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Jeff's avatar

"so the fascist subject strives to become something, literally some thing—part of a mob, a serious participant of a political movement, a devotee of a secret religion, an invincible, perfectly masculine warrior, a perfectly feminine woman, a member of a race or gender or historical civilization with certain immutable, permanent qualities, or the exponent of some kind of eternal, vital force"

It remains the case that I think Gamergate was a major--perhaps *the* major--inflection point for the modern right. I was one of the people who took the KYE guys to task for going easy on Hochman, and part of that is because I saw right through his act. And that's not because I'm particularly insightful, but rather because his act is so very familiar; anyone who's been very online for a decade or two knows exactly the type of guy he is. It wouldn't shock me at all to discover that a teenage Hochman spent most afternoons furiously posting to /r/kotakuinaction.

There's something grimly amusing about the fact that the big moment for the conservative movement was a misogynist backlash against women in video gaming cloaked by concern about ethics in games journalism, but that's where we are I guess.

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Teucrian's avatar

There is maybe an interesting vein to mine in the distinction between conservative thinkers like Buckley and Hochman who simply seem incapable of contemplating themselves or their own capacity to do evil, with the ones like Dreher and Hanania who look deeply into their own navels before coming to the conclusion that certain evils must be done and are, in fact, good actually.

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