the screenshot. A multitude of /b/ users attempted to log in with the new password, and the account was automatically locked out by Yahoo!. The incident was criticized by some /b/ users. One user commented, "seriously, /b/. We could have changed history and failed, epically." The FBI and Secret Service began investigating the incident shortly after its occurrence. On September 20 it was revealed they were questioning David Kernell, the son of Democratic Tennessee State Representative Mike Kernell. The stock price of Apple Inc. fell significantly in October 2008 after a hoax story was submitted to CNN's user-generated news site iReport.com claiming that company CEO Steve Jobs had suffered a major heart attack. The source of the story was traced back to 4chan. In May 2009, members of the site attacked YouTube, posting pornographic videos on the video-sharing platform under names of teenage celebrities. The attack spawned the popular Internet meme and catchphrase "I'm 12 years old and what is this?" as a response to a user comment on one such video. A 4chan member acknowledged being part of the attack, telling BBC News that it was in response to YouTube "deleting music". In January 2010, members of the site attacked YouTube again in response to the suspension of YouTube user lukeywes1234 for failing to meet the minimum age requirement of thirteen. The videos uploaded by the user had apparently become popular with 4chan members, who subsequently became angered after the account was suspended and called for a new wave of pornographic videos to be uploaded to YouTube on January 6, 2010. Later the same year, 4chan made numerous disruptive pranks directed at singer Justin Bieber. In September 2010, in retaliation against the Bollywood film industry's hiring of Aiplex Software to launch cyberattacks against The Pirate Bay, Anonymous members, recruited through posts on 4chan boards, subsequently initiated their own attacks, dubbed Operation Payback, targeting the website of the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America. The targeted websites usually went offline for a short period of time due to the attacks, before recovering. The website of the UK law firm ACS:Law, which was associated with an anti-piracy client, was affected by the cyber-attack. In retaliation for the initial attacks being called only a minor nuisance, Anonymous launched more attacks, bringing the site down yet again. After coming back up, the front page accidentally revealed a backup file of the entire website, which contained over 300 megabytes of private company emails, which were leaked to several torrents and across several sites on the Internet. It was suggested that the data leak could cost the law firm up to £500,000 in fines for breaching British Data Protection Laws. In January 2011, BBC News reported that the law firm announced they were to stop "chasing illegal file-sharers". Head of ACS:Law Andrew Crossley in a statement to a court addressed issues which influenced the decision to back down "I have ceased my work ... I have been subject to criminal attack. My e-mails have been hacked. I have had death threats and bomb threats." In August 2012, 4chan users attacked a third-party sponsored Mountain Dew campaign, Dub the Dew, where users were asked to submit and vote on name ideas for a green apple flavor of the drink. Users submitted entries such as "Diabeetus", "Fapple", several variations of "Gushing Granny", and "Hitler did nothing wrong". On October 18, 2006, the Department of Homeland Security warned National Football League officials in Miami, New York City, Atlanta, Seattle, Houston, Oakland, and Cleveland about a possible threat involving the simultaneous use of dirty bombs at stadiums. The threat claimed that the attack would be carried out on October 22, the final day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Both the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security expressed doubt concerning the credibility of the threats, but warned the relevant organizations as a precaution. The threat turned out to be an ill-conceived hoax perpetrated by a grocery store clerk in Wisconsin with no terrorist ties. The FBI considered it a clearly frivolous threat and the 20-year-old man was charged with fabricating a terrorist threat, sentenced to six months in prison followed by six months' house arrest, and ordered to pay $26,750 in restitution. Hello, /b/. On September 11, 2007, at 9:11 am Central time, two pipe bombs will be remote-detonated at Pflugerville High School. Promptly after the blast, I, along with two ther Anonymous, will charge the building, armed with a Bushmaster AR-15, IMI Galil AR, a vintage, government-issue M1 .30 Carbine, and a Benelli M4 semi auto shotgun. Around midnight on September 11, 2007, a student posted photographs of mock pipe bombs and another photograph of him holding them while saying he would blow up his high school—Pflugerville High School in Pflugerville, Texas—at 9:11 am on September 11. Users of 4chan helped to track him down by finding the perpetrator's father's name in the Exif data of a photograph he took, and contacted the police. He was arrested before school began that day. The incident turned out to be a hoax; the "weapons" were toys and there were no actual bombs. A 20-year-old from Melbourne, Australia, was arrested on December 8, 2007, after apparently posting on 4chan that he was "going to shoot and kill as many people as I can until which time I am incapacitated or killed by the police". The post, accompanied by an image of another man holding a shotgun, threatened a shopping mall near Beverly Hills. While the investigation was still open, he was charged with criminal defamation for a separate incident but died before the case was heard. On February 4, 2009, a posting on the 4chan /b/ board said there would be a school shooting at St Eskils Gymnasium in Eskilstuna, Sweden, leading 1,250 students and 50 teachers to be evacuated. A 21-year-old man was arrested after 4chan provided the police with the IP address of the poster. Police said that the suspect called it off as a joke, and they released him after they found no indication that the threat was serious. On June 28, 2018, a man was arrested following an indictment by the U.S. Department of Justice "on one count of transmitting in interstate and foreign commerce a threat to injure the person of another." The indictment alleged that he posted anonymously to /pol/ the day after the Unite the Right rally, communicating an intention to attack protestors at an upcoming right-wing demonstration, ostensibly to elicit sympathy for the alt-right movement. "I'm going to bring a Remington 700 and start shooting Alt-right guys. We need sympathy after that landwhale got all the liberals teary eyed, so someone is going to have to make it look like the left is becoming more violent and radicalized. It's a false flag for sure, but I'll be aiming for the more tanned/dark haired muddied jeans in the crowd so real whites won't have to worry," he wrote, according to the indictment. In 2023, a 38-year-old of Monmouth Junction, New Jersey, was arrested for threatening Volusia County, Florida, sheriff Mike Chitwood on 4chan due to Chitwood's condemnation of antisemitism. According to authorities, the poster, who lived 974 miles away from Volusia County, advocated "shoot[ing] Chitwood in the head and murder[ing] him" in a February 22 post. In April of that same year, two other 4chan users, residents of California and Connecticut respectively, were also arrested for threatening to kill Chitwood on 4chan. On the evening of April 2 and morning of April 3, 2024, two threats were posted on 4chan claiming there was a bomb in the Norwegian parliament building. Oslo police closed down the parliament building while the Norwegian Police Security Service carried out an investigation. No bomb was found in the building. The culprit behind the threats was not identified and nobody was arrested in relation to the case. On August 31, 2014, a compromise of user passwords at iCloud allowed a large number of private photographs taken by celebrities to be posted online, initially on 4chan. As a result of the incident, 4chan announced that it would enforce a Digital Millennium Copyright Act policy, which would allow content owners to remove material that had been shared on the site illegally, and would ban users who repeatedly posted stolen material. Also in August 2014, 4chan was involved in the Gamergate controversy, which began with unsubstantiated allegations about indie game developer Zoë Quinn from an ex-boyfriend, followed by false allegations from anonymous Internet users. The allegations were followed by a harassment campaign against several women in the video game industry, organized by 4chan users, particularly /r9k/. Discussion regarding Gamergate was banned on 4chan due to alleged rule violations, and Gamergate supporters moved to alternate forums such as 8chan. According to court documents filed on November 5, 2014, there were images posted to 4chan that appeared to be of a murder victim. The body was discovered in Port Orchard, Washington, after the images were posted. The posts were accompanied by the text: "Turns out it's way harder to strangle someone to death than it looks on the movies." A later post said: "Check the news for Port Orchard, Washington, in a few hours. Her son will be home from school soon. He'll find her, then call the cops. I just wanted to share the pics before they find me." The victim was Amber Lynn Coplin, aged 30. The suspect, 33-year-old David Michael Kalac, surrendered to police in Oregon later the same day; he was charged with second-degree murder involving domestic violence. Kalac was convicted in April 2017 and was sentenced to 82 years in prison the following month. A report of Jeffrey Epstein's death was posted on /pol/ around 40 minutes before ABC News broke the news. It was originally suspected that the unidentified person who made the posts may have been a first responder, prompting a review by the New York City Fire Department, who later stated that the post did not come from a member of its department. On May 14, 2022, a mass shooting occurred at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, US. The accused, Payton S. Gendron, is reported to have written a racist manifesto released May 12 (two days before the shooting), with the manifesto including birth date and other biographical details that match the suspect in custody. In the manifesto the author writes that in May 2020 he began to frequent 4chan, including its "Politically Incorrect" message board /pol/, where he was introduced to the Great Replacement conspiracy theory. On June 10, 2025, Ofcom, the British government's communications regulator, announced an investigation into 4chan for potential violations of the Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA), which took effect in the United Kingdom in April 2025. According to BBC News, "Ofcom says it requested 4chan's risk assessment in April but has not had any response." The news agency also reported, "Ofcom has the power to fine companies up to 10% of their global revenues, or £18m — whichever is the greater number." On August 13, 2025, Ofcom issued a provisional decision, finding that 4chan had contravened its duties under the OSA by failing comply with two information requests from the regulator. 4chan's lawyer issued a statement that the website "will not pay any penalty". He also stated, "American businesses do not surrender their First Amendment rights because a foreign bureaucrat sends them an email". On August 27, 2025, 4chan along with Kiwi Farms filed a lawsuit against Ofcom in the United States. Ofcom initially responded, "We are aware of this lawsuit. Under the Online Safety Act, any service that has links with the UK now has duties to protect UK users, no matter where in the world it is based." ISP bans On July 26, 2009, AT&T's DSL branch temporarily blocked access to the img.4chan.org domain (host of /b/ and /r9k/), which was initially believed to be an attempt at Internet censorship, and met with hostility on 4chan's part. The next day, AT&T issued a statement claiming that the block was put in place after an AT&T customer was affected by a DoS attack originating from IP addresses connected to img.4chan.org, and was an attempt to "prevent this attack from disrupting service for the impacted AT&T customer, and... our other customers." AT&T maintains that the block was not related to the content on 4chan. 4chan's founder Christopher Poole responded with the following: In the end, this wasn't a sinister act of censorship, but rather a bit of a mistake and a poorly executed, disproportionate response on AT&T's part. Whoever pulled the trigger on blackholing the site probably didn't anticipate [nor intend] the consequences of doing so. We're glad to see this short-lived debacle has prompted renewed interest and debate over net neutrality and Internet censorship—two very important issues that don't get nearly enough attention—so perhaps this was all just a blessing in disguise. Major news outlets have reported that the issue may be related to the DDoS-ing of 4chan, and that 4chan users suspected the then-owner of Swedish-based website Anontalk.com. On February 4, 2010, 4chan started receiving reports from Verizon Wireless customers that they were having difficulties accessing the site's image boards. After investigating, Poole found out that only the traffic on port 80 to the boards.4chan.org domain was affected, leading members to believe that the block was intentional. Three days later, Verizon Wireless confirmed that 4chan was "explicitly blocked". The block was lifted several days later. On March 20, 2019, Australian telecom company Telstra denied access to millions of Australians to 4chan, 8chan, Zero Hedge, and LiveLeak as a reaction to the Christchurch mosque shootings. Following the Christchurch mosque shootings, numerous ISPs temporarily blocked any site hosting a copy of the livestream of the shooting, including 4chan. The ISPs included Spark, Vodafone, Vocus, and 2degrees. See also International: Notes References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:4chan] | [TOKENS: 46] |
Category:4chan Subcategories This category has only the following subcategory. Pages in category "4chan" The following 25 pages are in this category, out of 25 total. This list may not reflect recent changes. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poway_synagogue_shooting] | [TOKENS: 3105] |
Contents Poway synagogue shooting Federal A shooting occurred on April 27, 2019, at Chabad of Poway synagogue in Poway, California, United States, a city which borders the north inland side of San Diego, on the last day of the Jewish Passover holiday, which fell on a Shabbat. Armed with an AR-15–style rifle, the gunman, John Earnest, fatally shot one woman and injured three other people, including the synagogue's rabbi. After fleeing the scene, Earnest phoned 9-1-1 and reported the shooting. He was apprehended in his car approximately two miles (3.2 km) from the synagogue by a San Diego police officer. A month before the shooting, Earnest had attempted to burn down a mosque in Escondido. In September 2021, Earnest was sentenced by a state court in San Diego County to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus an additional 121 years to life and another 16 years as part of a plea agreement. In December, he was sentenced in federal court to life in prison with no chance of parole, plus 30 years, with the federal and state life sentences running consecutively instead of concurrently. Shooting At approximately 11:23 a.m. PDT, a gunman, identified as 19-year-old John Earnest, entered the Chabad of Poway synagogue on the last day of the Jewish holiday of Passover, which fell on a Shabbat. Approximately 100 people were inside the synagogue at the time. Earnest carried a Smith & Wesson Model M&P 15 Sport II semi-automatic rifle and was wearing a tactical vest containing five magazines of ten rounds each. In the foyer, he shot and killed 60-year-old Lori Gilbert-Kaye with two bullets, and then wounded Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, who had founded the congregation. According to witnesses, Gilbert-Kaye had tried to shield the rabbi from the gunman. Earnest then turned to a side room occupied by several people, including a number of children. He fired into the room, wounding one man with a bullet to the leg, and his 8-year-old niece. He fired eight to ten rounds before his rifle jammed or malfunctioned, which prevented additional casualties. Two members of the congregation ran toward the shooter. Earnest then fled the synagogue, entering a Honda sedan. All the injured were expected to recover. Goldstein, who had been shot in the hand, lost his right index finger from the shooting, despite four hours of surgery. After Earnest fled, Goldstein spoke to the congregation despite his injury, telling them to stay strong. Jonathan Morales, an off-duty United States Border Patrolman who was a member of the synagogue, opened fire and hit Earnest's car multiple times, but he fled uninjured. Shortly thereafter, the shooter phoned 9-1-1 and reported the shooting himself. Earnest was apprehended approximately two miles (3.2 km) from the synagogue by a San Diego police officer responding to the shooting. Earnest left his car and surrendered, and was taken into custody without incident. The rifle, a tactical helmet, and five loaded 10 round magazines, were recovered from Earnest's car. Earnest was wearing a tactical vest when he was arrested. Surveillance cameras at the synagogue captured video of the shooting. The attack occurred exactly six months after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. Perpetrator John Timothy Earnest (born June 8, 1999), a then 19-year-old male from the San Diego neighborhood of Rancho Peñasquitos, was identified as the shooter. He was a 2017 graduate of Mt. Carmel High School and a nursing school student at California State University San Marcos. Officials said he had no previous criminal record or contacts with police, and no known connection to any white supremacist group. Earnest was a member of the Escondido Orthodox Presbyterian Church, which is affiliated with the theologically traditionalist Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Earnest had recently expressed white supremacist views to his college classmates and family, including saying that he studied Adolf Hitler and admired the manifesto of the perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings, and had made racist statements at a 2019 holiday party. In the weeks before the shooting, two other nursing students reported Earnest to a professor, and an investigation was opened. However, as he had made no criminal threats, he was not expelled or arrested. Prosecutors stated his radicalization started roughly 18 months before the shooting occurred. An antisemitic and racist open letter over 4,000 words long was posted on 8chan on 27 April 2019, signed with Earnest's name. It claimed that Jews were orchestrating a "meticulously planned genocide of the European race", a reference to the white genocide conspiracy theory. Further, the manifesto rehashed several durably politicized antisemitic tropes like blood libel, the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory, media control, and usury. Earnest denied that he had learned anti-semitic beliefs from his family. He apparently attempted to livestream the shooting on Facebook, but failed. The Washington Post said the manifesto mirrored the Christchurch gunman's. Earnest is believed to have written the letter, in which he cited shooters Brenton Tarrant and Robert Bowers for their involvement in the Christchurch mosque shootings and the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, respectively. He said that Jesus, Paul the Apostle, Martin Luther, Adolf Hitler, Ludwig van Beethoven, "Moon Man" and Pink Guy were figures who inspired him to commit the shooting. Earnest made a joking mention of PewDiePie and referenced "The Day of the Rope", an event from William Luther Pierce's neo-Nazi novel The Turner Diaries (1978), in which African Americans and Hispanics are executed and urged more violent attacks. He condemned President Donald Trump as a pro-Zionist traitor. A month before the shooting, on March 24, 2019, Earnest attempted to burn down the Dar-ul-Arqam mosque in Escondido, California. The fire was started at 3:15 am. The mosque is at 318 W. Sixth Ave, in Escondido, 30 miles (48 km) north of downtown San Diego; it had been converted from a church to a mosque. Seven people were inside the Islamic center; one of them was awake when the fire started. They smelled smoke, saw the fire and tried to stop it before firefighters arrived. The fire was extinguished before any major damage to the mosque or injuries occurred. Someone outside the building noticed the fire and called 9-1-1. The mosque's CCTV recorded an individual breaking the lock on the mosque's parking lot gate and entering, before using a flammable liquid to set the mosque on fire. Escondido police lieutenant Chris Lick told the media that no suspect had been determined yet and that it looked like the fire was started by a chemical factor. Police said that they found graffiti referencing the Christchurch, New Zealand mosque incident in the parking lot. Police officers never reported the exact wording of the graffiti, although it was later revealed to have said, "For Brenton Tarrant -t. /pol/" (referencing the perpetrator of the Christchurch shooting and 8chan's /pol/ board, to which both men posted their manifestos). Fire investigators, the San Diego County Sheriff's Bomb/Arson Unit, the FBI and the ATF investigated the incident as arson and a hate crime. Due to the graffiti on the mosque's driveway, investigators considered the fire a terrorist attack. In his open letter, Earnest claimed responsibility for the fire, which took place about 15 miles (24 km) from Poway. Yusef Miller, a spokesman for the Islamic community in Escondido, told Muslims who lived in the region to be cautious. Dustin Craun, executive director of the San Diego office of the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), condemned the attack and asked the police for more security around the mosque and protection at Islamic institutions across California. Also, CAIR held online meetings with hundreds of mosques and urged them to increase their security. A web page was set up on a crowdfunding site for donations to rebuild the mosque. During this campaign, more than 250 supporters donated over $5,000, far short of the ultimate goal of $20,000. Aftermath President Donald Trump offered "deepest sympathies to the families of those affected" by the shooting, further saying that "[o]ur entire nation mourns the loss of life, prays for the wounded and stands in solidarity with the Jewish community. We forcefully condemn the evil of anti-Semitism and hate, which must be defeated". Vice President Mike Pence stated "We condemn in the strongest terms the evil & cowardly shooting at Chabad of Poway today as Jewish families celebrated Passover. No one should be in fear in a house of worship. Antisemitism isn't just wrong - it's evil." On May 2, 2019, during his remarks in the White House Rose Garden on the National Day of Prayer, President Trump invited Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein and the two men who had chased the shooter out of the synagogue to address the gathering. Goldstein was invited by Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon to speak on antisemitism before the UN General Assembly on June 26. 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidates Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, and Eric Swalwell published statements condemning the attack. California governor Gavin Newsom responded by saying, "No one should have to fear going to their place of worship, and no one should be targeted for practicing the tenets of their faith." The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum released a statement which read "[M]oving forward this must serve as yet another wake-up call that antisemitism is a growing and deadly menace. All Americans must unequivocally condemn it and confront it whenever it appears." Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu stated "I condemn the abhorrent attack on a synagogue in California; this is an attack on the heart of the Jewish people. The international community must step up the struggle against anti-Semitism." President of Israel Reuven Rivlin wrote, "The murderous attack on the Jewish community during Pesach, our holiday of freedom, and just before Holocaust Memorial Day, is yet another painful reminder that anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews is still with us, everywhere. No country and no society are immune. Only through education for Holocaust remembrance and tolerance can we deal with this plague." At a press conference on the day after the shooting, Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, who was injured in the shooting, called to "battle darkness with light." He suggested that the United States call for a moment of silence in public schools. On April 29, the parents of the shooter issued a formal statement disavowing his actions, reading in part: "To our great shame, he is now part of the history of evil that has been perpetrated on Jewish people for centuries." Their attorney noted that the family will not pay for Earnest's defense, instead leaving him to likely be represented by a public defender. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church issued a statement reading in part, "We deplore and resist all forms of anti-Semitism and racism. We are wounded to the core that such an evil could have gone out from our community. Such hatred has no place in any part of our beliefs or practices, for we seek to shape our whole lives according to the love and gospel of Jesus Christ" and that "that "[a]nti-Semitism and racist hatred which apparently motivated the shooter [...] have no place within our system of doctrine." According to The Washington Post, the shooter's manifesto, which expressed Christian motives for killing Jews, resulted in a social media debate among Christian pastors. Rev. Duke Kwon of the Presbyterian Church in America expressed concern that the shooter could articulate a Christian theology of personal salvation while also espousing anti-Semitism. He and other ministers denied that Christian theology and Scripture provide support for anti-Semitism. In December 2019, a Poway street was renamed as Lori Lynn Lane to honor Lori Lynn Gilbert-Kaye, the woman who was killed in the shooting. In the aftermath of the shooting, the California State Legislature passed AB 1548 to establish the California State Nonprofit Security Grant Program in 2019, awarding up to $200,000 per year to religious, political, and mission-based institutions. The state allocated $12 million to the program, administered by the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, in 2019. Security grants had previously been a line item in the state budget since 2015. Legal proceedings On April 30, 2019, Earnest was charged in San Diego County Superior Court with one count of murder and three counts of attempted murder. All four charges included "hate-crime and gun allegations", which can incur more severe penalties upon conviction. The murder charge includes a "special circumstance" that Earnest intentionally killed his victim (Gilbert-Kaye) because of her religion, which could incur the death penalty under California law. Earnest pleaded not guilty to all the charges. A criminal complaint was also filed charging Earnest with arson of a house of worship, a reference to the March arson attempt against a mosque in Escondido. Earnest was ordered held without bail. A trial readiness hearing was scheduled for May 30 and a preliminary hearing for July 8. On May 14, Earnest was arraigned in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California in San Diego on 109 federal charges: 54 counts of obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs using a dangerous weapon resulting in death, bodily injury and attempts to kill; 54 counts of hate crimes under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act; and one count of damage to a religious property using fire for the earlier arson at Dar-ul-Arquam mosque in Escondido on March 24. Earnest was represented by a federal public defender. On December 5, the court announced a trial date of June 2, 2020. This date was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the San Diego County District Attorney's office announced it would seek the death penalty. Prosecutors scheduled a press conference to discuss trial details on March 5 and the trial would not occur until at least March 15, 2021. On July 20, 2021, Earnest pleaded guilty to the charges. On September 30, 2021, Earnest, then 22, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus an additional 121 years to life and another 16 years as part of a plea agreement reached with the San Diego County District Attorney's Office. On December 28, 2021, Earnest was sentenced in San Diego Federal Court to life in prison with no chance of parole, plus 30 years. Senior US district judge Anthony Battaglia said the federal and state life sentences would run one after the other instead of concurrently. Earnest will serve the sentence in federal custody. See also References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right] | [TOKENS: 17942] |
