I'm sorry but i'm gonna have to stop you there. Where on earth are you getting reports that PewDiePie has been "normalizing far right views" that have been "taboo for decades" please could you give us some evidence of this instead of spewing garbage while providing nothing beyond "he said the N-word once" which he apologized for and which I would hardly consider "normalizing far right views that have been taboo for decades".

He said a word once and apologized for it. He is only human after all and trying to attribute a shooting like this onto him because he said the N-word once is just ridiculous.

i made this twitlonger explaining how i feel
truly sorry to all the families affected by this terrorist attack
(also sorry if theres any incoherency, i typed this at midnight)
https://twitter.com/marquislmao/status/1106448514165415936?s=19

@sheepy where this guy is getting the whole pewds normalizes far right ideologies is most likely from when he endorsed that edgelord E;R (who im pretty convinced is most likely a neo-nazi, you may not agree but usually if ur willing to make so many nazi jokes you might be one yourself). and we get that pewdiepie didnt mean to endorse E;R, but by doing so he unintentionally told this audience that he is ok with this since he didnt truly condemn it.

big figures are used as mouthpieces when they dont condemn bad rhetoric and the only way for it to stop is for that mouthpiece to come out and condemn the viewpoint and anyone who agrees with it. naturally this leads to backlash, but it has to happen so u arent repeatedly namedropped in these situations.

pretty much what im saying is if you dont condemn a nazi, your practically supporting them.

this just in: all you need to do to become a national socialist is make jokes, there is absolutely nothing else required to confirm your loyalty to the nazis

Alright, I am posting with the viewpoint of someone who is quite familiar with the fringe far-right communities and ideas that this guy comes from (and that I also reject these same far-right beliefs). When I found out about the shooting and how deeply linked it was to far-right memetics that have been espoused on the -chan boards for years, I knew there would be some confusion and misinformation being spread about how this sort of thing comes about.

Now I don't believe PewDiePie has really anything to do with this, as he is not outright directing his viewers to political imageboards or the Daily Stormer. He said the n-word once yes, but that is certainly a far cry from "normalizing far right beliefs" (and as you will see below, it's often the case that people will confuse moderate right-wingers to be of this "far right"). The real reason people will end up espousing beliefs like this is almost single-handedly due to 4chan/8chan imageboards. 4chan has always been a notorious website, people go to that website for many reasons, and there is certainly easy access to the infamous Politically Incorrect board. The morbidly curious can take a look and see the fringe ideas or opinions people post about there, and for some people, there can be an excitement in seeing them -- the ideas are fringe, but it can bring a sort of excitement to an impressionable person when they conceive that these ideas "might be true", simply because they are taboo. It brings out a sort of narcissistic desire leading to a will to be apart of such a fringe group, because since it is an obviously small pond, you would feel like a big fish. And, this shooter guy is certainly narcissistic (much like Breivik).

You're twisting his words. He said "most of the names on this list" aren't what he would consider to be "far-right", and I think he is correct. Many of them might be right-leaning, yes, but they are not "far-right". Richard Spencer is undoubtedly far-right (he had an entire joke pointing out Richard Spencer was a nazi if you missed it), most of those people are pretty moderate conservatives (and to be fair, I'm not very familiar with "Black Pigeon Speaks" or "No Bullshit")

No, I can certainly guarantee that people in the "mass shooting community" really don't like Ben Shapiro, namely because he is Jewish. Ben Shapiro is nowhere near "far-right", namely due to his views on capitalism (and Israel) that are very much at odds with people in these fringe far right communities, he would at most be considered a neo-conservative (which usually refers to some old boomer who believes capitalism is the cure for everything, etc).

PewDiePie went on to make a follow up video where he did condemn E;R and that he advertised his channel solely based on 1 video he looked at, which did not contain any offensive material -- please do a little more research than headline reading.

what internet edgelords like yourself fail to realize is that the alt-right deliberately blurs the line between joking and really meaning it, and this space of memes and satire is what allowed more extreme forms of white nationalist ideology to crop back up (well that and the more general nihilism that our late capitalist hellscape has produced which leads to people livestreaming shootings while talking about meme magic)

this phenomenon is not new, and in fact the ACTUAL nazis exploited this sort of ambiguity. sartre even wrote about the 'bad faith' arguments of anti-semites thusly:

"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play.

