Speaker 1: Oh, Robert, that's how you start a podcast. This is
Speaker 1: it could happen here. That's right, that's Robert talking. That's right.
Speaker 1: Also with us accurate Christopher Wong and Garrison Davis do
Speaker 1: your podcast. Yeah, So we're all gathering today on on
Speaker 1: the day after what I think we'll go down as
Speaker 1: the single most momentous moment in the twenty one century.
Speaker 1: Will Smith slapped Chris Rock on stage at the Oscars.
Speaker 1: So the entire world has pivoted from obsession with the
Speaker 1: massive land war in Eastern Europe to discussing how Chris
Speaker 1: Rock getting slapped is like the massive land war in
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe or or eleven or nine eleven. Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: so it's a it's an amazing, like an unprecedentedly incredible
Speaker 1: time to be on on Twitter right now. That said,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about Nazi cat boys today. I've
Speaker 1: seen everyone's post on the subreddit being like, why aren't
Speaker 1: you guys giving blow by blows about the war in Ukraine.
Speaker 1: Then this is this is pressing topic and we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about Nazi cat boys. Previous to the Chris
Speaker 1: Rock slap. This is the most pressing topic of the
Speaker 1: twenty one century. Um is why there's Nazi catboys, and
Speaker 1: now we're going to talk about it well, because I mean,
Speaker 1: the roots of the crisis in Ukraine are the different
Speaker 1: kinds of catboys. That's Alinsky and Putin are, yes, Robert
Speaker 1: is fan art. Up, It's gonna be fine. I'm sure.
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll find some horrible fan art. Yes, of yeah,
Speaker 1: we have. We have to figure out if if Putin's
Speaker 1: ever watched Shelsing, and then we'll build to know. So
Speaker 1: I don't know what that means, but okay, you're you're
Speaker 1: about to find out. So great, So we we have.
Speaker 1: We have gathered here today to talk about to talk
Speaker 1: about the curious case of why they are Nazi capboys.
Speaker 1: UM route throughout one TikTok and Twitter pushed from boys
Speaker 1: and cat boys into kind of the cultural mainstream, plunging
Speaker 1: these once much more niche subcultures out of the dark
Speaker 1: depths of fortune, Reddit, Tumbler and discord and uh the
Speaker 1: latest rebirth of these kind of gender bending communities. It's
Speaker 1: pretty socially progressive and affirming. Uh. Like generally most most
Speaker 1: fem boys catboys are are lefties. There's a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of like Twitter communists. I'm sure there's a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of cat boys who like stalling or something. Um, but
Speaker 1: they're they're generally more generally more on the left. But
Speaker 1: but but for for those who've dug deeper into the
Speaker 1: history and origins of these Internet subcultures, you may have
Speaker 1: found a dark, racist, and hateful underbelly. So we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about that today. I do have to note, Garrison,
Speaker 1: as soon as you said that, I found a Stalinist
Speaker 1: catboy the Twitter. It's an incredible account. So that their
Speaker 1: their background image for their Twitter account is a picture
Speaker 1: of Dang Xiaoping and the Ayatollah of Iran having a meeting.
Speaker 1: Their their PfP is a lavender haired uh, it's like
Speaker 1: a it's like an anime pic avatar catboy. Yeah, with
Speaker 1: like a Soviet hat and then Marxist Leninist bisexual catboy
Speaker 1: stalin did nothing wrong at North Korea. Stand incredible. This
Speaker 1: is this is this is why the Left will never win.
Speaker 1: That's perfect. I'm pretty sure this is like illegal in
Speaker 1: those countries. It's it would have had this person shot
Speaker 1: in the second someone tried to describe a catboy to
Speaker 1: Joseph Stalwin, he would have had this person executed. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: oh wow, yeah, I see I see it now, that
Speaker 1: is that is intense. You know. The thing is, this
Speaker 1: type of thing is not going to be uncommon. We're
Speaker 1: gonna be again, We're gonna be going into like actual
Speaker 1: fascists who are also cowboys, and obviously they would have
Speaker 1: been would have been killed for being degenerous as well.
Speaker 1: But now we're gonna kind of talk about how this
Speaker 1: how this kind of came to be. And I've been
Speaker 1: writing this for like over a year. Actually, I've interviewed
Speaker 1: a few people for this that I've kind of contributed
Speaker 1: to the script. And initially this was going to be
Speaker 1: conceived as a video. Um, and you can't only talk
Speaker 1: about these things in a video format without dressing up
Speaker 1: like a silly character. So I am. I'm wearing a
Speaker 1: very actually a very very high quality catboy outfend right now,
Speaker 1: which the audio we'll just have to you'll have to
Speaker 1: you'll have to see it through the audio, So good
Speaker 1: luck with that synesthesia. Um yeah, yeah, yeah, so you are.
