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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   13690 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 21, 2026

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Meanwhile, when was the last time you've come across any such establishment that is as right-wing as this place is left-wing?

An example of a fairly small, low-cost-to-entry organization is an indie game studio. These can be so small, in fact, that they can be done as one-man-bands, but then can scale up from there. Why don't we see more right-wing indies?

Scott Braden Cawthon (born June 4, 1978) is an American video game developer, writer, and producer best known for creating Five Nights at Freddy's, a series of horror video games which expanded into a media franchise.

Five Nights At Freddie's is one of the most successful indie games of all time, and it earned him a ton of money and fame and a massive fanbase. Then it was revealed that Scott Cawthon was Red Tribe.

In June 2021, Cawthon became a trending topic on Twitter when his publicly available political donations were shared on the website. Except for one donation to then-Democratic representative Tulsi Gabbard and another donation to former Indiana House Speaker John R. Gregg, also a Democrat, all of Cawthon's donations were to Republican politicians, including Mitch McConnell and U.S. President Donald Trump. He posted on Reddit to confirm his support for the Republican Party, describing himself as pro-life. He claimed that he had been doxxed and had received threats of violence and home invasion after his donations were publicized. Reactions on social media were mixed, with some people reacting negatively.[24] Days later, Cawthon announced his intention to step away from professional game development and appoint someone else to assume creative control of the franchise.

Strangely, harassment, death threats and literal home invasions of a popular celebrity did not draw support for that celebrity, nor condemnation of such tactics, nor broad discourse that online toxicity was a serious problem. The Dev did not receive wall-to-wall coverage portraying him as a saintly victim from a sympathetic press, who oddly failed to coordinate broad-spectrum condemnation for the internet trolls and other deplorables engaging in this horrifying behavior. The Dev was not invited to speak at the UN.

Scott Cawthon will not be making any more video games.

Any attempt to stand up something like the right-wing equivalent of the DSA or Antifa is immediately torn apart by infighting and ideological purity-spiraling.

"political infighting" and "ideological purity spiraling" is not what I have observed killing attempts to stand up right-wing equivalents to the DSA or Antifa. Selective prosecution seems like a much larger factor. This is your reminder that posting anonymous "It's okay to be white" posters on a college campus resulted in an actual investigation by the for-real FBI.

Meanwhile I walk out my door and find no shortage of Pride parades and anti-ICE protests, all seeming to go off like clockwork, with no subsequent chorus of left-wing influencers asserting that these events are "false flags" or whatever.

Also riots and the occasional, wildly celebrated political murder. Mustn't forget those.

We will be fired from our jobs and beaten in the streets if we do the right-wing equivalents of these things, and the police will look the other way for those inflicting the latter. This does not mean that right-wing political action is impossible, only much, much harder, with the concomitant increased likelihood that coordinated meanness outside the standard system of procedures will ultimately prove necessary. We'll get there, don't you worry.

The prolife movement and gun rights movement have been extraordinarily successful- much more so than the DSA- in right wing organizing.

What tends to happen is that right wing ideas about race are mostly embraced by very disagreeable people who cannot cooperate. But there’s plenty of anti-LGBT orgs, gun rights orgs, anti-tax orgs, socially conservative groups, etc.

What tends to happen is that right wing ideas about race are mostly embraced by very disagreeable people who cannot cooperate.

Assuming that you are referring to the notion that there are intrinsic differences in "quality" between racial groups and that these differences should be allowed to influence policy, I question the extent to which these ideas are meaningfully "right wing". At least in the context of American politics.

While I acknowledge that the experiences and perceptions of those coming from Europe and Asia will differ, the US right has never really made "blood and soil" or ethnic tribalism in general a core pillar of it's identity the way that say the German right has. If anything the opposite has been the case, with the US right espousing a peculiar form of "blank-slatism" exemplified by appeals to the Declaration of Independence, and the rhetoric of men like Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Billy Graham, and Clarence Thomas.

In one of those ironic UNO reversal moments I actually kind of agree with Joe Biden when he says "if you are thinking about voting for Trump you aren't really black" but by the same token I would turn that around and say that if you're thinking about voting for a progressive in the year of our lord 2026 you aren't "white" either

It's like one of those Gian'Carlo Esposito memes...

"You want to discriminate against people on the basis of their skin color. I want to discriminate against people on the basis of their behavior. We are not the same."

"You want to discriminate against people on the basis of their skin color. I want to discriminate against people on the basis of their behavior. We are not the same."

"...not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

There is certainly a lot of behaviour on the basis of which we could use more discrimination, as long as the behaviours discriminated against aren't cherry-picked to be those more common among people of colour while ignoring equally-harmful conduct disproportionally seen in white people (or vice versa), and as long as a white person and a person of colour are met with the same consequences for the same malfeasance....

An example of a fairly small, low-cost-to-entry organization is an indie game studio. These can be so small, in fact, that they can be done as one-man-bands, but then can scale up from there. Why don't we see more right-wing indies?

Strangely, harassment, death threats and literal home invasions of a popular celebrity did not draw support for that celebrity, nor condemnation of such tactics, nor broad discourse that online toxicity was a serious problem. The Dev did not receive wall-to-wall coverage portraying him as a saintly victim from a sympathetic press, who oddly failed to coordinate broad-spectrum condemnation for the internet trolls and other deplorables engaging in this horrifying behavior. The Dev was not invited to speak at the UN.

Being slightly cheeky, what this story shows is that it is not, in fact, possible for a one-man indie studio to make a game. In addition to 1 developer, you also need a legion of supporters ready to condemn harassment / death threats / home invasions directed against the developer, a bunch of sympathetic press outlets, and 193 state-level actors. The left has this organizational apparatus and so they are able to make indie video games; the right doesn't, so they don't.

In other words, Why did you force me to do this? I just wanted to play video games.

In the years since Gamergate, has the right made any progress on this front? Maybe, but it seems like most initiatives in that direction are continually stymied by lack of interest (or outright condemnation) from other right-wingers.

As a game developer, you will likely have to contract some of the following:

  • Composers (left wing)
  • Artists (left wing)
  • Animators (left wing)
  • Designers (left wing)
  • Software developers (gay trans furries)

You can do some of these in-house, but most likely your team does not possess every skill required to make a game. And even if it does, this is a field where much success depends on networking. By being explicitly right wing, you make yourself a pariah. The explicitly left wing will boycott you, and even neutral parties won't associate with you out of fear of being labelled a Nazi far-right bigot.

Meanwhile, the more classically conservative fields like finance and law are more than happy just keeping their mouths shut and doing their jobs.

So if you want success in game development, you better keep your conservative opinions to yourself.

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