They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past."

compare that to the way /pol/ users talk about the need to "hide their power level"

and to an actual quote from the NZ shooter's manifesto:

"Whilst we may use edgy humour and memes in the vanguard stage, and to attract a young audience, eventually we will need to show the reality of our thoughts and our more serious intents and wishes for the future. For now we appeal to the anger and black comedic nature of the present, but eventually we will need to show the warmth and genuine love we have for our people."

it's really no different from the way crypto-fascism has always worked

https://twitter.com/nathanTbernard/status/988764063659384833

https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/25712847277?lang=en
https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/695622179874967552?lang=en

people like richard spencer fucking love israel because they see it as a template for what needs to be done in america and europe (ie an ethnostate), and it's a place they can fantasize about sending all american jews to, something which my favorite political cartoonist eli valley has satirized a lot, for example:
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56171597e4b07d425091e0a3/t/585229fe37c58186144f4947/1481779721237/?format=2500w

as for this notion that the "moderate right" and the alt-right differ greatly on capitalism, I won't go too much into it now but I think it's a distinction without a difference; we are reaching certain points of no return when it comes to climate change, global economic inequality etc., and the choice will ultimately be either building a more equitable society or building more walls and shutting economic and climate refugees out. you can guess which side both the "moderate right" and the alt-right come down on.

so youre telling me that a group dedicated and open to acknowledging their belief in far far right ideology (nobody on pol is going to deny this) somehow represents the majority of people (99% of people do not, in fact, use imageboards) who enjoy humor at the expense of a group of clowns?

really a large part of the value in humor related to dark topics is to emasculate topic being discussed; youre making those who are legitimately hateful into the butt of a joke

you are walking down a very interesting path if you think that joking about a topic means that even a minisecule portion of the jokesters are somehow going to join hitler youth

also as an aside regarding the politicization of the whole "don't give the shooter attention/say his name/read his writing" argument, note which types of people it applies to

https://preview.redd.it/rzb32g3e3am21.png?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=6c16ed04a846fc62d8f510a4b8f082d1e06ba75a

@bloodeagle

i wouldnt say he entirely condemned E;R, he essentially said that if he had known the dude made nazi jokes beforehand that he wouldn't have recommended him, but he didnt denounce the ideology or really say that "if you think these jokes are fine, i suggest you leave immediately, because i am not for this" or something along those lines. pewdiepie was ignorant to the ideas being spread by the person he was praising, and remained ignorant throughout the "condemning" of said person, and this is what those far right fringe people want. what im trying to say essentially is that your ignorance is their bliss. i do know more on this topic than just headline reading, i was an avid watcher of E;R's videos until i noticed that almost every video had some humor i found to be waaay too harmful. pewdiepie notes that he has to be more careful when he looks at these people, which is absolutely right he really does have to he has way too many fans for him to fuck up and accidentally promote someone/something that may have some really harmful rhetoric, but he also needs to work on actually denouncing the rhetoric itself. remember, he has a past of doing some pretty fucked up shit (like the n word fiasco, when he did a fuckin nazi salute, and when he hired people to hold up a sign that said "Death to all Jews" or something like that [and pewdiepie has mentioned this himself, he has this past of fucking up badly])

essentially i just want the dude to call out that fringe group of fans that he has and just tell them that their ideology is inherently fucked and they arent allowed to brofist with him if theyre gunna be spreaders of hate, because if they remain, they can really indoctrinate those really young fans that he has.

Honestly this shitstain did an amazing job at sowing chaos among people with this. Not only did he manage to kill many people, but his reasoning for this is so meme ridden and obfuscated I don't think 85% of people can see past their knee jerk reactions to even get anywhere close to the truth of the matter. And that was 100% his goal, the PDP shit the Owens shit, half of the YouTubers listed and even the fact that he uses guns are all red herrings meant specifically to fuck with and divide people and groups.

if there were literally no context regarding someone like pewdiepie other than him saying the n word once, of course it would be ridiculous to bring him up. unfortunately that's not the case at all, because as previous people in this thread have said, he has played a part in tacitly making extremely far right "thinkers" socially acceptable, and inadvertently helped spread this sort of stuff.

