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 Co'tor Shas wrote:

Fine, look at their gak on reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/altright/

I have literally never seen this subreddit before, and I doubt very much that it represents the core of what people call the alt-right. In fact, according to the metrics for the sub, it didn't have but a handful of subscribers until literally the day of Hillary's Alt-Right speech. Meanwhile, GamerGate has 60,000 subscribers and The_Donald has 295,000 subscribers. That's a troll subreddit.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
No, the alt-right are racists. They admit as much. It's their defining feature.

Who is they? who are they grouped around? how can you make the claim that all alt-right is racist?

Because the alt-right guys admit as much. Remember alt-right =/= conservative. They are a group dedicated to white nationalism.

Complete and utter BS.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Who is they? who are they grouped around? how can you make the claim that all alt-right is racist?

Because they repeat loads of racist myths. I mean, that's the simplest way to figure out if someone or some group is racist - do they say loads of racist stuff? When the answer is yes, they're racist..

Now, you may be really keen to jump in with some quote or other from some lefty. I'm gonna go with Hillary Clinton's super-predator thing, or maybe the fact that Robert Byrd was in the KKK 60 years ago. You go ahead and do that if you want. But you'll be missing a key thing - every group will have racists, and every person will have moments in their life when they did something racist.

A group is racist in its totality when racism a key aspect of the whole, and that's the case with the alt-right. The movement itself is poorly organised, and contradictory on almost every other subject outside of race (on economics there's about six different kinds of stupid all fighting each other). The only political issue that has any consistency is racism - take that out of the alt-right and there'd just be a bunch of chuckleheads spamming memes and patting themselves on the back for being non-PC.. ie they'd be indistinguishable from any 14 year old on the internet. But it is through racism that there is some kind unification to the movement.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

Fine, look at their gak on reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/altright/

I have literally never seen this subreddit before, and I doubt very much that it represents the core of what people call the alt-right. In fact, according to the metrics for the sub, it didn't have but a handful of subscribers until literally the day of Hillary's Alt-Right speech. Meanwhile, GamerGate has 60,000 subscribers and The_Donald has 295,000 subscribers. That's a troll subreddit.

GamerGate is no the alt-right. Neither is the Donald Trump subreddit. You can support gamer-gate or Donald Trump without being alt-right. The reason it just grew is that until very recent, the alt-right was basically unknown as a movement. It has existed as a movement for a while (as seb pointed out), even that subreddit is 6 years old.

If your argument for "the alt right isn't racist" is "Those aren't REALLY the alt-right!" you might have a problem there.


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 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
No, the alt-right are racists. They admit as much. It's their defining feature.

Who is they? who are they grouped around? how can you make the claim that all alt-right is racist?

Because the alt-right guys admit as much. Remember alt-right =/= conservative. They are a group dedicated to white nationalism.

Complete and utter BS.

How so? The alt-right, are a fringe movement dedicated to white nationalism. I've provided proof of this (and can certainly get more if needed). Where is your proof that they aren't?


Remember, Republican =/= atl-right. Conservative =/= alt-right. Republican =/= alt right. They are a different group entirely. There is some overlap, but in the same way that Marxist-Lenninst overlap the Democrats. An extremest fringe.

Rosebuddy wrote:
Gamergate started because a guy whipped up a hate mob against his ex.

It's a bit more complicated than that. Zoey Quinn was already a controversial figure in the game industry, and her Depression Quest game represented the exact sort of social justice non-game crap that a lot of people felt were unfairly getting promoted by games journalist. The five guys thing did two things. First, it proved that Quinn was every bit the terrible person that everybody already suspected her of being, and second, it accused her of sleeping with a game journalist who was assumed to be giving her preferential treatment. To a group of gamers who thought social justice warriors were terrible people and that game journalists were unfairly helping them, it was a bit of a smoking gun - in theory, though I think in practice it didn't work out like that. Kotaku's inability to apologize and then go on to cover for their journalist stoked the fires.

