Alan S. Kim/School Shooter/Negative XP & the fight against the Multiracial Far-Right

2022·0.15 MB·english-handwritten

by  Story (scythe singh-sousa)

Alan S. Kim/School Shooter/Negative
XP & the fight against the Multiracial
Far-Right
Introduction
In 2014 many things happened all at once. In that year Elliot Rodger a now infamously
self-proclaimed “involuntary celibate” wreaked havoc in the community of Isla Vista, California
while at the same time the extremely online Gamergate was an actual campaign that manifested
itself beyond fringe corners of the internet and into the mainstream with the election of Donald J.
Trump in 2016. The amalgamation of what is at times contradictory rhetoric, edgy humor,
centralized and decentralized digital “armies” fighting “wars”, anti-egalitarian and
anti-democratic ideals trying to react to what is viewed as “degeneracy” in the modern-day world
is the foundational building blocks of today’s modernized multiracial far-right reacting to the
postmodern world wanting to bring it back to the glory days of its mythologized past. Like the
occasionally cross-pollinating yet, asexually reproducing far-right came Alan S. Kim who’s
formerly known as “ϟCHØØL ϟHØØTΣR” and currently as “NEGATIVE XP” who is one of
many of the manifestations of today’s reactionary multiracial far-right. Yet out of the 23 albums,
he uploaded under his former moniker “ϟCHØØL ϟHØØTΣR” no album is as emblematic of
today’s far-right as the ϟϟ - EP. Despite the tone and offensiveness, many defenders of Kim
present the argument of “Post-Ironic Humor” an irony that’s supposedly so deep that no one can
decipher any realistic or tangible meaning from it. Regardless of a person’s beliefs living in a
post-modern world the stylized usage of SS Bolts in names, album covers, and eliminationist
lyrics draws faint memories of the underground 80’s nazi punk scene with reminders of the
“Rock Against Communism” concerts that mirror recent concerts like “Virginfest” on September
11th, 2021 or Kim’s now-defunct music collective “MKULTRA SUPPORT GROUP” mirroring
the downfall of the white power record-label “Panzurfaust Records”, whose music is made to
shift culture farther to the right, begs the action of creating spaces and amplifying music (and
culture) that directly challenges, confronts, and combats this hateful rhetoric. In this paper I will
argue that Kim’s musical work is not only inherently political and legitimizes the far-right but,
can help explain and understand the streamlining of far-right politics into the mainstream.
History
The word [incel] used to mean anybody of any gender who was lonely, had never had sex or
who hadn't had a relationship in a long time. But we can't call it that anymore.
● Taylor, Jim (August 30, 2018)."The woman who foundedthe 'incel' movement".BBC.
Generally, the term ‘incel’ originated from an online forum from a Canadian college student
named “Alana” called “Alana’s Involuntary Celibacy Project. She and many others on the 1997
mailing list called themselves “INVCELS” which was shortened to ‘incel’, the word meaning
anybody of any gender who hadn’t had sexual or romantic relationships in a long time.
After becoming more comfortable with her identity as a bisexual woman in 2000, Alana passed
on the website's domain to a random stranger which led to the creation of IncelSupport after the
mailing list ceased to exist. IncelSupport was known for its banning of misogynistic posts and
advocation of feminism in order to form relationships and eventually break away from inceldom.
Whereas love-shy.com was a competitor site formed in 2003 which had less moderation on
misogynistic posts. However, they still carried the same understanding of the term inceldom with
the only difference being the belief that inceldom could overlap with the psychological concept
of love-shyness a term for a specific type of severe chronic shyness. Where IncelSupport had
more feminist undertones in moderation philosophy Love-shy did not. The different philosophies
of the two websites led to moderators on IncelSupport to ban the more distasteful and
misogynistic elements off its site and led the banned users towards migrating to love-shy.
After the downfall of IncelSupport in the early-2010s, the incel community began to overlap and
migrate to 4chan an imageboard website which incels had migrated to the boards of /r9k/ (read:
ROBOT9000) which users are allowed to write stories as long as nothing is a carbon copy or
reposted, numerous stories were misogynistic and violent in nature and /pol/ (read: Politically
Incorrect) which originally was very left-wing in regards to chan-culture (now known as
/leftypol/) but, took a hard-right turn towards the far-right in the mid-2010s. This
politically-oriented board had quickly solidified into the alt-right and helped deify Elliot Rodger
(2014 Isla Vista killer), created and bolstered the anti-feminist #GamerGate movement, etc.
which has broad overlap and radicalized the Toronto Van Killer Alek Minassian.