Speaker 1: At the same time, You've done that enough that I
Speaker 1: don't know that anyone really noticed. I've never dressed as
Speaker 1: a cat boy for recording, before you addresses something. Every
Speaker 1: other recording that's true, I addressed as something. I generally
Speaker 1: addresses something. So first section one, Section one? What is
Speaker 1: what is a catboy? What? What is what is this?
Speaker 1: Um So? But first of all, of a few ground
Speaker 1: rules will be circling back too often. UM One, not
Speaker 1: all catboys and femboys identify as LGBT or queer. Um
Speaker 1: and two, gay people can still be racist. These are these,
Speaker 1: These are these, These are two points that we're gonna
Speaker 1: be coming back to over the course of these of
Speaker 1: these Deep Night episodes. So first things first, let's let's
Speaker 1: just define what a cat boy is for all of
Speaker 1: the boomers in the audience. Um And if you are,
Speaker 1: if you are a boomer listening to this, how why
Speaker 1: how did you find this? Why are why did you
Speaker 1: choose to listen to Garrison? The instant I became a
Speaker 1: boomer was the first time you tried to describe explain
Speaker 1: cat boys to me, Like I I suddenly developed a
Speaker 1: strong opinion on HRC because of me. You so most
Speaker 1: administration joke, but most simply m a cat boy? Is
Speaker 1: this what I'm doing right now? So someone who is
Speaker 1: kind of kind of boyish who who? Who? Who sometimes
Speaker 1: enjoys dressing in cat like apparel. I guess it's like
Speaker 1: cat ears. It is different from furries from and we
Speaker 1: will we will get into this, um. I mean, but
Speaker 1: I'm I'm definitely less boyish than I first was when
Speaker 1: I wrote this like a year ago, now that I'm
Speaker 1: on recreational estrogen. But nevertheless, someone who's a boyish and
Speaker 1: dresses or likes to dress in cat like kind of
Speaker 1: outfits generally on an anime trajectory of aesthetics. Uh now
Speaker 1: this is this is this is different from furies from
Speaker 1: multiple reasons. The physical cat like attributes on catboys are
Speaker 1: mostly confined to ears and pause sometimes with tails, but
Speaker 1: it's it's iffy um. Whereas you know, furries like to
Speaker 1: have like the full first suit thing going on, whereas
Speaker 1: catboys they still have like human faces and they wear
Speaker 1: like human clothes. So this is actually a very key difference,
Speaker 1: which will lots of made costumes like and yes a lot.
Speaker 1: And the other other big kind of recurring trope um
Speaker 1: is that is that well they well catboys you usually
Speaker 1: wear clothes. Is that they usually dress up in something
Speaker 1: similar to like a French made outfit um or or
Speaker 1: like different outfits like anime girls will were so like
Speaker 1: the tennis skirt thing, but generally on a made outfit
Speaker 1: to anime trajectory. So despite, despite the animal ears, right
Speaker 1: despite like the furry cat eers, the catboy or cat
Speaker 1: girl thing has much more in common with the fenboy
Speaker 1: community than the furry community and a lot of instances
Speaker 1: but more more more on that later. So after some
Speaker 1: initial research into the Nazi catboy meme, I decided it
Speaker 1: would be useful for tracing back the roots of this
Speaker 1: kind of odd online phenomenon to broaden the scope of
Speaker 1: research to include fem boys as well, uh, which is
Speaker 1: succinctly just cat boys without the cat part. It's like
Speaker 1: boys who or generally male identifying people who dressed in
Speaker 1: like feminine ways. Um, not a lot of fen boys
Speaker 1: will turn out to be trans and not all of
Speaker 1: them do a lot of fen boys identify as straight.
Speaker 1: But you know, I like to wear you know, boys
Speaker 1: generally kind of in the twink variety who likes to
Speaker 1: wear skirts, dresses, whatever, So I a much of it,
Speaker 1: a dissection to which gets a little bit more silly.
Speaker 1: Um but but yeah, so M boys. It's excited this
Speaker 1: This doesn't get less silly as we go on. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, catboys, feen boys. Feen boys identify as male
Speaker 1: dress up in more stereotypically feminine ways. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of similarity and crossover between fen boys and catboys. Um.