Contents Alt-right The alt-right (abbreviated from alternative right), is a far-right, white nationalist movement. A largely online phenomenon, the alt-right originated in the United States during the late 2000s before increasing in popularity and establishing a presence in other countries during the mid-2010s. The term is ill-defined and has been used in different ways by academics, journalists, media commentators, and alt-right members themselves. In 2010, the American white nationalist Richard B. Spencer launched The Alternative Right webzine. His "alternative right" was influenced by earlier forms of American white nationalism, as well as paleoconservatism, the Dark Enlightenment, and the Nouvelle Droite. His term was shortened to "alt-right" and popularized by far-right participants of /pol/, the politics board of the web forum 4chan. It came to be associated with other white nationalist websites and groups, including Andrew Anglin's Daily Stormer, Brad Griffin's Occidental Dissent, and Matthew Heimbach's Traditionalist Worker Party. Following the 2014 Gamergate controversy, the alt-right made increasing use of trolling and online harassment to raise its profile. It attracted broader attention in 2015, particularly through coverage on Steve Bannon's Breitbart News, due to alt-right support for Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Upon being elected, Trump disavowed the movement. Attempting to transform itself from an online-based movement to a physical one, Spencer and other alt-right figures organized the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which led to violent clashes with counter-demonstrators and resulted in one death when an alt-right member drove his car through the crowd of counter-demonstrators. The fallout from the rally resulted in a decline of the alt-right. The activities of alt-right movement have been described as largely merging into the far right as of 2020-2021. The alt-right movement espouses the pseudoscientific idea of biological racism and promotes a form of identity politics in favor of European Americans and white people internationally. Anti-egalitarian in nature, it rejects the liberal democratic basis of U.S. governance, and opposes both the conservative and liberal wings of the country's political mainstream. Many of its members seek to replace the U.S. with a white separatist ethnostate. Some alt-rightists seek to make white nationalism socially respectable, while others (known as the "1488" scene) adopt openly white supremacist and neo-Nazi stances to shock and provoke. Some alt-rightists are antisemitic, promoting a conspiracy theory that there is a Jewish plot to bring about white genocide, although other alt-rightists view most Jews as members of the white race. The alt-right is anti-feminist and intersects with the online manosphere. Most adherents to the alt-right are also Islamophobic. The movement distinguished itself from earlier forms of white nationalism through its largely online presence and its heavy use of irony and humor, particularly through the promotion of memes like Pepe the Frog. Individuals who are aligned with many of the alt-right's ideas without espousing its white nationalism have been termed "alt-lite". The alt-right's membership is overwhelmingly white and male, attracted to the movement by deteriorating living standards and prospects, anxieties about the social role of white masculinity, and anger at left-wing and non-white forms of identity politics such as feminism and Black Lives Matter. Alt-right material has contributed to the radicalization of men responsible for various murders and terrorist attacks in the U.S. since 2014. Critics charge that the term "alt-right" is merely a rebranding of white supremacism. Definitions and terminology The term "alt-right" is an abbreviation of "alternative right". A distinct far-right movement arising in the 2010s, it drew on older far-right ideas while also displaying novelties. Efforts to define the alt-right have been complicated by the contradictory ways in which self-described "alt-rightists" have defined the movement, and by the tendency among some of its political opponents to apply the term "alt-right" liberally to a broad range of right-wing groups and viewpoints. As the alt-right rose to wider awareness around 2016, media sources struggled to understand it; some commentators applied the term as a catch-all for anyone they deemed far-right. The scholars Patrik Hermansson, David Lawrence, Joe Mulhall, and Simon Murdoch noted that in the "press and broadcast media", the term had been "used to describe everything from hardcore Nazis and Holocaust deniers, through to mainstream Republicans in the US, and right-wing populists in Europe". As the term "alt-right" was devised by a group of white nationalists themselves, as a form of self-description, some journalists avoided it. George Hawley, a political scientist specializing in the U.S. far-right, disagreed with this approach, noting that using terms like "white supremacist" in place of "alt-right" conceals the way that the alt-right differed from other far-right movements. The 'alt-right' or 'alternative right' is a name currently embraced by some white supremacists and white nationalists to refer to themselves and their ideology, which emphasizes preserving and protecting the white race in the United States in addition to, or over, other traditional conservative positions such as limited government, low taxes and strict law-and-order. The movement has been described as a mix of racism, white nationalism and populism ... criticizes 'multiculturalism' and more rights for non-whites, women, Jews, Muslims, gays, immigrants and other minorities. Its members reject the American democratic ideal that all should have equality under the law regardless of creed, gender, ethnic origin or race. Hermansson et al defined the alt-right as "a far right, anti-globalist grouping" that operated "primarily online though with offline outlets". They noted that its "core belief is that 'white identity' is under attack from pro-multicultural and liberal elites, and so-called 'social justice warriors' (SJWs), who allegedly use 'political correctness' to undermine Western civilisation and the rights of white males". The anti-fascist researcher Matthew N. Lyons defined the alt-right as "a loosely organized far-right movement that shares a contempt for both liberal multiculturalism and mainstream conservatism; a belief that some people are inherently superior to others; a strong Internet presence and embrace of specific elements of online culture; and a self-presentation as being new, hip, and irreverent". The Encyclopædia Britannica defined the alt-right as "a loose association of relatively young white nationalists, extreme libertarians, and neo-Nazis" who were "mostly active online". The Southern Poverty Law Center defined the alt-right as "a set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals whose core belief is that 'white identity' is under attack by multicultural forces using 'political correctness' and 'social justice' to undermine white people and 'their' civilization". The Anti-Defamation League states that "alt-right" is a "vague term actually encompass[ing] a range of people on the extreme right who reject mainstream conservatism in favor of forms of conservatism that embrace implicit or explicit racism or white supremacy". In the Columbia Journalism Review, the journalist Chava Gourarie labelled it a "rag-tag coalition" operating as a "diffuse online subculture" that had "an inclination for vicious online trolling, with some roots in fringe-right ideologies". In The New York Times, journalists Aishvarya Kavi and Alan Feuer defined the alt-right as "a loosely affiliated collection of racists, misogynists and Islamophobes that rose to prominence around the time of Mr. Trump's first campaign." BBC journalist Mike Wendling termed it "an incredibly loose set of ideologies held together by what they oppose: feminism, Islam, the Black Lives Matter movement, political correctness, a fuzzy idea they call 'globalism,' and establishment politics of both the left and the right". History The alt-right had various ideological forebears. The idea of white supremacy had been dominant across U.S. political discourse throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. After World War II, it was increasingly repudiated and relegated to the far-right of the country's political spectrum. Far-right groups retaining such ideas—such as George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party and William Luther Pierce's National Alliance—remained marginal. By the 1990s, white supremacism was largely confined to neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan (KKK) groups, although its ideologues wanted to return it to the mainstream. That decade, several white supremacists reformulated their ideas as white nationalism, through which they presented themselves not as seeking to dominate non-white racial groups but rather as lobbying for the interests of European Americans in a similar way to how civil rights groups lobbied for the rights of African Americans and Hispanic Americans. Although white nationalists often distanced themselves from white supremacism, white supremacist sentiment remained prevalent in white nationalist writings. American white nationalists believed that the United States had been created as a nation explicitly for white people of European descent and that it should remain that way. Many called for the formation of an explicitly white ethnostate. Seeking to distance themselves from the violent, skinhead image of neo-Nazi and KKK groups, several white nationalist ideologues—namely Jared Taylor, Peter Brimelow, and Kevin B. MacDonald—sought to cultivate an image of respectability and intellectualism through which to promote their views. Hawley later termed their ideology "highbrow white nationalism", and noted its particular influence on the alt-right. Taylor, for instance, became a revered figure in alt-right circles. Under the Republican presidency of George W. Bush in the 2000s, the white nationalist movement focused largely on criticizing conservatives rather than liberals, accusing them of betraying white Americans. In that period, they drew increasingly on the conspiracy theories that had been generated by the Patriot movement since the 1990s; online, the white nationalist and Patriot movements increasingly converged. Following the election of Democratic Party candidate Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008—making him the first black president of the country—the world-views of various right-wing movements, including white supremacists, Patriots, and Tea Partiers, increasingly began to coalesce, in part due to a shared racial animus against Obama. According to Tait, during the rise of the Tea Party movement and Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign, there were "cultural and economic shifts that created the conditions for a parallel shift in right-wing politics.", including changing demographics, the rise of the Internet and social media giving a significant platform to more extreme right-wing voices that were previously marginalized by "responsible conservative gatekeepers", the perceived failure of the war on terror led by neoconservatives, the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage and undermined social conservatism, the 2008 Great Recession that undermined conservatives' support of the free market, and men with certain beliefs about gender roles "feeling traditionally male spaces were being eroded." and facing competition in the economy from "highly educated women". All of these factors also lead to "the collapse of intellectual and political guardrails on the right. The alt-right drew upon several older currents of right-wing thought. One was the Nouvelle Droite, a far-right movement that originated in 1960s France before spreading elsewhere in Europe. Many alt-rightists adopted the Nouvelle Droite's views on pursuing long-term cultural change through "metapolitical" strategies; it thereby shares similarities with European identitarianism, which also draws upon the Nouvelle Droite. The alt-right also exhibited similarities with the paleoconservative movement which emerged in the U.S. during the 1980s. Both opposed neoconservatism and expressed similar positions on restricting immigration and supporting an openly nationalistic foreign policy; however, unlike the alt-right, the paleoconservatives were typically closely aligned to Christianity and wanted to reform the conservative movement rather than destroy it. Certain paleoconservatives, such as Samuel T. Francis, became especially close to white nationalism. There were also links between the American right-libertarian movement and the alt-right, despite libertarianism's general condemnation of identity politics and collectivism. Many senior alt-rightists previously considered themselves libertarians, and right-libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard has been cited as a particular link between the two movements due to his staunch anti-egalitarianism and support for ideas about differing IQ levels among racial groups. Also cited in connection with the alt-right was the Dark Enlightenment, or neo-reactionary movement, which emerged online in the 2000s, pursuing an anti-egalitarian message. This movement intersected with the alt-right; many individuals identified with both movements. The Dark Enlightenment however was not white nationalist, deeming the latter insufficiently elitist. According to Dean, in the 1990s, there were "alt-right" Usenet groups that consisted of fringe libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, and fans of American writer and philosopher Ayn Rand, who advocated for the abolition of the state in favor of private property and markets. According to Winter, during the 1990s and early 2000s, "the American far-right did not harness the Internet quickly, effectively or widely. More recently, however, they have experienced a resurgence and mainstreaming, benefitting greatly from social media." According to Hawley, the alt-right began in 2008. In November of that year, the paleoconservative ideologue and academic Paul Gottfried gave a talk at his H. L. Mencken Club in Baltimore. Although the talk was titled "The Decline and Rise of the Alternative Right", it did not contain the phrase "alternative right" itself. Gottfried observed that, as the paleoconservative movement declined, a new cohort of young right-wingers were rising to take its place in challenging the neoconservative ideology then dominant in the Republican Party and broader U.S. conservative movement. One of those endorsing Gottfried's idea was fellow paleoconservative Richard B. Spencer. Born in 1978 to a wealthy family and raised in Dallas, Texas, in 2007, Spencer had dropped out of his PhD programme at Duke University to take up a position at The American Conservative magazine. Spencer claimed he coined the term "alternative right" for the lecture's title, although Gottfried maintained that they were its joint creators. As "alternative right" became associated increasingly with white nationalism in subsequent years, Gottfried distanced himself from it. After The American Conservative fired Spencer, in 2008 he became managing director of Taki Theodoracopulos's right-wing website Taki's Magazine. The website initially contained contributions largely from paleoconservatives and right-libertarians, but under Spencer also gave space to white nationalists like Taylor. In 2009, Spencer used the term "alternative right" in the title of an article by white nationalist Kevin DeAnna. By 2010, Spencer had moved fully from paleoconservatism to white nationalism, although various later press sources instead called him a white supremacist. Leaving Taki's Magazine, in March 2010, Spencer launched The Alternative Right webzine. Early issues featured articles by white nationalists like Taylor and MacDonald as well as the Heathen Stephen McNallen. Spencer noted that "if you look at the initial articles for AlternativeRight.com, that was the first stage of the Alt-Right really coming into its own". AlternativeRight.com consisted primarily of short essays, covering a range of political and cultural issues. Many of these reflected the influence of the French Nouvelle Droite, although this declined as the alt-right grew. Spencer later stated that he wanted to create a movement distinct from the white power image of neo-Nazi and KKK groups, noting that their approach to white nationalism was "a total nonstarter. No one outside a hardcore coterie would identify with it". In 2011, Spencer became the head of the white nationalist National Policy Institute and launched the Radix Journal to promote his views; in 2012, he stepped down from the AlternativeRight website and took it offline in December 2013. By that year, Spencer was expressing ambivalence about the "alternative right" label; he preferred to be called an "identitarian". On the Internet, Spencer's term "alternative right" was adopted and abbreviated to "alt-right". According to writer Osita Nwanevu, the abbreviation "retains the former phrase's associations—the mix of alienation and optimism embedded in the act of proudly affirming an 'alternative' direction—but compacts them into a snappier package". The "alt-right" tag was created with public relations in mind, allowing white nationalists to soften their image and helping to draw in recruits from conservatism. Many white nationalists gravitated to the term to escape the negative connotations of the term "white nationalism". Spencer thought that by this point, the "Alt-Right" had become "the banner of white identity politics". The term gained wider usage on websites like 4chan and Reddit, growing in popularity in 2015. Although there had previously been a strong left-libertarian contingent to these online spaces, there was a gradual rightward turn in chan culture centred on 4chan's politics board, /pol/, during the early-mid 2010s, with the fundamentalist approach to free speech contributing. According to Hawley, the alt-right was "an outgrowth of Internet troll culture", with Hermansson et al observing that "Online Antagonistic Communities" were key to the formation of the alt-right as a distinct movement. The alt-right's emergence was marked by the online gamergate controversy of 2014, in which some gamers harassed those promoting feminism within the gaming scene and voiced opposition towards progressivism in the video game industry. According to the journalist David Neiwert, Gamergate "heralded the rise of the alt-right and provided an early sketch of its primary features: an Internet presence beset by digital trolls, unbridled conspiracism, angry-white-male-identity victimization culture, and, ultimately, open racism, antisemitism, ethnic hatred, misogyny, and sexual and gender paranoia". Gamergate politicized many young people, especially males, in opposition to the perceived culture war being waged by leftists. Through their shared opposition to political correctness, feminism, and multiculturalism, chan culture built a link to the alt-right. By 2015, the alt-right had gained significant momentum as an online movement, attracting support on social media and internet forums. Notable promoters of the alt-right included Spencer, Vox Day, and Brittany Pettibone. Earlier white nationalist thinkers were also characterized as alt-right thinkers, among them Taylor, and MacDonald. Other prominent alt-rightists included Brad Griffin, a member of the neo-Confederate League of the South who founded the Occidental Dissent blog, Matthew Heimbach, who established the Traditionalist Youth Network in 2013, and Andrew Anglin, who launched the Daily Stormer website—named after the Der Stürmer newspaper active in Nazi Germany—in 2013. By 2016, Anglin called the Daily Stormer "the world's most visited alt-right website". While some of the websites associated with the alt-right—like The Daily Stormer and the Traditionalist Youth Network—adopted neo-Nazi approaches, others, such as Occidental Dissent, The Unz Review, Vox Popoli, and Chateau Heartiste, adopted a less extreme form of white nationalism. Far more widely visited than these alt-right websites was Breitbart News, which between 2016 and 2018 received over 10 million unique visitors a month. Launched by the conservative Andrew Breitbart in 2005, it came under the control of Steve Bannon in 2012. A right-wing nationalist and populist, Bannon was hostile to mainstream conservatism. Although much of Breitbart's coverage fed into racially charged narratives, it did not promote white nationalism, differing from the mainstream conservative press more in tone than in content. Alt-rightists termed Breitbart "alt-lite"; this term appeared in the alt-right's language in mid-2016, used pejoratively for rightists who shared their contempt for mainstream conservatism but not their white nationalism. In July 2016, Bannon claimed that Breitbart had become "the platform for the alt-right"; he may have been referring not to the website's official content but to its comments section—which is lightly moderated and contains more extreme views than those of Breitbart itself. Several political scientists rejected the characterization of Breitbart as alt-right, although press sources repeatedly described it as such, and the journalist Mike Wendling termed Breitbart "the chief popular media amplifier of alt-right ideas". In March 2016, the writers Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos published an article in Breitbart discussing the alt-right. They downplayed its most extreme elements and championed its counter-cultural value. Bokhari and Yiannopoulos' piece was subsequently widely cited in the mainstream press, with Hawley describing it as "the most sympathetic portrayal of the movement to appear in a major media venue to date". Many alt-rightists responded negatively to Bokhari and Yiannopoulos' article; The Daily Stormer referred to it as "the Product of a Degenerate Homosexual and an Ethnic Mongrel". Many press sources subsequently termed Yiannopoulos "alt-right". This was rejected both by Hawley, and by alt-rightists; on Occidental Dissent, Griffin asked: "What the hell does Milo Yiannopoulos—a Jewish homosexual who boasts about carrying on interracial relationships with black men—have to do with us?" Other observers instead labeled Yiannopoulos "alt-light" or "alt-lite", a term also applied to rightists like Mike Cernovich and Gavin McInnes. McInnes clarified his understanding of the difference between the alt-right and alt-lite by explaining that while the former focused on the white race, the latter welcomed individuals of any racial background who shared its belief in the superiority of Western culture. In June 2015, billionaire businessman Donald Trump announced plans to campaign to become the Republican nominee for the 2016 presidential election, attracting the interest of alt-rightists as well as from white nationalists more broadly, neo-Nazis, KKK groups, and the Patriot movement. Vocal in their support for Trump's campaign, this cause energized the alt-right and gave them the opportunity for a broader audience. Niewert observed that "Trump was the gateway drug for the alt-right", with many individuals learning of the movement through their interest in Trump. Ideologically, the alt-right remained "far to Trump's right", and Trump himself had little understanding of the movement. Tait argued that the mainstream media largely "overstate[d] the connection" between Trump and the alt-right. Many alt-rightists recognized that Trump did not share their white nationalism and would not bring about all the changes they desired; they nevertheless approved of his hard attitude to immigration, his calls for a ban on Muslims entering the U.S., and for a wall to be built along the border with Mexico to curtail illegal immigration. They were grateful that he had shifted the national conversation rightward, and that he had shown that it was possible to challenge the mainstream conservative movement from the right. Griffin called on alt-rightists to "join the Trump campaign... to take down the hated cuckservative establishment".[note 2] A small minority of alt-rightists were against supporting Trump; The Right Stuff contributor "Auschwitz Soccer Ref" complained that two of Trump's children had married Jews. A keen Twitter user, in November 2015, Trump retweeted a graphic about African-American crime statistics which included the white nationalist hashtag "#WhiteGenocide". The alt-righter RamZPaul rejoiced, retweeting Trump's piece with the comment: "Trump watches and is influenced by the Alt Right". Over coming months, Trump retweeted a second tweet that had "#WhiteGenocide" as a hashtag as well as sharing other tweets issued by white supremacists. The alt-right saw this as further evidence that Trump was their champion. In August 2016, Trump appointed Bannon to lead his election campaign. This was swiftly condemned in a Reno, Nevada speech given by the Democratic Party's nominee for the presidency, Hillary Clinton. She highlighted Bannon's claim that Breitbart was "the platform for the alt-right", describing the movement as "an emerging racist ideology" and warning that "a fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party". Attacking the alt-right as "racist ideas[...] anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-women ideas", she accused Trump of taking them "mainstream". Clinton said that while half of Trump's supporters were decent individuals "desperate for change", the other half represented a "basket of deplorables". After Clinton's speech, traffic to alt-right websites rose and the mainstream media gave it increasing coverage; Spencer and other alt-rightists were pleased, believing her speech gave them greater publicity and helped legitimize them in the public eye. Many Trump supporters adopted the moniker of "deplorables", and the term was widely used on memes that the alt-right promoted online. In September, Spencer, Taylor, and Peter Brimelow held a press conference in Washington DC to explain their goals. When Trump won the election in November, the alt-right's response was generally triumphalist and self-congratulatory. Anglin stated: "Make no mistake about it: we did this. If it were not for us, it wouldn't have been possible"; Spencer tweeted that "The Alt-Right has been declared the winner... We're the establishment now". Alt-rightists were generally supportive of Trump's decision to appoint Bannon his chief strategist, and Jeff Sessions his attorney general. While aware that Trump would not pursue a white nationalist agenda, the alt-right hoped to pull him further to the right, taking hardline positions that made him look more moderate, and thus shifting mainstream discourse rightward. Wendling suggested that Trump's election signaled "the beginning of the end" for the alt-right, with the movement's growth stalling from that point. Celebrating Trump's victory, Spencer held a November meeting in Washington D.C. in which he stated that he thought that he had "a psychic connection, a deeper connection with Donald Trump, in a way we simply do not have with most Republicans". He ended the conference by declaring "Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!", to which various attendees responded with Nazi salutes and chanting. This attracted significant press attention. When questioned on the incident, Spencer stated that the salutes were given "in a spirit of irony and exuberance". Later that month, Trump was asked about the alt-right in an interview with The New York Times. He responded: "I don't want to energize the group, and I disavow the group". This rejection angered many alt-rightists. In April 2017, many alt-rightists criticized Trump's order to launch the Shayrat missile strike against Syrian military targets; like many of those who had supported him, they believed he was going back on his promise of a more non-interventionist foreign policy in the Middle East. Hawley noted that the alt-right's influence on the Trump administration was "negligible". However, press sources alleged that several appointments within the Trump administration were linked to the alt-right, including Senior Advisor to the President Stephen Miller, National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, Deputy Assistant to the President Sebastian Gorka, Special Assistant to the President Julia Hahn, and speechwriter Darren Beattie. After Trump's election, the alt-right also supported the unsuccessful campaigns of several other Republicans, including Roy Moore. Some Republican candidates who were alleged to have alt-right links also ran for office, among them Paul Nehlen, Corey Stewart, Josh Mandel, and Joe Arpaio. In 2016, Twitter began closing alt-right accounts it regarded as engaging in abuse or harassment; among those closed were the accounts of Spencer and his NPI. In February 2017, Reddit then closed down the "r/altright" subreddit after its participants were found to have breached its policy prohibiting doxing. Facebook followed by shutting down Spencer's pages on its platform in April 