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April 10, 2019 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
19:20
Progressives Will Surrender to Nazis
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Did you know that if a racist touches something, that thing also becomes racist?
Because racism is basically like a germ, a virus, that infects people on contact.
So if you touch or see anything that is racist, you too become a racist.
And that's why Blizzard decided to ban the OK symbol in their Overwatch League.
This is an esports thing, I don't follow esports, but apparently the OK symbol is a white power symbol.
This became an issue because during an interview with one of the esports Overwatch players, one of the fans in the background threw up the OK sign, which means naturally they're a Nazi and they're promoting Nazism.
Which is why Blizzard told them not to do that or they would be banned after someone on Twitter complained about it.
Who was that human trash flashing the white power hand signal during an interview with Decay?
Hope they're banned from going to further matches.
And that was all it took for Blizzard to move on this subject.
That is how sensitive Blizzard are to white supremacy.
Or at least allegations of it.
Now, the ADL suggests that this is not actually the white power hand symbol.
On their website, they list this very blurry photograph as evidence of a white power hand symbol, where the right hand creates a W and apparently the left hand creates a P to represent white power.
I don't know the veracity of this, but let's just assume that they're correct on this one.
As you can see, this is not the OK hand sign, this is something different.
But the OK hand sign, according to Know Your Meme, which is a surprisingly reliable source on these things, has been used for centuries, as far as we can tell.
But it became associated with the campaign of Donald Trump in 2015, and by 2017, 4chan had worked out that the progressives were starting to associate the OK sign with Donald Trump, with MAGA hats, with white supremacy.
And so they decided to push it.
We must flood Twitter and other social media websites with spam, claiming that the OK hand sign is a symbol of white supremacy.
Make fake accounts with basic white girl names and type shit like, oh my god, that's so true.
Use as many emojis as you please.
It would also be good for us to associate the OK sign with a symbol of white supremacy because Mel Gibson used it.
Use the hashtag powerhand privilege in all of your tweets and whatnot related to this.
Bonus points if your profile pick is something related to supporting feminism.
Leftists have dug so deep down into their lunacy, we must force to dig more until the rest of society ain't going anywhere near that shit.
And that campaign is effectively how 4chan managed to steal the okay symbol and turn it into a an apparent symbol of white power.
Now, regular people don't think that that's the case.
Most normal people have no idea about any of this.
This is an artifact exclusively of the social media savvy political class, and it's very, very, very well picked up on by progressives and their antonyms on 4chan.
And the ADL themselves are actually well aware of this and actually list the okay hand gesture as a common hand gesture that 4chan trolling campaign claimed in 2017 and has been appropriated as a symbol meaning white power.
Used by many on the right, not just extremists, for the purpose of trolling liberals, the symbol eventually became used by actual white supremacists as well.
Caution must be used in evaluating instances of this symbol's use.
Because the OK symbol does not mean white power.
It means okay.
It's internationally recognized as that, and that's what the white supremacists are trying to play off of.
So why?
Oh why would we give the okay sign to the Nazis?
Why would we just let them have it?
Why would we let hypersensitive progressives get triggered into censoring everyone from using it when it clearly has other positive and far more widely understood connotations?
Well, we actually have a video from someone in the esports scene to explain to us why exactly this should be done.
Doing the okay hand gesture is not okay.
Blizzard was right to ban it and I'll explain why.
So that's it.
We are no longer allowed to use the okay sign because some anonymous people using a message board who we assume are Nazis also wants to use that sign.
Because that's how we measure ourselves.
We measure ourselves by the standards of the Nazis.
And if the Nazis are doing one thing, then we have to stop doing that thing immediately.
Which is in my opinion an absolutely ridiculous standard because I do not measure myself and my actions by the standards of the Nazis.
I simply don't care what they think.
Over the weekend, Blizzard made headlines for reportedly banning fans at Overwatch League events from making the okay hand gesture after one fan threw an up during an interview with LA Gladiators DPS player Decay.
And guess what?
Blizzard was right to ban it.
No they weren't.
It's a really silly move that actually gives the Nazis more power over these spaces than they had previously.
Now they only need to declare something else regarding Overwatch is in fact part of Nazi dogma and Nazi propaganda and you will have to cut that off too.
I know what you're thinking.
It's just a harmless hand sign.
Zanyata doesn't one of his wind poses.
It's a spray in the game.
It's nothing.
It is nothing.
The reason that this hand sign is even in the game itself is because of how innocuous the okay hand sign is and how ubiquitous it is around the world.
The problem is that it might seem innocuous, but it's been co-opted by people with ties to white supremacist movements.
Only if we let them.
If we let them have it and declare to everyone around the world, okay, right, the okay symbol is actually now a Nazi symbol, so no one's allowed to use it, then you've just given them a powerful cultural symbol that people weren't otherwise connecting with Nazism.
They were just using it because it was a friendly gesture to one another that actually meant sort of peace and security and tranquility.
Okay.
Everything was okay.
And then the insufferable progressives got here and gave this away to the Nazis.
And I know some of you are already in the comments telling me that it's not a white supremacist symbol.
It's all just a meme, and I'm an idiot, but- No, no but.
