“Ironic Nazism disguised as real Nazism disguised as ironic Nazism.”

November 14, 2017 9:50 PM

“At times while tracking [Anglin], I couldn’t help but feel that he was a method actor so committed and demented, on such a long and heavy trip, that he’d permanently lost himself in his role.”
Writing for The Atlantic, Luke O’Brien has assembled a detailed account of the strange history and fickle beliefs of Andrew Anglin, the man behind the almost-defunct Daily Stormer: “The Making of an American Nazi”
posted by Going To Maine (40 comments total)

O, I hope that pull quote isn’t framing this wrong. This article isn’t hagiographic, & the title is a new description Anglin used for his own work.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:51 PM on November 14, 2017

Every time I read one of these, I think of that twilight Zone episode where the venal, petty and grasping family members have to wear masks to get their inheritance.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:56 PM on November 14, 2017 [4 favorites]

Title also works for significant portions of 4chan, Reddit, Twitter.
posted by Artw at 10:02 PM on November 14, 2017 [5 favorites]

May Heaven save us from the actions of insecure little boys desperate for a sense of agency, because at this point I don't know what else will.
posted by fatbird at 10:34 PM on November 14, 2017 [15 favorites]

Going to Maine, the article is much more interesting and complicated than I ever could have imagined, and I study this stuff. I wish they hadn't brushed over his time living in Russia, because there is a big and important story about Russia's support for neo-nazis, but it's a compelling and insightful read. And no, not hagiographic, and correctly framed.
posted by msalt at 10:41 PM on November 14, 2017 [17 favorites]

Very blood chilling article

I think he was totally recruited by, and working for, Russia. I am sure that they are actively looking for trolls who are actually American-born and raised to help coordinate their efforts. His actions in attempting to set up protests where there will be violent clashes strongly suggest that.
posted by knoyers at 10:56 PM on November 14, 2017 [6 favorites]

Anglin has posted an article that sort of responds, but you can hunt it down on your own.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:40 PM on November 14, 2017

(It is unsatisfying and as expected.)
posted by Going To Maine at 11:53 PM on November 14, 2017

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

I thought this was the most chilling and insightful note in the article. One of the things about the internet is how disembodied you can be online—how detached from your own body and relationships and history and reputation. That makes it so easy to carelessly pretend, to try on and throw away new identities, which can be liberating and great but is also a terrifyingly easy road to the worst kind of radicalisation.
posted by Aravis76 at 12:20 AM on November 15, 2017 [20 favorites]

You can’t be 'ironic' without also espousing the thing itself, even if you do so whilst fooling yourself. The two go hand in hand.
posted by pharm at 12:29 AM on November 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

I think he was totally recruited by, and working for, Russia.

If Russia had involvement here I'd guess it far more likely that it was as a mysterious benefactor than through direct contact. Note the bit in the article about his funding, though when I think about the likelihood of there being a few Bitcoin-rich far-right guys acting independently - well actually that doesn't seem too unlikely at all, either.
posted by atoxyl at 2:10 AM on November 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

... but it was real.
posted by Drexen at 4:44 AM on November 15, 2017

Very blood chilling article

I think he was totally recruited by, and working for, Russia. I am sure that they are actively looking for trolls who are actually American-born and raised to help coordinate their efforts. His actions in attempting to set up protests where there will be violent clashes strongly suggest that.
posted by knoyers at 10:56 PM on November 14 [2 favorites +] [!]

white internationalism?
posted by eustatic at 4:51 AM on November 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

A cauldron bubbling with hate.

On his site, he pushed a “White Sharia” meme and published posts encouraging men to beat and rape women, take away their voting rights, and treat them like property. Women were “lower than dogs,” he wrote.

There's not even anything nominally intelligible there. Just the aim to induce and magnify the sheer intoxication of hate, transgression, and violence. A deliberate program of dehumanization of the self, to break the bonds of shared humanity, and to liberate oneself unto the unspeakable. Bad trip, man.
posted by dmh at 5:19 AM on November 15, 2017 [7 favorites]

The T’boli bit is priceless. Good riddance to them.
posted by minus273 at 5:49 AM on November 15, 2017

Excellent article, thank you for sharing it. It outlines Anglin’s serial adoption of and subsequent rejection of many radical ideologies (left and right), the specific tactics Daily Stormer used to gain traction.
posted by gregglind at 6:32 AM on November 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

There is no difference between pretending to be a Nazi and actually being a Nazi.
posted by JohnFromGR at 8:20 AM on November 15, 2017 [5 favorites]

I wish they hadn't brushed over his time living in Russia, because there is a big and important story about Russia's support for neo-nazis

Yeah: why Russia? Why the enormous Russian bot army spreading Daily Stormer articles? If there's still a world in 20 years, unwinding this will be fascinating / terrifying to read about.
posted by uncleozzy at 8:25 AM on November 15, 2017 [4 favorites]

I wish the film Generation P were a more widely known reference for any westerner speculating about “what Russia does”. x10 for English native-speaking countries.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 8:26 AM on November 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

I'm delighted to read the phrase "the almost-defunct Daily Stormer". It is the first non-porn site I can think of that has been hounded off the Internet. I guess it persists on Tor but that makes it so awkward to access it diminishes its impact significantly.