2018. In January 2017, Spencer launched a new website, Altright.com, which combined the efforts of the Arktos publishing company and the Red Ice video and radio network. In August 2017, the Unite the Right rally took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, bringing together alt-rightists with members of other far-right movements. Many alt-rightists thought that the rally would mark a turning point in the transformation of their movement from an online phenomenon into a street-based one. At altright.com, editor Vincent Law for instance predicted before the event took place that "People will talk about Charlottesville as a turning point". However, the event and its aftermath proved demoralizing for many in the movement. Various violent acts took place at the rally. An African-American man, DeAndre Harris, was assaulted by demonstrators, while Richard W. Preston, an Imperial Wizard for the Maryland-based Confederate White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, fired a gun towards counter-protesters. One participant in the rally, a 20-year-old from Ohio named James Alex Fields Jr., rammed his car into counter-protesters, killing 32-year old Heather D. Heyer and injuring 35 others. Although Spencer condemned the killing, other alt-rightists celebrated it. Fields was arrested and later sentenced to life in prison. The car ramming incident brought much negative publicity to the event and its participants, earning the alt-right a reputation for violence. Various commentators and politicians, including Sessions, labelled Fields' ramming attack "domestic terrorism". Trump claimed that there were "some very fine people on both sides" of the Charlottesville protests, stating that what he called the "alt-left" bore some responsibility for the violence. Spencer stated that he was "really proud" of the president for those comments. Amid criticism of his comments, Trump added his view that "racism is evil" and that "those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs". Various alt-rightists who attended the rally experienced personal and legal repercussions for their involvement; one attendee, the U.S. Marine Vasillios Pistolis, was for instance court-martialled. Internet service providers and social media websites subsequently terminated many alt-right accounts and sites. Prominent figures like Spencer became reticent about organizing further public protests. He experimented with the use of flash demonstrations, returning to Charlottesville with a much smaller group for an unannounced protest in October. Unite the Right exacerbated tensions between the alt-right and the alt-lite; Breitbart distanced itself from the alt-right, as did Yiannopoulos, who insisted he had "nothing in common" with Spencer. The alt-right significantly declined in 2017 and 2018. This happened for multiple reasons, including the backlash of the Unite the Right rally, the fracturing of the movement, more effective banishment of hate speech and harassment from major social media websites and widespread opposition by the American population. In 2018, Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center described it as "imploding", while Marilyn Mayo of the Anti-Defamation League stated that the alt-right was in "a downward spiral, but it doesn't mean they're going to disappear". That year, Heimbach was arrested for the battery of his wife and father-in-law, resulting in the dissolution of his Traditionalist Workers Party, while Anglin went into hiding to avoid a harassment lawsuit, and Spencer canceled his speaking tour. Writing for The Guardian, Jason Wilson stated that "the alt-right looks like it is crumbling". Tait stated that after the Unite the Right rally, "it was clear that the alt-right brand had been oversaturated, diluted, and damaged.", but added that the alt-right "managed to reintroduce racist and antisemitic discourse into the mainstream of the right via the overlapping circles of the hardcore alt-right, the alt-lite, and the nebulous world of online anti-progressivism. The story of the alt-right, then, is one of how the American right, or any modern ideological movement, can—and cannot—police itself without guardrails. There has been widespread concern that as the chance of a large-scale political movement dies out, lone-wolf terrorist attacks from members will become common. In 2017, terrorist attacks and violence affiliated with the alt-right and white supremacy were the leading cause of extremist violence in the United States. Zack Beauchamp of Vox suggested that "other, more nakedly violent far-right movements have risen in its wake". Several alt-right candidates ran as Republican candidates in the 2018 elections. The neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier Arthur Jones ran for an Illinois congressional seat, the white supremacist Paul Nehlen for the Wisconsin seat of Paul Ryan, the Republican Speaker of the House, and the neo-Nazi Patrick Little for the United States Senate election in California, 2018. According to Tait, "Leading figures associated with the alt-right have disappeared into obscurity, self-immolated, and reinvented themselves as centrists. Meanwhile, the ideology's ideas have diffused across the political landscape." Groups like the terrorist group Atomwaffen Division grew after the Unite the Right rally, recruiting those radicalized by its events and aftermath. New groups were also former in the aftermath, like the Patriot Front and the National Socialist Legion, which both split from Vanguard America. The accelerationist tome Siege spread rapidly in the post-Unite the Right landscape as radicalized alt-right adherents pushed one another to commit violence and "read Siege" was posted on /pol/ over 5,500 times between 2017 and 2022. During October and November 2019, Turning Point USA's "Culture War" college tour was frequently targeted by the dissident right, led by Nick Fuentes, who consider some groups to be not sufficiently conservative on issues of race and ethnicity, immigration, and LGBTQ rights. Fuentes himself would go on to found the Groypers in late 2019. In 2020, several alt-right organizations were formed outside of the United States including the Australian National Socialist Network, and the Canadian Diagolon group. Diagolon would go on to participate in the Canada convoy protest in 2022. In 2024, the Canadian alt-right organization Second Sons was founded by Canadian podcaster and military veteran Jeremy MacKenzie, the same person who founded Diagolon. Academic Laura K. Field in her 2025 book titled The Making of the MAGA New Right argued that the activities of Alt-Right movements have largely merged into the Far Right movement as of 2020-2021 as discussed in chapter six of her book titled called "From Alt-Right to Hard Right". Beliefs The alt-right is situated on the far-right of the left-right political spectrum. It has no unifying manifesto and those who describe themselves as "alt-rightists" express varying views about what they want to achieve. There are nevertheless recurring attitudes within the movement. The alt-right's views are profoundly anti-egalitarian. It rejects many of the basic premises of the Age of Enlightenment and classical liberalism, including the liberal democracy which underpins the U.S. political system. For this reason, Hawley thought that "the Alt-Right seems like a poor fit for the United States, where both the left and right have roots in classical liberalism and the Enlightenment." Similarly, the academic Thomas J. Main stated that the alt-right sought "a root-and-branch rejection of American political principles". The key division within the alt-right is between those who explicitly embrace neo-Nazi and white supremacist stances, and those white nationalists who present a more moderate image. Wendling suggested that this was "a distinction lacking a hugely significant difference". The white supremacist and neo-Nazi alt-rightists are sometimes termed "1488s", a combination of the white supremacist fourteen words slogan with 88, a coded reference to "HH", or "Heil Hitler". These neo-Nazi elements represent a minority within the alt-right. Many on the less extreme end of the movement are critical of them, believing that they "go too far" or generate bad publicity for it. Some of the latter mock the neo-Nazi and explicitly white supremacist elements as "Stormfags", a reference to the white supremacist website Stormfront. According to Tait, the alt-right engages in a realm of politics that they call "metapolitics". Swedish alt-right publisher Daniel Friberg says that metapolitics aims to "ultimately ... redefine the conditions under which politics is conceived." Metapolitics also involves shifting the overton window, the range of ideas considered politically acceptable at a given time. The alt-right is a white nationalist movement, and is fundamentally concerned with white identity. It views all political issues through the framework of race. Spencer described the alt-right as "identity politics for white Americans and for Europeans around the world", while the alt-rightist Greg Johnson of CounterCurrents Publishing stated that "The Alternative Right means White Nationalism". Not all alt-rightists actively embrace the term "white nationalist"; Spencer is among those who prefer to call themselves "identitarians". Main described the alt-right as promoting "white racialism", while Hawley commented that the alt-right is, "at its core, a racist movement". Similarly, historian David Atkinson stated that the alt-right was "a racist movement steeped in white supremacist ideas". Attitudes to non-white people vary within the alt-right, from those who desire tighter restrictions on non-white immigration into the U.S., to those who call for a violent ethnic cleansing of the country. Rejecting the idea that race is a socio-cultural construct, the alt-right promotes scientific racism, claiming that racial categories demarcate biologically distinct groups. They call this belief "race realism". A recurring tendency among alt-rightists is to rank these races on a hierarchy, according to perceived IQ. This hierarchy has Asians and Ashkenazi Jews at the top, followed by non-Jewish whites, then Arabs, and finally, black Africans. Several prominent alt-rightists, including Anglin and Spencer, have been romantically involved with women of Asian heritage. Unlike earlier racist worldviews, such as those of the interwar fascists, the alt-right emphasizes the idea of racial difference above that of racial superiority, leaving the latter either implicit, or secondary, in its discourse. Most alt-rightists reject the label of "white supremacist". Having analyzed alt-right posts online, the political scientists Joe Phillips and Joseph Yi noted that a pervasive underlying theme was the belief that white people were victims, and that white Americans had been disadvantaged by government policies, such as affirmative action for non-white groups, assistance to illegal immigrants, and the perceived denigration of "white history", like Christopher Columbus and the Confederate States of America. Alt-right online discourse also expressed much anger at the idea of white privilege, widely promoted by the American Left in the 2010s, with members citing job insecurity, under employment or unemployment, and growing mortality rates among whites as evidence that they do not lead privileged lives. Many alt-rightists have expressed the desire to push white nationalist ideas into the Overton window—the range of ideas tolerated in public discourse. The alt-right has served as a bridge between white nationalism and traditional conservatism, and as a tool used by white nationalists to push their rhetoric into the mainstream. On Twitter, alt-rightists, for instance, combined their white nationalist hashtags with others used by Trump supporters more broadly, notably #MakeAmericaGreatAgain, so as to spread their message across the broader political right. The alt-right is typically white separatist, with its members desiring autonomy in their own white communities. Some envision breaking up the United States into multiple states, each inhabited by a different ethnic or racial group, one or more of which would represent white ethnostates. Writing in the Pacific Standard, journalist Jared Keller commented that this desire for an independent ethnostate was similar to anarcho-fascist ideas promoted by the British National Anarchist Movement. Spencer compared his campaign for a white ethnostate with the early days of Zionism, which began in the 19th century with calls for the formation of a Jewish ethnostate, and resulted in the formation of Israel in the mid-20th century. Many alt-rightists are unclear as to how a white ethnostate would emerge, but are content instead to promote the idea. Spencer commented "I don't know how we're going to get there, because the thing is, history will decide that for us... You have to wait for a revolutionary opportunity to present itself, and history will present that opportunity". He suggested that it could be achieved through "peaceful ethnic cleansing", with non-whites given financial incentives to leave. The prominent alt-rightist Greg Johnson suggested that it would come about after white nationalists became the dominant force in U.S. politics, at which point they would deport all illegal migrants, before encouraging all other people of color to emigrate. Other alt-rightists are critical of the idea of breaking up the U.S. into ethnostates, arguing that this would mean destroying the country that their Euro-American ancestors built. They instead argue for restrictive immigration policies, to ensure that the U.S. retains its white majority. Some alt-rightists promote a pan-white empire spanning Europe and North America. Spencer noted that wanted his white ethnostate in North America to eventually form part of "a global empire" that could provide "a homeland for all white people", expanding its territory into the Middle East by conquering Istanbul, which in his words was "such a profoundly symbolic city. Retaking it, that would be a statement to the world". Some elements of the alt-right are antisemitic, but others are tolerant of Jews. Many in the alt-right believe that there is a Jewish conspiracy within the United States to achieve "white genocide", the elimination of white people as a racial group, and their replacement with non-whites. They believe that a Jewish cabal controls the U.S. government, media, and universities, and is pursuing its aim of white genocide by spreading anti-white tropes, and encouraging African-American civil rights groups. As evidence for this supposed white genocide, these far-right figures point to the depiction of inter-racial couples or mixed-race children on television, and the publication of articles discouraging women from having children early in life. They also cite apparent instances of white self-hatred, including Rachel Dolezal, an American woman of European descent who identifies as black. This antisemitic conspiracy theory is not new to the alt-right, but has recurred among far-right groups in Western countries since the 19th century; it was the reason for the Holocaust and various antisemitic pogroms in European history. Andrew Anglin, one of the most prominent alt-right ideologues and a member of its neo-Nazi wing, stated "the core concept of the movement, upon which all else is based, is that Whites are undergoing an extermination, via mass immigration into White countries which was enabled by a corrosive liberal ideology of White self-hatred, and that the Jews are at the center of this agenda". Anglin stated that in the alt-right, "Many people also believe that the Jews should be exterminated". Other alt-rightists, like Spencer, welcome the involvement of Jews within their movement. The alt-right sought to hasten the downfall of U.S. conservatism, and conservatives were often the main target of alt-right wrath. The prominent alt-right ideologue Brad Griffin stated "Alt Right is presenting itself as a sleek new challenger to mainstream conservatism and libertarianism... Alt Right was designed to appeal to a younger audience who reject the Left, but who don't fit in on the stuffy or banal Right either". The alt-right places little emphasis on economic issues. Unlike mainstream U.S. conservatives, alt-rightists do not tend to favor laissez-faire economics, and most appear to support President Trump's protectionist economic measures. The alt-right also rejects what it regards as the left-wing dominance of modern Western society. Phillips and Yi noted that alongside "white identity politics", the alt-right promotes "a message of expressive transgression against left-wing orthodoxy ('political correctness')". Political correctness has been characterized as one of the alt-right's "bugbears"; Nicole Hemmer stated on NPR that political correctness is seen by the alt-right as "the greatest threat to their liberty". Alt-rightists often employ the term "Cultural Marxism"—originally coined in reference to a specific form of Marxist thought, popularised among the U.S. right-wing in the 1990s—in reference to a perceived leftist conspiracy to alter society. They apply the term "Cultural Marxism" to a broad range of left movements. Anglin claimed that the goal of the alt-right was to form an authoritarian government. Writing in The New Yorker, the journalist Andrew Marantz claimed that neo-monarchists were among the alt-right. The alt-right has no specific platform on U.S. foreign policy, although it has been characterized as being non-interventionist, as well as isolationist. Generally, it opposes established Republican Party views on foreign policy issues. Alt-rightists typically opposed President Bush's war on terror policies, and spoke against the 2017 Shayrat missile strike. The alt-right has no interest in spreading democracy abroad and opposes the United States' close relationship with Israel. The alt-right often looks favorably on Russian President Vladimir Putin, viewing him as a strong, nationalistic white leader who defends his country from both radical Islam, and Western liberalism. Spencer praised Putin's Russia as the "most powerful white power in the world", while prominent alt-rightist Matthew Heimbach called Putin "the leader of the free world". Although during the Cold War, the American Right often presented the Soviet Union as the main threat to the U.S., links between the American far-right and Russia grew during the 2000s, when prominent far-right activists like David Duke visited the country; the latter described Russia as being "key to White survival". The far-right Russian political theorist Aleksandr Dugin is also viewed positively by the alt-right. Dugin has written for Spencer's websites, and Spencer's estranged wife, the ethnically Russian Nina Kouprianova, has translated some of Dugin's work into English. Many alt-rightists also regard Syrian president Bashar al-Assad as a heroic figure for standing up to rebel groups in the Syrian Civil War. Heimbach has endorsed a Shi'ite axis between al-Assad's Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, seeing them as allies in the global struggle against Zionism. Favoring a more patriarchal society, the alt-right is anti-feminist. Unlike many U.S. conservatives, the alt-right does not argue its anti-feminist position from traditional Christian perspectives. Instead, the alt-right claims that it is rooted in what it calls "sex realism", arguing that as a result of their biological differences, men and women are suited to different tasks in society. Lyons commented that the alt-right was misogynistic and presented women as irrational and vindictive. Although a minority in the movement, the alt-right has female members who support its anti-feminist stance; some prominent alt-right women, such as Lauren Southern, have experienced harassment and abuse from within the movement. The Daily Stormer, for instance, banned female contributors, and called for reduced female involvement in the white nationalist movement, producing an angry response from various white nationalist women. Within feminist circles, the alt-right's desired future was repeatedly compared to the Republic of Gilead, the fictional dystopia in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985) and its 2017 television adaptation. The alt-right intersects with the manosphere, an online anti-feminist subculture, including the men's rights movement, which believes that men face more oppression in Western society than women. It adopts the movement's view that feminism has undermined and emasculated men, and believes that men should aggressively reassert their masculinity so as not to become "beta males" or "cucks". There has been some clear influence between the two movements; prominent manosphere ideologue Roosh V, for instance, attended an NPI conference, and quoted antisemitic material from white nationalist sources in his articles. Some alt-right figures have distanced themselves from the manosphere and its proponents; Greg Johnson of Counter-Currents Publishing was of the view that "the manosphere morally corrupts men", because it does not promote "the resurgence of traditional and biologically based sexual norms". The alt-right displays far less interest in homosexuality and abortion than the U.S. conservative movement, with alt-rightists taking varying perspectives on these topics. Hawley suggested that the alt-right was more broadly sympathetic to legal abortion access than the conservative movement; many alt-rightists support abortion access, because of its disproportionate use by African-American and Hispanic-American women. Some on the alt-right consider homosexuality to be immoral and a threat to the survival of the white race, with alt-right trolls having employed homophobic terminology like "faggot". A combination of homophobia and anti-globalism have produced the concept of "globohomo", a variant of the "Cultural Marxism" conspiracy theory. Others adopt a more tolerant stance, and have praised gay white nationalists. This reflects a broader trend among white nationalists to denigrate gay culture, while being more tolerant of gay writers and musicians whose views they sympathize with, like James O'Meara, and Douglas Pearce. The alt-right is broadly secular. Many of its members are atheists, or highly skeptical of organized religion and God. Some alt-rightists identify as Christians; The Right Stuff, for instance, hosted an alt-right Christian podcast called "The Godcast". There are also individuals in the movement who do not believe in Christian teachings but identify as cultural Christians, admiring the Christian heritage of Western society. Others on the alt-right oppose Christianity entirely, criticizing it for its Jewish roots, for being a universal religion that seeks to cross racial boundaries, and for encouraging what they see as a "slave morality" that they contrast with perceived ancient aristocratic values. Some elements pursue modern Paganism. White evangelical leaders of the Southern Baptist Church have angered the alt-right by expressing support for refugees entering the U.S., calling for measures to help undocumented migrants gain legal status, and urging members not to display the Confederate Battle Flag. Despite this, alt-right hostility to Christianity has waned over time, with many alt-right commentators identifying as Christian, while rejecting mainstream Christian politics and most mainstream Christian religious leaders, especially Pope Francis. The Mormon-related hashtag #DezNat – which targets pornography, the LGBTQ community, Mormon apostates and progressives, sometimes violently (see blood atonement) – has also been linked to the alt-right. Several press sources have linked the alt-right to Islamophobia, and Wendling stated that alt-rightists view Islam as a fundamental threat to Western society. Hawley expressed the view that "ironically, people on the Alt-Right are less Islamophobic than many mainstream conservatives". He observed that many U.S. conservatives criticized Muslim migration to the United States, because they regarded Islam as a threat to liberty; the alt-right has made little use of this argument. For alt-rightists, migration from Islamic-majority countries is undesirable not because the migrants are Muslims, but because most of them are non-white; it is equally opposed to non-white migrants who are Christian or non-religious. Structure Alt-right groups live, recruit and coordinate (and hence evolve) online. And from what we can already see, they do so pretty much exactly like the pro-ISIS groups evolve and coordinate, but Facebook has so far been less quick to shut them down. The academic Timothy J. Main characterized it as an "ideological movement" interested more in spreading its ideas, rather than operating as a social movement or political party, while according to Hawley, the alt-right was "a disorganized mob that broadly shares a number of goals and beliefs". The alt-right is not an organized movement, and has no formal institutions or leading elite. It is a predominantly online phenomenon, lacking print newspapers, and has little radio or television presence. It had no think tanks that influenced government policy, and could not command the open allegiance of any major politicians or mainstream pundits. Unlike many counter-cultural movements, it lacked soft power in the form of original bands, songs, films, and other cultural artifacts, of which it produced very few. According to Hawley, it was the movement's success in using the Internet that allowed it "to punch above its weight in the political arena". The alt-right made use of a large number of blogs, podcasts, forums, and webzines, in which it discussed far-right political and cultural ideas. The use of the Internet by the far-right was not pioneered by the alt-right; the white supremacist web forum Stormfront had, for instance, been active since 1996. Where the alt-right differed was in its members willingness to leave far-right websites, and engage in trolling on other parts of the Internet, such as the comments sections of major news websites, as well as popular social media applications, such as YouTube, and Twitter. According to Hawley, it was the alt-right's use of trolling which put it "into the national conversation". The movement's online structure had strengths, in that it allowed members to say things anonymously online, that they would not be willing to say on the street, or any other public place. The lack of any formal organization also meant that nobody could be kicked out of the alt-right. As the alt-right developed, a number of formal, real world events were held, particularly through the National Policy Institute. Members of the alt-right have also attended events organized by an older far-right white nationalist group, American Renaissance. These events have gained a more limited audience than the alt-right's online activities. This may be because operating online allows members of the alt-right to operate anonymously, while to attend events they must often expose themselves to journalists and protesters, thus making it more likely that their views will become publicly known. U.S. alt-rightists have also sought to build links with other far-right and white nationalist groups elsewhere in the world. Heimbach, for instance, addressed meetings of the Golden Dawn in Greece and the National Democratic Party of Germany. Various U.S.