I’m just glad these people are directing their efforts towards things that don’t really matter, like deciding who attends furry meetups. History gives us all too many examples of how bad this “denounce others to prove your own loyalty” dynamic can get when applied to matters of consequence.
... I know I shouldn't be so reductive about something you so clearly put a lot of work into, Mr. Woodgrains, but I honestly can't help but feel that the entire thing can be summed up as "Whale cancer." As horrific as it all is, it's also entirely predictable -- a group of people that positively *savor* getting to punch Nazis in the face, will inevitably savor punching each other in the face. If you grant yourself moral license to do anything you want (cause it's *moral*, you see), you inevitably turn into a terrible person. And if you get promoted for attacking others, inevitably your society turns into a self-devouring clusterf*ck of Klingon Promotion (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KlingonPromotion).
... at the very least, it fits into the vague notion I have that "All the worst disagreements in the world are caused by people trying to agree with each other. That's when things get *really* ugly."
"I’m not much for tabloid trash and messy fight videos, I confess, so normally this is the sort of event I’d briefly catch wind of on social media before grimacing a bit and wondering at what I’m doing with my life."
At least you can justify it as a part of your job.
I have no such justifications for being completely engrossed in internet drama. I simply find it entertaining.
Either way, thanks for writing this. It's a great story and you were the perfect person to dig into it.
I think that the only way to disincentivize this kind of thing from happening is to harm people who judge others without knowing all the facts. The reason people participate in this kind of tribalist behavior is because they don't have any skin in the game, and when you make it clear that judging somebody else incorrectly will result in a very harsh punishment for THEM, they'll take the time to look deeper and investigate more thoroughly before making (or believing) false accusations.
As someone also smeared by O'Furr as an alleged "fascist", I would have sued him myself long ago except that he's got nothing to sue for and has a history of doing things like assaulting his own roommate for accepting the notices of service he himself actively tries to dodge. He's literally not worth the hassle.
While I try to be precise with words and don't go around trying to attribute to people positions they don't actually hold, my understanding is that you've picked a lot of fights over the decades and can hardly be surprised that people you were openly disgusted by (particularly during your time with the Burned Furs back in the day) and whose politics you passionately oppose have few kind things to say about you. Those ideological battles can and should typically be fought in the court of public opinion, not in the courtroom.
There's some risk, in writing an article where I point out very real flaws within progressive subcultures and with controversy-baiting writers like O'Furr, that everyone who has grievances with them will look at me and assume they are in good company. I think it's worth dispelling that. I know very little about you beyond a quick scan of your public-facing writing, but what little I've seen makes you look like a conservative polemicist with a long history of returning ugliness for ugliness, calling people "groomer," for example, as readily as O'Furr calls people "fascist."
Given your approach, I don't think liberals are wrong to distrust you, and while I feel emphatically that the proper approach to that sort of disagreement is nonviolent and hope to treat people courteously as a rule, I think it's worth emphasizing that I am no more on your side, such as it is, than I am on O'Furr's. I'm glad you enjoyed my article, but "people don't deserve to be attacked for their beliefs and shouldn't be smeared publicly as Nazis on the basis of thin evidence" should not be construed to mean I align with your own causes or approach.
This goes off the rails in many places, for example, here:
"I searched within the group, first checking whether any active members had heard of Skaard before the beach incident — they hadn’t — then searching the near-million messages in their chat history for any mention of Skaard or Renn, or messages from either. As far as I can tell, neither Skaard nor Renn ever posted anything to the group, or were mentioned, in the entire chat history. Moreover, the reaction within their chat server to the beach confrontation itself showed no signs that anyone viewed the fracas as an assault on one of their own, or that anyone recognized the victims.
People don’t trust the Furry Raiders, of course, but they have much more motive to falsely claim Skaard than to falsely disown him: a member of your group being assaulted gives you the opportunity to paint yourself in a sympathetic light to outsiders."