compare an abridged list of pewdiepie's political twitter follows:
https://preview.redd.it/binovkw6a8m21.png?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=1821fbb9d7041f69d17b9c12f21630307d51ba86

with the favorite twitter accounts of the quebec shooter:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DbjnwcdV4AAL6aB.jpg

notice also how, for people like this guy, there doesn't seem to be much of a distinction between open white nationalists like richard spencer and people who would vociferously deny that label like ben shapiro, paul joseph watson, and stefan molyneux. this is the point: VERY few people actually read the daily stormer, or follow richard spencer, or post on /pol/. but then, the stuff they obsessively post about black crime or muslim rape gangs or whatever gets aggregated by breitbart or the daily caller, or discussed on fox news, or brought up by these "alt-light" figures, and it reaches a wider audience. most of them will never act on their beliefs beyond just voting republican and memeing online, but I really do believe it serves as a gateway drug to the harder shit like richard spencer. do you think all those /pol/ nazis just woke up one day and decided jews in the media were making interracial marriage look socially acceptable to prepare for white genocide? or did they gradually get groomed by the right wing online sphere until they were susceptible to buy into shit like that?

well first of all correlation does not imply causation, you cant say that pewdiepie and the shooter having the same self-admittedly non white supremacist figures followed means absolutely anything at all

secondly, id be interested in some kind of evidence as to your claim that he "doesnt seem to [make] much of a distinction" between those who are legitimate self-expressed white supremacists and memesters like ben shapiro. if this kind of proof exists id actually love to see it because it would lend some credit to what youre saying

thirdly, the demographics of imageboard users are either bored middle class kids who dont take any of the shit seriously beyond laughing at it because its edgy and then forgetting it or psychologically damaged people who probably grew up with negative or no parental influence, and were likely never exposed to proper explanations of the subjects they talk so much about or were actually groomed by people in real life to think that way

i take ire with the idea that the media seems to love to propagate that looking at content from anyone who has marginally dangerous views will brainwash you into somehow becoming apathetic towards it; remember that they need to make money too and they write what sells

Yep I’m still confused about everything even after reading this thread and a bunch of articles, honestly I’m probably going to wait until this does down a little because the knee jerk reactions are usually hastily drawn and usually incorrect. There’s also a lot of nuance probably.

Of course there’s also something that should be done about these types of things so I appreciate people who try to reason this out.

I've been avoiding engaging this thread for a while but, cmon.
Memesters do not get fox news election night specials. Memesters do not speak at prominent events. Even if he were "memeing", he is taken seriously. Shapiro is treated as the intellectual powerhouse of the right (which he isn't. Intellectual I mean, he's totally the powerhouse of the right as it stands rn).

Oh, and this "memer" advocated for ethnic cleansing in 2003. https://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2003/08/27/transfer-is-not-a-dirty-word-n976781

edit: i dont mean to say he is a white supremacist as that is the flavor of memester Melon was saying he was, but he is no memester. He is a serious commentator who says some seriously terrible things.

Fair point honestly, this one slipped my mind.

I would still uphold this distinction when considering the ultimate ends of Ben Shapiro and the general worldview found on 4chan/8chan. While perhaps Shapiro and many of these fringe right people would agree on the "problem of Muslims", Shapiro is coming from a "Israel/Jewish-minded position", while the people I am referring to by "far right" will heavily condemn Shapiro for being a "zionist", coupled with your smorgasbord of conspiracy theories associated with it. From what I have seen, much attention hasn't been given to Shapiro by these people, I have seen more "Jew rubbing hands big nose" memes shared making fun of him than praise given to him.

Yes, but the thing about Spencer is that he also gets condemned by people on far-right I am referring to; the people from the community of the mosque shooter don't take him, or any of the big alt-right figureheads, seriously anymore. There is a sort of vicious regress of schisms that frequently occur in these communities, and understandably it would be hard to keep track (and I also couldn't tell you who would be looked up to now). These people distrust anyone with a notable public image, and they would call them "sophist rhetoricians". For instance, you mention that Spencer "loves Israel" -- I'm very much willing to bet the consensus on this same 8chan imageboard is of the contrary.

I don't think it is exactly fair to have this sort of reduction, considering the ultimate ends willed by the people in these fringe right wing groups (ethnostate) and someone like Crowder or Shapiro (open to immigration, but within legal bounds).

