kamikadse161

2023-09-08 22:05:37

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Part III (Kekistan)

(this is part of a series, linked together there: rant.li/kamikadse161/online-fa…)

Content Warning for all kinds of fascist symbols, and fascist bigotry like explicit antisemitism, racism, misogyny, glorification of violence and so on in the provided examples

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(thread)

This is part 3 of a thread on the coded language and symbols used by nazis and especially alt-right nazis online to get away with being nazis and peddling violent white supremacism right under our noses.

You can find the first and second portions of this thread here— the first part focuses more on classically nazi-specific stuff, the second portion is more about the alt-right. (rant.li/kamikadse161/part-ii-h…)

Today, if I can hold my nose long enough, I'm going to try and plow through some more alt-right stuff, a little ethnonationalism, and some miscellaneous grab bag white supremacist sewage.

Picking up where we left off, let's start with Kekistan, the fictional alt-right country beloved by white supremacist trolls.

This is the Kekistani flag, complete with the 4chan clover logo in its upper-left corner.

The first thing to know about the Kek flag is that it is explicitly modeled on the original Nazi flag. It's not exactly hard to see the similarities.

Kekistan is closely linked to Pepe the Frog, a crypto-nazi favorite (crypto-nazis = nazis who won't outright admit to being nazis).

“Kek” is an old gamer version of “lol.” Part of the, ahem, rich mythology of Kekistan is its roots in the ancient worship of a frog god named Kek.

It's also probably not a coincidence that “Kek” sounds disconceringly like “k*ke.”

Kekistan trolling is peak alt-right disingenuous irony— it's explicitly grounded in nazi imagery, but crypto-nazis play it off like it's an elaborate troll of SJWs.

Since we're talking about fake nations, we might as well dip into the wastepond of online European “ethnonationalists.”

One favorite symbol for these Euro-nazis is Greco-Roman statuary, a la the old flyer/sticker campaigns by Identity Evropa (now American Identity Movement).

For obvious reasons, this kind of symbolism is extremely popular with European nazis, although American nazis will use it, too.

I focus mostly on American violent white supremacism, so this is just broad strokes here, but this sort of European-style crypto-nazism seems very strongly associated with the far right ethno-nationalist “Identitarianism” sweeping Europe right now.

One very popular phrase among these Euro-nazis is “Great Replacement.” It's a conspiracy theory about a plot to replace the “indigenous” European population with black and brown (and especially Muslim) immigrants, a plot supposedly concocted by the Jews.

“Great Replacement” conspiracy theory is pretty much interchangeable with the American “white genocide” conspiracy theory concocted by nazi felon David Lane, which posits that the Jews are conspiring to destroy white America through immigration, miscegnation, and racial violence.

When you see violent white supremacists like Richard Spencer and the Charlottesville tiki torch nazis chanting “Jews will not replace us” (or the crypto-nazi “you will not replace us”), they're referencing nazi Great Replacement/white genocide conspiracy theory.

After antifascists leaked Identity Evropa's chats showing them to be actual literal nazis, they steered away from Euro-nazi symbolism and rebranded as wholesome American nazis under AmIM.

They still keep “Identitarianism” in their principles, though, which is a dead giveaway.

American Identity Movement still only accepts whites and explicitly talks about white rights and white genocide, but that isn't enough for the hardcore 8chan nazis who reject crypto-nazism as “optics cucking”— betraying white supremacy by playing to mainstream sensibilities.

These hardcore nazis reserve even more scorn for the violent white supremacist Proud Boys, who espouse “western chauvinism,” meaning if you're willing to champion “white culture” and say super-racist shit they'll let you in, even if you're brown or black.

The hardcore nazis will call white supremacists like Proud Boys, AmIM, and MAGA voters “civnats,” short for civic nationalists. It's a mocking term for those who focus on the supposed superiority of white culture rather than outright declaring the supremacy of white blood.

(The “civnat” nazis usually respond to the nickname by calling the “fuck optics” nazis “wignats,” as I described earlier.)

While we're on the topic of white blood “nationalism,” let's detour for a second into the land of dairy.

Remember a while back when nazis made drinking/bathing themselves in milk sort of the white supremacist version of the ice bucket challenge?

That's rooted in blood nazism.

The whole milk thing comes out of a bizarro chan theory that the ability to digest lactose (which most folks of European descent have, and which a lot of non-whites don't possess) is somehow proof of genetic superiority.

So, nazis performatively drink milk, now.

And while we're on the topic of ethno-nationalism, another word nazis have taken (proving again the Snyder Rule of the Internet: nazis ruin everything) is “fren,” a cute internet term for “friend” that they've backcroymed to stand for “far right ethno-nationalist.”

“Frens” are “cozy” with each other.

Fascists do love to hang with their frens.

In fact, the word “fascist” comes from the word “fasces,” meaning a sticks bundled together into one big stick that's harder to break, representing a united military front.

Fasces are a popular symbol for violent white supremacists, and were on display in Charlottesville on the shields of members of violent hate gang Vanguard America.

The man who murdered Heather Heyer with his car in Charlottesville (below) was photographed holding such a shield.

Ben Franklin's “Join or Die” snake is another popular symbol for white supremacist unity. In the Charlottesville poster below, you can see various white supremacist org logos in the different body pieces.

It's also very popular with 3%er militia extremists.

3%ers (or III%ers, or threepers) are a militia group in the far right Patriot Movement. Their name is a reference to the supposed 3% of American colonists that supposedly took up the arms against the British.

They're also very fond of “Molon Labe” and Punisher skull imagery.

The violent brown shirt white supremacist Proud Boys have a whole aesthetic of their own: Ed Harvey-esque lettering, a cock logo (pointing West, for “western chauvinism”), black-yellow Fred Perry shirts (a reference to British skinhead wars), the Fred Perry laurel symbol.

Proud boys love making cereal references, an allusion to their practice of jumping in members as they recite cereal brand names.

They have some cute sayings, too: “Proud of your boy” (#pyob), “west is best,” “uhuru” (an ironically-appropriated African nationalist slogan).

Proud boys also love their disingenuously ironic white power “ok” signs, which... well, I'll save that for the next installment in this thread series, where I'll get into white supremacist board culture and “memetic warfare.”

/thread for now!

Next segment of this ongoing thread starts here, focusing on chan culture (sorry, got ahead of myself promising memetic warfare— that'll be the following segment, scout's honor)