Speaker 1: But since fenboys have more of an established online history, uh,
Speaker 1: including them in the research seems like the best way
Speaker 1: to kind of dig into like the fascist femboy nazi
Speaker 1: catboy idea. So, speaking of section two, the racist femboy
Speaker 1: meme the past the past few years, there's been kind
Speaker 1: of a growing meme and perception across social media that
Speaker 1: femboys are like really racist, um and just kind of
Speaker 1: pretty fascy in general. Um, even really homophobic and transphobic
Speaker 1: and a lot of in a lot of senses, as
Speaker 1: much as a homophobic or transphobic femboy may see them
Speaker 1: contradictory at first. But again, more more on this later. Um.
Speaker 1: So when I'm talking about this going forward, I'm probably
Speaker 1: gonna be mixing words and terms like nazi and fascist,
Speaker 1: all right or far right now not not all of
Speaker 1: these racist femboys are what I would call Nazis by
Speaker 1: any means, um and not not not all advocate for
Speaker 1: even joke about genocide, but there were absolutely recruitment attempts
Speaker 1: from self described Nazis. And you know, the line between
Speaker 1: jokes and actual beliefs is intentionally very foggy in this
Speaker 1: kind of internet subculture. So I'll kind of be lazily
Speaker 1: lumping together everything from racist to far far right wing
Speaker 1: folks for the sake of simplicity, because it's all like
Speaker 1: in the same spectrum. And like I mentioned at the beginning,
Speaker 1: not all femboys and cat boys identify as being queer
Speaker 1: um and gay people can still be racist. These there
Speaker 1: are these are points we're going to be circling back
Speaker 1: to a lot. So at this point, the alright femboy
Speaker 1: meme has kind of actually or overshadowed the actual phenomenon
Speaker 1: of it happening. Right in the past few years, the
Speaker 1: popularity of leftist fem boys has skyrocketed, Yet if you
Speaker 1: still do digging on like Twitter or Discord, you can
Speaker 1: indeed fed users who appear to be fem boys but
Speaker 1: are also everything from racist to just openly fascist. Now,
Speaker 1: naturally that leaves people wondering, how can one have such
Speaker 1: a kind of contradictory lifestyle and belief system, which leads
Speaker 1: us to Section three. The Internet and that's it. That's
Speaker 1: kind of that's kind of the answer. We that's we
Speaker 1: can kind of pack it up here. Um. We that's
Speaker 1: the answer. It's the Internet. That's that's why that that's
Speaker 1: why this has happened. That's what I'm getting out of this. Yeah, sure, whatever, whatever,
Speaker 1: it's it's Garrison. Are you you are? Have you been
Speaker 1: caught up on why people say al Gore invented the Internet?
Speaker 1: On where that joke came from? You you have to
Speaker 1: you have to remember Chris Carrison's Oh no, So there
Speaker 1: was like al Gore was among a bunch of different
Speaker 1: people who like voted to fund some of the different
Speaker 1: government kind of projects that became the Internet, right, like
Speaker 1: you have the r pnet and ship all that stuff.
Speaker 1: Like he was one of the people who like pushed that.
Speaker 1: And then in the debate with George Bush while running
Speaker 1: for president in uh two thousand, he uh like basically
Speaker 1: made some claims that you could uncharitably translate as him
Speaker 1: saying that he invented the Internet. Um, he didn't actually
Speaker 1: say that. It was more like he was saying, well,
Speaker 1: I you know, supported from an early stage the development
Speaker 1: of the Internet, but it got turned into like al
Speaker 1: Gore claimed to have invented the Internet because it was funny.
Speaker 1: Ab yes, and and so now that that's that's the
Speaker 1: joke is even though he didn't really he just was
Speaker 1: not you know. But anyway, so we can we can
Speaker 1: blame Nazi cowboys on on al Gore. Absolutely well, that
Speaker 1: that does it for us today. Um you can find
Speaker 1: us on Wait okay, we still have a we still
Speaker 1: have like half an episode to do. Alright, well, here's
Speaker 1: here's speaking of of of al Gore and the Internet.
Speaker 1: Here's some ads brought to you by the Internet. Ah boy,
Speaker 1: those ads were so good they made me wanna be
Speaker 1: a cat. Okay, all right, Wow, moving on. If you're
Speaker 1: in any way familiar with facism, you are probably aware
Speaker 1: that one of it's more consistent traits is that it's
Speaker 1: notoriously ideologically inconsistent. Um So, for for this project, I
Speaker 1: interviewed multiple people who have a more personal history in
Speaker 1: the cat boy and femboy online communities than I do.