It flared up because people had begun analysing what videogames mean and say, and a lot of nerds want games to be art so that they can feel special for spending so much time on them but don't want to apply the critical models that films and books have developed.

It flared up because the day after the term GamerGate was coined by Adam Baldwin, a dozen or so articles were posted declaring gamers to be dead. That direct assault on the gamer identity by institutions that should've been defending them is what caused GamerGate to flare up.

Sarkeesian, likewise, attacked the gamer identity through her critiques, and it felt very much at the time, to them, that gamers were being attacked for being socially awkward nerds - basically, that they were being bullied. Again. They made the mistake of thinking they could fight against Sarkeesian with rational debate on the content of her critiques, but were quickly labeled as misogynist harassers, and like I said before, calling people names isn't a real good way to win them over to your cause.

I need to go, but I'll address the rest of your comment what I get back.

 Sqorgar wrote:
It's a bit more complicated than that..

It was, but not in the way that you describe. The original issue was one of integrity in gaming journalism, namely that Zoey Quinn had an affair with a games journalist who had written (a?) review(s?) about one of her games and then the industry closed ranks about the issue rather than combating it. As it turned out there wasn't a problem about influencing the review as the dates didn't match but by that point it was irrelevant as everything had become obscured by the mounds of gak that idiots had been throwing at each other (including death threats, posting people's home addresses and other such lovely behavior) and the integrity issue has long been forgotten.

I'm just here drinking liberal tears and laughing about the whole thing, then again it is not surprising. The left has shown that they are the ones who are intolerant, violent, racist ect. Keep it up, you're just insuring 4 more years of Emperor Trump

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:
It's a bit more complicated than that..

It was, but not in the way that you describe. The original issue was one of integrity in gaming journalism, namely that Zoey Quinn had an affair with a games journalist who had written (a?) review(s?) about one of her games and then the industry closed ranks about the issue rather than combating it. As it turned out there wasn't a problem about influencing the review as the dates didn't match but by that point it was irrelevant as everything had become obscured by the mounds of gak that idiots had been throwing at each other and the integrity issue has long been forgotten.

Yup. What could have been a good discussion on both sides (on the one hand, the issues with games journalism, and on the other, the sexism and portrayal of woman in a lot of games media, as well us gamers), but it turned into gak-flinging, because people can't admit that issues may have multiple facets to them.

It wasn't actually a review, it was "coverage". I think Grayson favorably referenced Depression Quest somewhere in one of his articles, about how ground breaking it or something.
Something like that anyway. Its been a while, and I don't care enough to look it up. The whole thing was a mess.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Something like that anyway. Its been a while, and I don't care enough to look it up. The whole thing was a mess.

I thought it was a review for RPS? In fairness though I also can't be bothered to check.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
It wasn't actually a review, it was "coverage". I think Grayson favorably referenced Depression Quest somewhere in one of his articles, about how ground breaking it or something.
Something like that anyway. Its been a while, and I don't care enough to look it up. The whole thing was a mess.

It wasn't even that. He mentioned it in an article about upcoming games.

 gmaleron wrote:
Keep it up, you're just insuring 4 more years of Emperor Trump

I very much doubt it.....

 Melissia wrote:

 MarsNZ wrote:
This is one of the most absurd claims by the perpetually offended

So the alt-right is a meme created by the alt-right? I suppose that makes sense, but it's a bit of an odd statement for you to make.

Thanks for proving my point for me. I can always count on you to provide the logical gymnastics needed to tar everyone who disagrees with you as some kind of conspiratorial singular group of evil people. Even if it usually amounts to "I know you are but what am I"

Some racist used to refer to himself as Alternative Right, he's long been relegated where he belongs, irrelevancy. Now it's a term used by corporations such as Twitter to combat 'harrassment' - in other words censor opinions that don't follow victim narrative - as if the ignore and DCMA claim weren't already the most regularly mashed buttons by demagogues such as Sarkeesian, Ramsey and Dunham. If you claim Hillary lost for any other reason than 'white America' you're now 'alt-right'. When liberals who don't support morality policing reject being labeled by those that do they're by your own admission 'alt right' themselves.