That's literally the end of the story.
You are an idiot.
You are for some reason acting like anything that a Nazi touches becomes infected with Nazism.
And we should effectively give them everything.
Because there is no particular reason that they can't co-opt everything by the logic that we have established here.
If all it takes is for them to use it on social media, my god, you are going to lose everything to them.
Listen, calm down.
I was like you a week ago, and then I did some research and found out what's really going on here.
What's really going on here is that a group of people on 4chan who have absolutely no power and influence outside of 4chan are actually leveraging your weakness against you, your fear and misunderstanding and loathing of these things, and they are making you dance to their tune.
I don't think we should do that.
I think that we should ignore them and carry on as we were before, because like you said, nobody had any problem with the okay hand sign.
It didn't mean Nazism.
You are promoting that.
A group of people on 4chan decided to troll people by flooding Twitter with claims that the hand gesture was actually a white power sign as part of something they called Operation OKKK.
Now, this wasn't true at the time and was just intended to mess with people.
The problem is, like with all memes, it got completely out of control.
What's fucked up is that actual white supremacists have decided they like using the hand sign.
It got so bad that the anti-defamation league has stated that while the okay hand gesture isn't exactly a racist hand signal, it has been used by some white supremacists.
Mate, Twitter is used by white supremacists.
By this logic, we've got to get off Twitter.
We've got to stop using it.
Do you not see that you're turning the white supremacists into a far more impressive enemy than they actually are?
I can't remember who said it, but the fear of the thing is usually worse than the thing itself.
Because when you actually look at who these people are, they're not actually very impressive themselves.
They don't hold positions of high office.
They're not massively wealthy or influential.
They are in fact some kind of internet underclass.
And you want to give them more influence than they deserve.
Please stop.
Now, the ADL also says that context is super important.
Like, if I said that's okay and then did this, you know that I mean that's okay and I'm not being a racist.
Well, I don't know that.
You might be a white supremacist in disguise.
I mean just like someone in an Overwatch tournament using the okay sign behind one of their favorite players or whatever, that's again the context in which I would have thought that's not a white supremacist.
That's someone who's trying to communicate a message presumably to the defeated team.
The problem is when you try to hide the gesture.
We've seen plenty of times in history that people who want to keep their beliefs and opinions hidden take up coded language or symbols to hide it from everyone.
White supremacists have a fucking ton of these and it's looking like the okay hand symbol is becoming one of these.
I don't care what hand symbols white supremacists use, but the only reason that this would become a white supremacist hand symbol is if you give them it.
You reacting like this will guarantee that they will continue to do it.
And they will continue to do it because they know that you are sensitive to this and that they will drag the rest of the general public who are also using the okay symbol into this silly ideological war of which they have absolutely no interest whatsoever.
And if you're still doubting me, that guy who killed 50 people at two mosques in New Zealand last month slashed the okay hand gesture during his arraignment in court.
Because he knew you would bring it up.
You are making him famous.
You are giving them this mimetic weapon to use against the general public.
You have somehow connected a player being banned from an Overwatch tournament to the shooter from the Christchurch mosque.
Do you consider the things that you're doing?
You are the one imbuing this meaning into that symbol.
For everyone else, it does not mean that.
And if you weren't propagandizing people to make them think that that was the case, it wouldn't.
Basically, it's gotten pretty clear that this, while it seems innocuous, has been adopted as a white supremacist symbol, even if people aren't necessarily aware of that.
If they're not aware of it being a white supremacist symbol, then they do not consider it to be a white supremacist symbol.
So to those people, it is not a white supremacist symbol.
And to the white supremacists themselves, they are only doing it because you react to it.
They're doing it because they know it pushes your buttons.
Stop letting them push your buttons.
Stop putting yourself in the position of weakness when dealing with white supremacists.
Surely you would want to deal with these people above all others from a position of strength.
Say to them, we don't care.
We don't care what you do.
Go away.
And that's even if you can find an answer for the question of why are you engaging with them at all.
Okay, that was a lot of facts.
So let's recap really quick.
That okay hand gesture started as a meme, wasn't really white supremacist, then actual white supremacists took it over.
And you aren't even going to stand around and fight them?
If every time the white supremacists move into an area of cultural influence, are you just going to retreat?
That's another front on the culture war that we have to pull back from.
Do you understand how quickly they're going to overrun everything that you consider to be your space?
And that's why that Overwatch League fan, the guy who actually flashed that hand gesture into background, didn't do anything wrong.
You're right.
He did absolutely nothing wrong.
And yet, because of people like you propagating this myth that the okay sign is a white power sign, he is actually now banned from the tournaments.
Your weakness helped get this innocent person banned from a tournament.
I hope you're very proud of yourself.
He didn't know, and actually, he tweeted an apology afterwards when he learned the context that it's taken on.
But people were mad that Blizzard made the ban, and I guess it's kind of understandable.
It's not just kind of understandable, it's totally understandable because this situation is remarkably unjust.
Just because some Nazis somewhere else are doing things to troll progressives does not mean that we have to abide by those rules just because you are fellow progressives.
Your opinions are dumb.