Speaker 1: Um So, those interviews, plus my own online digging through
Speaker 1: like hundreds of threads from various form websites. I've I've
Speaker 1: literally looked through hundreds hundreds of the cat boy posts
Speaker 1: on Fortune. But doing doing all that has been very
Speaker 1: helpful for understanding kind of this intersection of politics and subculture.
Speaker 1: And since I did all this research, you don't need
Speaker 1: to so there you go. Um. But one of the
Speaker 1: first kind of big takeaways I had after the research
Speaker 1: and interviews is that the Nazi femboy cat boy thing
Speaker 1: is not actually unique at all in terms of Internet radicalization.
Speaker 1: It just has some aesthetic abnormalities that can confuse on
Speaker 1: liquors or normalise, which makes the internet phenomenon seen more
Speaker 1: outlandish than that actually is. But before we dig deeper
Speaker 1: into this litter box of hate, I would like to
Speaker 1: divide the femboy and catboy kind of racism spectrum into
Speaker 1: actually to two assistinct categories. First, um, we have we
Speaker 1: have type one, which I'm calling the fem fast people
Speaker 1: who are initially into the femboy community and aesthetic and
Speaker 1: then got introduced into far right politics online. And then
Speaker 1: we have type two, the fasci fem people who were
Speaker 1: already into far right politics and only then got introduced
Speaker 1: to the femboi community online. So I usually break down
Speaker 1: lots of instances of fascists mixing with various subcultures into
Speaker 1: these like similar like to two categories of people starting
Speaker 1: off with politics and then getting into the culture, and
Speaker 1: people starting off with the culture then getting into politics.
Speaker 1: I think it's actually kinda it's useful for understanding a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of how there's like differences between different types
Speaker 1: of fascist people in various subcultures. So these two types
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna be using to help to help
Speaker 1: talk about these different kind of strains of of the
Speaker 1: fascist femboy. For for now, we're gonna focus on the
Speaker 1: first one, the fem fast. So let's let's let's wind
Speaker 1: let's wind the clocks back. Let's say a decade. Broadly,
Speaker 1: gay people can't get married, and to most kids, trans
Speaker 1: people are ostensibly a myth um. So what kind of
Speaker 1: person is going to become a femboy in this in
Speaker 1: this type of in this type of environment. Simplest answer
Speaker 1: is like a certain sect of social outcasts and anime nerds,
Speaker 1: as well as some people who maybe don't consciously know
Speaker 1: or accept that they're queer yet really the only way
Speaker 1: to get initially exposed to the fembo aesthetic back then
Speaker 1: was via anime, manga, hanti porn, and you know, select
Speaker 1: video games specifically multiplayer games, and random and internet browsing.
Speaker 1: Right this, this is this is how you're gonna get
Speaker 1: exposed to this type of aesthetic. In fact, one of
Speaker 1: the probably the oldest example of a Nazi catboy is
Speaker 1: from an anime called hell Singh where they had they
Speaker 1: had this Nazi catboy character who is the who was
Speaker 1: the source of a lot of Nazi catboy memes on
Speaker 1: four Chan, like the it's very very popular meme figure um.
Speaker 1: And this is I think a lot of where that
Speaker 1: aesthetic tied to fatchism actually really start from. But of
Speaker 1: course there's a lot of fascist fans of anime in general,
Speaker 1: so that the type of aesthetics that the type of
Speaker 1: aesthetics of femininity that animey kind of presents get used
Speaker 1: by fascism a lot. Even among like they're more like
Speaker 1: a cottage core styles, it's still of that very like
Speaker 1: patriarchal um type of femininity that is popular among Japanese animation.