-based alt-rightists used social media to encourage support for the Alternative for Germany party in that country's 2017 federal election. The scholar Sitara Thobani argued for a convergence between the U.S. alt-right and Hindu nationalism in India. Tactics Main argued that a characteristic of the alt-right was its use of vitriolic language, including "race-baiting, coarse ethnic humor, prejudicial stereotyping, vituperative criticism, and the flaunting of extremist symbols". In The New Yorker, the journalist Benjamin Wallace-Wells noted that the alt-right sought to test "the strength of the speech taboos that revolve around conventional politics—of what can be said, and how directly"; members often made reference to freedom of speech when calling for their views to be heard in public discourse. Alt-rightists promoted their messages through Twitter hashtags such as "#WhiteGenocide", "#WhiteLivesMatter" and "#StandUpForEurope". A recurrent tactic of alt-rightists is to present themselves—as white men—as victims of oppression and prejudice; this subverts many leftist arguments about other social groupings being victims and is designed to infuriate leftist opponents. The alt-right also make heavy use of imagery drawn from popular culture for its own purposes. For instance, the American singer Taylor Swift is often held up as an idealized example of "Aryan" beauty. When describing their own conversion to the movement, alt-rightists refer to themselves as having been "getting red pilled", a reference to a scene in the 1999 film The Matrix in which Neo, the protagonist, chooses to discover the truth behind reality by consuming a red pill. On alt-right blogs and message boards, members often discuss how they were "red-pilled" originally. Members that encourage others to conceal their actual beliefs to more easily spread their messages refer to this tactic as "hiding one's power levels", in reference to a scene from the anime Dragon Ball Z. Alt-rightists have also adopted milk as a symbol of their views; various members have used the words "Heil Milk" in their online posts while Spencer included an emoji of a glass of milk on his Twitter profile along with the statement that he was "very tolerant... lactose tolerant!" The animal studies scholar Vasile Stănescu suggested that this notion drew upon the 19th-century pseudoscientific idea that Northern Europeans had become biologically superior to many other human populations, because they consumed high quantities of milk and meat products. The alt-right makes strong use of humor and irony. As noted by Nagle, the alt-right's use of humor renders it difficult to tell "what political views were genuinely held and what were merely, as they used to say, for the lulz". By presenting an image which was much less threatening than that of earlier white nationalist groups, the alt-right was able to attract people who would be willing to visit its websites but who would not have considered attending neo-Nazi or KKK events. As noted by Hawley, "whereas older white nationalists came across as bitter, reactionary, and antisocial, much of the Alt-Right comes across as youthful, light-hearted, and jovial—even as it says the most abhorrent things about racial and religious minorities". Members of the alt-right sometimes mocked the earnestness and seriousness of earlier white nationalists such as William Pierce. Another of the tactics employed online by alt-rightists is to parody their leftist opponents. One American alt-rightist, for instance, created a Twitter account for a fictional individual whom they described as an "LGBTQ+ pansexual nonbinary POC transwoman" who was a "Journalist for BLM [Black Lives Matter]. Always stayin woke". Alt-rightists also orchestrated pranks, again, to cause alarm among opponents. For instance, during the 2016 presidential campaign, alt-rightists presented claims that they were plotting to send representatives posing as officials to voting booths, where they would suppress ethnic minority turnout. There was no such plot, but press sources like Politico presented these claims as fact. This tendency toward trolling rendered it difficult for journalists to learn more about the alt-right, because any members they talked to were willing to deceive them for their own amusement. Nagle argued that the alt-right had inherited a transgressive style descending from the Marquis de Sade in the 18th century, but that with the alt-right this "the transgressive anti-moral style" reached "its final detachment from any egalitarian philosophy of the left or Christian morality of the right". Tait argued that many viewed alt-right content "for the politically transgressive content without embracing the political or philosophical vision of the alt-right." The alt-right makes heavy use of memes, which became a defining trend of the movement in 2016, adopting much of its "image- and humor-based culture", including its heavy use of memes, from the online subcultures active at 4chan, and later 8chan. The prevalence of such memes in alt-right circles has led some commentators to question whether the alt-right is a serious movement rather than just an alternative way to express traditionally conservative beliefs, with Chava Gourarie of the Columbia Journalism Review stating that provoking a media reaction to these memes is for some creators an end in itself. One of the most commonly used memes within the alt-right is Pepe the Frog. The Pepe meme was created by artist Matt Furie in 2005 and over following years spread through the Internet, being shared by pop stars like Nicki Minaj and Katy Perry. By 2014, Pepe was one of the most popular online memes, used among far-right trolls on 4chan and from there adopted by the alt-right. After Trump tweeted a meme of Pepe as himself, and his son Donald Trump Jr. posted a Pepe meme shortly after, alt-righters and 4channers began spreading the meme with political intent. According to writer Gary Lachman, Pepe became "the unofficial mascot of the alt-right movement". The use of Pepe spawned the satirical worship of the Ancient Egyptian frog-headed deity Kek, as well as satirical nationalism of the nonexistent nation of "Kekistan". "Clown World", a phrase used by the alt-right to express their distaste towards societies perceived to be too liberal or multiracial, is often used in conjunction with images of Pepe dressed like a clown, who they dub "Honkler". Another alt-right mascot was Moon Man, an unofficial parody of McDonald's 1980s Mac Tonight character. Alt-rightists posted videos to YouTube, in which Moon Man rapped to songs they had composed like "Black Lives Don't Matter" by a text-to-speech synthesizer. The alt-right used specific terms for individuals outside the movement. Whites who were not part of the movement were called "normies"; homosexuals, and whites who socialized with people of color, were referred to as "degenerates". An alt-right acronym was "WEIRD", for "Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic people". Mainstream conservatives were denigrated as "cuckservatives", a portmanteau of "cuckold" and "conservative". The term "cuckold" pertains to a man with an unfaithful wife; the alt-right saw this as analogous to the role of the U.S. conservative movement in assisting non-whites in the U.S.[note 3] Various terms were used for leftists. Those who expressed progressive views, particularly online, were characterized as "social justice warriors" (SJWs). Individuals who expressed leftist opinions on Tumblr—and who alt-rightists often stereotyped as fat, ugly feminists—were called "Tumblrinas". The term "snowflake", short for "special snowflake", was used as a pejorative for such individuals, and in reference to leftist uses of "trigger warnings", alt-rightists expressed a desire to "trigger" leftists by upsetting them. Leftists who professed victim status while harassing or bullying others were labeled "crybullies", while leftists who were perceived to be stupid were labeled "libtards", a portmanteau of "liberal" and "retard". "NPC", derived from "Non-player characters" which are ubiquitous in video games, is used to disparage opponents of the alt-right by implying they are incapable of independent thought, and can only mindlessly repeat the same arguments and accusations against the alt-right. When referring to African-Americans, alt-rightists regularly employed the meme "dindu nuffin"—a bastardization of "didn't do nothing"—in reference to claims of innocence by arrested African-Americans. On this basis, alt-rightists referred to black people as "dindus". Events involving black people were called "chimpouts", rhetorically linking them with chimpanzees. Alt-rightists also used memes to ironically support the Black Egyptian hypothesis, often using stereotypical African-American vernacular such as "We wuz kangz n shieet" ("We was kings and shit"). Following the murder of Ahmaud Arbery in 2020, "jogger" was adopted by some members as a euphemism for "nigger" in reference to how Arbery was killed while jogging, and because both words sounded similar. Refugees were often referred to as "rapefugees", a reference to incidents like the 2015–16 New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Germany, in which non-white refugees were reported to have sexually assaulted white women. Another meme the alt-right employed was to place triple parentheses around Jewish names; this started at The Right Stuff to highlight the presence of Jewish Americans in the media and academia. One alt-rightist created a Google Chrome plug in that would highlight Jewish names online. Alt-rightists often utilized older white nationalist slogans, such as the Fourteen Words: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children", that "Anti-racist is a code for anti-white", and that "Diversity is a code word for white genocide". From the latter, alt-rightists produced the hashtag reduction "#WhiteGenocide" for use on Twitter, highway billboards, and flyers. Also used was the slogan "It's OK to be white" as a way of expressing a supposed reverse racism towards white people by minorities. The use of "Deus Vult!" and various other crusader iconography was employed to express Islamophobic sentiment. Also apparent were "helicopter ride" memes, which endorse documented cases of leftists being dropped from helicopters by Chilean and Argentine juntas. Similarly, the term "Right-Wing Death Squad" (usually abbreviated as RWDS) also callbacks to the "helicopter ride" meme and to refer to far-right, fascist death squads. Additional online features of the alt-right included references to Fashwave, a neo-fascist subgenre of electronic music microgenre vaporwave. Wendling noted that campaigns of abuse for political ends were "a classic alt-right tactic", while Hawley called the alt-right "a subset of the larger Internet troll culture". This trolling both contributed to creating racial discord, and generated press attention for the movement. Those most regularly targeted were Jewish journalists, mainstream conservative journalists, and celebrities who publicly criticized Trump. Such harassment was usually spontaneous rather than pre-planned, but in various cases, many alt-right trolls piled on once the harassment had begun. After criticizing Trump and the alt-right, the conservative journalist David A. French—who is white—received much abuse referencing his white wife and adopted black daughter. Alt-right trolls sent him images of his daughter in a gas chamber, and repeatedly claimed that he liked to watch his wife have sex with "black bucks". As a result of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, the artist Arrington de Dionyso, whose murals are frequently displayed at the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria, also experienced abuse from the alt-right. In 2017, a wave of threats began being made to Jewish Community Centers which some press sources attributed to the alt-right. Another Jewish target was the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who was sent messages stating that he and his children "will go to the ovens". Not all targets were U.S. citizens. In what it called "Operation: Filthy Jew Bitch", The Daily Stormer encouraged its followers to send abuse to the British Member of Parliament (MP) Luciana Berger, who is Jewish; images sent to her featured a yellow star on her head, accompanied by the hashtag "Hitlerwasright". One UK-based alt-rightist was convicted for his involvement in the campaign. In another instance, Anglin commented on the June 2016 murder of the British MP Jo Cox by a far-right activist, by saying that "Jo Cox was evil and she deserved to die. Her death was not a tragedy, it was justice". While celebrating violence, The Daily Stormer is cautious to remain on the legal side of U.S. incitement laws. Demographics The alt-right's anonymized and decentralized nature makes it difficult to determine how many individuals are involved in it, or the demographic attributes of this membership. The movement's members are concentrated in the United States, but with participants present in other Anglophone countries, such as Canada, Britain, and Australia, as well as in parts of continental Europe. While acknowledging that the U.S. was "central" to the alt-right, Hermansson et al stressed that it was an "international phenomenon". Alt-rightists have provided their own opinions on its numbers; in 2016, Anglin thought it had a "cohesive constituency" of between 4 million and 6 million people, while Griffin believed it had a core membership in the hundreds of thousands, with a larger range of sympathizers. Main determined that, between September 2016 and February 2018, alt-right websites received a combined average of 1.1 million unique visitors per month, compared to 46.9 million unique visitors to broader right-wing sites, and 94.3 million for left-wing sites. He deemed the size of the alt-right to be "miniscule [sic]". Thomas Main estimated through web traffic that alt-right websites, excluding Breitbart News, had a readership the size of small magazines such as Commentary or Dissent. In 2017, following the Charlottesville car attack, an ABC News/Washington Post poll found out that 10% of all Americans supported the alt-right. In their 2020 study on the matter, researchers Patrick Forscher and Nour Kteily estimated the support for the alt-right at 6% among the general American population, a number which rises to 10% among Trump supporters. The alt-right is majority male, although Hawley suggested that about 20% of its support might be female. From the nature of the online discourse as well as the attendees of events organized by NPI and American Renaissance, Hawley believed that the majority of alt-right participants are younger on average than the participants of most previous American far-right groups. Wendling believed that a large portion of the alt-right were university students or recent graduates, many bearing a particular grudge against the political correctness encountered on campus; the alt-right ideologue Greg Johnson believed that the movement was attracting a higher percentage of better-educated Americans than prior white nationalist groups, due to declining opportunities and standards of living for graduates during the 2010s. Wendling also thought that alt-rightists tried to position themselves as "a cool posse of young intelligent kids", but that this was misleading. He determined that many of those active on alt-right forums were middle-aged men from working-class backgrounds. Tait said that younger members of the alt-right "recognized that the internet let them make an end run around the systems that marginalized their forebears. It's this younger cohort in particular that formed the [movement]". Tait also said "that a large segment of the movement was composed of young, male YouTubers and memelords who advanced misogynistic, anti-liberal, antisemitic, and often racist ideas as they shitposted pro-Trump or anti-progressive memes under absurd pseudonyms". On interviewing young alt-rightists, Hawley noted that many revealed that they embraced far-right politics in response to the growing racial polarization of the Obama era; in particular, the public debates around the shootings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. Hawley suggested that many of these young people were willing to embrace the idea of dismantling the United States in favor of a new, white ethnostate, because they had grown up in the U.S. during the post-civil rights era. In contrast, he thought, older white nationalists were keener to retain links to patriotic American imagery, because they nostalgically recalled a period of U.S. history when segregation and overt white dominance were a part of life, and believed that this system could be reinstated. The psychologists Patrick S. Forscher and Nour S. Kteily conducted a study of 447 self-identified alt-right members, and found that they had higher rates of dark triad traits than non-Trump supporters. Forscher and Kteily also noted that the alt-rightists' psychological profiles bore similarities to those of Trump supporters more broadly, although displayed greater optimism about the economy, a higher bias against black people, and a higher rate of support for white collective action than other Trump supporters. The political scientist Philip W. Gray cited several reasons for the alt-right's emergence. In his analysis, new online media had reduced the conservative movement's ability to enforce its boundaries against the far-right, while the growing distance of World War II meant that pride in the U.S. victory over Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy provided less of a barrier to the American far-right, than it had when large numbers of people still remembered the conflict. Gray also argued that the alt-right was a reaction against the left-wing racial and social agitation of the 2010s, in particular the Black Lives Matter movement, and the popularization of concepts like white privilege and male privilege, as well as events like the racial unrest in Baltimore and Ferguson, and the shooting of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge. The scholar of American studies Annie Kelly argued that the alt-right was influenced by a pervasive "discourse of anxiety about traditional white masculinity" in mainstream U.S. culture. In her view, much of the "groundwork" for this discourse was set forth by the conservative movement, in the years following the September 11 attacks in 2001. Hawley concurred that some U.S. conservatives, such as Ann Coulter, had contributed to the alt-right's rise through their attacks on political correctness, as part of which they had "effectively delegitimized complaints about hate speech and racism". Some conservatives, like columnist Matt K. Lewis, have agreed with this assessment. Drawing comparisons with the tale of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, the commentator Angela Nagle also suggested that "the hysterical liberal call-out" culture of the 2010s, in which "everyone from saccharine pop stars to Justin Trudeau [was called] a 'white supremacist' and everyone who wasn't With Her a sexist" made it more difficult for people to recognize when a far-right movement really emerged online. Disagreeing with Nagle's view that the alt-right was primarily a "response to the stupidity of marginal Internet liberalism", the anti-fascist reporter Jay Firestone—who had spent three months undercover in New York's alt-right community—instead argued that it was a "response to decades of decline in standards of living for working people, amid the proliferation of unemployment and meaningless, dead-end jobs". Links to violence and terrorism "The sprawling networks the alt-right has built around its poisonous, racist ideology have violence at its core in its pursuit of a white ethnostate. The white, male grievance culture that the leaders of the alt-right are incubating has already inspired more than 40 deaths and left more than 60 people injured. And unfortunately, the alt-right seems likely to inspire more, as it moves further into the real world. Its leaders continue to abdicate all responsibility for the violence their ideology inspires and are becoming increasingly recalcitrant in the face of widespread condemnation. ... After a year of escalating alt-right violence, we are probably in for more". In 2017, Hawley noted that the alt-right was not a violent movement, but that this could potentially change. From their analysis of online discourse, Phillips and Yi concluded that "rather than violence, most Alt-Right members focus on discussing and peacefully advocating their values". They added that presenting the alt-right as a violent, revolutionary movement, or equating all alt-rightists with the 1488 scene—which was a "rhetorical tactic" for progressives—was "an intellectual failure akin to treating all Muslims or black nationalists as radicals and terrorists". Conversely, Wending noted that there were individuals on the extreme end of the alt-right willing to use violence. He stated that "the culture of the alt-right is breeding its own brand of terrorists: socially isolated young men who are willing to kill". The alt-right movement has been considered by some political researchers a terrorist movement and the process of alt-right radicalization has been compared to Islamic terrorism by political scientists and leaders. A paper on the subject stated that it clearly fell under an extremist movement, saying that "alt-right adherents also expressed hostility that could be considered extremist: they were quite willing to blatantly dehumanize both religious/national outgroups and political opposition groups". In February 2018, the Southern Poverty Law Center assembled a list of 13 violent incidents between 2014 and 2018 perpetrated by alt-right influenced people, in which 43 people died and 67 people were injured. The perpetrators of these events were all male between the ages of 17 and 37, with an average age of just over 25 years old (only three of them were over 30). All but one was American; the other was Canadian. Dylann Roof spent much time reading alt-right websites before carrying out the 2015 Charleston church shooting. However, he took greater interest in older white nationalist writers and groups, like the Council of Conservative Citizens and the Northwest Front. In December 2017, the 21-year old William Edward Atchison shot dead two students at Aztec High School in Aztec, New Mexico before killing himself. Atchison's online activity had included posting pro-Hitler and pro-Trump thoughts on alt-right websites like The Daily Stormer, under such usernames as "Future Mass Shooter" and "Adam Lanza", and joking about school shootings, in particular the Columbine High School massacre. An alt-righter named Taylor Wilson, who had attended the Unite the Right Rally, was charged with attempting a terror attack on an Amtrak train in October 2017. It was reported that he held a business card from the American-based neo-Nazi political party National Socialist Movement. In October 2018, Robert Bowers opened fire on a synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing 11 and injuring 6. He was a member of a fringe social network called Gab, where he posted a message indicating an immediate intent to harm just prior to the shooting; Bowers had a history of extreme antisemitic postings on Gab. The website is a favorite of alt-right users who are banned or suspended from other social networks. In August 2019, the self-described alt-right member James Patrick Reardon of New Middleton, Ohio was arrested, accused of threatening violence against local Jewish communities; an arsenal, or weaponry, was found in his home. Various far-right militant groups have been linked with the alt-right. The Rise Above Movement (RAM), based in Southern California, has been linked to various violent acts, including participation in the Unite the Right rally. According to Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, RAM constituted "an alt-right street-fighting club". Several press sources also described the Atomwaffen Division, a militant neo-Nazi group founded in the U.S. in 2013, as being part of the alt-right. The group was responsible for five murders, several of which were of other alleged group members. Far-right groups outside the U.S. have also been influenced by the alt-right. The Stawell-Times News noted that Antipodean Resistance, an Australian neo-Nazi group, had links to the alt-right online subculture. The group, which makes use of Nazi symbols such as the swastika and the Nazi salute, has explicitly called for the legalization of the murder of Jews. The group was initially involved in vandalism and organizing training camps, although various commentators warned that it might turn to terrorism, and should be proscribed. Reactions Hawley thought that, because of its use of novel tactics not previously used by the far-right, "the Alt-Right represents something genuinely new on the American political scene", while Main believed that the alt-right represented "the first new philosophical competitor in the West" to the liberal democratic system since the fall of the Soviet Union. Lyons stated that the alt-right "helped revitalize White nationalist and male supremacist politics in the United States", while according to Niewert, the alt-right gave white nationalism "a fresh new life, rewired for the twenty-first century". Kelly noted that while it was "important not to overstate" the size of the alt-right, its success lay primarily in its dissemination of far-right ideas and in making anti-leftist rhetoric more acceptable in mainstream discourse. A December 2016 Pew Research Center survey found 54% of U.S. adults had heard "nothing at all" about the alt-right, 28% had heard "a little", and 17% "a lot". A poll by ABC News and The Washington Post found that 10% of respondents supported the alt-right, to 50% who opposed it. An Ipsos and Reuters poll found 6% of respondents supported the movement. Such polls indicate that while millions of Americans are supportive of the alt-right's message, they remain a clear minority. Trump's election precipitated the publication of various books on the alt-right. In 2018, the documentary film Alt-Right: Age of Rage was released. Directed by Adam Bhala Lough, it included interviews with Spencer and Taylor as well as with anti-fascist activists devoted to combatting the alt-right. The alt-right presented "a unique set of challenges" to journalists, progressives, and conservatives. Its opponents failed to agree on how to respond to it, with there being much discussion in U.S. public discourse on how to avoid its normalization. Some opponents emphasized "calling out" tactics, labeling the alt-right with terms like "racist", "sexist", "homophobic", and "white supremacist" in the belief that doing so would scare people away from it. Many commentators urged journalists not to refer to the alt-right by its chosen name, but rather with terms like "neo-Nazi"; in 2017, the Associated Press for instance advised journalists to avoid the term. The activist group Stop Normalizing developed the "Stop Normalizing Alt Right" Chrome extension, which changes the term "alt-right" on webpages to "white supremacy". Some on the political right, including Yiannopoulos, argued that the alt-right's appeal would be diffused if society accepted many of its less extreme demands, including curbing political correctness and ending mass immigration. Commentators like the conservative David Frum suggested that if issues like immigration policy were discussed more openly in public discourse, then the alt-right would no longer be able to monopolize them. Commentators have also highlighted the theoretical commonalities between the white identity politics of the alt-right and the forms of identity politics widely embraced on the American Left in the 2010s, with Yiannopoulos commenting that if the American Left wanted to continue using identity politics as the basis of much of its mobilization, it would have to accept white identity politics as a permanent fixture of the political landscape. Some opponents sought to undermine the alt-right's stereotype of leftists as being devoid of humor and joy, by using its own tactics of humor and irony against it; for instance, by labelling angry alt-rightists as "snowflakes" who were being "triggered". Anti-fascists also adopted the alt-right's use of pranks. On several occasions, they publicized meet-ups to destroy Confederate monuments or gravestones. Alt-rightists mobilized to stop them, only to find that no such anti-fascist event was happening at all. Various opponents employed doxing, publicly revealing the identities and addresses of alt-rightists, many of whom had previously acted anonymously. This discourages individuals from involving themselves in alt-right activities, as they fear that being outed as alt-rightists might result in job loss, social ostracization, or violence. From 2016 onward, some anti-fascists also resorted to physical confrontation and violence against the movement. On Trump's inauguration day, for example, a masked anti-fascist punched Spencer in the face when he was talking to reporters; the footage was widely shared online. Hawley noted that this tactic could be counter-productive to the alt-right's opponents, as it reinforces the narrative that alt-rightists peacefully engaging in their constitutionally protected right to free speech were being victimized. Other commentators called for more vigorous policing of the web by governments and companies to deal with the alt-right. If denied access to mainstream social media outlets, the alt-right would be restricted to far-right websites like Stormfront, and thus, isolated from those not already committed to its cause. Many alt-rightists concur that denying it access to social media would devastate its ability to proselytize. However, it has also been suggested that such censorship could backfire and aid alt-right recruitment, as it would play into the alt-right narrative that the establishment was marginalizing those campaigning for white interests. Suppressing the alt-right in this manner would also set a precedent which could be repeated for other groups in future, including leftist ones. Phillips and Yi argued that such leftist attempts to prevent alt-right speech reflected a growing "authoritarian shift" within the American Left, among whom "limiting or preventing the public speech" of white males was increasingly seen as an acceptable method for equalizing "power relations" between racial and gender groups. In the 1990s, a loose group of left-wing online activists based on Usenet groups referred to themselves as "alternative left" or "alt-left" to distinguish their ideas from those of more mainstream leftist thought. Ideas promoted by "alt-left" activists at the time included universal basic income and anti-work sentiment. The popularisation of the term "alt-right" in the 2010s saw the increasing use of "alt-left" to describe far-left groups; among the press sources that did so were Fox News in December 2016, and Vanity Fair in March 2017. After the Unite the Right Rally later that year, Trump commented that some counter-protesters were part of the "very, very violent ... alt-left". Commentator Brian Dean believed that Trump was essentially conflating the term "alt-left" with "anti-fascist". Responding to Trump's use of the term, various commentators criticised the use of "alt-left", claiming that it was neither created nor adopted by leftists but had been designed by right-wingers and/or centrist liberals to smear left-wing protesters by suggesting a false equivalence between the alt-right and their opponents.[note 4] The historian Timothy D. Snyder stated that "'alt-right' is a term ... meant to provide a fresh label that would sound more attractive than 'Nazi,' 'neo-Nazi,' 'white supremacist,' or 'white nationalist.' With 'alt-left' it's a different story. There is no group that labels itself that way". The term "alt-left" has also been used to describe anti-liberal leftists who use conspiratorial framing. Alt-right memes, slang, and imagery have been adopted by some people outside the Western world in order to promote different extremist ideologies from white nationalism. Examples include the "akh-right", which is Islamist, promoting similar policies to traditional Islamist groups like the Taliban but with a different aesthetic. Akh-right and alt-right supporters have bonded online over shared support for antisemitism, misogyny, homophobia, and the Taliban itself. Andrew Tate, a former kickboxer and social media influencer who converted to Islam, is popular with this subculture as well. "Trads", an Indian alt-right subculture, promote Hindu nationalism, Brahmanical supremacy and Islamophobia. They use a saffron-recolored version of Pepe the Frog, in order to avoid the original green color's association with Islam. Trads believe mainstream Hindu rightists such as Narendra Modi are insufficiently committed to true Hinduism. See also Notes References |