Cries of 'coordinated trolling' and 'coopting memes' just shows that you're extremely naive and probably quite new to the internet outside of safe spaces like Buzzfeed and HuffPost.

The "alt-right" isn't a defined thing any more than BLM or OWS is. It's an online group of people with loosely shared cultural values.

I don't venture into their forums because I don't have a high tolerance for angry teenage boys all reposting the same "hilarious" memes and drinking libtard tears. Also all the "Lord Milo" and 'Emperor Trump" seems a bit like virtual fanboi fellatio to me.


But to say "all alt-right is X" is disingenuous. It a broad movement with no barrier to entry. You may as well say "Dakkadakka is a specific group of people whose members are all X."

 Sqorgar wrote:
represented the exact sort of social justice non-game crap that a lot of people felt were unfairly getting promoted by games journalist.

It's a game that attempts to show what living with depression is like. This is a topic that has been done in poetry, theatre, songs, films, books and comics for decades now. If a journalist thinks that this is a more important game than Medal of Duty 14 then it's kind of part of their job to bring this up and argue why.

This sentence is very revealing of what it's really about. Social justice? Same ol' culture war. Non-game? That's just trying to paint people as impostors and fakes. It turns out that interactive electronic media is a very broad category that has room for a lot of different expressions. Arguing that Depression Quest isn't a game is only marginally less dumb than arguing whether something is or isn't art. Yes, it's a game. Yes, it's art. Now can we get to the good part of talking about what a particular game does? That is, after all, the part that could actually advance the medium and our understanding of it.

The identity of a "gamer" is fundamentally a pretty bad one. It's that of a passive consumer of mass-produced media. People call themselves gamers and think they're so much better than those silly Reality TV Fans or Likers of Rap Music when the intellectual and emotional heights of videogames couldn't even reach to pinch the toes of literature. No matter how Kotaku feths up, the truth remains that building your identity around how much you've played Dark Souls is going to leave you with a very frail identity (and I say that as someone who has happily sunk over 600 hours into DS1 and DS2).

 MarsNZ wrote:
If you claim Hillary lost for any other reason than 'white America' you're now 'alt-right'. When liberals who don't support morality policing reject being labeled by those that do they're by your own admission 'alt right' themselves.

Cries of 'coordinated trolling' and 'coopting memes' just shows that you're extremely naive and probably quite new to the internet outside of safe spaces like Buzzfeed and HuffPost.

Clinton lost because she had nothing to offer, ran a campaign that was worse than Donald Trump's, was actively repulsive and had generally fallen to groupthink. Etc etc. Now, that out of the way, coordinated online efforts absolutely did happen. They have been a part of the Internet for a very long time because coordinated efforts to change public perception is as old as media itself and it's much easier to do it online since you don't need a printing press and official channels to reach people. White nationalists have absolutely been working very hard to get people to become white nationalists through spreading their message and increasing their acceptability. It would be absurd to claim that they are outside the fundamental political process.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
No, the alt-right are racists. They admit as much. It's their defining feature.

Whatever. The left has been calling the right racists for decades now. They even called Captain Milktoast ROmney racist, while holding onto the likes of Al Sharpton.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
No, the alt-right are racists. They admit as much. It's their defining feature.

Whatever. The left has been calling the right racists for decades now. They even called Captain Milktoast ROmney racist, while holding onto the likes of Al Sharpton.