Speaker 1: So now the reasons that someone might be drawn to
Speaker 1: this specific community can vary from person to person. Maybe
Speaker 1: they just don't feel as connected to like the hyper
Speaker 1: macho masculine style that American culture promotes. Maybe it's a
Speaker 1: way to get attention and validation, or maybe you just
Speaker 1: like wearing skirts or find it kind of hot. There's, there's,
Speaker 1: and there's there's always the possibility that someone is transfer
Speaker 1: gain they just don't fully know it yet. This is
Speaker 1: the case with a lot of these people actually, Um,
Speaker 1: but some of some of you may be surprised to
Speaker 1: hear that before our modern TikTok femboy craze, most femboys
Speaker 1: did self identify as straight ancests. Uh. There is a
Speaker 1: lot of reasons for this, including like increased to aphobia
Speaker 1: and transphobi back then, plus, like non binary was hardly
Speaker 1: even the thing like culturally at that at that point. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the people I interviewed for this project talked
Speaker 1: about how some of the sis straight fem boys he
Speaker 1: knew back then now do identify as trans or queer. Um,
Speaker 1: but back then that wasn't really the case. Um. The
Speaker 1: other person I interviewed for this called themselves the sis
Speaker 1: gender femboy at the time of the interview, but has
Speaker 1: now since come out as trans so like it says,
Speaker 1: it is definitely a recurring pattern, but it's not a
Speaker 1: thing for everybody, Like there is definitely like a lot
Speaker 1: like a lot of these people do call themselves straight
Speaker 1: even still now um, and that is something that a
Speaker 1: lot of kind of people don't have a don't have
Speaker 1: the easiest time kind of comprehending. That's I'm gonna what
Speaker 1: I'm gonna kind of try to get into. So let's
Speaker 1: let's let's say you're a kid, young teen and like eleven,
Speaker 1: you're getting into anime and video games. What kind of
Speaker 1: websites are you gonna gravitate to? Right, You're gonna gravitate
Speaker 1: to read it, You're gonna gravitate to four Chan especially
Speaker 1: in right. These are the these are kind of the
Speaker 1: cultural meccas of of those types of type type types
Speaker 1: of subcultures. So what is prelevant on these websites? Well,
Speaker 1: on four Chan we have a slash b which is
Speaker 1: their random channel um which also has a not Safer
Speaker 1: work designation, and it's was often flooded with femboy picks
Speaker 1: UM and since there are so few female users of
Speaker 1: that site, you see a lot of hentai and occasionally
Speaker 1: boys dressing up like not safer work female anime characters,
Speaker 1: just because there's people still like femininity, but there's so
Speaker 1: few actual girls using those sites that the femininity that
Speaker 1: you see is either through anime or it's through kind
Speaker 1: of cross dressing. Um. And then there's also the slash
Speaker 1: d page which is just completely dedicated to Henta I,
Speaker 1: So you get a lot of a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of that type of like anime style of femininity
Speaker 1: through kind of that that type of appropriation and and
Speaker 1: fetishization on the slash d page. So there's there's a
Speaker 1: decent chance that anime and gaming nerds that browse their
Speaker 1: interests online will get exposed to fen boy staff at
Speaker 1: some point. Right nowadays it's discord, used to be four Chan,
Speaker 1: used to be Reddit, So it becomes this type of
Speaker 1: figure right infinity loop of people who are exposed to
Speaker 1: something and then start propagating it and get exposed to
Speaker 1: new people to it, and it's just like continuous cycle.
Speaker 1: Because if if you're a kid who discovers they kind
Speaker 1: of like this super niche, almost taboo thing, where are
Speaker 1: you going to go to find other like minded people
Speaker 1: that you're gonna go back to? Online multiplayer gaming, Reddit
Speaker 1: and four chune. It's it's it's it's all. It's all
Speaker 1: the same circles. So if if even if you don't
Speaker 1: get exposed to it in places like four chune, you're
Speaker 1: probably gonna end up there or somewhere similar regardless. And
Speaker 1: the other other and and the other thing that's important
Speaker 1: to talk about I which is going to talk about
Speaker 1: like how how the femboys start getting into politics is
Speaker 1: like who else is very prevalent and actively recruiting on
Speaker 1: these types of sites with on like on multiplayer gaming,
Speaker 1: on Reddit and four chan. It's it's nazis right that
Speaker 1: the people who are who are into very far right
Speaker 1: politics try to mask trying to mask some of their
Speaker 1: beliefs initially, and like humor and memes. You know, a lot, large,
Speaker 1: large part of Internet radicalization is done through is done
Speaker 1: through memes, especially especially back in there's like so so
Speaker 1: many like memes. A memes as a social and recruitment tool,
Speaker 1: we're very very common, especially on like you know, if
Speaker 1: you're on like an image board, that that's the whole
Speaker 1: point is that you're sharing images. Um. So a big
Speaker 1: part of this overrepresentation of racists in the femboy community
Speaker 1: was simply the online proximity between these groups of people,
Speaker 1: between the femboys and then the fascists on four Chan
Speaker 1: or have they read it in certain online games, whether
Speaker 1: they be like Second Life, whether it be like MMS.
Speaker 1: You know, all these types of places, and in any
Speaker 1: place that you can design your own character as well,
Speaker 1: You've got got a lot of this type of like
Speaker 1: anime femboy type thing, because a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of these games that are main in Japan can like
Speaker 1: give like more feminine options for like male characters, or
Speaker 1: just have like Copboy like years and stuff available as
Speaker 1: a cosmetic option. So a lot a lot of this
Speaker 1: fetish fetishization that we see on four Chune and on
Speaker 1: and in the early two thousands and tens is now
Speaker 1: is now applied to Discord. Like this you did kind
Speaker 1: of carry over for trans obviously not the kind of
Speaker 1: cultural behemoth that it used to be. A lot of
Speaker 1: this stuff just happens on Discord now um where you
Speaker 1: can kind of cultivate online communities that are more self contained.