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Contents Incel An incel (/ˈɪnsɛl/ ⓘ IN-sel; a portmanteau of "involuntary celibate") is a member of an online subculture of mostly male and heterosexual people who define themselves as unable to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one. They often blame, objectify, and denigrate women and girls as a result. The term inspired a subculture that rose to prominence during the 2010s, after being influenced by and associated with misogynist terrorists such as Elliot Rodger and Alek Minassian. The incel subculture's online discourse has been characterized by loneliness, social isolation, resentment, hostile sexism, anti-feminism, sexual objectification and dehumanization of women, misogyny, misanthropy, self-pity and self-loathing, racism, a sense of entitlement to sex, nihilism, rape culture, and the endorsement of sexual and non-sexual violence against women and the sexually active. Incels tend to blame women and feminism for their inability to find a partner; their romantic failures are often attributed to biological determinism, where women's preference for mating with high-status males (nicknamed "Chads") is seen as innate and unchangeable. Incel communities have been criticized by scholars, government officials, and others for their misogyny, endorsement and encouragement of violence, and extremism. Over time the subculture has become associated with extremism and terrorism, and since 2014 there have been multiple mass killings, mostly in North America, perpetrated by self-identified incels, as well as other instances of violence or attempted violence. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describes incels as "part of the online male supremacist ecosystem" that is included in their list of hate groups. The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) states that "the incel community shares a misogynistic ideology of women as being genetically inferior to men, driven by their sexual desire to reproduce with genetically superior males, thereby excluding unattractive men such as themselves" which "exhibits all of the hallmarks of an extremist ideology"; GIFCT states that incel beliefs combine a wish for a mythical past where all men were entitled to sex from subordinated women, a sense of predestined personal failure, and nihilism, making it a dangerous ideology. Estimates of the overall size of the subculture vary greatly, ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands of individuals. History and organization The first website to use the term "incel" was Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project, a blog and mailing list founded in 1997[a] by a female university student living in Toronto known as Alana, in order to write about and discuss her own experiences of celibacy with like-minded people. The blog was intended as a supportive and inclusive site for people who had difficulty forming romantic relationships, and was used by people of all genders and sexual orientations to share their thoughts and experiences in order to overcome social barriers such as shyness. Alana originally used the abbreviation "invcel" for "involuntarily celibate", later shortening it to "incel". Her website was intended for "anybody of any gender who was lonely, had never had sex or who hadn't had a relationship in a long time". She later said, "I was trying to create a movement that was open to anybody and everybody." During her college years and afterward, Alana realized she was bisexual and became more comfortable with her identity. As her own dating life improved, Alana stopped maintaining the website, passing the site's contents on to someone else she did not know around the year 2000. In 2018, Alana said of her project: "It definitely wasn't a bunch of guys blaming women for their problems. That's a pretty sad version of this phenomenon that's happening today. Things have changed in the last 20 years". After learning that the perpetrator of the 2014 Isla Vista killings was being glorified by parts of the incel subculture, Alana wrote: "Like a scientist who invented something that ended up being a weapon of war, I can't uninvent this word, nor restrict it to the nicer people who need it". She expressed regret at the change from her original intent of creating an "inclusive community" for people of all genders who were sexually deprived due to social awkwardness, marginalization, or mental illness. In 2003, the message board love-shy.com was founded as a place for people who felt perpetually rejected or were extremely shy with potential partners to discuss their situations. It was less strictly moderated than its counterpart, IncelSupport, which was also founded in the 2000s. While IncelSupport welcomed men and women and banned misogynistic posts, love-shy.com's userbase was overwhelmingly male. Over the next decade, the membership of love-shy.com and online fringe right-wing communities like 4chan increasingly overlapped. In the 2000s, incel communities became more extremist as they adopted behaviors common on forums such as 4chan and Reddit, where extremist posts were encouraged as a way to achieve visibility. According to Bruce Hoffman and colleagues writing in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, as "edgy" and extremist statements became more prevalent in incel communities, so too did extremist trolling and "shitposting". The r/incels subreddit later became a particularly active incel community. It was known as a place where men blamed women for their inceldom, sometimes advocated for rape or other forms of violence, and were misogynistic and often racist. Reddit banned the r/incels subreddit in 2017 following a new policy that prohibited "content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or a group of people", adopted in October 2017. At the time of the ban, the community had around 40,000 members. The incel community continued to inhabit Reddit in other subreddits, such as on the subreddit r/braincels. Although the tone of the subreddit was similar to r/incels, moderators of the r/braincels forum said that they did not endorse, support, or glorify violence or violent people, a distinction they made from the subject matter of its predecessor that resulted in its being banned from Reddit. On September 30, 2019, the r/braincels subreddit was banned after Reddit again broadened its banning policy. Incel communities began to migrate away from shared platforms and instead use their own closed forums dedicated specifically to the subject. In the 2010s, the subculture came to wider public notice with the banning of r/incels, and when a series of mass murders were committed by men who either identified as members of the subculture or shared similar ideologies. Increased interest in incel communities has been attributed to feelings of "aggrieved entitlement" among some men who feel they are being denied rights they deserve and blame women for their lack of sex. Since around 2019, some self-identified incels have attempted to redefine their views to appear more mainstream, by writing blog posts and articles on subject-specific wikis and forums. These reject the more open expressions of misogyny within other segments of the subculture, highlighting the heterogeneity of incel communities, and reframing incels not as an online subculture but as those experiencing a life circumstance that applies even to individuals who are not members of the subculture. In 2021, M. Kelly wrote for the Political Research Associates think tank that these attempts to redefine themselves contradicted the communities' self-identifications and moderation strategies, where members regularly challenge other users' "legitimacy" as incels, but have accepted as members individuals with sexual experience who nonetheless shared similar political ideologies. In 2017, the largest incel forum was founded by a previous moderator of the r/incels subreddit. The forum had almost 15,000 members as of October 2022[update]. It is composed of public and registered message boards for self-described incels to discuss their personal experiences. Moderators ban women and LGBTQ individuals from joining, stating that the forum is oriented towards straight men. In 2020, Talia Lavin in her book Culture Warlords, described the site's culture as one of "one-upmanship", "barroom boast-off" and shock content. In 2023, Rolling Stone described a vindictive site culture, giving an example of an ex-moderator who entered a romantic relationship and was subsequently rejected by site members as a "fake incel". In 2019, Vox stated that the site has a culture of praising mass killers, which is treated lightly by the site's admins. The site has used several top-level domains since its creation, after being suspended by one domain registry due to violence and hate speech and denied renewal by another. The site owners also operate a wiki, which has been described by researchers publishing in New Media & Society as cherry picking academic papers to promote misogynistic points. In September 2022, the UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) published a report about the largest dedicated incel forum, based on monthly visits, and a network of other sites run by the same two pseudonymous individuals. The Washington Post, New York Times, and the CCDH identified them as Uruguay-based Diego Joaquín Galante and United States–based Lamarcus Small. In December 2021, the New York Times reported that it had identified 45 people, individually, who died in connection to a website called Sanctioned Suicide, and estimated that the true number was likely much higher. The Times reporters discovered that Galante and Small created and operated the suicide website, in addition to their several incel forums. The CCDH reported that Galante and Small also maintained forums for online communities dedicated to body image and unemployment. Ideology Incel rhetoric invokes an idealized patriarchal society in which couples adhered to traditional gender roles, married early, and were strictly monogamous. During this mythologized "golden age", incels imagine that all men had nearly unencumbered access to women as romantic partners, thereby reducing the competition for sex. Incels often disagree about precisely when this golden age occurred, but they concur that it was gradually destroyed by feminism, the sexual revolution, women's liberation, and technological progress. As a result, incels tend to blame both women and the feminist movement for their inability to find a partner. Incel discourse is characterized by resentment and hatred, self-pity, hostile sexism, anti-feminism, racism, sexual objectification and dehumanization of women, misogyny, misanthropy, and nihilism. Discussions often revolve around the belief that men are entitled to sex from women. In the incel worldview, the only solution to male sexlessness is a rigidly patriarchal social structure encompassing enforced monogamy and the elimination of women's rights, thereby increasing women's dependency on men. Some incels also advocate for sexual slavery, legalized rape, punishment for female promiscuity, redistribution of women, and violence against feminists. Other common topics include idleness, loneliness, unhappiness, suicide, sexual surrogates, and prostitution, as well as attributes they believe increase one's desirability as a partner such as looks, income or personality. The incel community has a shared victimhood identity in which individuals fatalistically celebrate their failures and discourage each other from seeking romantic success. Some studies found that loneliness and social isolation are key aspects of inceldom. The metaphor of the "red pill" originates from the movie The Matrix in which the protagonist must choose whether to remain in a world of illusion (taking the blue pill), or to see the world as it really is (taking the red pill). In the wider manosphere, an online association of anti-feminist and male supremacist groups that includes incels along with men's rights activists (MRAs), men going their own way (MGTOW) and pick-up artists (PUAs), the "red pill" refers to the belief that male privilege is a feminist myth and that feminism has instead granted women power and privilege over men. To be "red-pilled" means to awaken to the realization that contemporary society has been engineered by feminists to reduce men's rights, and that men must fight against feminist brainwashing. Endorsing these beliefs means that one has "taken the red pill". The concept of the "black pill"[b] or "blackpill" developed on incel forums as a more nihilistic critique of the "red pill". Expanding upon the red pill belief that men are an oppressed group, black pill ideology uses pseudoscientific claims to argue that society has been set up to benefit women and "alpha males" on the basis of physical attractiveness. Both worldviews portray women as manipulative, superficial, and hypergamous. The concept of hypergamy was originally applied to the mating choices of animals, but incels use the term to argue that women seek high-status men in order to increase the social, economic and genetic potential of their offspring. Most incels subscribe to the "black pill", believing it is impossible for unattractive men to escape this social hierarchy. Incels commonly identify as either "redpilled" or "blackpilled", whereas non-incels who uphold mainstream views about romance and dating are seen as being "bluepilled". Black pill ideology is defined by biological determinism, in contrast to ideas of personal agency and self-improvement often associated with red pill beliefs. Selected ideas from evolutionary psychology are used to reinforce the idea of "sexual market value" in a mating system controlled by the most desirable women. Those who subscribe to red pill ideology believe they can use their knowledge of women's hypergamy to achieve success in the dating market and increase their own sexual market value, such as by improving their social skills or physical appearance ("looksmaxxing"). However, according to black pill ideology, improving one's looks is futile, since dating success is entirely determined by genetics, keeping most men from achieving sexual dominance. The black pill promotes fatalism and defeatism for men perceived to be unattractive. According to the black pill, as long as women are able to freely choose their sexual partners, genetically inferior men will only find a wife once she is past her sexual prime, who will only use the man for financial security. Researcher Angus Lindsay writes that the nihilistic worldview of the black pill appears to have influenced terroristic behavior by incels who have attempted violent retributions against those who are perceived to hold a higher social status. Hoffman et al. write that "'Taking the black pill' is critical to the incel identity, since it means recognizing 'inceldom' as a permanent condition". Aja Romano writes at Vox that black pill ideology "unites all incels". According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), there are some incels who believe in the red pill and others who believe in the black pill. Those who believe they can improve their chances with women are adherents to the "red pill", whereas only incels who believe they have little to no power to change their position in society or chances with women are blackpilled. The ADL writes that, among incels, the beliefs summarized as "red pill" center around the idea that feminism has unbalanced society to favor women and give them too much power. Redpilled incels believe they have the opportunity to fight back against this system which disadvantages them, which they do by trying to make themselves more attractive to women. Conversely, blackpilled incels are those who believe they can do nothing to change their situation. The ADL writes, "This is where the incel movement takes on characteristics of a death cult". Those who have taken the black pill are left with few options, says the ADL: giving up on life (referred to by incels as "LDAR", an abbreviation for "lie down and rot"), dying by suicide, or committing mass violence. On Reddit, notable figures within the incel community are described as having taken the black pill, such as the mass murderer Elliot Rodger. On the former incel subreddit r/braincels, the term "blackpill" was used for meme images that criticized women as egocentric, cruel, and shallow. The black pill has been described by Vox correspondent Zack Beauchamp as "a profoundly sexist ideology that ... amounts to a fundamental rejection of women's sexual emancipation, labeling women shallow, cruel creatures who will choose only the most attractive men if given the choice". Many self-identified incels support their beliefs through citations to scientific studies in fields including psychology, sociology, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, and economics. Collections of research deemed to support their beliefs are sometimes named the "scientific blackpill". Some evolutionary psychology researchers[who?] have disputed incels' interpretations of studies from their field, such as the strategic pluralism (or "double-mating strategy") hypothesis. Researchers at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue have described incels' appeals to science as part of a strategy of "argument by exhaustion", where "large numbers of references of dubious quality are made to back up questionable assertions". Self-identified incels regularly endorse the ideas of women's genetic inferiority, "female hypergamy", the "80/20 rule" (an application of the Pareto principle, in which incels assert that 80% of women desire the top 20% of most desirable men), and the "just be white" (JBW) theory, which posits that Caucasians face the fewest obstacles to relationships and sex. Self-identified incels also believe that people seeking a romantic or sexual partner participate in a cruel, mercenary, and Darwinian sexual selection, wherein incels are genetically unfit and where women hold an advantage for reasons ranging from feminism to the use of cosmetics.[better source needed] Incels may attribute their lack of sexual success to factors such as shyness, sex-segregated work environments, negative body image, penis size, or their physical appearance, and commonly believe that the only thing more important than looks in improving a man's eligibility as a prospective partner is wealth. Some justify their beliefs based on the works of fringe social psychologist Brian Gilmartin and clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson. Incel communities became more extremist and focused on violence from the late 2010s. This has been attributed to factors including influences from overlapping online hate groups and the rise of the alt-right and white supremacist groups. The misogynistic and violent rhetoric of some members of these communities has led to numerous bans from websites and web hosts. Incel communities continue to exist on more lenient platforms including 4chan, 8chan, and Gab, as well as on web forums created specifically for the topic. More extremist self-identified incels have increasingly migrated to obscure locations including gaming chat services (such as Discord) and the dark web to avoid site shutdowns and the self-censorship that has developed among some incel communities as an effort to avoid drawing scrutiny from law enforcement or website service providers. Beginning in 2018 and into the 2020s, the incel ideology has been described by North American governments and researchers as a terrorism threat, and law enforcement have issued warnings about the subculture. In May 2019, an American man was sentenced to up to five years in prison for making terrorist threats, posting on social media, "I'm planning on shooting up a public place ... killing as many girls as I see". In September 2019, the U.S. Army warned soldiers about the possibility of violence at movie theaters showing the Joker film, after "disturbing and very specific chatter" was found in conversations among self-identified incels on the dark web. A January 2020 report by the Texas Department of Public Safety warned that the incel movement was an "emerging domestic terrorism threat" that "could soon match, or potentially eclipse, the level of lethalness demonstrated by other domestic terrorism types". A 2020 paper published by Bruce Hoffman and colleagues in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism concluded that "the violent manifestations of the ideology pose a new terrorism threat, which should not be dismissed or ignored by domestic law enforcement agencies". John Horgan, a psychology professor at Georgia State University who in 2019 received a $250,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to study the incel subculture, explained why the incel ideology equates to terrorism: "the fact that incels are aspiring to change things up in a bigger, broader ideological sense, that's, for me, what make it a classic example of terrorism. That's not saying all incels are terrorists. But violent incel activity is, unquestionably, terrorism in my view". In February 2020, an attack in Toronto that was allegedly motivated by incel ideologies became the first such act of violence to be prosecuted as terrorism, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police stated that they consider the incel subculture to be an "Ideologically Motivated Violent Extremist (IMVE)" movement. In 2021, Jacob Ware wrote in Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses that analysis of incels has been focused within the United States and Canada due to the concentration of incel-motivated attacks in those countries. In March 2022, the United States Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center, published a case study titled "Hot Yoga Tallahassee: A Case Study of Misogynistic Extremism", to examine the 2018 Tallahassee shooting at a hot yoga studio and draw attention to "the specific threat posed by misogynist extremism." Some discussions in incel communities endorse violence against sexually active women and more sexually successful men, harassment of women, and suicide. According to the Anti-Defamation League, they form the most violent community within the manosphere. In some incel communities, it is common for posts to glorify violence by self-identified incels such as Elliot Rodger (perpetrator of the 2014 Isla Vista killings) and Alek Minassian (perpetrator of the 2018 Toronto van attack), as well as by those they believe shared their ideology such as Marc Lépine (perpetrator of the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre), Seung-Hui Cho (perpetrator of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting), and George Sodini (perpetrator of the 2009 Collier Township shooting). Rodger is the most frequently referenced, often being referred to as their "saint" with memes in which his face has been superimposed onto paintings of Christian icons. Some incels consider him to be the true progenitor of today's online incel communities. In 2020, the BBC described Rodger as "the founding father of the incel ideology". Some within these communities view violence as the only solution to what they see as societal oppression and abuse against them and speak frequently of incel "uprisings" and "revolts". Others take the more nihilistic view that nothing will change society, even violent acts, and focus their efforts on constructing a scientific justification for this nihilism. Some support the idea of violence as revenge on society, without the hope it will lead to societal change. Other researchers[who?] have questioned the degree of violence found in incel communities, with some suggesting that "extreme inceldom looks more like suicidality than violence toward others". Some violent posts may be motivated by status-seeking behavior by individuals on forums, rather than a desire to promote violence.: 735 A 2021 study found that the overwhelming majority of self-identified incels themselves do not think that incel groups promote violence.: 735 A 2022 study found that most self-identified incels surveyed (79%) rejected violence. A subgroup of self-identified incels who frequent websites founded by Nathan Larson, who was a perennial political candidate and active participant in incel communities, work deliberately to convince other self-identified incels that they are justified in raping women if they are rejected sexually. Some self-identified incels describe women's sexual rejection of them as "reverse rape", a phenomenon they consider to be equally harmful as rape. A September 2022 report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, about the largest dedicated incel forum, found that users posted about rape once every 29 minutes during their study period, and used the word "kill" 1,181 times in one month. During the study period, 89% of forum users expressed that they support rape in general. According to the report, some posters on the forum try to normalize the idea of child rape, and more than half the total forum during their study period supported pedophilia. The report also exposed that the incel forum site operators had changed a forum rule in March 2022, to allow for the sexualization of pubescent minors, narrowing an existing rule to outlaw only the sexualization of "pre-pubescent" minors. Racism is generally considered[by whom?] to be common on incel forums, though some researchers[who?] have questioned its prevalence. In 2019, Jaki et al. estimated that 3 percent of comments on incel forums contained words from a list of racist words identified by the researchers. Some researchers[who?] have questioned linguistic analysis of incel forums as the primary methodology for studying the subculture, recommending that future researchers employ qualitative methods such as one-on-one interviews to obtain a more nuanced view and to avoid results being skewed by the prevalence of shitposting on incel forums.: 736 Incels believe that being white makes one more attractive to potential mates, paralleling ideas of race science promoted by the far right. This often encourages racist attacks on Black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) members of incel forums. Such "racepill" ideology portrays whiteness as the most desirable racial classification, often invoked using the phrase "Just be White" (JBW). Incels attempting to appear more white in order to attract a partner call this process "whitemaxxing". Antisemitic beliefs are regularly found on incel forums, with some posters going so far as to blame the rise of feminism on a plot masterminded by Jews to weaken the Western world. Incel communities are a part of the broader manosphere, a loose collection of misogynist and anti-feminist movements that also includes men's rights activists (MRAs), Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), pickup artists (PUAs), and fathers' rights groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the incel subculture as "part of the online male supremacist ecosystem", which they began including in their list of hate groups in 2018. The New York Times describes involuntary celibacy as an adaptation of male supremacy, saying that incels "believe that women should be treated as sexual objects with few rights". While the self-identified incels believe they are inferior to the rest of society, often referring to themselves as "subhuman", they also espouse supremacist views: either that they are superior to women, or superior to non-incels in general. A 2019 study published in Terrorism and Political Violence found that self-identified incels believe themselves to be the only ones who are "capable of pro-social values and intelligent enough ('high IQ') to see the truth about