I still wonder though what theory Google used to seize the domain name. It's been on client hold for months now, since the Charlottesville murder. I'm OK with taking away speech platforms for actual Nazis. But domain names are property. Does Google have a policy that articulates when they will seize someone's property? For what else other than being a Nazi?

I've looked a few times and as near as I can tell Google has never made a public statement about it. Best I've found is this article which notes originally Google was going to "cancel the registration" and then went with a client hold instead, possibly to satisfy a letter-of-the-law 60 day waiting period. But that ended a month ago. The EFF has been calling attention to the question. I disagree with their position that Nazis have the right to free speech, but I would like to know what rules Google is operating by.
posted by Nelson at 8:29 AM on November 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

Part of it could be that Russia will aid any and all causes it sees as undermining western hegemony, but outside of Wikileaks it's nazis they've really thrown their weight behind. It's hard not to come to the conclusion that they just really like fascism.
posted by Artw at 8:30 AM on November 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

The question is if they like having nazis around because they are nazis or because nazis are disruptors who allow them to maintain control. (The answer, I believe, is the latter.) That said, it's a fairly academic question because the result is the same.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:47 AM on November 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

Part of it could be that Russia will aid any and all causes it sees as undermining western hegemony, but outside of Wikileaks it's nazis they've really thrown their weight behind. It's hard not to come to the conclusion that they just really like fascism.

Or totalitarianism in general; their client states (like the gangster-run “people's republics” in rebel-held parts of eastern Ukraine, or Transnistria) purport to be Soviet-style tankie Communists, heavy-handed hammer-and-sickle iconography and all.

I suspect it's not the Russians favouring any one type of ideology so much as their contempt and hostility towards liberalism/democracy, coming from a combination of Putin's resentment from having watched that fell his empire to Dugin's ultra-Hobbesian “Eurasian” ideology, where there is no principle but might.
posted by acb at 8:53 AM on November 15, 2017 [6 favorites]

Re: Google locking down the domain - their standard TOS says, "We may suspend or stop providing our Services to you if you do not comply with our terms or policies or if we are investigating suspected misconduct. ... We may review content to determine whether it is illegal or violates our policies, and we may remove or refuse to display content that we reasonably believe violates our policies or the law."

Their content policies are, of course, vague, and don't state they apply to hosting, but the above bits seem to say they can apply them to anything related to Google. And they do include, "Do not engage in harassing, bullying, or threatening behavior, and do not incite others to engage in these activities."

I think they're legally clear, but they're setting a formal precedent of "we may freeze or block any content that offends us," and while that's always been the case, very few companies are willing to state that publicly.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 9:46 AM on November 15, 2017

The T’boli bit is priceless.

But such a tantalizingly vague sketch of what turned out to be a major life change. A lot of the basic pattern for these kinds of guys is there in his childhood of obvious family problems, unaddressed mental health issues, excessive drug use, and a vague, nihilistic, undirected sense of rebelliousness. Yet, the dude walks into the woods to go Full Noble Savage and comes back out to go Full Nazi? That's a hell of a course correction. I want to know what went on during that time period beyond "the tribe had rejected him."
posted by Panjandrum at 10:07 AM on November 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

ErisLordFreedom: I get that Google's TOS would have them terminate DNS services for Daily Stormer. Good for them! But they have also seized intellectual property that belongs to Anglin, the domain name. They haven't just stopped serving DNS for him; they're preventing him from taking that name to any other DNS provider. That seems extraordinary to me.

One possible explanation is that Anglin can't find another provider, that literally no one is willing to serve him. Another possibility is Google is waiting for Anglin to sue them to recover his property.

The precedent of domain seizure is a bit nervous-making. Again, I'm 100% fine with depriving Nazis of a platform for their hate speech. (On the grounds that Nazis harm free speech far more than the harm done in denying them.) But I'd like to know what the rules Google is playing by are. I wonder if Verisign knows?
posted by Nelson at 10:18 AM on November 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

A lot of the basic pattern for these kinds of guys is there in his childhood of obvious family problems, unaddressed mental health issues, excessive drug use, and a vague, nihilistic, undirected sense of rebelliousness.