Frazz, they are actively racist and push white nationalism. The alt-right are not the right wing. In fact they have very little to do with the repulbican party, with any sort of economic conservatism or even a lot of the moral conservatism not there at all. It's the racist who think the the normal right doesn't push their racist views. This is not trying to call of the the right wing racist, but a radical fringe group (who admits to being racist and pushing white nationalism) racist. If this was saying "the republican party is racist!" I'd be the first to call it out (because the republican party isn't racist). This is like calling the KKK racist.

 Sqorgar wrote:
To a group of gamers who thought social justice warriors were terrible people and that game journalists were unfairly helping them, it was a bit of a smoking gun...

See, and here's the part that shows how fething bonkers the gamergate thing was. I've gamed for more than 30 years, and never in all my time in gaming have I ever run in to a SJW, or a game made by a SJW, or someone analysing any game from SJW perspective. I know that such people are out there because I hear people complain about them all the damn time, but this is the same way that I know about those Japanese dating games where you're dating pigeons and whatever. The only way these things would impact my gaming is if I went out searching for these things, either because I liked that kind of thing, or because I have some reason to fight with these people.

Now here, by your own statement, we have a bunch of gamers who are hostile to SJWs. They want to fight these people. The simple answer here is just fething don't, you idiots. Play the games you like, read the reviews you can rely on (so don't read any reviews, basically), and have with your gaming. If you want to engage in weird little field of media analysis of games, do it because you have a contribution you want to make, not because there are some people contributing that you want to have a tribal war with.

But this thing where people go from playing games to crusading against random people in the gaming industry because they see games differently to themselves, well how fething strange is that.

Rosebuddy wrote:
There isn't very much thinking that actually needs to be done, though. A woman can use a toilet designated for women, a man can use a toilet designated for men. Problem solved. The "nuanced views" that you talk about are, in my experience, not actually very nuanced or good at all.

See? That's what I was talking about. When you take these absolutist views and reject the very idea that there could be valid alternatives, that's when the whole authoritarianism thing comes in.

For this thing in particular, I think there are a lot of factors involved, and a lot of unintended results. For instance, once they started making laws about who should and shouldn't be using particular bathrooms, you ended up having people following androgynous women in the women's bathroom, demanding that they prove that they belong there. I don't recall that happening before. The very act of making a legal mandate created a moral divide over something that, honestly, should only really affect a very, very small percentage of the population. It's an unintended consequence, and to act without thoroughly exploring the ramifications of the moral and social cost of them is negligent. I want to be a good person and be kind to people that I think are well deserving of it, but I think that doing the right thing requires understanding how everybody is affected, not just the ones I agree with.

A nuanced view on the refugee crisis would mean considering how to help, what sacrifices would have to be made and how to turn welcoming refugees into a strength but for some people "nuanced views" means that we should think long and hard about whether Syrians deserve to drown in the Mediterranean. It's such a low level of debate that it isn't useful and when someone insists on sticking to this level time and time again the question must be raised whether it's meant in good faith.

There are some logistical issues with the Syrian refugees that means that how we help them is a much more difficult question to answer than whether we should help them. We absolutely should help those in need, but we need to be considerate of what we can sacrifice and what we shouldn't sacrifice. I think that for some, refusing to sacrifice anything is tantamount to racism, even when the things we refuse to sacrifice are fundamental to the functioning of our communities and government.

An actual nuanced view of militant Islamic extremists would include an understanding of these groups as political forces, an understanding of the economics and politics of the regions involved, where they recruit from, why it is that they exist now rather than at any other time and so on and so on. But the "nuanced view" is that Muslims kill because it's what the Koran says.