Along with Reddit, a discussion website that not only hosted a laundry list of subcommunities
that further radicalized incels in their violent misogyny but, is infamous for being the site where
Alek Minnasian actively interacted with and supported Elliot Rodger both before and after the
event of the Isla Vista Killings. Alongside Rodger and Minnasian were other incels prior to them
who were non-violent. Nonetheless, they helped create and amplify the subculture such as
Christine Weston Chandler (infamously known as “Chris Chan”). “Chris Chan” is a webcomic
artist known for being harassed by Kiwifarms and 4Chan as a “lolcow” internet slang meaning
one who’s purposefully milked for laughs online. She helped bolster part of the cultural aspects
of incels by her music under the moniker “Christian and the Hedgehog Boys” specifically with
the song ‘So Need a Cute Girl which was covered by the incelcore/e-punk founder Negative XP
under his original moniker ‘ϟCHØØL ϟHØØTΣR’. This cross-pollination between the
communities of 4chan, Reddit, and Incels led to extremist and explicitly eliminationist political
positions espoused by modern-day incels during the mid-2010s. These hostile modes of politics
helped increase their visibility and position as an unspoken force in politics. Such examples
ranged from advocating for the corrective-rape, genocide, and segregation of women and
feminists from male-dominated society, despite the contradictory positions of claiming that
inceldom is founded on their inability or lack of sexual and romantic relationships, a sense of
collective unity, identity, and pride under the banner of ‘incels’ began to form.
From the underbelly of the internet formed a meta culture (meaning subculture within a
subculture) of trolling for reactions, memes accelerating and normalizing false and obscure
stereotypes, dated language to describe targeted groups and individuals, etc. Merging emerged as
the disenfranchised incels above ground became radicalized through resentment, misogyny,
misanthropy, and narcissism towards increasingly violent and eliminationist manifestos forming
the basis of an incel philosophy which in turn was utilized by incels below ground to troll,
antagonize, and create artifacts that deify and reinforce the actions of those above to create a
cycle of isolation, radicalization, and violence. As presented by Elliot Rodger, who was deified
as “Saint Elliot '' in incel communities, creating phrases like “Going E.R.” to hint towards future
actions. Additionally, these hints focused on the dehumanization and stereotyping of the
perceived enemies of incels.This ranged from the mythology of “Chads” and “Tyrone’s” stealing
their alleged prizes of women giving them relationships, pseudo-economic theories like “Sexual
Marketplace Value”, painting women as sexually-promiscuous “Stacy’s”, and the idea that
feminism, women’s liberation, and women’s rights were not only wrong but, should be stripped
away from women. This idea would force them into robotic “femoids' 'whose only use in society
is to reproduce and serve the incel. Inevitably as the world kept spinning and movements like
Gamergate, the formation of the alt-right, and re-emergence of conspiracy theories and the
formation of the Intellectual Dark Web as a political force between the period of early-2000s to
late-2010s led to a contradictory intersectional hierarchy which led to incels analyzing and
categorizing others by characteristics and social categories. This contradictory form of
intersectionality had a reactionary flavor added which simultaneously despised hierarchies yet
reaffirmed and conformed to its openly hostile values. These values included anti-egalitarianism,
anti-political correctness, anti-liberalism, and anti-identity politics while half-heartedly
integrating multiracialism and multiculturalism through tokenizing minority members as
deflections towards any allegations of bigotry. Such political and philosophical contradictions are
even seen in the incel community itself with the term being used to encompass a range of social
categories from race, gender, disability, and class. An example of this would be Seung-Hui Cho,
the 2007 Virginia Tech Shooter, who through incel language intersected with the racial
component of ‘ricecel’ by being Korean and the disability component of ‘autistcel’ by being on
the autism spectrum or the aforementioned Christine Weston Chandler who’s considered to be a
notable transgender incel named ‘transcels’ and another notable ‘autistcel’. This bewildering
