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Comment by mindcandy | Hacker News Reader

You are aware that mentioning the god Kek is a post-hoc explanation, right? People care about kek-themed stuff because of World of Warcraft. The tie-in to Egyptian mythology was a convenient coincidence.

Regardless, you might not be a hate filled racist. But, a whole lot of hate filled racists use the Kekistan flag as a thinly-veiled symbol of hate filled racism. So, be aware: that's the message conveyed to the world at large when it is shown. Not Egyptian mythology.

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You say convenient, I would say significant. 2016 had an unusually paranormal feel to a lot of people, complete with an actual rain of frogs (Pepe wasn't the only frog meme that year as you might recall). The 'meme magic' group in particular was fascinating to me, as it seemed like an evolution of the '80s 'chaos magic' group which I also find fascinating. Only this time, there was actually a relationship with higher powers. That is where the vitality of the movement was when I encountered it, and that is what I found interesting enough to look into further.

I'm disappointed as hell that a secularist wanker like Carl Benjamin successfully co-opted the movement for crass political purposes. But I'm also annoyed that if I tried to re-appropriate the same symbology for the optimistic, metaphysics-exploring group of pranksters that meme'd it to relevance, I'd get called a bigot for associating with the wrong people.

Any group is defined by its lowest common denominators, which is why I and so many people I respect try to seek out smaller subcultures. The trouble I'm seeing is that when a large group like the nationalist right wants to co-opt a smaller but more effective movement, the larger group's rivals refuse to acknowledge any distinction between the different subcomponents, even if those subcomponents disagree on everything that's objectionable about the larger group to begin with. It's bad for the interesting subcultures and it's bad tactics for the larger ones to unite rather than divide their opposition.

Now I'd best go take my own advice and send happy thoughts to those members of the globalist left who like to garden.

Interesting observation. Globalism includes ideas, as small interesting ideas grow the established more powerful and exploitive ideas can absorb the meme momentum then reassociate the imagery and ideas as their own.

It's a strange turn of events, especially when you consider the long-standing ties between chaos magick culture and strongly left spheres, like the Beat movement, cacophony society, and industrial subculture. Of course the early internet had much of this anarchic influence and hacker culture has been colored by anti-establishment, disruptive and radically progressive ideas, in particular radical free speech. "You can't stop the signal". This is a big part of the background early 4chan spawned from.

Now it's fascinating to see the alt-right and fascist-lite communities, fundametally authority-based philosophies, try to co-opt ideas like chaos and "meme magick".

On one hand, it seems what started as a joke/critique of fascist ideology steeped i heavy irony, has moved on while being picked up unironically. On the other hand, it's getting ever harder to tell the difference between genuine beliefs and those parodying them, once obvious satire has gotten boring, and the only way to get a rise is to make a more convincing charicature of the target.

This tactic of appropriation for political ends is sometimes referred to as entryism, and while it's not confined to any one ideology I think the right is somewhat better at it because it's consonant with the idea of machtpolitik and gaining territory by seizure. Given the difficulty and costs involved in contesting physical territory, securing virtual territory (from dominating a forum to 'owning' a particular word or phrase) is a necessary precursor to control of a larger battle space.

>So, be aware: that's the message conveyed to the world at large when it is shown.

This has gotten completely insane.

If anyone has followed the Tesla/TESLAQ saga, at one point people on Twitter were decorating their avatars with clowns, mocking Elon. Well it turns out, according to the crazy left, that clowns are symbols for Nazism. Did you know that? I didn't. Tesla fans were literally accusing Tesla doubters of being White Supremacists, because clowns.

It's the easiest way to discredit literally any idea or any person. Just mention Nazi Germany or Hitler or SS or anything like that, and you don't need any arguments or anything else afterwards.

Note that the person doesn't even have to agree with the politics of National-Socialist Germany or anything close it.

Cause now the one attacked has the burden of proof, otherwise s/he'll forever be known as Nazi.

In a nutshell, that's it.

>at one point people on Twitter

Here's your problem. You're following immature overexcited crazies on twitter and trying to extrapolate to "the world at large".

>Well it turns out, according to the crazy left, that clowns are symbols for Nazism.

Context matters. Is the "ok hand" gesture a symbol of white supremacy? Plainly not. But when the Christchurch shooter flashed it in court to the cameras, was it then a symbol of white supremacy? Of course it was. Such nuance is lost on some people (or rather it is not lost, and they know full well what they're meaning but fall back on that lame excuse as a cowardly cover).

>Tesla fans

>Tesla doubters

What is this immature, playground-level shit?

>> Tesla fans

>> Tesla doubters

> What is this immature, playground-level shit?

Twitter.

>Here's your problem. You're following immature overexcited crazies on twitter and trying to extrapolate to "the world at large".

The same arguments appear on these very forums. Of course, you're probably above it.

>Such nuance is lost on some people

Once again, the enlightened ones explaining it to us deplorables. I think the nuance is lost on you: the symbol has become an ironic joke for these people.

>What is this immature, playground-level shit?

Calling people fans and skeptics of a business is "playground-level shit"? Boy, life must be tough when you're intellectually superior to everyone around you.

Have you got some sort of inferiority complex? Your three replies are all: "what, you think you're better than me?" No, I don't, and I didn't imply that. What's your point?

I don't even know how to reply to you... You didn't address any of my points, and tried to paint my reply as claiming I'm superior to you.

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