The guy's basically Charlie Manson with social media instead of an actual cult. Whether that's by chance or by choice who can say?

I want to know what went on during that time period beyond "the tribe had rejected him."

My guess would be either ridicule of the crazy white guy who's starving while he thinks he's going to live in the jungle or actual threats to his life when he (almost inevitably) tried to prey on the local women or insulted the local men. Or both. And anyway, the mental distance between "I am the white savior sent to protect you" and "I'm a nazi; heil Hitler!" is pretty short.
posted by octobersurprise at 10:32 AM on November 15, 2017 [7 favorites]

his childhood of obvious family problems

I'll say. I'm a little curious about the dad. He ran a leather bar and a gay conversion therapy racket? There's a story in there all by itself.
posted by octobersurprise at 10:57 AM on November 15, 2017 [5 favorites]

Republican, clearly.
posted by Artw at 11:12 AM on November 15, 2017

The T'boli were obviously never meant to be more than a prop in his life story. And, ultimately, they failed him, and thus were undeserving of him as a saviour, or, indeed, of existence. (Compare and contrast this to Hitler in his bunker, declaring that the German people had failed him, and their annihilation would be deserved.)
posted by acb at 11:43 AM on November 15, 2017

Excellent story! Thanks for posting it.
posted by vibrotronica at 11:48 AM on November 15, 2017

For his part, Randazza argues that restricting Anglin’s trolling would set a dangerous precedent. Anglin “has every right to ask people to share their views, no matter how abhorrent those views are,” Randazza told me. “This is the shitty price we have to pay for freedom.”

Oh, fuck off. After a year or more of having Nazi trolls disrupting my campus, making threats against members of my community, and generally making life shitty for everyone, I'm pretty done with the idea of prioritizing "freedom" in the abstract over the real harm that is happening to people right now. At some point we need to rethink how we approach this stuff, if the real outcome of this trial will be to confirm that yes, you can incite a hugely damaging harassment and stalking campaign with no consequences whatsoever. But hey, at least we're the land of the free.

Great article.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 1:22 PM on November 15, 2017 [12 favorites]

Anglin is getting more than $90,000 per year from a crowd-funding site that specialises in funding racists and other bigots.

The article itself is pretty thin, probably not worth engaging with it.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:52 PM on November 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

The T'boli were obviously never meant to be more than a prop in his life story.

I don't get the sense that anyone is, really. That's one insight that comes out of this - a less expected one (to me, from what I knew up to this point) is how little direction there actually seems to be in his story.
posted by atoxyl at 2:11 PM on November 15, 2017

For some reason I thought he was a lifer with this stuff but he now looks more like an opportunistic serial failure - though he's managed to leave real damage in his wake.
posted by atoxyl at 2:13 PM on November 15, 2017

Anglin is getting more than $90,000 per year from a crowd-funding site that specialises in funding racists and other bigots.

Two or three years ago Hatreon would have been an Onion article.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 5:33 PM on November 15, 2017 [5 favorites]

That was a thoughtful article. I appreciated that the author took seriously this person's danger, but also didn't accept his overinflated sense of self importance. It's a difficult line and I felt it was well drawn.

Also was very excited to learn about Susan Bourbaki Anthony from this piece.
posted by latkes at 5:50 PM on November 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm a little curious about the dad. He ran a leather bar and a gay conversion therapy racket? There's a story in there all by itself.

That's easy to understand.

"All these danged sissies! Let's get 'em something solid and macho, like leather biker gear, you know, like Judas Priest! Hey it's working! Well, sort of.... Hmm."

posted by msalt at 7:24 PM on November 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

The Lost Boys

To answer this question—and to comprehend the powerful and unexpected effect Charlottesville is having on the alt-right itself—we need to understand what the movement is, and what it is not. Unlike old-fashioned, monolithic political movements, the alt-right is a fractious, fluid coalition comprising bloggers and vloggers, gamers, social-media personalities, and charismatic ringleaders like Spencer, who share an antiestablishment, anti-left politics and an enthusiasm for the political career of Donald Trump. Older theorists who predate the 2016 election—men such as Jared Taylor of the “white advocacy” organization American Renaissance and the neoreactionary Curtis Yarvin, who writes under the name Mencius Moldbug—exert influence. But what is new, and unusual, about today’s far right is the large number of young people, most of them men, who have been drawn into its orbit—or, as they would put it, “red pilled.” The metaphor comes from The Matrix, the dystopian science-fiction movie in which the protagonist, Neo, is offered a red pill that allows him to see through society’s illusions and view the world in its true, ugly reality.

posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:18 PM on November 16, 2017 [4 favorites]

No surprise that weev, nobody's favourite nazi low-life, is involved in all of this.
posted by scruss at 8:57 PM on November 16, 2017