__
An astute watcher would know better context for this.
In 2017, coinciding with Skaar joining the Furry Raiders, not long after vocally doing exactly what they do with his indefensible nazi fursona, the alt-right peaked with the Unite The Right hate rally in Charlottesville. It was organized in a bunch of Discord servers.
Guess who else was doing that? the altfurries and Furry Raiders.
In early 2018, in response to literal terrorism using their platform, Discord did a blanket sweep of all those servers.
Including the altfurries and Furry Raiders.
Foxler did not tell you this and Discord records were not searched because their offending activity got them deleted.
Guess what they did when it came out that altfurries were literally admins in Richard Spencer's alt-right server?
They made a group effort to deny they knew who those altfurries were. To name one Richard Spencer admin, Nathan Gate, furry co-founder of the altfurry Discord.
Why else would Furry Raiders deny knowing these people besides hiding something? First, they aren't know for personal loyalty to anyone, they constantly fight each other. Second, they enforce extreme loyalty to the group and if someone isn't vocally defending them then that person goes down the memory hole. They do that when their members go to jail too.
The point being that describing their connection based on deception about records, speculating motives, and uncritically repeating what they say is stupid. Quoting them at all for any reason is loaded at least.
Ever see nazi-furries post ironic rainbow swastikas, claim that they're gay so they can't possibly be nazis, etc? Posting Renn's shirt as an example of how there can't possibly be anything dishonest there smells credulous.
They may not be very devoted to shitty ideology, but wearing that shirt to bypass a ban smells like passive-aggression. There's a lot of coping and swerving around the inconvenient history of two people who were banned and just couldn't stop pushing for years.
No is a complete sentence.
You don't actually have to both-sides on behalf of people who refuse to understand the word No.
One more note on coping and swerving: "defending others from accusations of extremism only provides further evidence that Skaard is a Nazi" - the accusations in the link are evidence of people being outed from an actual terrorist forum so what are you even doing? You also repeat a claim that some were silently edited out based on tweets against it, but that doesn't match the contents, ie, the tweet you featured is lying. Speaking of credulously believing less than credible people while swerving around actual evidence of neo-nazism.
This whole thing stinks of elevated whataboutism couched in feigned concern. Bandaging the poor foot of a nuisance knocker who stuck it in the door, while frowning about mean people who put up signs to stay away and then slammed it.
Thanks for the response! I confess I'm a bit baffled by some of your critiques, including that I didn't include a condemnation of an event occurring a month after the article topic loosely connected to someone who has no connection whatsoever to this story, but it's certainly an enlightening comment. I'm also intrigued by your stated desire for "better context" for a claim about lack of participation in a Telegram server, including the assertion that we should distrust testimony of all involved and all available objective evidence in favor of your own suspicion that the proof you're looking for would reside somewhere in deleted messages not shared by any accusers, based in part on an event featuring nobody involved in or mentioned in this story, occurring a year before any record emerges even accusing Skaard of anything to do with the Furry Raiders.
I suppose anything's possible, but my role is to scour the record for the clearest story supported by the evidence, not conjecture related to the events in question with only the most tenuous connections.
Similarly, I'm intrigued by your claim that interviewing people connected to a story is "loaded" when the people in question are unpleasant, or that quoting them while making it clear that people don't trust them, giving clear reason people don't trust them, and providing what objective independent confirmation I can should be considered "uncritically repeating what they say." Yours is a fascinating standard, but not, I confess, one I find compelling.
I'm also a bit surprised by your comparison between a gay democratic socialist with a long history of public opposition to the right wing and "nazi-furries post[ing] ironic rainbow swastikas." I agree that trusting the shirt in isolation would be credulous, particularly if people had provided evidence of hypocrisy across the rest of his commentary, which is why I didn't do that. More, I don't want you to be under the illusion that I hold "Bernie Sanders democratic socialist" and "good" to be synonyms. I'm not particularly fond of Sanders or socialism and find much of Renn's social media posting to be over-the-top in its paranoia, but I think it's worth working to describe people and their politics as they actually are.