theory of intersectionality that takes pieces of the feminist theory coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw
known as ‘intersectionality’ instead focuses on analyzing types of discrimination as the
entry-point and reinforcement of inceldom. By taking the misinterpreted “Blue vs Red” pill
dichotomy of the Matrix films incels and similar overlapping groups swallowed the red pill to
allegedly wake up and learn an unsettling truth of the world. This truth in the view of the
alt-right is the idea that the modern world is corrupted by feminism, progressive movements, and
the alleged totalitarian control of society by liberals, leftists, and Jewish people. Nonetheless,
incels took this dichotomy a step further and made its own pill to swallow alongside the red…the
“black pill”.Their concept of black pills led incels to the idea of adopting the defeatist attitude
that any attempt to form relationships with others is doomed to failure and that the idea of even
trying to break away from inceldom is impossible. This rapid, yet extreme, shift in a specific
online subculture towards the far-right was not only proliferated by lackluster moderation on
forum sites. Other popular yet, non-political subcultures proliferated other reactionary
underground communities such as those in video games, anime, music. These communities serve
as fertile ground for further overlap broadening as far as controversially including women as a
form of incel into the main category of ‘Femcel’ with sub-categories like ‘femcel-lite’ and
‘truefemcel’. Women who are perceived to be ‘femcel-lite’ are women who, through incel
philosophy, are seen as below ordinary women in perceived attractiveness but who still fit the
original definition of inceldom. Whereas ‘truefemcels’ are perceived as women who are so low
in the eyes of society that their inceldom is seen as permanent and truly inescapable. The
evolution of inceldom from a community combating their inner-shyness to a misogynistic,
violent, and contradicting reactionary philosophies held influence online even as other
movements around it came and went with varied success. That amalgamation of numerous
underbellies is what leads to its prevalence in the 21st century.
Opposition & Author Views
There is a really interesting irony in the incel style of quasipolitics – they are both a response
to and advocates of almost an Ayn Randian view of romance and human relationships. So
they rail against the loneliness and the isolation and the individualism of modern life, but they
seem to advocate it as well, in that they love the language of the strong triumphing over the
weak. But they themselves are the weak.
[...]
They’ll say how terrible it is that the left has won the culture wars and we should return to
traditional hierarchies, but then they’ll use terms like "banging sluts", which doesn’t make any
sense, right? Because you have to pick one. They want sexual availability and yet, at the
same time, they express this disgust at promiscuity.
● Williams, Zoe (April 25, 2018)."‘Raw hatred’: whythe 'incel' movement targets and
terrorises women".The Guardian.
Supporters and defenders of the incel and alt-right as both a political force and sub-culture often
will use a myriad of defenses which can fall into 4 major categories: Denial/Deflection, Logical
fallacies, Misreadings/Misinterpretations of data, and Victim mentality.
To start, the most common type of defense used when defending incels and its budding with the
far-right is to deny and deflect criticism. A notable example is Dr. Jordan Peterson’s defense of
Alek Minnasian in the immediate aftermath of the 2018 Tronto Van attack. Peterson claimed the
following statement from a 2018 New York Times Article: “‘He was angry at God because
women were rejecting him,’ Mr. Peterson says of the Toronto killer. ‘The cure for that is
enforced monogamy. That’s actually why monogamy emerges.’ Mr. Peterson does not pause
when he says this. Enforced monogamy is, to him, simply a rational solution. Otherwise women
will all only go for the most high-status men, he explains, and that couldn’t make either gender
happy in the end. ‘Half the men fail,’ he says, meaning that they don’t procreate. ‘And no one
cares about the men who fail.’ I laugh, because it is absurd. ‘You’re laughing about them,’ he
says, giving me a disappointed look. ‘That’s because you’re female.’”. This quotation in the
article presents a brief and concise example: we see Peterson deny that the perpetrator isn’t to
blame and in the same breath create a scapegoat out of a perceived perpetrator that led to violent
action taking place.