I would be anticipating an upcoming video by PewDiePie to talk about this and hope for a solemn condemnation there, as he has already done on Twitter.

proposing a bloodless solution to an extremely complex and controversial topic is not quite "ethnic cleansing" but i do agree with your point. i definitely shouldnt have referred to shapiro as a memester and only did so because thats how i see him. still; my point stands that he really hasnt earned the label of "white supremacist" or "nazi" in any case

I was gonna write a big-ass post about ben shapiro but I think I've already wrote too many nerd essays for now so let me redirect y'all to the definitive article about him which I was gonna post but CaptainZidgel already did:
https://static.currentaffairs.org/2017/12/the-cool-kids-philosopher

Quite the opposite, there is actually very little nuance in this but he wants you to think there is a lot of super secret and spooky reasons so people get more divided and more scared of the other side. And it's working as well, the fact that people here are even debating Shapiro is proof of that. Attributing Shapiro to this shooting is like attributing violent videogames or goths to Columbine, you are barking up the wrong tree. Shapiro is a fucking moron sure, and the things he says are beyond retarded, but this dude, and people who commit terror acts like this are psychopaths pure and simple, the only difference here is he hijacked a political movement because he finds it funny and wants to see the world burn.

This is what right-wing Chan board culture does to the human brain. Ironically racist --> Actually racist

edit: It's also pretty terrifying that YouTube is just 4 autoplays away from CRINGEY Feminist gets OWNED Compilation #687 and then after that onto nothing but Sargon of Akkad and Stephan Molyneux videos and a Lauren Southern video about "The Great Replacement" where a lot of that rhetoric resides. It's an endemic.

discussing the tragedy and making sure those affected are remembered is important, and it's equally important we make sure this never happens again, but my post was in direct reference to mustard overlord posting an image of his 4chan posts which contained links to his crackhead manifestos, which should not be read by anyone ever

:(

people tend to joke about sensitive/scary topics to try and take the weight off of them. you don't really have control over whether a public place you are in gets shot up, or whether another country drops a bomb on you, but constantly living in fear of those things isn't a good way to cope either. i think it should be okay to joke about topics that pose danger to yourself because otherwise it's harder to mentally accept them and keep going. laughing at something makes it hurt less 100%. never punish or demonize people for making jokes. that doesn't solve anything.

t. someone who can still find humor in suicide jokes despite many people close to me taking their lives.

yo im just gonna say i dont watch pewdiepie but i went to his channel and looked at like 4 videos and i really didnt get a "racist white supremacist enabling" vibe from him. i dont think him dropping the n bomb on a stream a couple years ago really qualifies to be held as a beacon of the alt right. dont you think it could be kinda unfair for a group of idiots to flock to someone and then ruin that persons reputation? kinda unrelated but a while ago there was a huge spam from hackers on gta online who spammed subscribe to pewdiepie, does this make pewdiepie a champion of people who cheat in online video games too?

motherfucker wrote the name of the quebec city mosque shooter from 2017 on one of the guns.
disgusting.

he made a video where he paid some poor kids in india on Fiverr (which said kids are now banned from) to make a sign that said "death to all jews" on it and then uploaded footage of him watching the video and laughing very hard at it

pewdiepie definitely isnt a beacon of the alt right, but he is definitely becoming more and more of a mouthpiece for them, and this is mostly due to the jokes pewds made in the past. i mentioned this before but the paying of people to hold up signs that said "Death to Jews" along with doing the nazi salute, endorsing E;R, and saying the n word all in a way contributed to allowing the edgelords to feel comfortable around him because his jokes are indirectly stating that he is comfortable with being edgy without a hint of self-awareness of what he might be supporting. the edgelords see that, and they think its ok too, and this is how the alt right ropes them in, by lulling them into this false sense of security (through the use of edgy humor), finding a weakness within them (typically through showing them fringes of left wing people who tell them theyre bad and edgy humor is harmful, enraging the edgelord), then using that to teach them "brown people women and jews are bad, get rid of em" essentially.

it sucks that this happened to pewdiepie and i definitely know he isnt an alt right moron, hes just a youtuber whos tryna make a living off of entertaining others with his brand of humor, but hes gotta do something about being name dropped by someone like this

I was gonna downfrag this at first because i thought you were trolling, but he actually did wtf

i was talking about people who posted it on twitter, i saw h3h3 and ben shapiro do it

as an aside, this might be the single most depraved, tone-deaf response I've ever seen a politician give after a mass shooting (including trump):
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D1r0KX3X0AAWviI.jpg

You could've told me the last 3-4 paragraphs were part of the shooter's manifesto and I'dve believed you.