Your assertion that "no is a complete sentence" would hold rather more weight if Renn and Skaard had constantly worked to go where they were not wanted while others let them be, but I do think fuller context makes it fall apart in ways that should be apparent to less motivated parties. "Leave us alone" while they pestered people over years would be sympathetic, but "stop hosting your events while we smear you as a Nazi to anyone you try to contact who has even the slightest connection to us" is, well, decidedly less so. I think it would have been much wiser of the two of them to accept those two events as a lost cause despite their good memories of attending the previous year before the admin switch-up, but imprudence is hardly a sound justification for assault.
Finally, I'm confused by your assertion that the Tweet I featured is lying about a section having been edited out of Dogpatch's article because—you'll have to clarify here, the current article doesn't contain it? I'm not sure whether you're contesting the idea that Crassus was included in the article in the first place, the idea that he was edited out, or the idea that the edit was silent and without apology for including him, but whichever it is, your assertion strikes me as a bit confused. I think the article in question combined accurate descriptions of some political extremism from some people with strained and conspiratorial connection-drawing to implicate others, and find the former reasonable and the latter irresponsible. Given your commentary in response to my article, I confess I'm not surprised you would find the latter part more compelling than I do.
Anyway, my firm line against interpersonal violence of this sort hasn't failed me yet, and I find your own defense of that violence reprehensible and hypocritical. Take care.
Fantastic article.
I’m just glad these people are directing their efforts towards things that don’t really matter, like deciding who attends furry meetups. History gives us all too many examples of how bad this “denounce others to prove your own loyalty” dynamic can get when applied to matters of consequence.
You covered this with the depth of Matt Taibbi, getting to understand and present all sides by digging below the surface.
And at the same time, it's the stupidest, most petty and immature story I've read about in a while.
Thanks for the work and the good read.
... I know I shouldn't be so reductive about something you so clearly put a lot of work into, Mr. Woodgrains, but I honestly can't help but feel that the entire thing can be summed up as "Whale cancer." As horrific as it all is, it's also entirely predictable -- a group of people that positively *savor* getting to punch Nazis in the face, will inevitably savor punching each other in the face. If you grant yourself moral license to do anything you want (cause it's *moral*, you see), you inevitably turn into a terrible person. And if you get promoted for attacking others, inevitably your society turns into a self-devouring clusterf*ck of Klingon Promotion (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KlingonPromotion).
... at the very least, it fits into the vague notion I have that "All the worst disagreements in the world are caused by people trying to agree with each other. That's when things get *really* ugly."
Brilliant work. Small-scale story with big-scale insight. We need a lot more thinkers like you in this world. Bravo!
"I’m not much for tabloid trash and messy fight videos, I confess, so normally this is the sort of event I’d briefly catch wind of on social media before grimacing a bit and wondering at what I’m doing with my life."
At least you can justify it as a part of your job.
I have no such justifications for being completely engrossed in internet drama. I simply find it entertaining.
Either way, thanks for writing this. It's a great story and you were the perfect person to dig into it.
Yes. The fandom is horrible.
Skibidi Toilet has a much more vibrant and positive community.
#NotAllLiberals
I think that the only way to disincentivize this kind of thing from happening is to harm people who judge others without knowing all the facts. The reason people participate in this kind of tribalist behavior is because they don't have any skin in the game, and when you make it clear that judging somebody else incorrectly will result in a very harsh punishment for THEM, they'll take the time to look deeper and investigate more thoroughly before making (or believing) false accusations.
As someone also smeared by O'Furr as an alleged "fascist", I would have sued him myself long ago except that he's got nothing to sue for and has a history of doing things like assaulting his own roommate for accepting the notices of service he himself actively tries to dodge. He's literally not worth the hassle.