the social world". The study determined that they followed a pattern that is typical of extremist groups, ascribing highly negative values to out-groups and positive values to in-groups, with the unusual caveat that despite seeing themselves as psychologically superior, they also view themselves negatively in terms of physical appearance. Incel communities sometimes overlap with communities such as Men Going Their Own Way, men's rights activism, people who believe they are experiencing "true forced loneliness" (TFL), and pickup artistry, although at least one incel website has expressed hatred for pickup artistry and accused pickup artists and dating coaches of financially exploiting incels. In 2019, media scholar Debbie Ging wrote that incels' discourse around "victimhood and aggrieved entitlement" began on 4chan and has spread into more mainstream groups such as men's rights activists and Men Going Their Own Way. Incel communities have also been observed to overlap with far-right groups. In 2019, the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right noted that the subculture is "part of a growing trend of radical-right movements" that are distressed by neoliberalism, especially women's empowerment and immigration. In 2020, Hoffman and colleagues, in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, stated that "a particularly worrisome trend is how seamlessly the militant incel community has been integrated into the alt-right tapestry, with common grievances and intermingling membership bringing the two extremisms closer together". In March 2021, Der Spiegel reported on the overlap between the incel community and the Feuerkrieg Division, a group modeled after the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi terrorist network. Lexicology The term "involuntary celibate" (shortened to "incel") refers to self-identifying members of an online subculture, based around the inability to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one, a state they describe as "inceldom" or "incelibacy". It is sometimes used interchangeably or alongside other terms, such as "love-shy" (describing those with social anxiety or excessive shyness preventing romantic success), "FA" (short for "forever alone"), "unfuckability", "omegas", "betas", "betafags", "the undersexed", or "the sexless". Alana, the coiner of the term "incel", initially considered using other terms such as "perpetually single" or "dating shy". Members of incel communities regularly use jargon and a distinct dialect. They often use dehumanizing and vulgar terms for women, such as "femoids" (a portmanteau of "female humanoids", sometimes shortened further to "foids") and "roasties" (a reference to the labia minora, which incels falsely believe changes shape and begins to resemble sliced roast beef after a woman becomes sexually active). They refer to attractive, sexually active women as "Stacys" and less attractive sexually active women as "Beckys". Attractive sexually active men are referred to as "Chads", and race-based variations on the term include "Tyrone" for black men and "Chang" for Asian men. People who are average looking but not incels are "normies". "Mogging" refers to the act of eclipsing another person in terms of physical appearance and thereby undermining them. Looksmaxxing is an attempt at enhancing one's appearance by methods including getting a haircut and dressing nicely, taking steroids and working out, undergoing plastic surgery, or engaging in alternative techniques such as mewing in hopes of improving facial aesthetics. The abbreviation "NEET" refers to people who do not have jobs and are not attending school: "not in education, employment, or training". Members of incel communities use many variations of the term "incel" to refer to subgroups within the community, such as "volcels" (voluntary celibate; someone who chooses to forego sexual intercourse), "fakecels" (those who claim to be incel, but in reality have recently had sex or been in a relationship), and "truecels" (true incels; men who have never had any sexual or romantic encounters). There are a number of race-based variations of the term "incel", which refer to people who believe their race is the reason behind their inability to find a partner, including "currycels" (people of South Asian ancestry) and "ricecels" (those of Chinese or Southeast Asian backgrounds), or collectively, "ethnicels". "Incel" has also come to be used as an insult against people who do not necessarily identify with the subculture, but who are perceived to be sexually inexperienced, undesirable, or unpopular. Demographics Self-identified incels are mostly male and heterosexual, and are often described as young and friendless introverts. Estimates of the size of incel communities during 2018–2020 varied. It ranged from the thousands, to tens of thousands, to hundreds of thousands. A statistical analysis of the largest incel forum shows that only a few hundred accounts made up the vast majority of forum posts during all of 2021 and most of 2022. Incel communities are largely made up of emerging adults who feel they have not met their sexual milestones "on time" according to gendered dating norms, resulting in a gender role conflict. In one study, approximately half of incels surveyed lived with their parents or grandparents, and 17.8% were not in employment, education, or training (NEET). Mainstream news media has often described incels as predominantly white. In 2018, sociologist Ross Haenfler was quoted in The Washington Post describing incels as primarily white. In 2018, Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center told NBC News that incels are "young, frustrated white males in their late teens into their early twenties who are having a hard time adjusting to adulthood". More recent studies have described incel communities as ethnically diverse. A 2024 study by Alyssa Maryn and colleagues states, "Recent research suggests that common perceptions that Incels are almost all White are inaccurate". In June 2019, Sylvia Jaki and colleagues published a linguistic analysis of the most popular incel forum, arguing that "contrary to what is often reported", there was no definitive evidence that the group is predominantly white. Hoffman and colleagues, publishing in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, reported that a March 2020 survey of the same forum determined that 55% of respondents self-identified as Caucasian. Incels who are not white often blame their race for their celibacy, using the acronym "JBW" (Just be white) to sardonically express the perceived advantages white men have in attracting women. A 2024 survey of self-identified incels by researchers from the University of Texas found that incels tended to be slightly center-left. They were significantly left in questions about homosexuality, corporate profits and welfare benefits. In a 2022 study, the University of Texas researchers ran a poll of self-reported incels, which found that 63.58% of those who responded identified as white, a smaller percentage than non-incels in the study. They found that 45% of incels who responded leaned to the left on the political spectrum. 17.5% were centrists, and 38.9% leaned to the right, showing no differences between the incel and the control group of the study. A 2025 survey found that incels tended to consider "feminists" and the "political left" at-large to be "enemies" of the incel community. Self-identified incels are mainly located in North America and Europe. There are also incel communities for people outside the Anglosphere, such as the Italian website Il Forum dei Brutti and the モテない男性 (motenai dansei ) board on the Japanese website 5channel. The English-language forums also receive much traffic from non-Anglophone countries. In 2020, research by the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) on the three largest incel forums found that they had a total of about 20,000 users, with only about 1,000 who post actively. The FOI found that between 4.6 and 7.3% of the visitors to the forums originated from Sweden, though they caution this may not be accurate given the use of personal VPNs. Brooks and colleagues found that areas with higher male-to-female sex ratios, fewer single women, higher income inequality, and lower gender pay gaps had higher rates of incel-related activity on Twitter. The first incel website, Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project, was inclusive of all genders. There have been more contemporary female-specific incel or femcel communities, such as r/TruFemcels and its successor ThePinkPill. As of February 2020[update], the most popular female incel forum was the r/TruFemcels subreddit, with over 22,000 members. It was banned in January 2021 for violating Reddit's rules against promoting hate. Another subreddit reportedly associated with self-identified female incels is r/Vindicta, which contains beauty advice. There are hashtags pertaining to the idea of female incels in use on TikTok, such as #femcel, #femcelcore and #femcelrights, which as of 2022, have over 250 million views. There are reported to be tens of thousands of women self-identifying as female incels on the internet. There is disagreement in online incel communities on whether women can be incels, with some claiming that male incels grossly outnumber female incels, others claiming that it is impossible for women to be incels at all, others claiming that only "severely deformed" women can be incels, and others arguing that only unattractive women belonging to the "bottom percentile in terms of appearance" can be incels. Members of male incel communities often reject the concept of a female incel, believing that all women can obtain sex from men, and believing that self-identified female incels are voluntarily celibate. Members of male incel communities may also troll female incels. The Anti-Defamation League reported in 2020 that the majority of incels do not believe that women can be incels. Journalists have written that outside of the female incels' own communities, few believe women can be incels. In 2021, M. Kelly wrote for Political Research Associates that members of incel communities point to the existence of female incels as an argument against criticisms of them as misogynist, but that most incel communities do not accept them and ban them from using their forums. Like members of male incel communities, female incel community members tend to believe that they are victims to their ugliness and think that only unattractive men will date them. They call more attractive looking women "Stacys", who they believe decrease their chance of having sexual contact with men, similar to discussion of "Chads" in male incel forums. They have adopted the idea of the "pink pill", which has been likened to "red pill" and "black pill" terminology, and which describes a belief that some women are considered undesirable and thus are unable to engage in sexual relationships due to society's focus on certain aspects of female attractiveness. Some women identifying as incels believe they could have casual sex, but fear it could only be with men who would abuse or disrespect them. Within online female incel communities, misogyny and an impossible feminine beauty ideal are also perceived as reasons for female celibacy. Other women may share similar concerns, but do not self-identify as female incels. Some female incel communities have been critical of body positivity and mainstream feminism, viewing them as unhelpful to female incels. In 2022 a former member of the r/TruFemcels community was quoted in The Atlantic saying, "I'd rather be able to talk about being ugly than just try to convince myself that I'm pretty". In 2022, an expert in psychology interviewed by El País characterized female incel communities as overly insular and skeptical of outsiders (who are deemed "normies"), in what she described as "cognitive inflexibility". She stated that, "US culture is less sociable. In Spain, [female incels] would have completely different characteristics... I don't think it would have the same number of followers, to begin with, because in Spain we are more encouraging of interpersonal relationships, and the development of social skills." Women who identify as incels share some similarities with their male counterparts, such as belief that physical appearance is the most important factor in finding a partner. In other ways they tend to be different. Members of female incel communities are more likely to self-blame rather than blaming men for their dating and sexual difficulties. This may be due to gender stereotypes, such as the belief that women do not have a "natural" need for sex. Journalist Isabelle Kohn wrote in 2020 that, rather than being angry at the men who reject them, they empathize with the men for not wanting to date them. Kohn notes the tendency for women identifying as incels to turn their rage inwards, rather than outwards like males. Female incel communities are generally overlooked within academic literature about incels. In 2020, journalist Arwa Mahdawi hypothesized that the fact that females who identify as incels do not go on violent rampages like some of their male counterparts is the most obvious reason why they have not received much attention in mainstream media. In February 2020, Kohn wrote that she could find "mountains" of academic papers on male incels, but none on female incels. She says the assumption that female incels do not exist adds to their pain. In 2024, an article in Archives of Sexual Behavior stated that "there has been almost no research on femcel communities or what the women who join them have to say." Mental health "Involuntary celibacy" is not a medical or psychological condition. Some people who identify as incel have physical disabilities or psychological disorders such as depression, anxiety, autism, and body dysmorphic disorder. A 2022 study found that self-identified incels reported higher rates of depression, anxiety, and formal mental diagnoses than the general population: 95% reported depression and 93% reported anxiety. 38% had clinical diagnoses. Some posters to incel forums attribute their inability to find a partner to physical or mental ailments, while some others attribute it to extreme introversion. Many of those identifying as incels engage in self-diagnosis of mental health issues. Members of incel communities often discourage posters who post about mental illness from seeing therapists or otherwise seeking treatment. Some members of incel communities with severe depression are also suicidal. Some members encourage suicidal members to kill themselves, sometimes recommending that they commit acts of mass violence before doing so. Mass murders and violence Mass murders and other violent attacks have been committed or are suspected to have been committed by men who have self-identified as involuntarily celibate, or whose statements align with incel ideologies. Other intended attacks by such individuals have been thwarted by police before being carried out. On August 4, 2009, George Sodini opened fire at an LA Fitness health club in Collier Township, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Three women were murdered and nine other people were injured before Sodini killed himself. He purportedly expressed sexual frustration and complained of constant rejections by women on a website registered in his name. Sodini and his actions have been embraced and glorified by some members of incel communities, who sometimes refer to incel violence as "going Sodini". On May 23, 2014, Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured fourteen others before killing himself in Isla Vista, California, near the campus of University of California, Santa Barbara. These killings drew media attention to the concept of involuntary celibacy, and particularly the misogyny and glorification of violence that are a mainstay of many incel communities. Rodger self-identified as an incel and left behind a 137-page manifesto and YouTube videos in which he detailed his involuntary celibacy and discussed how he wanted revenge for being rejected by women. He had been an active member of a community popular among incels called PUAHate (short for "pickup artist hate"), and referenced it several times in his manifesto. Although PUAHate shut down soon after the attack, Rodger became something of a martyr to some communities that remained, and to some of those that emerged later. It is common to see references to "E.R." in incel forums, and mass violence by incels is regularly referred to as "going E.R.". Rodger has been referenced by the perpetrators or suspected perpetrators of several other mass killings, and is one of several attackers who are regularly praised by members of incel communities. On October 1, 2015, Chris Harper-Mercer killed nine people and injured eight others before killing himself in a shooting at the Umpqua Community College campus, in Roseburg, Oregon. He left a manifesto at the scene, outlining his interest in other mass murders including the Isla Vista killings, his anger at not having a girlfriend, and his animus towards the world. In his journal writings, he had related to Elliot Rodger and other mass shooters, describing them as "people who stand with the gods". Before the attack, when someone on an online message board had speculated Harper-Mercer was "saving himself for someone special", Harper-Mercer had replied: 'involuntarily so". Several hours before the shooting, someone suspected to be Harper-Mercer posted a threat to a Pacific Northwest college to /r9k/, a 4chan board with many incel posters. On July 31, 2016, Sheldon Bentley robbed and killed an unconscious man in an alleyway in Edmonton, Alberta. During his trial, Bentley said he killed the man by stomping on his abdomen because he was frustrated with stress from his job as a security guard and with being an incel for four years. On December 7, 2017, William Atchison killed two people before killing himself, in Aztec, New Mexico, in a shooting at Aztec High School, where he had previously been a student. He had used the pseudonym "Elliot Rodger" on several online forums and praised "the supreme gentleman" (a term Rodger had used to describe himself, which has since become a common reference among incel communities). Atchison had also posted far-right content online. On February 14, 2018, Nikolas Cruz killed seventeen people and injured seventeen others, in a shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Allegedly also motivated by other extremist views, Cruz had allegedly previously posted online that "Elliot Rodger will not be forgotten". After an April 23, 2018 vehicle-ramming attack in Toronto, Ontario, Alek Minassian was convicted of 10 counts of first-degree murder and 16 counts of attempted murder. Shortly before the attack, Minassian had allegedly posted on Facebook that "the Incel Rebellion has already begun" and applauded Rodger. The term "Incel Rebellion" is sometimes used interchangeably with the term "Beta Uprising", which refers to a violent response to incels' perceived sexual deprivation. Following the attack, a poster on a website created to supersede r/incels wrote about Minassian, "I hope this guy wrote a manifesto because he could be our next new saint". Following the attack, police claimed that Minassian had been radicalized by incel communities. A video interview was released in September 2019 showing Minassian being interrogated by police shortly after the attacks. In the video, Minassian is shown telling police that he was a virgin, and that he was motivated by a resentment of "Chads and Stacys", as well as women who gave "their love and affection to obnoxious brutes" rather than to him. The video also showed Minassian saying that he hoped the alleged attack would "inspire future masses to join me" in committing acts of violence as a part of the "Beta Uprising". The judge who found Minassian guilty on all counts wrote in her decision that Minassian had attempted to tie his attack to the incel community as a way of increasing his notoriety, and that "working out his exact motivation for this attack is ... close to impossible". She found that Minassian had "lie[d] to the police about much of the incel motivation he talked about and that the incel movement was not in fact a primary driving force behind the attack". On November 2, 2018, Scott Beierle killed two women and injured four women and a man before killing himself in a shooting at the Hot Yoga Tallahassee studio in Tallahassee, Florida. He had been a follower of incel ideologies for a long time, and had a history of arrests for grabbing women's buttocks. In 2014, he posted several YouTube videos of himself espousing extreme hatred for women and expressing anger over not having a girlfriend, mentioning Elliot Rodger in one video. In the months leading up to the shooting, he posted numerous misogynistic, racist, violent, and homophobic songs to SoundCloud. In January 2019, Christopher Cleary was arrested for posting on Facebook that he was "planning on shooting up a public place soon and being the next mass shooter" and "killing as many girls as I see" because he had never had a girlfriend and was a virgin. He has been described as an incel in the media. In May 2019, Cleary was sentenced to up to five years in prison for an attempted threat of terrorism. On June 17, 2019, Brian Isaack Clyde began what was intended to be a mass shooting at the Earle Cabell Federal Building and Courthouse in Dallas, Texas. He was shot and fatally wounded by officers from the Federal Protective Service before he injured anyone. Clyde had shared incel memes on social media, along with other posts referencing right-wing beliefs and conspiracy theories. Following the incident, the Joint Base Andrews military base briefed its personnel on certain online behaviors among "introverted, sexless individuals", with a spokesman describing them as "a very real threat to military members and civilians". Self-identified incels have praised attackers with unclear motives, who they believe to be incels. After the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, some of the incel community celebrated the shooter Stephen Paddock, who they felt was a hero who was targeting "normies". After the 2018 Toronto shooting, posters on an incel message board expressed excitement with the possibility that the perpetrator might be an incel, although no motive was identified. Coty Scott Taylor abducted 6-year-old Faye Marie Swetlik on February 10, 2020, in Cayce, South Carolina. Three days later, both Taylor and Swetlik were found dead. It was determined that Taylor had suffocated Swetlik and then killed himself by cutting his throat. Friends reported that Taylor was a self-described incel and that he had often said he "lived without hope". On February 24, 2020, a female spa worker was stabbed to death in an attack that also severely injured her female coworker at an erotic massage parlor in Toronto. On May 19, the Toronto Police Service declared the attack was being treated as a terrorist incident after evidence pointed to the stabbings being motivated by incel ideology, and police laid charges against a 17-year-old male alleged to have committed the stabbings. This was the first time violence thought to be motivated by incel ideologies was prosecuted as an act of terrorism, and is also believed to be the first act of violence not perpetrated by an Islamist extremist to be prosecuted as terrorism in Canada. On September 14, 2022, the perpetrator entered a guilty plea to murder and attempted murder. The attack was ruled a terrorist attack during sentencing proceedings. Armando Hernandez Jr. opened fire on May 20, 2020, at Westgate Entertainment District, a mixed-use development in Glendale, Arizona, before being arrested by police. A 19-year-old man was critically injured, while a 30-year-old woman and a 16-year-old girl suffered minor injuries. According to the Maricopa County prosecutor, Hernandez identified himself as an incel and claimed he wanted to target couples and shoot at least ten people. The prosecutor said, "Mr. Hernandez is a self-professed incel ... He was taking out his anger at society, the feeling that he has been bullied, the feeling that women didn't want him". The prosecutor also alleged that Hernandez sent a video of the attack to a woman he wished to impress. Between January and the end of July 2020[update], five self-identified incels were arrested in separate incidents in North America for killing or planning to kill women. Among them was Cole Carini, a man who was charged with making false statements to law enforcement in June 2020 after claiming serious injuries to his hands had been caused by a lawnmower accident. Police alleged that Carini was actually injured while trying to make a bomb, and that he had written a note threatening violence against women and referencing Elliot Rodger. In April 2021, Malik Sanchez, a 19-year-old self-described incel who praised Elliot Rodger, was arrested on federal charges after allegedly videotaping himself approaching women sitting outside a restaurant in Manhattan, New York and telling them he was going to detonate a bomb. The man had previously been arrested several times for harassing others, often while recording or livestreaming, and for multiple assaults with pepper spray. In July 2021, a 21-year-old self-identified incel from Ohio was charged with attempting a hate crime and illegally possessing a machine gun. The man was a frequent poster on a popular incel website, where he wrote posts venerating Elliot Rodger. He wrote a manifesto in which he expressed his desire to "slaughter" women, and in another document he allegedly wrote about his goals to kill 3,000 people in a mass casualty attack. On August 12, 2021, Jake Davison, a 22-year-old man who referenced "inceldom" in online videos and expressed similar views, perpetrated a mass shooting in Plymouth, England. He killed five people, including his mother, and injured two others before killing himself. On December 27, 2021, 47-year-old Lyndon McLeod committed the 2021 Denver and Lakewood shootings, murdering five people before being killed by a police officer. McLeod had self-published a trilogy of science fiction novels under the pen name Roman MccClay, in which the protagonist of those books, named after himself, was depicted as killing three of the people McLeod eventually targeted. On 21 March 2022, a stabbing took place at Malmö Latin School in Malmö, Sweden, during which 18-year-old Fabian Cederholm stabbed and killed two female teachers with an axe and a knife before disarming himself, calling emergency services and being arrested by first responders. Cederholm had previously praised Elliot Rodger online. On May 6, 2023, 33-year-old self-identified incel Mauricio Martinez Garcia went on a spree shooting in a mall in Allen, Texas. Garcia killed eight people and injured at least seven others before he was killed by a police officer. On October 4, 2024, 19-year-old Semih Çelik killed Ayşenur Halil and İkbal Uzuner (both women aged 19) during which he threw Uzuner's severed head off the Walls of Constantinople before committing suicide himself. Çelik was in contact with incel groups on Discord, where he received praise for his actions. Turkish police began monitoring incel groups in response. Following a decision by an Ankara court, Turkey blocked Discord in the aftermath of the murders. On April 26, 2025, 38-year-old Owen Lawrence, armed with a crossbow, attacked two 19 and 31-year-old women participating in the Otley Run, a popular Pub crawl in Leeds, West Yorkshire, with the 19-year-old having to undergo live saving injury. Lawrence then fired an airgun into his head, which would eventually cause him to pass away two days later. Prior to the attack, he had explicitly stated via Facebook that the motive for the attack was misogyny, and had referenced incel ideology and other mass murders (some of whom were incels) in the past. Criticism Incel communities have been criticized in the media and by researchers as violent, misogynist, and extremist. Keegan Hankes, a senior research analyst working for the Southern Poverty Law Center, has cautioned that exposure to violent content on incel forums "play[s] a very large role" in the radicalization of their members, and describes incel forums as having "more violent rhetoric than I'm used to seeing on even white supremacist sites". Journalist David Futrelle has described incel communities as "violently misogynistic", and is among critics who attribute worsening violent rhetoric on incel forums to the growth of the alt-right and white supremacy, and the overlap between incel communities and online hate groups. Psychologist and sex researcher James Cantor has described incels as "a group of people who usually lack sufficient social skills and ... find themselves very frustrated". He has said that in incel forums "when they're surrounded by other people with similar frustrations, they kind of lose track of what typical discourse is, and they drive themselves into more and more extreme beliefs". Senior research fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), Amarnath Amarasingam, has criticized some incel communities where calls for violence are commonplace, saying "under the right set of psychological and personal circumstances, these kinds of forums can be dangerous and push people