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Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars 270 POLITOLOGICKÝ ČASOPIS / CZECH JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 3/2018 al wars that overlap into politics. A website Nagle, Angela: called 4chan mostly serves as a place for right-wing people, whilst Tumblr mostly KILL ALL NORMIES: ONLINE serves as a place for left-wing people. Nagle CULTURE WARS FROM 4CHAN focuses primarily on 4chan, which has built AND TUMBLR TO TRUMP its own community of online nerds posting AND THE ALT-RIGHT. under the alias ‘Anonymous’. Internet ano- nymity and poor regulation of cybercrimes Winchester: Zero Books. 2017. have given its users the illusion of invin- 136 pages. cibility and have led to many unpleasant events, including cyberbullying. Nagle also DOI: 10.5817/PC2018-3-270 describes how internet memes originating from the site have been used in political On the internet, fallacies, conspiracy the- campaigns – e.g. Pepe the Frog, a former- ories and hoaxes are often used instead of ly a harmless internet meme, who became verified information. Since the internet is a symbol for the alt-right and its opposition a decentralized network, people have access to ‘political correctness’. this information, regardless of whether it The author describes how feminist blog- was approved, fact checked or revised in any gers were harassed by the 4chan communi- way. It gets even more scary when such in- ty just because they did not agree with the formation is propagated by opinion makers feminist point of view. For example, blogger on social networks. These people can make Anita Sarkeesian received many rape threats, up anything and make many people believe because she had successfully crowdfunded it. At this time, such people have even more her feminist video project about stereotypes influence over the youth than the press does. in video games. Just notice how popular social media influ- Sarkeesian’s videos were not very popular, encers are – their popularity is also transmit- as most viewers did not understand them. ted to the real world. But honestly, it is naive to think that an av- That is why we should pay more attention erage viewer, especially an adolescent, would to the political movements that come from understand the academic newspeak. The alt- the depths of the internet. One well-known right, therefore, has a tremendous advantage internet phenomenon is the alt-right – over ‘Tumblr liberals’ (as Nagle calls the left- a movement whose name was coined by wing youth on the internet) because it has white nationalist Richard Spencer. The pub- the ability to impress people, and thus makes lication unorthodoxly titled Kill All Normies: it easier for people to accept their required Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr worldview. The online left fails in this respect to Trump and the Alt-Right by Irish writer and does not manage to convince many Angela Nagle is one of the first of its kind, people who were not previously open to its and it attempts to show us how the internet ideas. community that formerly supported liberal The book describes how the hatred to- Barack Obama started to lean towards con- wards women and feminism has grown servative Donald Trump. and gives the example of Zoe Quinn, a vi- As the title of the publication suggests, it deo game developer who became subject is a summary of the current online cultur- to harassment all over the internet. This REVIEWS 271 controversy became known as Gamergate, irreverence. Young people just want to defy and according to Nagle, it ‘brought gamers, the liberal mainstream and all the issues pro- rightist chan culture, anti-feminism and the moted by it. Every opinion that does not fit online far right closer to mainstream discus- into the alt-right worldview, they call ‘propa- sion and it also politicized a broad group of ganda’, and this kind of conservatism is their young people, mostly boys, who organized way of revolting. tactics around the idea of fighting back Nagle concludes that the left became against the culture war being waged by the a laughing stock for the whole new gener- cultural left’. Nagle marks this culture war ation because of anti-free speech, anti-free as a ‘geeks vs feminists’ battle. She sees one thought and anti-intellectual online propo- origin of this culture war in the internet ‘pi- nents of the left. She notes that when Milo rate utopias’ of the libertarian left. In the end, Yiannopoulos challenged his opponents to however, it has helped the right rather than argue with him, they did not know how. That the left, which is an interesting thing and it is because in their ‘intellectually shut-down just shows how the political views on the in- world of Tumblr and trigger warnings’, as ternet have changed over time. It makes us