Well, it certainly does affect things. The reason why the extremists like to behead people is a misguided interpretation of scripture, and I'm not sure that you can argue that economics and politics are behind the murdering of cartoonists who draw Muhammad. I don't think you can ignore economics and politics, but I don't think you can ignore the Koran's contributions to religious fanaticism any more than I think you can ignore the Bible's influence on the coordinated attack on evolution by creationists.

 gmaleron wrote:
I'm just here drinking liberal tears and laughing about the whole thing, then again it is not surprising. The left has shown that they are the ones who are intolerant, violent, racist ect. Keep it up, you're just insuring 4 more years of Emperor Trump

I commented ages ago that support for Trump for some people seems entirely divorced from policy, or any of the actual, substantive realities of governing a country. Instead it's like it is about continuing a stupid internet fight in to the real world, where people who've taken offence against some SJW have now decided they can win that argument by supporting Trump in to the presidency, despite the fact that, you know, on a level of basic knowledge and policy Trump is comical disaster.

Here's that same thing again. It seems to come up a lot.


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 feeder wrote:
But to say "all alt-right is X" is disingenuous. It a broad movement with no barrier to entry. You may as well say "Dakkadakka is a specific group of people whose members are all X."

"Dakkadakka is a specific group of people whose members are generally interested in playing wargames, most being very familiar with GW wargames."

So not so hard. While a group with no barriers to entry might not tend towards greater variation, it is still likely that there will be consistent characteristics among most of its members. In the case of the alt-right there is clearly a consistent racism that runs throughout.

Rosebuddy wrote:
It's a game that attempts to show what living with depression is like. This is a topic that has been done in poetry, theatre, songs, films, books and comics for decades now. If a journalist thinks that this is a more important game than Medal of Duty 14 then it's kind of part of their job to bring this up and argue why.

This sentence is very revealing of what it's really about. Social justice? Same ol' culture war. Non-game? That's just trying to paint people as impostors and fakes. It turns out that interactive electronic media is a very broad category that has room for a lot of different expressions. Arguing that Depression Quest isn't a game is only marginally less dumb than arguing whether something is or isn't art. Yes, it's a game. Yes, it's art. Now can we get to the good part of talking about what a particular game does? That is, after all, the part that could actually advance the medium and our understanding of it.

I have no problem with Depression Quest, honestly. I think Jason Rohrer and Jonathan Blow's pretentious interviews are better lightning rods for the arrogance of indie developers who like to just gak on gaming, all the while puffing themselves up as the second coming of Christ. But there's no doubt that there was this very exhausting run of pretentiousness in gaming journalism (especially at Rock, Paper, Shotgun and Polygon, but to a lesser extent Kotaku - both of whom liked to point out sexism at every opportunity) that alienated a lot of gamers who honestly just wanted to play games like Bayonetta as escapism. It's not that these pretentious games existed, but more how the popular gaming sites treated them (while also linking to their Patreon donations page, seeming more like advertisements than journalism). I think gamers were sick of it, and when they saw something that they thought proved that "fake gamers" were trying to push out "real gamers", it was the straw that broke the camel's back.

I don't think Quinn or anything to do with the five guys letter proves anything of the sort, and I like gaming when there is a larger variety of experiences - even walking simulators and TWINE choose-your-own-adventures. However, I get the frustration that came from seeing gamers under attack for being gamers (the "gamers are dead" articles were insulting as hell), and I can easily see how they saw what they wanted to see in that five guys letter rather than what was actually there. The frustration was real, and the powder keg was ready to blow. If it wasn't Zoey Quinn, it would've been something else. GamerGate was always going to happen. It didn't really matter what started it.

The identity of a "gamer" is fundamentally a pretty bad one. It's that of a passive consumer of mass-produced media. People call themselves gamers and think they're so much better than those silly Reality TV Fans or Likers of Rap Music when the intellectual and emotional heights of videogames couldn't even reach to pinch the toes of literature. No matter how Kotaku feths up, the truth remains that building your identity around how much you've played Dark Souls is going to leave you with a very frail identity (and I say that as someone who has happily sunk over 600 hours into DS1 and DS2).

I disagree completely. I say this as a gamer and a professional video game developer. There's a reason people take some pride in being a gamer, and it isn't just how many hours of Dark Souls you've played. I don't think your assessment of being a "gamer" is honest or fair at all. I'm proud of being a gamer and I'm proud of the contributions I've personally made to video gaming. I worked hard for those accomplishments. I have a right to be proud of them. I've earned it.