Within the alt-right, these examples are more common when discussions of racially-motivated
violence comes up. For example when the Proud Boys are being accused of being white
supremacists they use the defense of claiming to be “Western Chauvinists”. Mixing the
synonyms ‘Western’ which is commonly and used to reference Caucasian (White) people of
European Descent, and Chauvinism a word used to describe people who are excessively patriotic
to their nation, in essence saying White Supremacy but, with synonyms. Another example
amongst the alt-right is their usage of members who are non-white as sheilds for rhetorical
deflection, as shown by the former chairman of the Proud Boys Enrique Tarrio a
Cuban-American who as the former chairman. He often painted the Proud Boys as a ‘Drinking
Club’ that has rowdy members but, is overall welcoming to people of color. That would be fine if
it weren’t for the Proud Boy loyalty oath which reads: “I'm a proud Western chauvinist, I refuse
to apologize for creating the modern world”. This is further reinforced by the usage of slogans
that glorify Chilean dictator Agusto Pinochet claiming “Pinochet Did Nothing Wrong” and “Free
Helicopter Rides” an inside joke that fetishizes the infamous ‘Death Flights’ that Pinochet used
against political dissidents and leftists.
In addition, the second common defense of incels and their alt-right apologists are a broad range
of logical fallacies. The most common example is the logical fallacy of ‘No True-Scotsman’
when rejecting a universal claim, one says that no honest person who believes in said universal
claim would believe in it. An example of this fallacy in action would be the language that Incels
use to describe themselves, particularly “truecels” an incel who has never experienced any form
of physical intimacy and believes that they cannot change their status as incels. Normally this
term is used to describe the purest and most genuine amongst the subcultures which is contrasted
by the term “fakecels” a person who claims to be an incel despite having success in fostering
intimate relationships. Similar usage appears in the alt-right with their language in describing
alleged traitors in the movement, ranging from calling other members “feds” or “glowies”
(although it’s worth noting that the far-left often recycles this joke in order to make light of the
far-right and its perceived delusional views). The term is used for accusing others of being part
of the federal government with glowie a term that gained popularity amongst the far-right in the
aftermath of the January 6th Capitol Siege. Another simply accuses others of being “Antifa”
better known as anti-fascists, an accusation that gained popularity amongst mainstream
conservative pundits and politicians alike in the aftermath of Donald J. Trump's usage of the
word as a catch-all term for framing their opposition as inherently violent, when discussing
violence on the far-right.
These arguments rely on 3 logical fallacies: ad hominems, an argument made against a person as
opposed to the position they’re maintaining. The red-herring fallacy aims at diverting attention
from the original topic toward something that has surface-level value and is irrelevant to the
subject at hand. And straw-manning which aims to misrepresent the positions of the opponent to
seem more absurd or illogical.
Afterward, is the intentional misreading of scientific research or adoption of pseudoscience.
According to Lisa Sugiura in her 2021 book “The Incel Rebellion: The Rise of the Manosphere
and the Virtual War Against Women”, she discusses the usage of pseudoscience to reinforce
beliefs by saying the following: “Incels ascribe to a nihilistic ideology named the blackpill,
which cements the realisation of being an incel. The blackpill is comprised of commonly held
beliefs, such as hypergamy, the ‘just be white’ (JBW) theory, the 80/20 rule of dating, lookism,
the halo effect and sexual racism that rely on pseudoscience – where incels seek evidence to
support to their claims, rather than a scientific approach, which would strive to prove a claim by
seeking evidence, which may prove that claim to be false, amid uncritical interpretations of
evolutionary biology and psychology studies, as well as studies undertaken by dating sites.”.
This usage of arbitrary pseudoscience reinforces the ideological foundation of incel philosophy
and is usually used to counter any claims of taking responsibility, personal introspection, or even
trying to break out of inceldom entirely. Using pseudoscience has broad overlap with the
far-right, especially when making propaganda, or boosting engagements a notable example
would be the false claim that white people are being displaced by non-white immigrants entering
the nation otherwise known as the “white replacement conspiracy theory” which has been
influential to far-right extremists of the past such as Timothy McVeigh a former military veteran
who was directly inspired by the Neo-Nazi book “The Turner Diaries” committed the Oklahoma
City Bombing of 1995 and Dylan Roof who perpetrated the Charleston church shooting of 2015
both were influenced by white supremacist ideologies which had pseudoscientific foundations,
along with the misreadings of data which have influenced modern groups like Patriot Front, the
Proud Boys, and the 3%ers.