Your worldview is ridiculous.
And you are hyper-reactive to a bunch of 4chan trolls that nobody else cares about.
You are the ones causing this problem.
They don't have the power to be the source of the problem.
You are the problem.
You are the reason that this has happened.
You are the reason this guy's been banned.
It feels to them like they're losing their free speech, but I don't actually think that's what's happening here.
I wouldn't frame this as a free speech issue either.
I would frame this as a moral weakness issue from the progressives themselves.
You are complete moral cowards.
In the face of what you understand to be trolling, you have already lost the battle.
And this is just a rearguard action to try and cover your asses so people don't realize just how weak you are.
And listen, I get it.
It sucks seeing a thing you like get turned into something racist.
You're gonna fight back against it.
But it's not about free speech.
It's about not wanting to be associated with racist ideologies.
You're the one doing that.
In everyone else's mind, this is not a racist symbol.
But in your mind, it is because you give far too much credence to a bunch of incels on 4chan.
For the love of God, man, think about what you're doing.
Think about how weak you are acting.
Think about how much ground you are giving to them.
You are now turning yourself on the rest of your community and saying, right, you're all gonna have to be whipped into line.
Yes, you've lost this particular thing.
I'm taking this away from you and giving it to the Nazis.
But don't worry, you can thank me for it afterwards because that keeps us separate from the Nazis.
At least until the next time they do this with another one of our cultural artifacts.
Wait until they turn one of the Overwatch characters into the latest Nazi fad.
See what happens then, you bloody moron.
The fact of the matter is, Blizzard gets to say what goes in their studio.
They are not treading on your right to free speech.
And even if they were, you can go a couple years without doing the okay hand gesture.
Where on earth do you think you derive the authority to tell people what they can and can't do?
You don't.
You don't have any moral authority.
You don't have any physical authority.
You are just some dweeb who follows their betters down the progressive rabbit hole where everything good will be given away to the bloody Nazis because you are stupid and weak.
You can't win this fight.
You can't win on these terms.
You have to show some backbone.
If anything, what you should all do, all of you, at the same time in a massive photo, is everyone doing the okay sign and trying to retake that for, oh, I don't know, progressivism, liberalism, blizzard, overwatch, I don't know, whatever it is.
Your fan community, show the Nazis that you're not afraid of the things that they do.
At least until all this blows over and racists lose the fight.
If they do lose the fight, it will not be because of people like you.
It will be because of people like me.
Because history has shown that they will lose and you'll get to do your dumb hand gesture again.
Why are you so upset by the hand gesture?
And history only suggests they lose because people actually fight them.
You will be like Scandinavia.
You'll just capitulate.
You'll just give them everything they want.
And then, I guess, some handsome Anglo-types are going to have to come over, save you from the Nazis once again, and you can send us a Christmas tree every year.
Blizzard has done this before.
They banned Pepe memes from the Overarch League a few months ago because it was an innocuous meme that took on racist undertones and it's not okay to use anymore.
Thank you for proving my point.
They have done this before, they are doing it now, and they will do it again in the future.
And if they had any sense, they'd do it with your own video game characters to really get under your skin and give you a point at which you simply can't retreat any further.
Or imagine Blizzard taking out characters from the game because the Nazis had adopted them as their own.
Is that the position you want to be at?
Because that's where you're going.
That's where you're going to arrive.
And you've got no other options at this point because you were a coward.
Look, let's be real here.
The okay hand gesture is a fucking white supremacist thing now.
No, it isn't.
And I'm not going to surrender to the Nazis unlike the progressives who seem to be determined to surrender as quickly as possible and enforce this surrender on the rest of the people around them.
You are like Vichy France.
You are like a collaborating regime with the white supremacists.
Oh, they're doing that?
Right.
Okay, well, everyone, be aware that they're doing that and we have to all be respectful of that.
No, I am not going to dance to their tune.
And you shouldn't either, you mong.
Don't be mad at Blizzard for banning it.
Be mad at white supremacists for taking an innocent thing and ruining it.
They don't have the power to ruin it, you idiot.
They are a bunch of anonymous LARPers on 4chan.
Blizzard are the institution here.
They're the ones with the actual power and they are exercising it against their own fans who are just being innocent and innocuous with this.
They're using it in the traditional sense of the okay sign.
There is no reason to think that guy was a Nazi, but you are turning him into one.
You are saying, well, he's with them now.
No, he's not.
Stop it, you wuss.
And this goes double for Blizzard as well.
Stop giving things to the Nazis.
Or, you know, be mad at me for telling you all this or whatever.
Blizzard is even protecting some of their younger fans from falling down the slippery slope of racist memes, whether they intend to be racist or not.
If they don't intend to be racist, it's not racist.
There is no such thing as objective racism because racism is about intent.
And if they don't intend it to be racist, then it's not.
Blizzard got it right.
Don't be mad at them.
Be mad at white supremacists for turning something innocent into something disgusting.
You're repeating yourself now, and your repetition is no more convincing than it was the first time.
Pepe was associated with racist memes, so is the okay hand gesture.
I don't want to see racism anywhere in esports.
I don't think you do either.
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