And what, precisely, is a "gamer", then? What is the skill set? What is the creed? What are the deeds of gamers? A developer needs to take an active role in the medium but it should be telling that "gamer" isn't synonymous with "modder".

 Sqorgar wrote:

See? That's what I was talking about. When you take these absolutist views and reject the very idea that there could be valid alternatives, that's when the whole authoritarianism thing comes in.

There isn't a lot of backing up and thinking that needs to be done over the question of whether women or black people should be able to vote. How's that for authoritarianism. Some people do think that's a very tricky question but that's on them. That some people want to barge in and question the genitals or w/e of other people out of rampant fear and hatred of trans people is on them. Whether laws need to be made about it all and what shape those should take and how they should even be enforced is another matter. I'm fine with rejecting some points of view, because I have considered them and found them to be bad, and in practice you are too. You just finished typing up a post about "social justice non-game crap" so you don't have a lot of ground to stand on.

 Sqorgar wrote:
I don't think you can ignore economics and politics, but I don't think you can ignore the Koran's contributions to religious fanaticism any more than I think you can ignore the Bible's influence on the coordinated attack on evolution by creationists.

Religion just adds a little extra flavour to the substance. Religious scripture can obviously be interpreted and ignored in any way that anyone wants to and there isn't anything about any book of any kind that can simply compel someone to act in a certain way. The Islamic State didn't form from Al-Qaida in Iraq and then spread because of Islam. There were material factors at play that created a lot of people that wanted to have a right-wing religious militia and that allowed for this attempt. That's the sort of thing that happens when you blow countries up. Creationists could be from any religion that features a creation story. There just aren't many prominent non-Christian religions in the US.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Yup. What could have been a good discussion on both sides (on the one hand, the issues with games journalism, and on the other, the sexism and portrayal of woman in a lot of games media, as well us gamers), but it turned into gak-flinging, because people can't admit that issues may have multiple facets to them.

The one singular defining thread that you find throughout the "alt-right" is that journalism isn't an unbiased spectator. They pick sides. And the thing about all these different alt-right bastions - GamerGate, Sad Puppies, Frank Cho, Trump - is that the journalists took the other side and used their influence to unfairly smear their opponents as sexists/racist/harassers and misrepresent their viewpoints to make them look worse. There was never going to be any honest debate on any of this stuff because they second you criticized a Sarkeesian video, you were labeled a sexist and banned from your gaming forum of choice. If the alt-right is anything, it is a group of exiles who were banned from their own communities for trying to have an honest discussion.

 Sqorgar wrote:
[ I think gamers were sick of it, and when they saw something that they thought proved that "fake gamers" were trying to push out "real gamers", it was the straw that broke the camel's back.

"Real" and "fake" gamers? Come on man. That's childish. It's like when I was arguing with my friends back in junior high about whether The Offspring was "real" punk or not. It's totally arbitrary nonsense.

 feeder wrote:

But to say "all alt-right is X" is disingenuous. It a broad movement with no barrier to entry. You may as well say "Dakkadakka is a specific group of people whose members are all X."

This is exactly what I was thinking. The group is so disorganized and broad - how can you call it racist?

They did the same thing with Obama...And nothing was done. why would it be any different with Trump?

 Xenomancers wrote:

 feeder wrote:

But to say "all alt-right is X" is disingenuous. It a broad movement with no barrier to entry. You may as well say "Dakkadakka is a specific group of people whose members are all X."

This is exactly what I was thinking. The group is so disorganized and broad - how can you call it racist?

As was just pointed out, the people on Dakkadakka are unified by an interest in tabletop games. It's a tabletop game forum. Painting models, making terrain, complaining, seeking strategic tips on marine-vs-marine matchups, cultivating decades-long enmities over which edition of DnD is superior (it's 4th btw), complaining... There are clearly identifying traits of the community even though people got started for different reasons.