Speaker 1: So throughout the entirety of the fascism was pretty successful
Speaker 1: infesting among nerd spaces, right nerds and geeks of many types,
Speaker 1: whether that be gaming or anime, or these more like
Speaker 1: esoteric communities esotericism like niche um. But these communities generally
Speaker 1: they attract people who are more disenfranchised, right, and them
Speaker 1: boys generally feel disenfranchised in one way or another, which
Speaker 1: just pushes them into these, you know, less mainstream subculture.
Speaker 1: At this point, they could be pretty easy targets for
Speaker 1: fascist recruiters to start suggesting that maybe some of their
Speaker 1: problems in the world are actually coming from feminism, immigrant
Speaker 1: stealing jobs fromative action, and slowly leading into talk of
Speaker 1: like i Q and racism and anti semitism. So for
Speaker 1: those who famil these ideas initially like abhorrent, uh, it
Speaker 1: can be explained at all this talk and simply etgy
Speaker 1: jokes in irony attempting to trigger the enormies, which was
Speaker 1: a big part of that type of propagation of this
Speaker 1: type of humor and then politics masses humor on these
Speaker 1: sites and on these like gaming chats. This isn't unique
Speaker 1: to fem boys or cathboys in any way. Right. The
Speaker 1: more people I interviewed and the more kind of old
Speaker 1: forms that I read, I started to actually see stuff
Speaker 1: that seemed much more familiar. Um, And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of parallels between this far right femboy thing and the
Speaker 1: far right fur phenomenon, which I know Robert and the
Speaker 1: Worst Your Ever podcast put together two episodes that do
Speaker 1: a great job kind of talking about the far right.
Speaker 1: The only real episode of the Worst Year Ever that
Speaker 1: we ever got to do. Yeah, yeah, it could you
Speaker 1: because I guess just briefly kind of talk about the furry,
Speaker 1: the furry kind of thing and how that because there's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of there's even though these cultures are
Speaker 1: different between fen boys and furries, the tactics that fascists
Speaker 1: used to get into these communities is exactly the same.
Speaker 1: Um and it kind of plays on the same same tropes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's weird, so you've got I think it
Speaker 1: kind of hearkens to the fact that like whenever you
Speaker 1: have a fandom, no matter kind of what the fandom
Speaker 1: is about or the message of the media it's about,
Speaker 1: you're going to have like Nazis in it. Um And
Speaker 1: and that's obviously like Star Wars, right where the point
Speaker 1: of Star Wars is Empire, bad Empire. Basically space Nazis
Speaker 1: bad guys and there's a whole bunch of people who
Speaker 1: have just like made that into their life and get
Speaker 1: tattoos of the imperial sigil or whatever on their fucking chess.
Speaker 1: Or you've got like Disney movies where like there's these
Speaker 1: there's weirdos who will take far right nationalist messages at it.
Speaker 1: Like every like everything everything has its Nazis. The punk community, right,
Speaker 1: punk music is supposed to be anti authoritarian um and
Speaker 1: kind of inherently left wing, but there's Nazi punks, so
Speaker 1: like it's all like every community has their Nazis, and
Speaker 1: the Furies are no different. One of the things that
Speaker 1: does make the Furries different is, I think because of
Speaker 1: how and this this is something probably you're a little
Speaker 1: too young, and and I guess a lot of our
Speaker 1: audience may have missed out on aspects of but like
Speaker 1: early on in the Internet, and I'm talking like the
Speaker 1: first decade of actual Internet culture, from like ninety six
Speaker 1: to two thousand five or six, which is really the
Speaker 1: first decade of like mass Internet culture, the punching bag
Speaker 1: of the entire Internet was was Furries. Like they were
Speaker 1: the people that like it was the safest to make
Speaker 1: fun of um jokes about like killing them all sorts
Speaker 1: of really fucked up shit. Um. And so I think
Speaker 1: they developed kind of this um very strong defensive impulse
Speaker 1: within the community. And so while every subculture has their Nazis,
Speaker 1: the Furries have gone kind of the furthest in documenting
Speaker 1: and um working to like ostracize those people. And they've done.