Nagle calls it, they learned to recite jargon, realize that today’s rebels are not on the left, not to argue. The videos of alt-right propo- like it used to be, but on the right, and that nents being punched and shouted at do not nowadays, the right has become the count- really help the left either. er-culture. I must agree that feminism has become In her book, Nagle dedicates space to Milo viewed as a men-hating, anti-free speech Yiannopoulos, one of the prominent figures movement and it is hard to convince others of the ‘alt-light’ (a ‘youthful bridge between of the contrary. A typical feminist is present- the alt-right and mainstream Trumpism’, ed as a social justice warrior with arguments as Nagle calls it). He gained fame in 2014, that no one really holds – a straw man fallacy when he covered the Gamergate controversy is often used. That is because of controversial and he describes conservatism as the ‘new Tumblr bloggers and Twitter users, whose punk’. This sounds strange, since punk has articles or tweets went viral. But I think that traditionally been associated with left-wing a few rare cases cannot justify the overall movements. Nagle describes how transgres- view on feminism by alt-right proponents sion, which has been embraced as a virtue of and the constant bullying of those who have social liberalism, became significant for an a different opinion. Angela Nagle is just online anti-feminist movement that rejected blaming the victims. The real problem is that traditional church-going conservatism. the internet is not a place for decent political Alt-light figures like Milo Yiannopoulos, debates. It is a place of fallacies, prejudice, Nagle says, influenced not only internet cul- hatred, demagoguery and hoaxes. The only ture, but mainstream culture as well. He real- solution is to develop critical thinking, so ly is an extravagant figure, since he is openly people can filter reasonable opinions from gay and prefers black men, but still declares those less reasonable or even deceptive. himself a conservative and fights against the However, it is clear to me that this task is LGBT community. But, according to Nagle, unfeasible. the rise of the alt-right does not imply a re- Nagle’s book does not strive to be purely turn to conservatism – it is more a non-con- academic, but rather to be a book that is ac- formism, self-expression, transgression and cessible to everyone. That is also its biggest 272 POLITOLOGICKÝ ČASOPIS / CZECH JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 3/2018 weakness. The absence of references raises become more and more relevant over time, doubts as to the accuracy of the information and it will be necessary to understand them, contained therein. Moreover, I noticed that since they essentially affect the political in some parts, the author does not mention views of the present generation. Angela Na- critical issues that have been discussed. One gle gives us a satisfying starting point. example of this is Zoe Quinn’s alleged affair Oldřich Florian with a journalist. Even though the report was Faculty of Law, Masaryk University proven to be fake, it played a very import- ant role in the Gamergate controversy, and was actually the reason why so many people began to criticize Zoe Quinn, which led to mass cyberbullying. This case illustrates how malicious the internet can be in violating the Havelková, Barbara: right to privacy. Most of the Western world has access to GENDER EQUALITY IN LAW: the internet and its beauty is that everyone UNCOVERING THE LEGACIES can write what they want and no one limits of CzeCh State SoCialiSm. their expression. They do not have to be on TV to be seen or in a newsroom to be able Oxford: Hart Publishing. 2017. to express their opinion. But that is also the 358 pages. biggest disadvantage. There are no regula- tions, so people can spread whatever they DOI: 10.5817/PC2018-3-272 want and influence people without their content being revised. Over time, it is quite In her book Gender Equality in Law: Uncov- possible that such things will even enter the ering the Legacies of Czech State Socialism, mainstream. And this is precisely what hap- Dr. Barbara Havelková contributes a nu- pened in the case of the alt-right in its various anced argument to the broader discussion of forms. gender equality within the Czech Republic. We can get information about this topic She does so by articulating the ways in which from various internet discussions, internet gender inequality is manifested within exist- articles, and a very few peer-reviewed jour- ing legal, political, and social frameworks. nals. Also, there are books by Milo Yian- As such, Havelková’s argument contributes nopoulos and Zoe Quinn, but they are more to a more comprehensive understanding of autobiographical.
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