into violence". In August 2018, another researcher at the ISD, Jacob Davey, compared the radicalization of men in incel forums to teenagers being urged to go to extreme measures on online forums that promote anorexia and other eating disorders, and to online campaigns convincing people to join ISIL. Speaking about their feelings of entitlement to sex, Davey said the attitude "can go as far as the justification of rape". While generally agreeing with critics' concerns about misogyny and other negative characteristics in the incel subculture, some commentators have been more sympathetic. In April 2018, economist Robin Hanson wrote a blog post likening access to sex with access to income, writing that he found it puzzling that similar concern had not been shown to incels as to low-income individuals. Hanson was criticized by some for discussing sex as if it was a commodity; others wrote more positively about his opinions. In May 2018, The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote a similarly controversial op-ed, titled "The Redistribution of Sex" in which he suggested sex robots and sex workers would inevitably be called upon to satisfy incels' sexual desires. Columnist Toby Young argues that sex robots could be a "workable solution"; others[who?] have criticized the column for objectifying women and for legitimizing the incel ideology. Journalist Zack Beauchamp has expressed concern about other types of harm inflicted by incels that may be lost in the attention paid specifically to mass violence; he points to forum posts in which users brag about yelling at, catfishing, and sexually assaulting women. University of Portsmouth lecturer Lisa Sugiura has described incel forums as a "networked misogyny", and urged the posts in such forums be taken seriously not only in the context of hate speech but also as a form of grooming that could radicalize "impressionable and vulnerable disillusioned young men". Some sociological research on incel communities has analyzed them as a hybrid masculinity, in which privileged men distance themselves from hegemonic masculinity while simultaneously reproducing it. Criticism has also been directed against platforms that host or have hosted incel content, including Reddit (which banned the r/incels community in 2017, and banned most of the remaining incel communities in September 2019, but is still home to some identifying as incels) and Twitter. Cloudflare, which provides services including DDoS protection, caching and obsfucation of the source host of the content, has also been criticized for protecting incel websites against downtime even when webhosts have terminated service. Reporting on incels by media outlets following the incel-related attacks during the 2010s has been criticized for its "breathless" coverage, for normalizing incel communities by describing them only as "sexually frustrated", and for directing readers to incel communities. Some reporting has also been criticized for giving attackers notoriety by reporting on them at length, or for victim blaming by implying that women who had rejected the attackers' romantic or sexual advances held some responsibility for provoking the attacks. Those who have written sympathetically about incels have faced criticism for legitimizing the incel ideology, such as from Samantha Cole in Vice who condemned media outlets who "cove[r] and amplif[y] toxic internet culture as if it's valid ideology". In a 2021 report published by Political Research Associates, M. Kelly wrote about recent attempts by various self-identified incels to "rebrand" their communities and stated that "incels' attempts to reframe their identity have also been helped along by researchers, journalists, and 'counter-violent extremism' experts, who, in their attempts to investigate and understand incels, have given them larger, more mainstream platforms. These new platforms have allowed self-identified incels to reframe the public narrative about them; minimize the threat their community poses; and have amplified—or even endorsed—their hate-laced grievances, centering their self-perceived victimhood at the hands of women who deny them sex". Kelly criticized a podcast titled The Incel Project for platforming incel ideologies without challenging or fact-checking their statements. She said the creator, Naama Kates, was "no longer just reporting on incels' misogyny, but justifying and sharing it with the world". Kelly criticized the International Center for Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE), who published several reports on incels co-authored by Kates and by the founder and lead moderator of a major incel forum, writing that "while previous ICSVE reports have drawn from primary data, including interviews and surveys with members of the community being studied, this seems to be the first time—at ICSVE or in academic research more broadly—that someone actively involved in a community that regularly expresses bigoted or violent ideology has co-authored the resulting study". A 2024 report commissioned by the UK Commission for Countering Extremism concluded that incel participation is driven primarily by mental-health difficulties and social isolation rather than ideological extremism, and recommended that public responses focus on support services instead of counter-terrorism approaches. Portrayals in fiction In his debut novel Whatever (1994), French writer Michel Houellebecq seems to portray early examples of incels. However, the term did not yet exist at the time; neither did the online communities. The unnamed, 30-year-old protagonist looks unattractive, lacks social skills and suffers from depression, which means that despite his excellent job as an IT professional, he is not popular with women. Things are much worse for his colleague, who is downright ugly and still a virgin at 28. The main character tries to seduce his friend into killing a young woman who has rejected him, which his friend refuses at the last moment. In this novel, the main protagonist philosophizes about the disastrous consequences of the sexual revolution. Because of sexual liberalism, the market mechanism has come to determine human relationships; as a consequence, beautiful people get everything, ugly people get nothing. Two episodes of the American crime drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit are based on incels. In season 16, the episode "Holden's Manifesto" (2014) is based on Elliot Rodger and the 2014 Isla Vista killings. In season 20, the episode "Revenge" (2018) features a group of incels who attack the targets of each other's obsession to exact revenge while creating alibis for one another, the plotline which in itself is inspired by a 1950s novel, Strangers on a Train. An episode of the American medical series Chicago Med also focused on an incel patient who is injured in a drive-by shooting targeting hospital staff. Fair Warning, a 2020 thriller novel by Michael Connelly, features a company that buys genetic test data on women genetically identified as vulnerable to sex addiction. The company sells their names and addresses to incels, one of whom is a serial killer. The 2023 science fiction film The Beast also features a character based on Elliot Rodger. The British miniseries Adolescence, released on Netflix in 2025, directly explores incel culture. Told across four episodes, the series follows Jamie Miller, a 13-year-old boy arrested for the murder of his classmate, Katie. Through police interrogations and psychological evaluations, it is revealed that Jamie had been influenced by online ideologies associated with the manosphere and incel communities. The series examines the impact of social media, toxic masculinity, and adolescent radicalization. See also Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Minecraft_fandom] | [TOKENS: 54] |
Category:Minecraft fandom Subcategories This category has the following 3 subcategories, out of 3 total. Pages in category "Minecraft fandom" The following 9 pages are in this category, out of 9 total. This list may not reflect recent changes. |
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Contents Christchurch mosque shootings On 15 March 2019, two consecutive terrorist mass shootings took place in Christchurch, New Zealand. They were committed during Friday prayer, first at the Al Noor Mosque in Riccarton, at 1:40 p.m. and almost immediately afterwards at the Linwood Islamic Centre at 1:52 p.m. Altogether, 51 people were killed and 89 others were injured, including 40 by gunfire. The perpetrator was an Australian man, Brenton Tarrant, then aged 28. Tarrant was arrested after his vehicle was rammed by a police car as he was driving to a third mosque in Ashburton. He live-streamed the first shooting on Facebook, marking the first successfully live-streamed far-right terror attack, and had published a manifesto online before the attack. On 26 March 2020, he pleaded guilty to 51 murders, 40 attempted murders, and engaging in a terrorist act, and in August was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole – the first such sentence in New Zealand. The attacks were mainly motivated by white nationalism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and white supremacist beliefs. Tarrant described himself as an ecofascist and professed belief in the far-right "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory in the context of a "white genocide", within his manifesto he cited Anders Behring Breivik, Dylann Roof and other right-wing terrorists as inspirations, praising Breivik above all. The attack was linked to an increase in white supremacy and alt-right extremism globally observed since about 2015. Politicians and world leaders condemned it, and the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, described it as "one of New Zealand's darkest days". The government established a royal commission into its security agencies in the wake of the shootings, which were the deadliest in modern New Zealand history and the worst ever committed by an Australian national. The commission submitted its report to the government on 26 November 2020, the details of which were made public on 7 December. The shooting has inspired multiple copycat attacks,[b] especially due to its live-streamed nature. In response to this incident, the United Nations designated March 15 as the International Day to Combat Islamophobia. Background The gunman first attacked the Al Noor Mosque, the first mosque in the South Island, opened in June 1985. It is located on Deans Avenue in the suburb of Riccarton.[citation needed] The Linwood Islamic Centre was attacked shortly after the Al Noor Mosque. It opened in early 2018. It is located on Linwood Avenue in the suburb of Linwood. Brenton Harrison Tarrant (born 27 October 1990), a white Australian man, was 28 years old at the time of the shootings. After his arrest, Tarrant told investigators that he frequented right-wing discussion boards on 4chan and 8chan and also found YouTube to be "a significant source of information and inspiration." He donated money to far-right groups in Europe in 2018. Tarrant arrived in New Zealand in August 2017 and lived in Andersons Bay in Dunedin until the shootings. He was a member of a South Otago gun club, where he practised shooting at its range. Preparation Tarrant started planning an attack about two years prior to the shootings, and chose his targets three months in advance. Some survivors at the Al Noor Mosque believed they had seen Tarrant there on several Fridays before the attack, pretending to pray and asking about the mosque's schedules. The Royal Commission report found no evidence of this, and police instead believe that Tarrant had viewed an online tour of Al Noor as part of his planning. On 8 January 2019, Tarrant used a drone operated from a nearby park to investigate the mosque's grounds. Additionally, he used the Internet to find detailed mosque plans, interior pictures, and prayer schedules to figure out when mosques would be at their busiest levels. On the same day, he had driven past the Linwood Islamic Centre. Police recovered six guns: two AR-15 style rifles (one manufactured by Windham Weaponry and the other by Ruger), two 12-gauge shotguns (a semi automatic Mossberg 930 and a pump-action Ranger 870), and two other rifles (a .357 Magnum Uberti lever-action rifle, and a .223-calibre Mossberg Predator bolt-action rifle). Tarrant was granted a firearms licence with an "A" endorsement in November 2017, and purchased weapons between December 2017 and March 2019, along with more than 7,000 rounds of ammunition. He used four 30-round magazines, five 40-round magazines, and one 60-round magazine in the shootings. Additionally, he illegally replaced the semi-automatic rifles' small magazines with the higher capacity magazines purchased online, against the conditions of Tarrant's gun licence. The guns and magazines used were covered in white writing naming historical events, people, and motifs related to historical conflicts, wars, and battles between Muslims and European Christians; as well as the names of recent Islamic terrorist attack victims and the names of far-right attackers. The markings white supremacist slogans such as the anti-Muslim phrase "Remove Kebab" and the number "14", a reference to Fourteen Words. His armoured vest had at least seven loaded .223/556 magazines in the front pockets. He also wore an airsoft helmet, which held the head-mounted GoPro he used for his live stream. Police also found four incendiary devices in Tarrant's car; they were defused by the New Zealand Defence Force. He said, on the livestream, that he had planned to set the mosque on fire. Tarrant wrote a 74-page manifesto titled The Great Replacement, a reference to the "Great Replacement" and "white genocide" conspiracy theories. Minutes before the attacks began, the manifesto was emailed to more than 30 recipients, including the prime minister's office and several media outlets, and links were shared on Twitter and 8chan. Seven minutes after Tarrant sent the email containing the manifesto to parliament, it was forwarded to the parliament security team, who instantly called the police communication centre at 1:40 p.m., around the same time the first 111 calls were made from the Al Noor Mosque. In the manifesto, several anti-immigrant sentiments are expressed, including hate speech against migrants, white supremacist rhetoric, and calls for all non-European immigrants in Europe whom he claimed to be "invading his land" to be removed. The manifesto displays neo-Nazi symbols though he denies being a Nazi, describing himself instead as an "ethno-nationalist", and an "eco-fascist". The manifesto was described by some media outlets as "shitposting"—a form of trolling designed to derail conversations and provoke strong reactions from people not in the know. Readers of the manifesto described it as containing deliberately provocative and absurd statements, such as sarcastically claiming to have been turned into a killer by playing violent video games. On 23 March 2019, the manifesto was deemed "objectionable" by the Chief Censor of New Zealand, making it unlawful to possess or distribute it in New Zealand. Exemptions to the ban were available for journalists, researchers, and academics. In August 2019, The New Zealand Herald reported that printed copies of the manifesto were being sold online outside New Zealand, something New Zealand law could not prevent. Events The shootings, which were the deadliest terror attack committed by an Australian, took place at two separate venues. At 1:32 p.m., Tarrant started his live-stream that would last for 17 minutes on Facebook Live, starting with the drive to the Al Noor mosque and ending as he drove away. Just before the shooting, he played several songs, including "Serbia Strong", a Serb nationalist and anti-Muslim song; and "The British Grenadiers", a traditional British military marching song. At 1:39 p.m., Tarrant parked his vehicle in the driveway next to the Al Noor Mosque. He then armed himself with the Mossberg 930 and Windham Weaponry AR-15 rifle before walking towards the mosque. At 1:40 p.m., as Tarrant approached the mosque, a worshipper greeted him with "Hello, brother!". Tarrant fired his shotgun nine times towards the front entrance, killing four worshippers. He then threw the shotgun to the ground and opened fire on people inside with the AR-15–style rifle, killing two other men down a hallway near the entrance and dozens more inside a prayer hall; a strobe light attached to the same AR-15 rifle disoriented victims. Another worshipper, Naeem Rashid, charged at Tarrant and knocked him down, dislodging a magazine from his vest in the process, Tarrant quickly got back up and proceeded to shoot Rashid several times, murdering him. Rashid was posthumously awarded the Nishan-e-Shujaat and the New Zealand Cross, the highest awards of bravery in Pakistan and New Zealand, respectively. Tarrant fired at worshippers in the prayer hall from close range. He then went outside, where he killed a man, discarded his Windham WW-15 and retrieved a Ruger AR-556 AR-15 from his car. He went to the mosque's southern gate and killed two people in the car park sheltering behind vehicles and wounded another. He reentered the mosque and shot already-wounded people, then again went outside, where he killed a woman lying injured from previous gunfire. Thereupon Tarrant drove over the deceased woman, leaving six minutes after he arrived at the mosque. He shot at fleeing worshippers and cars through the windscreen and closed window of his own car as he was driving towards the Linwood Islamic Centre. At 1:46 p.m., police arrived near the mosque just as Tarrant was leaving, but his car was hidden by a bus, and at the time, no description of the vehicle had been provided, or that he had left. He drove eastwards on Bealey Avenue at up to 130 km/h (81 mph), weaving between lanes against oncoming traffic and driving onto a grass median strip. At 1:51 p.m., just after the livestream had ended due to a connection interruption, he aimed a shotgun at the driver of a vehicle on Avonside Drive and attempted to fire it twice, but it failed to fire on both occasions. The GoPro device attached to Tarrant's helmet continued recording until he was apprehended by police eight minutes later. At 1:52 p.m., Tarrant arrived at the Linwood Islamic Centre, 5 kilometres (3 mi) east of the Al Noor Mosque, while about 100 people were inside. He parked his vehicle on the mosque's driveway, preventing other cars from entering or leaving. According to a witness, Tarrant was initially unable to find the mosque's main door, instead shooting people outside and through a window, killing four and alerting those inside. A worshipper named Abdul Aziz Wahabzada ran outside. As Tarrant was retrieving another gun from his car, Aziz threw a payment terminal at him. Tarrant fired back at Aziz, who picked up an empty shotgun that Tarrant had dropped. He took cover among nearby cars and attempted to draw Tarrant's attention by shouting, "I'm here!" Regardless, Tarrant entered the mosque, where he shot and killed three people. When Tarrant returned to his car, Aziz confronted him again. Tarrant removed a bayonet from his vest but then retreated into his car instead of attacking Aziz. Tarrant drove away at 1:55 p.m., with Aziz throwing the shotgun at his car. Aziz was awarded the New Zealand Cross, New Zealand's highest award for bravery. In May 2023, he represented recipients of the Cross at the coronation of Charles III and Camilla. After a long period of being left vacant, the building was demolished in November 2023. A silver 2005 Subaru Outback matching the description of Tarrant's vehicle was seen by a police unit, and a pursuit was initiated at 1:57 p.m. Two police officers rammed his car off the road with their vehicle, and Tarrant was arrested without resistance on Brougham Street in Sydenham at 1:59 p.m., 18 minutes after the first emergency call. Tarrant later admitted that when he was arrested, he was on his way to attack a mosque in Ashburton, 90 km (56 mi) southwest of Christchurch. He also told the police that there were "nine more shooters", and that there were "like-minded" people in Dunedin, Invercargill, and Ashburton, but when interviewed later, he confirmed that he had acted alone. Legal proceedings Tarrant appeared in the Christchurch District Court on 16 March, where he was charged with one count of murder. The judge ordered the courtroom closed to the public except for accredited media and allowed the accused to be filmed and photographed on the condition that Tarrant's face be pixelated. In court, Tarrant smiled at reporters and made an inverted OK gesture below his waist, said to be a "white power" sign. The case was transferred to the High Court, and Tarrant was remanded in custody as his lawyer did not seek bail. He was subsequently transferred to the country's only maximum-security unit at Auckland Prison. Tarrant lodged a formal complaint regarding his prison conditions, on the grounds that he had no access to newspapers, television, Internet, visitors, or phone calls. Corrections said Tarrant was being held in accordance with the law and Tarrant later dropped the complaint. On 4 April 2019, police announced they had increased the total number of charges to 89, 50 for murder and 39 for attempted murder, with other charges still under consideration. At the next hearing on 5 April 2019, Tarrant was ordered by the judge to undergo a psychiatric assessment of his mental fitness to stand trial. On 20 May, a new charge of engaging in a terrorist act was laid against Tarrant under the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002. One murder charge and one attempted murder charge were also added, bringing the total to 51 and 40, respectively. On 14 June 2019, Tarrant appeared at the Christchurch High Court via audio-visual link from Auckland Prison. Through his lawyer, he pleaded not guilty to one count of engaging in a terrorist act, 51 counts of murder, and 40 counts of attempted murder. Mental health assessments had indicated no issues regarding his fitness to plead or stand trial. The trial was originally set to begin on 4 May 2020, but it was later pushed back to 2 June 2020 to avoid coinciding with the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. During his time in prison, Tarrant was able to send seven letters, one of which was subsequently posted on the Internet message boards 4chan and 8chan by a recipient. Minister of Corrections Kelvin Davis and the Department of Corrections were criticised for allowing the distribution of these letters. Prime Minister Ardern subsequently announced that the Government would explore amending the Corrections Act 2004 to further restrict what mail can be received and sent by prisoners. On 26 March 2020, Tarrant appeared at the Christchurch High Court via audio-visual link from Auckland Prison. During the appearance, he pleaded guilty to all 92 charges. Due to the nationwide COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, the general public was barred from the hearing. Reporters and representatives for the Al Noor and Linwood mosques were present in the courtroom. According to media reports, Tarrant's lawyers had informed the courts that their client was considering changing his plea. On 25 March, Tarrant issued his lawyers with formal written instructions confirming that he wanted to change his pleas to guilty. In response, court authorities began making arrangements for the case to be called as soon as possible in the midst of the COVID-19 lockdown. The judge convicted Tarrant on all charges and remanded him in custody to await sentencing.[citation needed] On 10 July, the government announced that overseas-based victims of the shootings would receive border exemptions and financial help to fly to New Zealand for the sentencing. On 13 July, it was reported that Tarrant had dismissed his lawyers and would be representing himself during sentencing proceedings. Sentencing began on 24 August 2020 before Justice Cameron Mander at the Christchurch High Court, and it was televised. Tarrant did not oppose the sentence proposed and declined to address the court. The Crown prosecutors demonstrated to the court how Tarrant had meticulously planned the two shootings and more attacks, while numerous survivors and their relatives gave victim impact statements, which were covered by national and international media. Tarrant was then sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for each of the 51 murders, and life imprisonment for engaging in a terrorist act and 40 attempted murders. The sentence is New Zealand's first terrorism conviction. It was also the first time that life imprisonment without parole, the maximum sentence available in New Zealand, had been imposed.[note 1] Mander said Tarrant's crimes were "so wicked that even if you are detained until you die, it will not exhaust the requirements of punishment and denunciation." Following the sentencing, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters called for Tarrant to serve his sentence in Australia to avoid New Zealand having to pay the costs for his life imprisonment. The cost of housing Tarrant in prison was estimated at NZ$4,930 per day, compared to an average cost of $338 per sentenced prisoner per day. Peters's remarks were also motivated by Australia's policy of deporting New Zealand citizens who had committed crimes or breached character requirements. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said there was no legal basis for the proposal and that respecting the wishes of his victims and their relatives was paramount. Justice Minister Andrew Little said Parliament would need to pass a law to deport Tarrant to Australia. University of Otago law professor Andrew Geddis said it was "legally impossible" to deport Tarrant to Australia to serve his sentence. On 28 August, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton advised that, while no formal request had been made by the New Zealand Government to repatriate Tarrant to Australia and for him to serve his life sentence in an Australian correctional facility, the Australian Government was open to considering a request. Victims Fifty-one people died from the attacks, either at the scene or shortly afterwards: 44 at the Al Noor Mosque and seven at the Linwood Islamic Centre. The dead comprised 43 men, 4 women, and 4 boys. Their ages ranged from 3 to 77 years old. Thirty-five others were injured at the Al Noor Mosque and five at Linwood. Forty-nine others were injured by other causes.