While I try to be precise with words and don't go around trying to attribute to people positions they don't actually hold, my understanding is that you've picked a lot of fights over the decades and can hardly be surprised that people you were openly disgusted by (particularly during your time with the Burned Furs back in the day) and whose politics you passionately oppose have few kind things to say about you. Those ideological battles can and should typically be fought in the court of public opinion, not in the courtroom.
There's some risk, in writing an article where I point out very real flaws within progressive subcultures and with controversy-baiting writers like O'Furr, that everyone who has grievances with them will look at me and assume they are in good company. I think it's worth dispelling that. I know very little about you beyond a quick scan of your public-facing writing, but what little I've seen makes you look like a conservative polemicist with a long history of returning ugliness for ugliness, calling people "groomer," for example, as readily as O'Furr calls people "fascist."
Given your approach, I don't think liberals are wrong to distrust you, and while I feel emphatically that the proper approach to that sort of disagreement is nonviolent and hope to treat people courteously as a rule, I think it's worth emphasizing that I am no more on your side, such as it is, than I am on O'Furr's. I'm glad you enjoyed my article, but "people don't deserve to be attacked for their beliefs and shouldn't be smeared publicly as Nazis on the basis of thin evidence" should not be construed to mean I align with your own causes or approach.
calling someone a groomer is kind of different, but yeah, f*ck all of that.
In either case, it's the work of an oppressive hegemonic hive mind.
This goes off the rails in many places, for example, here:
"I searched within the group, first checking whether any active members had heard of Skaard before the beach incident — they hadn’t — then searching the near-million messages in their chat history for any mention of Skaard or Renn, or messages from either. As far as I can tell, neither Skaard nor Renn ever posted anything to the group, or were mentioned, in the entire chat history. Moreover, the reaction within their chat server to the beach confrontation itself showed no signs that anyone viewed the fracas as an assault on one of their own, or that anyone recognized the victims.
People don’t trust the Furry Raiders, of course, but they have much more motive to falsely claim Skaard than to falsely disown him: a member of your group being assaulted gives you the opportunity to paint yourself in a sympathetic light to outsiders."
__
An astute watcher would know better context for this.
In 2017, coinciding with Skaar joining the Furry Raiders, not long after vocally doing exactly what they do with his indefensible nazi fursona, the alt-right peaked with the Unite The Right hate rally in Charlottesville. It was organized in a bunch of Discord servers.
Guess who else was doing that? the altfurries and Furry Raiders.
In early 2018, in response to literal terrorism using their platform, Discord did a blanket sweep of all those servers.
Including the altfurries and Furry Raiders.
Foxler did not tell you this and Discord records were not searched because their offending activity got them deleted.
Guess what they did when it came out that altfurries were literally admins in Richard Spencer's alt-right server?
They made a group effort to deny they knew who those altfurries were. To name one Richard Spencer admin, Nathan Gate, furry co-founder of the altfurry Discord.
Why else would Furry Raiders deny knowing these people besides hiding something? First, they aren't know for personal loyalty to anyone, they constantly fight each other. Second, they enforce extreme loyalty to the group and if someone isn't vocally defending them then that person goes down the memory hole. They do that when their members go to jail too.
The point being that describing their connection based on deception about records, speculating motives, and uncritically repeating what they say is stupid. Quoting them at all for any reason is loaded at least.
Ever see nazi-furries post ironic rainbow swastikas, claim that they're gay so they can't possibly be nazis, etc? Posting Renn's shirt as an example of how there can't possibly be anything dishonest there smells credulous.
They may not be very devoted to shitty ideology, but wearing that shirt to bypass a ban smells like passive-aggression. There's a lot of coping and swerving around the inconvenient history of two people who were banned and just couldn't stop pushing for years.
No is a complete sentence.
You don't actually have to both-sides on behalf of people who refuse to understand the word No.