Rosebuddy wrote:
And what, precisely, is a "gamer", then? What is the skill set? What is the creed? What are the deeds of gamers? A developer needs to take an active role in the medium but it should be telling that "gamer" isn't synonymous with "modder".

A gamer is like an art connoisseur or a bibliophile or a movie buff. It is someone who doesn't just enjoy gaming, but respects it, and respects the artists and artisans who make it. And, I think, gamers find comfort being around other gamers because a respect of gaming isn't not nearly as commonplace as it should be.

There isn't a lot of backing up and thinking that needs to be done over the question of whether women or black people should be able to vote.

Where are people trying to take away anybody's right to vote? No doubt that white nationalists exist and have been lumped into the alt-right (or vice versa), but I'm not aware of any coordinated campaigns to take away anybody's voting privileges?

That some people want to barge in and question the genitals or w/e of other people out of rampant fear and hatred of trans people is on them. Whether laws need to be made about it all and what shape those should take and how they should even be enforced is another matter. I'm fine with rejecting some points of view, because I have considered them and found them to be bad, and in practice you are too. You just finished typing up a post about "social justice non-game crap" so you don't have a lot of ground to stand on.

First, the "social justice non-game crap" was me trying to write from GamerGate's perspective (as I was describing GamerGate's viewpoints at the time). It is not my own perspective.

Second, I don't think you can make laws to force people to be less insecure and scared. You may think their viewpoints don't matter, but they are American citizens. They get to vote for the elected official that best represents their interest, and they have a right to affect how the government affects their lives. And if you think that passing laws that increase their paranoia and insecurity is productive just because you think they are donkey-caves, well, I have a Trump presidency for you to spend in quiet self reflection.

Religion just adds a little extra flavour to the substance.

I'm not sure you can separate the two. There's always dogma at the center of any extremism. I'm not sure you can say that the dogma created the extremism or that the extremism created the dogma. The two likely grew together, feeding off each other, and I don't think you can destroy one without destroying the other. I think some people are so afraid of attacking the Islamic faith and seeming like racists that they have convinced themselves that they can destroy the extremism without tackling the dogma, and I think that's misguided. It can't be done.

 feeder wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:
[ I think gamers were sick of it, and when they saw something that they thought proved that "fake gamers" were trying to push out "real gamers", it was the straw that broke the camel's back.

"Real" and "fake" gamers? Come on man. That's childish. It's like when I was arguing with my friends back in junior high about whether The Offspring was "real" punk or not. It's totally arbitrary nonsense.

Your parents have asked me to remind all you gamers-real or unreal-to put down the game device, get a job, and move out of the house you lazy bums.

A gamer is like an art connoisseur or a bibliophile or a movie buff.

A gamer is someone who NEEDS TO GET A FREAKING JOB.
-signed-every generation before you.

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 feeder wrote:

But to say "all alt-right is X" is disingenuous. It a broad movement with no barrier to entry. You may as well say "Dakkadakka is a specific group of people whose members are all X."

This is exactly what I was thinking. The group is so disorganized and broad - how can you call it racist?

As was just pointed out, the people on Dakkadakka are unified by an interest in tabletop games. It's a tabletop game forum. Painting models, making terrain, complaining, seeking strategic tips on marine-vs-marine matchups, cultivating decades-long enmities over which edition of DnD is superior (it's 4th btw), complaining... There are clearly identifying traits of the community even though people got started for different reasons.

Well sure, but there are many and varied reasons to come here. Someone may only be here for painting tips and never played a game in their life. We have a video games forum, that's not really in the realm of toy soldier mans at all. MtG and similar.

So while there are general traits one can apply to the stereotypical Dakkanaught, one cannot take a list of Dakka members and say "These people are all tabletop gamers."

That is the point I was trying to make.