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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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Just gotta say, the comment histories of the accounts in that inrange thread are something else. I still have no idea what the drama is about, but at least it's easy to see what side the literal trans maoists are on. And wow they're going mask off these days.

Edit: wow, Karl did videos with one of the murderers in the CHAZ militia, that's way worse than I was expecting. And all the info was collected by kiwifarms, which once again explains why this crowd is so adamant about shutting them down.

They're turning on gun jesus too. May Satan help them, because God obviously won't.

Edit: that arfcom thread is amazing. If I was more into guns it would be a "finding my people" moment.

wow, Karl did videos with one of the murderers in the CHAZ militia, that's way worse than I was expecting.

Are you repeating a statement from the ARFCOM thread/other socials or is that your assessment? Genuinely curious.

I ask because the escalation of rhetoric throughout this ordeal has been really bothering me. The first one that stuck out at me was how Karl and all of his supporters are now "groomers." It's easy to see how his detractors arrived here: he allegedly made comments supporting "drag queen story hour," and drag queens have been reported making sexual comments to children. But is implicitly, nay, explicitly accusing Karl of grooming children helping? As far as the "antifa CHAZ murder" claim goes, to my knowledge this has been leveled at Tacticool Girlfriend, an openly trans gun YouTuber. I have never seen this claim made with evidence, though I haven't made any effort to confirm or deny it myself. But again, it's now more often than not that I see this person referred to as "the CHAZ killer" as if it is hard fact.

Fringe loonies will do what fringe loonies do. I wonder if the usual suspects over on /k/ are still fervently denouncing Ian as a dirty commie for disabling comments on videos related to Rhodesia.

I have a huge amount of respect for Ian for staying the course by remaining professional and basically apolitical. The man just wants to talk about guns, their workings and their history.

trans maoists

It couldn't be Ahuviya Harel, could it?

deleted

I was surprised to see in /r/dankchristianmemes, a heavily upvoted thread about wanting traditional hymns, but not wanting "conservative/far-right ideals" in the church. All the comments are about how great it is that mainline Protestant denominations are affirming of all kinds of alternative lifestyles.

https://old.reddit.com/r/dankchristianmemes/comments/11i1mit/is_it_too_much_to_ask_for_both/

Honestly this really made me think. On Reddit, the gun people are leftist, the Christians are leftist, etc. etc. I spend so much time on Reddit that it makes me think leftism has literally taken over everything. Then I went to church this morning and realized there's an entire big population of people who don't use Reddit, have never heard of Reddit, and who still exist across the whole spectrum of political belief.

I need to get off of Reddit.

I need to get off of Reddit.

Yes

At least here it's the modern worship churches that are right wing and traditional denominations that song hymns and hang rainbow flags and seem pretty left wing, are those still too far right for reddit?

Reddit looks more leftist than it is because leftist groups are very good at two things: mod takeovers and brigading from their discord hangouts. Stalking post histories made me realize that in most cases the "radically leftist highly upvoted post in a normally non-political sub" is completely artificial.

But my god it's an amazing tactic for imposing the appearance of consensus. Back in the days of the open internet the left was at a disadvantage, but they've adapted wonderfully to this new environment that rewards procedural manipulation and party organization.

Back in the days of the open internet the left was at a disadvantage, but they've adapted wonderfully to this new environment that rewards procedural manipulation and party organization.

I have to wonder, if this is true, why was this? Was it harder to entry-ize a regular old forum somehow?

There were too many of them. Take over some forum and you have control of one of a thousand comparable discussion forums. Take over the relevant subreddit (and leverage that into more control over other subreddits) and you can control a much larger portion of the internet.

The thing about that meme was its use of “extreme right-wing beliefs”. After browsing the thread, I found myself wondering what they might consider “moderate right-wing beliefs”.

Before KE Arms announced the development of the KP-15 lower, the subreddit was very low traffic. Its tone mirrored that of the youtube channel, which had none of the weird racial and sexual politics stuff. For the 2-3 years of development and production of the KP-15 lower, the channel was pretty much all about eager anticipation and then people showing off their builds. Once the forum drama hit, there was a large influx of "supporters", and I think the brand and community will never recover the tone that I enjoyed.

Karl was already subtly working an agenda with his historic pieces, that were often about convincing leftists that guns benefited black people. His view of history was often a bit dubious/one-sided as well.

whether there's a reason that particular SUBREDDIT would be more left-leaning than gun owners writ large.

There's your answer: it's Reddit