Speaker 1: They're on the level with like punks in terms of
Speaker 1: the degree to which they have like that has become
Speaker 1: kind of a guiding principle for a lot of Furries. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is that kind of what you're looking for? Yeah, because
Speaker 1: a big a big and the thing you mentioned about
Speaker 1: like Furries being such the punching bag, that's something that's
Speaker 1: that's something that Nazis even definitely kind of grasp onto
Speaker 1: as a way to do grooming and recruitment. Right is
Speaker 1: if if if if, if fascists can present themselves as
Speaker 1: friends to these people who are always punched down upon,
Speaker 1: then they can kind of put them into their in groups,
Speaker 1: right they can They can support them, give them, give
Speaker 1: them a sense of validation, and give them a sense
Speaker 1: of a community. Tell them like that they they they belong.
Speaker 1: Your your your always going to be kicked out of
Speaker 1: like like real life social groups. Right, you can only
Speaker 1: exist here with us. We're gonna we understand you. Like right,
Speaker 1: they can. They can kind of foster this thing, even
Speaker 1: though obviously it's dealing with things that are not the
Speaker 1: most like, not the most like systems straight thing in
Speaker 1: terms of like regular heterosexuality. Um got a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of furries are straight, but like in terms
Speaker 1: of like the way they approach that is is definitely
Speaker 1: different than a lot of regular people. But they so
Speaker 1: white cremacists and different fascists can like grasp on to
Speaker 1: this gr respond to this kind of disenfranchisement and offer
Speaker 1: this sense of community. Um, be you know, be very
Speaker 1: friendly initially, be being very being very kind of open
Speaker 1: these people and start and start you know, the term
Speaker 1: would be like red pilling them, right, um to talk
Speaker 1: about that a lot of their social issues are actually
Speaker 1: you know the fault of Stw's talking about those, you know,
Speaker 1: all of these Jewish bankers. You know, it can start,
Speaker 1: you can start crafting the propaganda very carefully if you're
Speaker 1: friends with them first and then only start slowly introducing
Speaker 1: them into your more extremist kind of view of politics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just no one's really surprised when an anime nerd
Speaker 1: or like a capital G gamer starts spewing far right
Speaker 1: talking points, but when a femboy does, that just seems
Speaker 1: off because like, aren't they also a degenerate right like
Speaker 1: like it's like what, there is a bit of a
Speaker 1: cognitive dissonance there, um and like yes and no, Right,
Speaker 1: you may be over estimating some people's commitment to the
Speaker 1: fascist cause here, because a recurring pattern I found when
Speaker 1: talking to people with history in these communities, especially if
Speaker 1: they're more of like the fem fashion variety, right, starting
Speaker 1: up starting off with them boys headaches, then getting into
Speaker 1: being racist and and and like like pretty racist and
Speaker 1: then getting into fascism. Is that look looking back these
Speaker 1: people and they say, like themselves and others, all of
Speaker 1: their kind of parenting of racist and fascist talking points,
Speaker 1: especially online, was like they claim much more due to
Speaker 1: having to like fit in with these with these already
Speaker 1: pretty reactionary online spaces um and make friends at seemingly
Speaker 1: one of the few places that people with similar interests gather.
Speaker 1: You know, some people deep down don't really care about
Speaker 1: the political beliefs that much, and we're more still looking
Speaker 1: for a community and it just so happened that back then,
Speaker 1: in the early the places where these communities of outcast
Speaker 1: found each other were also places that other outcasts used
Speaker 1: racism as a lazy, attention seeking shock comedy and like
Speaker 1: the triggering of normies, which was basically like a sport
Speaker 1: on these on on these forums. Now, obviously this is
Speaker 1: not excusing any horrent behavior and or horrible things, is that?
Speaker 1: But that whole idea, plus the active like grooming and
Speaker 1: the active recruitment from Nazis made the nerdy outcast to
Speaker 1: fascist pipeline that we see today. That's really how it
Speaker 1: built up and became such a powerful tool, you know,
Speaker 1: in around um. But there is there is the other.
Speaker 1: All of this just generally more applies to the people
Speaker 1: who were into fend boys addicts and then got kind
Speaker 1: of railroaded into into nationalism and too fascism. Right, it's
Speaker 1: because they they're fem boys on these platforms. There's also
Speaker 1: racists on these platforms, so these things start to kind
Speaker 1: of mix. But there's still that other type of femb
Speaker 1: boy nazi um, the one who started off online with
Speaker 1: far right views and then discovered fem boys and started
Speaker 1: to feel things well, we're starting by talking about them
Speaker 1: next on on on part two. But I guess does
Speaker 1: anyone anyone have any any questions at least to close
Speaker 1: off part one about the more kind of fem fast
Speaker 1: variety of people who are generally kind of more regular politically, um,
Speaker 1: but are into into like femboy and cowboy kind of
Speaker 1: aesthetics and then and then get put into into into
Speaker 1: more reactionary ideas. Mm hmmm, uh stay off the internet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not a question. But yes, that is that is
Speaker 1: a that is a good uh, there's a good mission statement.