[clarification needed] Aftermath Police advised mosques to close temporarily, and sent officers to secure and patrol various sites in Christchurch. All Air New Zealand Link services departing from Christchurch Airport were cancelled as a precaution, due to the absence of security screening at the regional terminal. Security was increased at Parliament, and public tours of the buildings were cancelled. In Dunedin, the Police Armed Offenders Squad searched a house, later reported to have been rented by Tarrant, and cordoned off part of the surrounding street in Andersons Bay because Tarrant had indicated on social media that he had originally planned to target the Al Huda Mosque in that city. For the first time in New Zealand history, the terrorism threat level was raised to high. Prime Minister Ardern called the incident an "act of extreme and unprecedented violence" on "one of New Zealand's darkest days". She described it as a "well-planned" terrorist attack and said she would render the person accused of the attacks "nameless" while urging the public to speak the victims' names instead. Ardern directed that flags on public buildings be flown at half-mast. In May 2019, the NZ Transport Agency offered to replace any vehicle number plates with the prefix "GUN" on request for free. In mid-October 2019, Ardern awarded bravery awards to the two police officers who apprehended Tarrant, at the annual Police Association Conference in Wellington. Due to the legal proceedings against Tarrant at the time, the two officers had interim name suppression, but in December 2019, this was lifted. On 1 September 2020, Prime Minister Ardern designated Tarrant as a terrorist entity, thereby freezing his assets and making it a criminal offence for anyone to support him financially. For the three months following the shooting, almost 1,000 reports were published in major news outlets in New Zealand. Less than 10% of news reports published by major media outlets mentioned Tarrant's name. Susanna Every-Palmer, an academic psychiatrist, suggested that the media made a moral choice to deny Tarrant exposure and not sensationalise his views, deviating from how similar events internationally were covered in the media. The court required the media to pixelate Tarrant's face when covering the legal proceedings, thus, within New Zealand, he remained largely faceless and nameless. Instead, media coverage focused largely on the victims and their families. In contrast, the media response in Australia was different, focusing on the extreme violence of the attack, as well as the attacker and his manifesto. For example, The Australian published an audio excerpt containing cries for help, and The Herald Sun wrote dramatic descriptions of victims being shot and used poetic devices to create more vivid imagery. Coverage of the victims was largely focused on physical horrors such as bloodshed, injuries, and graves being dug. Within an hour of the attack, all schools in the city were placed in "lockdown". A ministry report launched after the attacks said schools' handling of the events were varied: some schoolchildren in lockdown still had their mobile phones, and some were able to view the footage of the first attack online, while some schools had children "commando crawl" to the bathroom under teacher supervision. Student climate strikers at the global School strike for the climate rally in Cathedral Square, near the sites of the attacks, were advised by police either to seek refuge in public buildings or go home. The citywide lockdown lasted nearly three hours. In response to security concerns, the University of Otago postponed its sesquicentennial street parade which had been scheduled for 16 March. The third test cricket match between New Zealand and Bangladesh, scheduled to commence at Hagley Oval in Hagley Park on 16 March, was likewise cancelled due to security concerns. The Bangladesh team were planning to attend Friday prayer at the Al Noor Mosque and were moments from entering the building when the incident began. The players then fled on foot to Hagley Oval. Two days later, Canterbury withdrew from their match against Wellington in the Plunket Shield cricket tournament. Likewise, the Super Rugby match between the Crusaders, based in Christchurch, and Highlanders, based in Dunedin, due to be played the next day, was cancelled as "a mark of respect for the events". After the attacks, there were renewed calls to rename the Crusaders team, since its name derives from the medieval Crusades against Muslims. Some pre-arranged music and entertainment events were cancelled in the shooting's wake. Mosques around the World became the focus of vigils, messages, and floral tributes. The mayor of Christchurch, Lianne Dalziel, encouraged people to lay flowers outside the city's Botanic Gardens. As a mark of sympathy and solidarity, school pupils and other groups performed haka and waiata to honour those killed in the attacks. Street gangs including the Mongrel Mob, Black Power, and the King Cobras sent members to mosques around the country to help protect them during prayer time. One week after the attacks, an open-air Friday prayer service was held in Hagley Park. Broadcast nationally on radio and television, it was attended by 20,000 people, including Ardern, who said, "New Zealand mourns with you. We are one." The imam of the Al Noor Mosque thanked New Zealanders for their support and added, "We are broken-hearted but we are not broken." A national remembrance service was held on 29 March, a fortnight after the attacks. Shortly after the attack, New Zealand Police launched Operation Whakahaumanu. The operation was designed to reassure New Zealanders after the attack and to also investigate possible threats who shared a similar ideology to the gunman. Police increased visibility in streets and visited many schools, businesses, and religious places as part of the operation. In Canterbury alone, there were almost 600 people of interest to police, where hundreds of properties were searched. On 14 July 2020, the Independent Police Conduct Authority deemed three of these searches to be unlawful. An online fundraiser on the fundraising website "Givealittle" started to support victims and their families had, as of August 2020,[ref] raised over NZ$10,903,966. Counting other fundraisers, a combined total of $8.4 million had been raised for the victims and their families (as of 20 March 2019).[update] Prime Minister Ardern reiterated that those injured or killed in the shootings and their immediate families are covered by the country's accident-compensation scheme, ACC, which offers compensation for lost income and a $10,000 funeral grant, among other benefits. In late June, it was reported that the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh had raised more than NZ$967,500 (US$650,000) through its New Zealand Islamophobia Attack Fund for the victims of the Christchurch mosque shootings. This amount included $60,000 raised by Tree of Life – Or L'Simcha Congregation. These funds were to be donated to the Christchurch Foundation, a registered charity which had been receiving money to support victims of the Christchurch shootings. This philanthropy was inspired by local Muslim support for the Pittsburgh Jewish community following the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in late October 2018. Related arrests and incidents Police arrested four people on 15 March in relation to the attacks, including a woman and a man, after finding a firearm in a vehicle in which they were travelling together.[clarification needed] The woman was released uncharged, but the man was held in custody and was charged with a firearms offence. Additionally, a 30-year-old man said he was arrested when he arrived at Papanui High School to pick up his 13-year-old brother-in-law. He was in camouflage clothing, which he said he habitually wore. He claimed to be seeking compensation for a wrongful arrest, but no formal complaint was filed. The actions were defended by police, who mentioned the threat level after the massacre and that they had to deal with reports possibly related to the attacks. He was later jailed for an unrelated incident. On 4 March 2020, a 19-year-old Christchurch man was arrested for allegedly making a terror threat against the Al Noor Mosque on an encrypted social media platform Telegram. Media reports subsequently identified the man as Sam Brittenden, a member of the white supremacist group Action Zealandia. On 4 March 2021, a 27-year-old man was charged with "threatening to kill" after making an online threat against both the Linwood Islamic Centre and the Al Noor Mosque on 4chan. The suspect was granted name suppression and remanded into custody until 19 March. On 18 March 2019, the Australian Federal Police conducted raids on the homes of Tarrant's sister and mother near Coffs Harbour and Maclean in New South Wales. Police said the raids were carried out to assist New Zealand Police with their investigations into the shootings, adding that Tarrant's sister and mother were assisting the investigation. On 19 March 2019, an Australian man who had posted on social media praising the shootings was indicted on one count of aggravated possession of a firearm without a licence and four counts of using or possessing a prohibited weapon. He was released on bail on the condition that he stay offline. The man pleaded guilty in Magistrates Court to four counts of possessing a prohibited weapon. A 24-year-old man from Oldham, Greater Manchester, United Kingdom, was arrested on 16 March for sending Facebook posts in support of the shootings.[needs update] On 20 March, an employee of Transguard, a company based in the United Arab Emirates, was fired by his company and deported for making comments supporting the shootings. Thomas Bolin, a 22-year-old living in New York, sent Facebook messages praising the shootings and discussing a desire to carry out a similar act in the United States with his cousin. Bolin was later convicted of lying to the FBI for claiming he did not possess any firearms. Nine days after the attack, a mosque in Escondido, California, was set on fire. Police found graffiti on the mosque's driveway that referenced the shootings, leading them to investigate the fire as a terrorist attack. According to Sri Lankan State Defence Minister Ruwan Wijewardene, an early inquiry indicated that the 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings on 21 April were retaliation for the Christchurch attack. Some analysts believe the attacks were planned before the Christchurch attack, and any linkage was questioned by New Zealand's government—with Prime Minister Ardern saying she was not aware of any intelligence linking the two. A mass shooting later took place at a synagogue in Poway, California on 27 April 2019, killing a person and injuring three others. The neo-Nazi perpetrator of the shooting, John T. Earnest, also claimed responsibility for the fire and praised the Christchurch shootings in a manifesto. He and Tarrant were said to have been radicalised on 8chan's /pol/ discussion board. He also unsuccessfully attempted to live stream his shooting on Facebook. On 3 August 2019, Patrick Crusius opened fire and killed 23 people and injured 22 others in a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, targeting Mexicans. In a manifesto posted to 8chan's /pol/ board, the suspect expressed support for and inspiration from the Christchurch shootings. Additionally, the alleged shooter described himself as an "eco-fascist". On 10 August 2019, Philip Manshaus opened fire at a mosque in Bærum, Norway, and unsuccessfully attempted to live stream it on Facebook. He referred to Tarrant as a saint online and posted an image depicting Tarrant, Crusius, and Earnest as "heroes". The attack resulted in one injury. Manshaus was sentenced to 21 years for the attack and for killing his teenage stepsister, who was found dead shortly after the attack. On 27 January 2021, the Singaporean Internal Security Department reported it had arrested a 16-year-old Indian Protestant youth under the Internal Security Act for plotting to attack the Assyafaah and Yusof Ishak Mosques on the anniversary of the shootings. The youth had produced a manifesto that described Tarrant as a "saint" and praised the shootings as the "justifiable killing of Muslims". Unable to obtain firearms and explosives due to Singapore's strict gun control laws, the youth had instead purchased a machete and vest. On 6 June 2021, Nathan Veltman drove a truck into a Pakistani Muslim family in Ontario, Canada, killing 4 and injuring another. After his arrest, he cited support for and inspiration from the Christchurch shootings. On 14 May 2022, white supremacist shooter Payton Gendron killed ten people and injured three others at a Tops Friendly Markets grocery store in Buffalo, New York, targeting African Americans. Eleven of the 13 victims shot were Black and two others were White. He livestreamed the attack on Twitch and published a manifesto stating that he was inspired by Tarrant and others including Crusius and Earnest respectively. In response, Acting Chief Censor Rupert Ablett-Hampson placed an interim ban on the circulation of Gendron's manifesto within New Zealand. In addition, the Department of Internal Affairs considered referring Gendron's livestream of the shooting to the Office of Film and Literature Classification. In Finland on 15 March 2024, the anniversary of the Christchurch mosque shooting, a Junior sergeant in the Finnish army Evita Kolmonen was arrested for allegedly planning a mass shooting that day at a university in Vaasa. She stated that the world needed "a mass culling" to put an end to "selfish individualism", "human degeneration", global warming and conspicuous consumption. The Finnish police described her as ecofascist and stated that she had read books by Friedrich Nietzsche, Pentti Linkola and Ted Kaczynski. She had additionally praised Pekka-Eric Auvinen in internet conversations and had visited the school where Auvinen perpetrated the mass shooting. During the court proceedings, a bomb threat was called against the Court of Appeal of Vaasa hearing her case. Kolmonen was convicted on 15 January 2025 of firearm offense and planning an aggravated crime against life and health and was sentenced to three years and two months in prison. On 4 March 2025, Western Australia Police arrested a 16-year-old boy in Eaton who allegedly made an online threat against the newly opened Sydney Islamic House mosque. The youth had published a comment under a post on the mosque's Instagram profile referencing the Christchurch mosque shootings, stating "about to christ church [sic] 2.0 this join[t]". The New South Wales Police's Liverpool City Police Area Command also commenced an investigation and confirmed there were no "ongoing threats to the community." Meta Platforms apologised after Instagram initially dismissed the complaint, attributing it to a technical error. The youth was charged with "creating a false impression about the existence of threats or danger." The teenager had also published posts with references to White supremacy and homophobia. He appeared in the Bunbury Children's Court where he accepted full responsibility and was referred to a diversionary programme for countering violent extremism. Reactions Queen Elizabeth II, New Zealand's head of state, said she was "deeply saddened" by the attacks. Other politicians and world leaders also condemned the attacks,[note 2] with some attributing them to rising Islamophobia. The prime minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, announced that the Pakistani emigrant who charged at Tarrant and died, would be posthumously honoured with a national award for his courage. The president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, showed footage taken by Tarrant to his supporters at campaign rallies for upcoming[update] local elections. The New Zealand and Australian governments, as well as Turkey's main opposition party, criticised his actions. U.S. president Donald Trump condemned the "horrible massacre". When asked after the attacks if he thought white nationalists were a growing threat around the world, Trump replied, "I don't really. I think it's a small group of people that have very, very serious problems. It's certainly a terrible thing." Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad expressed deep regret over the terrorist attack. He said he hoped the New Zealand government would bring the perpetrator to justice. Two New Zealand-based anti-immigration groups, the Dominion Movement and the New Zealand National Front, condemned the attacks, distanced themselves from the perpetrator, and shut their websites down. Some in the broader far-right culture celebrated the attacks and "sanctified" Tarrant as a central figure. Tarrant's manifesto was translated and distributed in more than a dozen different languages with a number of supporters on 8chan making photo and video edits of the shooting. Some extremists were inspired by Tarrant, committing violent incidents and deadly attacks of their own, such as those in Poway, El Paso, and Bærum. The United Kingdom's domestic intelligence service, MI5, launched an inquiry into Tarrant's possible links to the British far-right. The Ukrainian Sich Battalion has urged its members to buy a copy of Tarrant's manifesto, encouraging them to "get inspired" by it. Ahmed Bhamji, chair of the largest mosque in New Zealand, spoke at a rally on 23 March in front of one thousand people. He claimed that Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence agency, was behind the attack. The claim has been widely described as an unfounded, antisemitic conspiracy theory. The chairman of the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand said that Bhamji's statement did not represent other New Zealand Muslims, but Bhamji defended his statements. The attack was also condemned by the Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, Harun Khan, describing it as "the most deadly Islamophobic terrorist attack" observed recently. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called on Donald Trump, then U.S. president, to condemn the shootings. Speaking to reporters in Washington, D.C. Nihad Award, executive director of CAIR said: "You should condemn this, not only as a hate crime but as a white supremacist terrorist attack." Just before carrying out the attacks, Tarrant asked his audience to subscribe to YouTuber PewDiePie's channel in light of his then-ongoing rivalry with Indian channel T-Series. PewDiePie, real name Felix Kjellberg, has been accused of using far-right content in his videos. Kjellberg tweeted his condolences in reaction, saying he "felt absolutely sickened" to be mentioned by Tarrant. Kjellberg later called for the "subscribe to PewDiePie" movement to be discontinued, citing the attacks; "to have my name associated with something so unspeakably vile has affected me in more ways than I've let show." During the attacks, Tarrant played the song "Fire" by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. In a Facebook post, singer Arthur Brown expressed "horror and sadness" at the use of his song during the attacks, and cancelled a planned instore appearance at Waterloo Records shortly after the shootings out of respect for the victims. In China, internet users expressed outrage and anger at the shooter praising their country's government. Propaganda and incitement The first shooting, starting from the drive to the Al Noor Mosque and ending on the way to the Linwood Islamic Centre was live-streamed on Facebook Live using Tarrant's head-mounted GoPro camera. The link to the Facebook livestream was first posted on 8chan's /pol/ board, alongside links to the manifesto. The post included the following, Well lads, it's time to stop shitposting and time to make a real life effort post. I will carry out and [sic] attack against the invaders, and will even livestream the attack via facebook [sic]. Fewer than 200 people watched the 17-minute livestream live, and none of them made a complaint to Facebook or notified the police. The livestream's perspective mirrored that of a first-person shooter video game, as well as being the first successfully live-streamed far-right terror attack. Copies of the live-streamed video were reposted on many platforms and file-sharing websites, including Facebook, LiveLeak, and YouTube. Police, Muslim advocacy groups, and government agencies urged anyone who found the footage to take it down or report it. The New Zealand Office of Film and Literature Classification quickly classified the video as "objectionable", making it a criminal offence in the country to distribute, copy, or exhibit the video, with potential penalties of up to 14 years' imprisonment for an individual, or up to $100,000 in fines for a corporation. Stuart Bender of Curtin University in Perth noted that the use of live video as an integral part of the attacks "makes [them] a form of 'performance crime' where the act of video recording and/or streaming the violence by the perpetrator is a central component of the violence itself, rather than being incidental." At least eight people in New Zealand have been arrested for possessing or sharing the video or manifesto; most of their names have been suppressed either to prevent threats against them or in support of freedom of expression online. The first was an 18-year-old man who was arrested and charged with inciting racial disharmony under the Human Rights Act on the same day as the shooting. Early news media reports identified him as an accomplice to the shooting, but the police have denied this. On 20 March 2019, Philip Arps was indicted for sharing the video under the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993, he subsequently pleaded guilty to the charges. In June 2019, he was sentenced to 21 months' imprisonment and was released in January 2020, under the condition of him wearing a GPS electronic monitor. Arps had also expressed neo-Nazi views and sent letters advocating violence against New Zealand politicians. On 26 February 2020, another Christchurch man was jailed for nearly two years for doctoring footage of the shootings upon Arps' request, two days after the attacks. Conspiracy theorist Richard Sivell faced trial for possession of the video on 30 October 2024. His first appearance on this matter was at Taupō District Court in August 2024, when he refused to enter a plea. In between these hearings, a separate case saw Sivell convicted of threatening to kill then–Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in 2021-22. Several media organisations in Australia and tabloid news websites in the UK broadcast parts of the video, up to the point Tarrant entered the building, despite pleas from the New Zealand Police not to show it. Sky Television New Zealand temporarily stopped its syndication of Sky News Australia after that network showed the footage, and said it was working with Sky News Australia to prevent further displays of the video. At least three Internet service providers in New Zealand blocked access to 8chan and other sites related to the attacks; and they temporarily blocked other sites hosting the video such as 4chan, LiveLeak, and Mega until they comply with requests to take down copies of the video. The administrator of the online message board Kiwi Farms refused a New Zealand Police request for the data of users who made posts related to Tarrant and the attack. Various social media sites—including Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter—said they were working to remove the video from their platforms, and would also remove content posted in support of the attacks. According to Facebook, no complaints were made about the video until 12 minutes after the live-stream ended; the original video from Tarrant himself had been viewed fewer than 200 times before Facebook was notified of its content, and it had been viewed only 4,000 times before it was removed, which happened within minutes of notification. Facebook created a digital hash fingerprint to detect further uploads after the video had been propagated on other sites. The company said it had blocked 1.5 million uploads of the video. Reddit banned "subreddits" named "WatchPeopleDie" and "Gore" for glorifying violence. Microsoft proposed the establishment of industry-wide standards that would flag such content quickly, and a joint project to manage and control the spread of such information via social media. Despite the networks' attempts to self-police, New Zealand officials and other world leaders have asked them to take responsibility for extremist content posted on their services. Australia introduced legislation that would fine content providers and potentially imprison their executives if they do not remove violent imagery of these types of attacks. The French Council of the Muslim Faith filed a lawsuit against Facebook and YouTube, accusing the companies of "broadcasting a message with violent content abetting terrorism, or of a nature likely to seriously violate human dignity and liable to be seen by a minor". Facebook has contested the lawsuit, saying, "Acts of terror and hate speech have no place on Facebook, and our thoughts are with the families of the victims and the entire community affected by this tragedy. We have taken many steps to remove this video from our platform, we are cooperating with the authorities". On 15 May 2019, Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron co-hosted the Christchurch Call summit in Paris, which called for major technology companies to step up their efforts to combat violent extremism. The initiative had 53 state signatories and signatories representing eight large tech companies. The attack was used by both far-right terrorists and Islamic State to call for attacks on either side of a war between Islam and the Western world. The attack featured in Islamic State propaganda with Abu Hassan al-Muhajir calling for attacks on the “nations of the Cross and the apostate” in retaliation for the attack. In January 2021, Singaporean security services report the arrest of a youth who was planning a copycat attack on the anniversary of the 15 Match 2019 attack. He had watched videos of theַ shooting spree, read the Australian terrorist's manifesto, and also watched Islamic State propaganda. The arrested youth "came to the erroneous conclusion that ISIS represented Islam, and that Islam called on its followers to kill non-believers". Legacy Gun laws in New Zealand came under scrutiny in the aftermath, specifically the legality of military-style semi-automatic rifles. In 2018, it was reported that of the estimated 1.5 million firearms in New Zealand, 15,000 were registered military style semi-automatic weapons as well as at least 50,000 unregistered A-Category semi-automatics. As Philip Alpers of GunPolicy.org noted, "New Zealand is almost alone with the United States in not registering 96 percent of its firearms ... one can assume that the ease of obtaining these firearms may have been a factor in his decision to commit the crime in Christchurch." Cabinet considered creating a firearms register. On the day of the attack, Ardern announced that gun laws would change. On 21 March, Ardern announced a ban on semi-automatic weapons. As an interim measure, the government reclassified some semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, requiring police approval to buy them. The Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Act 2019 was introduced in the House of Representatives on 1 April 2019 and passed its final reading on 10 April, and became law shortly afterwards. All legally obtained semiautomatic and military-grade firearms and their relevant ammunition were able to be handed over to police in a buy-back scheme. The scheme was initiated in July 2019, and lasted six months. As at 21 December 2019, 33,619 hand-ins had been completed, 56,250 firearms had been collected, 2,717 firearms had been modified, and 194,245 parts had been collected.[needs update] Police Minister Stuart Nash hailed the buy-back scheme as a success. In contrast, a spokeswoman for the Council of Licensed Firearms Owners, said the buyback had been a failure, claiming that there were 170,000 prohibited guns in New Zealand, so "50,000 was not a number to boast about". On 24 May 2019, the cabinet announced it would take the form of a Royal Commission of Inquiry, which was stated soon after and chaired by justice Sir William Young of the Supreme Court. On 26 November 2020, the Royal Commission presented report to the government. and soon after made public. It made 44 recommendations, including the establishment of a new national intelligence agency specialising in counterterrorism strategies all of which the government agreed to implement. The inquiry was criticised by some Islamic community groups, such as the Islamic Women's Council, for not going far enough in its criticisms of government and police organisations. In August 2024, the government confirmed it would implement 36 of the 44 Royal Commission's recommendations. Following the recommendations of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the 2019 terrorist attack, the New Zealand Government set up a research centre, called He Whenua Taurikura, in Wellington to look into violent extremism. From 2022, the centre had been run through a trust and was known as the "Centre of Research Excellence for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism". Funding for the trust was withdrawn in stages in 2024, a step criticised by the trustees and by other interested parties. Prior to the final funding cut announcement in 2024, critics of the centre had disparaged its research, claiming it "lacked researchers experienced enough in the field." In October 2023, the Coroner's inquiry into the Christchurch mosque shootings began. It was a coronial inquiry into the mosque shootings. It followed criminal proceedings and the start of a Royal Commission of Inquiry. The coronial report identified 12 issues to be examined at the hearing. It covered many aspects of the shootings and the response given. In May 2019, a proposed movie entitled Hello Brother, based on the shootings, was dropped. It had been criticised for failing to consult the local Muslim community. In August 2021, the film was put on hold. Widows of Shuhada (widows of martyrs) was the name of a Radio New Zealand (RNZ) documentary series about the widows of four men who were killed in the attack. In June 2021, funds for a film called They are Us began being sought. A spokesperson for the Prime Minister clarified that Ardern and the New Zealand government had no involvement with the film. It was also felt casting an Australian as Ardern was questionable; while this was not an emphasised issue it was seen as emblematic of the foreign, not local, desire to make the film. Several representatives of the New Zealand Muslim community also questioned the timing and appropriateness of the film. A draft script was then leaked in July 2021 and was criticised by politicians. Later that month the production had been put on hold until the producers had undertaken a full consultation with the country's Muslim community. On 6 July 2022, Governor-General Cindy Kiro awarded the New Zealand Cross to Linwood Mosque survivor Abdul Aziz and the late Naeem Rashid for confronting Tarrant. In addition, Kiro awarded the New Zealand Bravery Decoration to Senior Constables Scott Carmody and Jim Manning for apprehending the terrorist; and Liam Beale and Wayne Maley for helping survivors of the Al Noor mosque. In addition, Lance Bradford, Mike Robinson and Mark Miller (the latter posthumously) received the New Zealand Bravery Medal for helping victims of the mosque shootings. See also Notes References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Video_game_characters_introduced_in_2010] | [TOKENS: 58] |
Category:Video game characters introduced in 2010 Subcategories This category has only the following subcategory. Pages in category "Video game characters introduced in 2010" The following 23 pages are in this category, out of 23 total. This list may not reflect recent changes. |
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