One more note on coping and swerving: "defending others from accusations of extremism only provides further evidence that Skaard is a Nazi" - the accusations in the link are evidence of people being outed from an actual terrorist forum so what are you even doing? You also repeat a claim that some were silently edited out based on tweets against it, but that doesn't match the contents, ie, the tweet you featured is lying. Speaking of credulously believing less than credible people while swerving around actual evidence of neo-nazism.
Noticeably absent: any effort at all towards that while events are having to handle terror threats always from one direction. Nathan Gate was one of the people documented behind them. https://www.mephitfurmeet.org/2023/09/events-on-sunday-september-3rd-2023/
This whole thing stinks of elevated whataboutism couched in feigned concern. Bandaging the poor foot of a nuisance knocker who stuck it in the door, while frowning about mean people who put up signs to stay away and then slammed it.
Thanks for the response! I confess I'm a bit baffled by some of your critiques, including that I didn't include a condemnation of an event occurring a month after the article topic loosely connected to someone who has no connection whatsoever to this story, but it's certainly an enlightening comment. I'm also intrigued by your stated desire for "better context" for a claim about lack of participation in a Telegram server, including the assertion that we should distrust testimony of all involved and all available objective evidence in favor of your own suspicion that the proof you're looking for would reside somewhere in deleted messages not shared by any accusers, based in part on an event featuring nobody involved in or mentioned in this story, occurring a year before any record emerges even accusing Skaard of anything to do with the Furry Raiders.
I suppose anything's possible, but my role is to scour the record for the clearest story supported by the evidence, not conjecture related to the events in question with only the most tenuous connections.
Similarly, I'm intrigued by your claim that interviewing people connected to a story is "loaded" when the people in question are unpleasant, or that quoting them while making it clear that people don't trust them, giving clear reason people don't trust them, and providing what objective independent confirmation I can should be considered "uncritically repeating what they say." Yours is a fascinating standard, but not, I confess, one I find compelling.
I'm also a bit surprised by your comparison between a gay democratic socialist with a long history of public opposition to the right wing and "nazi-furries post[ing] ironic rainbow swastikas." I agree that trusting the shirt in isolation would be credulous, particularly if people had provided evidence of hypocrisy across the rest of his commentary, which is why I didn't do that. More, I don't want you to be under the illusion that I hold "Bernie Sanders democratic socialist" and "good" to be synonyms. I'm not particularly fond of Sanders or socialism and find much of Renn's social media posting to be over-the-top in its paranoia, but I think it's worth working to describe people and their politics as they actually are.
Your assertion that "no is a complete sentence" would hold rather more weight if Renn and Skaard had constantly worked to go where they were not wanted while others let them be, but I do think fuller context makes it fall apart in ways that should be apparent to less motivated parties. "Leave us alone" while they pestered people over years would be sympathetic, but "stop hosting your events while we smear you as a Nazi to anyone you try to contact who has even the slightest connection to us" is, well, decidedly less so. I think it would have been much wiser of the two of them to accept those two events as a lost cause despite their good memories of attending the previous year before the admin switch-up, but imprudence is hardly a sound justification for assault.
Finally, I'm confused by your assertion that the Tweet I featured is lying about a section having been edited out of Dogpatch's article because—you'll have to clarify here, the current article doesn't contain it? I'm not sure whether you're contesting the idea that Crassus was included in the article in the first place, the idea that he was edited out, or the idea that the edit was silent and without apology for including him, but whichever it is, your assertion strikes me as a bit confused. I think the article in question combined accurate descriptions of some political extremism from some people with strained and conspiratorial connection-drawing to implicate others, and find the former reasonable and the latter irresponsible. Given your commentary in response to my article, I confess I'm not surprised you would find the latter part more compelling than I do.
Anyway, my firm line against interpersonal violence of this sort hasn't failed me yet, and I find your own defense of that violence reprehensible and hypocritical. Take care.
...huh. I'm not at all sure why you felt the need to use a burner to comment on my article, Patch, but thanks for reading!