[Thread] Youtube link, discussion on cryptofascism
The scary thing about fascism is that is has an uncanny ability to hide amongst reasonable arguments. Take this video, for example :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU6CuSMzNus
This is cryptofascist propaganda. It primes you, the unwitting viewer, by touching upon a current frustration with the way things are today as far as online communication is concerned. And those are legitimate concerns, don't get me wrong, corporate monopolies controlling the discourse, spying on you for profit and political status quo maintenance are ALL things we should be fighting.
re: [Thread] Youtube link, discussion on cryptofascism
However, things start to go wrong, when you realize that a lot of the voices he's been amplifying are the voices of popular Youtubers, a lot of whom are part of the cryptofascist skeptic community. Then, there's the reminiscing of the old bygone era of the internet, with the implicit desire to enact a palingenesis of the online culture circa 2007. Calling it the "golden age" of the internet.
Here's the truth, there are no golden ages of the internet, every era has its own set of issues and problems, and I can tell you that 13 years ago, the internet was a toxic cesspit of neoliberalism, where online american jingoism started becoming popular, not to mention all the normalized homophobia, transphobia, misogyny and ableism running rampant.
re: [Thread] Youtube link, discussion on cryptofascism
There are small islands of pleasant communities in that era that people, like myself, who have social issues due to being autistic, trans , pan, ace and otherkin, clung onto for comfort in a world that was, at the time, quite actively hostile to ourselves.
In order to survive outside of our spaces, we had to hide our queerness, and are often made just as toxic as our oppressors and to attack our own after having been gaslit by populist arguments. And the spaces we called our own? They often got invaded and taken down by lawless ugly reactionaries who live to cause pain in the most vulnerable people.
re: [Thread] Youtube link, discussion on cryptofascism
In this video, he makes no mention of these trolls. or the fact that a lot of the times, making us lash out in retaliation, or making us commit suicide had become a sport for them during that period. This is further bolstered by the fact that he has made absolutely no mention of the rise of neofascism, and the alt-right pipeline, and has in fact featured PewDiePie in a positive light.
It should be mentioned, that this was the very era of the internet where even being featured on Encyclopedia Dramatica is a death sentence for your career. Yes, a transphobic, psychophobic, ableist, and homophobic wiki clone run by black hat hackers, convicted pedophiles and felons held this much power over queer people during that era.
re: [Thread] Youtube link, discussion on cryptofascism
It gets even worse when in the later parts of the video, you start to see where he was going with this. He's shown you the problem, he's made you mad by making victims of people who made the mistake of putting all their eggs in one basket, and...
...made scapegoats out of us, the very queer people who suffered the most during the supposed "Golden Age" of the internet. He pointed the finger at cancel culture, the very reason why the toxicity, that had been normalized and festering for so long, is finally being questioned and excised from online communities.
And of course, he actively dismisses articles, most of which are legitimate and backed by data, that talks about the rise of online racist, fascist movements like Gamergate, the AltRight, amd Alt Furry, etc, and the violence associated with it, because in his eyes, they're just sensationalism.
re: [Thread] Youtube link, discussion on cryptofascism
The rest of the video is just neoliberal chud-ish fluff that waxes poetic about how people were more creative in the past and how it's good that monetization wasn't a thing back then.
(Read : "It's great that the only people who can be creative online are those who can afford it, and that the queer people who need online monetization of their work the most can't have that.")
re: [Thread] Youtube link, discussion on cryptofascism
What makes this far more terrifying than any old white potato fascist screaming about coloured or trans people is that this has the potential to recruit people, who otherwise show no signs of explicit fascist beliefs, into the alt right pipeline. And if you don't already know what to look for, chances are, with your guard down, and with the friendly sounding voice of the narrator, you would have already been suckered into the overarching narrative this video is trying to paint for you.
This video is quite literally, the start of the Alt-Right pipeline on YouTube. Stay vigilant and inform your friends!
re: [Thread] Youtube link, discussion on cryptofascism
He lumps the queer folks writing about toxicity and how to fight them, the queer folks actively fighting neofascism in social media, with the corporate takeover in those same spaces. This is a dehumanization tactic, since it equates us with corporations, who everyone doesn't see as human, making it easy to demonize us.
Then he draws a line in the sand, by giving us and the corporations the label of "them" and the unwitting viewer the label of "You" and uses a very silver-tongued approach in doing so. Quite literally building an "Us vs them" narrative in the process, and priming his viewers to be hostile to queer folk.