User:Pleun/insp/transgression

Online Culture Wars

Contemporary fascism, misogyny, and extreme right ideologies are cultivated in online forums collaboratively. Alt-Right and Leftists ideology is framed with terminology that forms an impassable forest of jargon for normies and nihilist meta-memes which are rapidly evolving and duplicating. Right conservatism and left-wing socialism are reformed with new styles of media-usage, propaganda, and focus of ideology. The alt-right is reappropriating everything from entire subcultures to usage of transgression formerly done so by the socialist left, is bullying their way to domination en is coining term after term to shape their moral bible.

Main interests

• Framing of reality in online echo chambers
• Collective creation of an ideology online

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• from online echo chambers to actual political power
• possible physicality of online spaces

Possible Questions of focus

• How is offline politics influenced by the online culture war?
• Can I break an online echo chamber by taking its ideology offline, leaving a physical trace?
• How can I stimulate discussion (poke a few holes in the online echo chamber) between sides?
• How are language and image used in online culture to shape ideology?

Research Method

I want to create a dynamic dictionary of the language of the right side of the online culture wars, namely of the Alt Right and the Manosphere. For now focussing on two key forums, one Right-wing forum on 8chan and one key manosphere forum on Reddit: 8chan /pol/ and reddit/theredpill. When I achieve this dynamic dictionary I want to look for ways to open up discussion, maybe by leaving physical/public traces, that would function to create some friction or different sounds in the online echo chambers.

1. I first want to map out the broad scope of the culture wars, which will be the basis of my knowledge and thesis.
I will do this by:

• text (short descriptions of ideology, bio's of actors, links between actors, online habitats)
• gathering media
• creating a map

Restrictions gathering data:

• ONLINE culture wars
• Focus on 2015>2016>2017
• Focus on main events, actors, media,

2. The implementation and part-creation of a tool that will gather jargon on (a) main right-wing forum(s), through Pattern (a Natural Language Processing library in Python), because of my believe this jargon captures the core of their ideology.

I plan to use text scraping to scrape the forum and then start to filter out content so I would be left with non-dictionary words. Then I also want to look at which words, nouns/adjectives are used most, maybe if they are used in a positive or negative way.

• Natural Language Processing

• Bag-of-words model

3. Publishing the research in a manner that aids general understanding and triggers discussion.

Plan B

• (How) does the alt-right influence Dutch politics?

Notes

• While attempting to describe these groups, I notice the left-wing/feminist side has less specific groups/names. Plus a lot of names, like SJW, are coined by the "enemy".
• If I create a dictionary and follow word origin and scrape its history online, could that give clues on how the ideology is shaped?
• Is it possible to scrape a few forums and check when unknown words are created? Therefore following directly when, where and how the ideology is shaped?
• 06/11/2016: CNN has released a video on The Red Pill: http://edition.cnn.com/videos/cnnmoney/2017/10/30/divided-we-code-red-pill-cnntech.cnn
• Even when addressing non-TRP they still use jargon heavily
• internet > ideology or ideology > internet?
• WOKE vs The Red Pill (frames of reality) Two sides, same coin?
• normie takeover

Relation to practice

• I was researching the online subculture of Vaporwave for a while when the culture got reappropriated and was involved in an online culture war, by the alt-right.

Bibliography

Mapping out the online culture wars, with the help of:

HAVE READ/WATCHED:

• The book Kill All Normies, Angela Nagle
• The Red Pill Documentary
• Aesthetics of Fascism, a talk by Nina Powers
• Kill All Normies, a talk by Angela Nagle (Author), Constanteyn Roelofs (GeenStijl) en Zihni Özdil (GroenLinks)

NEED TO READ/WATCH:

• Klaus Theweleit – Male Fantasies Volume 2, Male Bodies: Psychoanalyzing the White Terror
• Victor Klemperer – Language of the Third Reich – LTI – lingua-tertii-imperii
• The authoritarian personality (1950) – Theodor W Adorno

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Culture Wars

Right-wing

• 4Chan
• Reddit

Alt-Light

Main Ideology:

Main Actors:

• Steve Bannon
• Milo Yianopoulous

Alt-Right

Main Ideology:

Main Actors:

• Richard Spencer

Manosphere

“ These subcultures, between which there is often animosity, and some important political and philosophical difference, have become collectively referred to by some observers as ‘the Manosphere’. The term has been used to describe everything from progressive men’s issues activists dealing with real neglect of male health, suicide and unequal social services to the nastier corners of the Internet, filled with involuntary celibacy-obsessed, hate-filled, resentment-fueled cultures of quite chilling levels of misogyny.” Angela Nagle. Kill All Normies

MRA

Main Ideology: MRA (Men's Rights Activists)
Mostly older men
Reactionary: a reaction to feminism
Main Focus: alimony, perternaty fraud, men's issues regarding family

Key events, media, input:

• The Myth Of Male Power by Warren Farrell, 1993
• “Neil Lyndon’s No More Sex War: The Failures of Feminism.”
• “Neil Strauss’s 2005 book The Game.”
• Bang by Roosh V

Main Actors:

• Paul Elam

Main Habitats:

• A Voice For Men

MGTOW

Main Ideology:

Main Actors:

Main Habitats:

Neo Masc

Main Ideology: “ feminism is a major cause of civilizational decline”

Main Actors:

• “Roosh V (aka Daryush Valizadeh) ”, website: Return of Kings

Main Habitats:

• “The Reddit subforum The Red Pill has been central to the online development and resurgence of this anti-feminist politics online.” Angela Nagle. Kill All Normies
• Return of Kings, website by Roosh V

Dictionary

• The Red Pill
• PUA: Pick Up Artist
• Incel: Involuntary Celibate
• “riding the cock carousel”
• Alpha-male and Beta male
• "nice guy"

Leftwing

• Tumblr
• Buzzfeed

#WOKE vs. The Red Pill

Alt-Woke Manifesto: http://tripleampersand.org/alt-woke-manifesto/

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Influence of the online culture wars in Dutch politics
Transgression
Transgression in art: http://dissidentreality.com/articles/cinema-transgression-manifesto/
Transgression within the alt-right
Accelerationism