Speaker 1: But yeah, in terms of like, in terms of like
Speaker 1: the you know, this topic can whenever whenever I bring
Speaker 1: it up, I thought of a lot when I've tried
Speaker 1: to explain it to people, there's always a bit of
Speaker 1: like that, how that doesn't make any sense? And I'll
Speaker 1: be getting into some of the more kind of semantics
Speaker 1: of it um in in part two, but at least
Speaker 1: at least for like the initial initial kind of dive
Speaker 1: into how the online community aspect is used as such
Speaker 1: a powerful tool for people who are feeling so alone
Speaker 1: that just the the idea of their being an online community,
Speaker 1: whether it be racist or not can is just super
Speaker 1: appealing because if if everyone thinks that you're weird in
Speaker 1: an outcast, if these other people who are also weird
Speaker 1: and outcasts start kind of trying to make friends with you,
Speaker 1: then it can be a very powerful like recruitment tool. Um.
Speaker 1: Which then of course they'll they'll they'll be people, they'll
Speaker 1: be people who eventually try to like take them out
Speaker 1: of the whole femboy stetics in a lot of in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. Um. But a lot of fascists
Speaker 1: also get into the femboy stetic because of the because
Speaker 1: of the proximity issue, right, because these things are so
Speaker 1: like next to each other. Well, the thing you're the
Speaker 1: kind of important broader realization there. And this is something
Speaker 1: that a radicalization scholar named Scott Atran has been talking
Speaker 1: about for ten years now, probably more is that people
Speaker 1: get radicalized in communities. People like when we talk about radicalization,
Speaker 1: like why, Like I guess the other half of the
Speaker 1: explainer that I started this with being like, you know,
Speaker 1: every subculture has their Nazis. It's not because like the
Speaker 1: reason every subculture has their Nazis is that subcultures are
Speaker 1: like people get radicalized as part of communities as part
Speaker 1: of subcultures. They don't get radicalized as individuals, just like
Speaker 1: people don't aren't just walking out in the world and
Speaker 1: decide to become a Nazi. They become a Nazi because
Speaker 1: a Nazi reaches them in something they're already into, right,
Speaker 1: like that, That's just the way it happens. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: definitely a large part of this is like a group
Speaker 1: of like group dynamics, especially in places like forums. Well
Speaker 1: you're you know, try trying to trying to get like
Speaker 1: this like a tension battle. Um. And I guess the
Speaker 1: other other big part of about them boy kind of idea,
Speaker 1: especially on image boards is like it is such an
Speaker 1: attention seeking, in validation seeking place right you you want
Speaker 1: to you want to post things that gets you a
Speaker 1: lot of comments, likes, upboats, whatever. The kind of the
Speaker 1: metric is, um, So people will do things that get
Speaker 1: them visibility. Even if even if half the people interacting
Speaker 1: with you are calling you a degenerate, at least there's
Speaker 1: people still looking at you. Right at least you feel seen, um,
Speaker 1: and then the other half people will be like, no,
Speaker 1: it's actually fine, you know. So as long as there's
Speaker 1: that visibility, that that sense of community. Then a lot
Speaker 1: of the more cognitive cognitive dissonance aspects can kind of
Speaker 1: be passed by. But we'll we'll we'll get into more
Speaker 1: of that for for for for part two. Um anyway, Uh,
Speaker 1: you can find us on Twitter, Instagram at to Happen
Speaker 1: Here Podon cole Zone Media, you can find me uh
Speaker 1: talking about cowboys occasionally on Twitter at Hungry bow Tie
Speaker 1: and about it. Well, it's you know, I've I've been
Speaker 1: I've been trying to edit down this episode because the
Speaker 1: script was way too long. We're trying to make it
Speaker 1: more sistinct the past few days. So my my, my, my, my,
Speaker 1: I am. I am pretty excited to be to to
Speaker 1: to close this Google doc at the end of the day. Well,
Speaker 1: congratulations on all your hard work, Garrison and listeners at home.
Speaker 1: Go dress like a cat boy. Yeah, and and don't
Speaker 1: be a Nazi. Yeah, I mean that's also important. It
Speaker 1: could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
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Speaker 1: happen here? Updated monthly at cool Zone media dot com,
Speaker 1: slash sources, Thanks for listening.