I guess my main reaction is... these are not serious people. They live in a fantasy world, have become obsessed with it, and it bleeds into real world interaction with real, violent consequences.
And the fantasy I’m talking about is not really the furry identities, but this obsession with and overinflation of the idea that they are all main characters in a serious political struggle of epic import. They are fighting real, actual Nazis. They are planning La Transgenres Resistance against jackbooted government transphobes. Every narcissistic, paranoid, neurotic act up to and including physical violence is justified by the critical importance of their titanic struggle, and every personal conflict is twisted until the players are either heroes or villains within The Discourse.
It’s a weird blend of narcissism and a defense mechanism against a lack of more serious purpose - if I’m just a hard to deal with person who sucks at relationships, I’m pathetic, but if I can be an Oppressed Freedom Fighter whose personal struggles are a front in the great culture battle, and whose shitty boyfriends are not just jerks but The Enemy, well then I Matter.
It’s probably not a coincidence that people who create and sometimes live in (at least online) “fursonas” are more prone to this sort of unseriousness, but I certainly don’t think it’s causal. There are plenty of non furries with exactly the same pathology, so I think that makes this story very much worth pursuing.
Sep 5, 2023·edited Sep 5, 2023Liked by TracingWoodgrains
I really appreciate this, Trace. Yeah, it's really niche; but the Nazi-punching mania took over my social circles pre-pandemic for a while, and while it turned out to be yet another stupid "progressive" fad, it really messed with my understanding of some of the people I know. I'm not a furry, but this was all over the place, and still is in some non-furry Internet subcultures and among some people.
It's not exclusively men who fantasize about this kind of violence - plenty of my friends who longed to deck a brownshirt in a quiet residential neighborhood in Seattle were women, taking self-defense classes in the desperate hope someone evil would appear and let them be the superhero who defended "the community." But I was most... disturbed, honestly, by the obsessive violent rhetoric among men I knew. These were nerds across the board, guys whose inability to fit in with everyday casual machismo culture had been socially defining for a lot of them in the past. And now they had an outlet - a language of constant threats of violence, a group to share their fantasies of being the big tough man with. A few of them turned Internet-cop, constantly scouring their hobbyist Facebook groups and Discord servers for Nazis, code at that point for "Trump voter," to harass.
These were not "internet autists." These were people with normal jobs, mainstream geeky hobbies, spouses and close families, and lots of IRL friends. They've all abandoned this now, thank God, but I sometimes wonder - and never ask - how much of that time they remember and what they think of how they behaved then. None of them ever punched, or got within punching distance of, a perceived Nazi, it goes without saying; probably some of them only participated secretly knowing that they would never have to make good on any threat. Are they embarrassed? I don't know. But I'm still afraid they'd have Silverbeak and Dogpatch and co.'s justifications ready to go. And I still wonder, if any of them had ended up in a similar situation as the beach barbecue, whether they would have behaved like the assailant did. Probably not... but I can't forget that they actively aspired to that.
Sep 5, 2023·edited Sep 5, 2023Liked by TracingWoodgrains
Interesting. There's a lot of talk in the comments suggesting this is about Furries, but I think I've seen similar (though obviously much less dramatic) situations in other communities. If I was trying to define it, I'd say it's the difference between personal and political justification/reasoning.
There's been a lot of talk for a long time about the personal being political and one related phenomenon is that 'I don't like you, please stay away from me' feels a lot less acceptable than 'you are problematic/evil, go to hell!'
Not liking someone is a matter of taste and invites discussion/debate and is, in the end, as much about you as about them (and opens you up to all sorts of armchair psychologizing, do you not like them because they're racist, or because you're racist, because they're anti-fa, or you're anti-fa?) but 'you're a commie/nazi' really doesn't, so it's a safe way to avoid that.
This was as far away from a furry beach fight as one can get, but some of the Discourse (TM) in the wake of the Will Smith Oscar Slap made me feel like I was taking crazy pills. To me, it was obvious that physically striking someone was wrong, regardless of how offensive they were being. But there were people actually arguing that it was justified because Chris Rock mocked a "disabled Black woman" (alopecia being the disability). This was the same contingent that call words "violence" and call out "harm" in all kinds of situations. But when it came to actual violence, apparently that didn't count. I went full Constanza "you know, we're living in a society" that week.
Wow, hard to pick a side when all dramatis personae are delusional mental cases who spend way too much time online, like adjudicating a squabble between the voices in the head of a schizophrenic.
But in reality world this sure looks like an assault.
> Despite the meetup being voluntary, masked, and outdoors, two other admins from the area, a nonbinary furry who goes by Scout Pawfoot and a trans woman who goes by Silverbeak (herself a longtime friend of Teskine), pulled the two into a chat group with other local meetup admins to press them to cancel their meetup. According to Renn, people in the group claimed they would be murdering people by hosting it, and called Renn and Skaard Nazis.
If you don't think it's safe to attend an event, then wouldn't the rathional response be to simply "not go?" Perhaps state the concern for safety on the forum if you're really concerned? And that's it!
This sounds insane.
I also have a problem with calling people Nazis -- even dispicable people -- who aren't Nazis. "Nazi" should mean a specific things. Israelis who are under constant existential threat from their neighbors don't call them Nazis. (I spend about 4 months/year in Israel and have never heard the word Nazi used to refer to anyone other than the Germans and perhaps a few modern European and American groups who directly borrow their doctrines and symbology.)
I’m not very online, but this was a moving piece. Thank you Trace for taking so much time to do the investigative work and thoughtful analysis that this article required.
Easy for something like this to be written off by most as weirdos being weirdos, but the themes and tendencies of this behavior are all too human and universal across all groups regardless of where they’re from.
I wish more people could approach conflict in general with the mindset Trace expressed in his writing, and that we could avoid dehumanizing behavior across the board for the betterment of everyone.
I actually think someone who went largely unscathed from all of this is probably (in my mind) the most responsible for it: Serah.
They and this Skaard fellow had a contentious break up. After this happens, this Serah character goes on the warpath to impugn Skaard and spread false rumors about them.
Doing what they can to gain sympathy and ostracize their ex boyfriend, Skaard, from the group.
As far as I can tell, all roads lead to that.
So really, this whole story is a tale as old as time.
Hell hath no fury like a Furry Trans Woman scorned.
I've been worried about this trend for a while, which I've mostly seen among young people but can believe cuts across many ages. Ironically, I've come to call some of these people "fascist youth" in my mind (but not out loud) because that is what they remind me of. Either that or Maoists. The neat trick where you call anyone with whom you disagree politically a "Nazi" or "TERF" (as you pointed out) and have now removed them to a level where you can physically harm or kill them with impunity is being reproduced across a varied array of activist groups. It scares me.
The recent story about Oxfam creating a caricature of JK Rowling in a short animation reminiscent of Nazi propaganda against Jews was a chilling example.
I've never seen more proof of terminal Internet autism. How many words is this masterpiece on "Nazifurs" and one incident at some random beach that not one soul would've cared about if not for some degenerates dressed in suits.
How hot was it? Even Mx Purrzog said "imagine the smell"
‘Despite the meetup being voluntary, masked, and outdoors, two other admins from the area, a nonbinary furry who goes by Scout Pawfoot and a trans woman who goes by Silverbeak [...] pulled the two into a chat group with other local meetup admins to press them to cancel their meetup.’
‘Their falling-out was ugly and deeply personal in both directions, with Serah (herself a trans woman) furious that Skaard “deadnamed” Silverbeak [...] Serah would go on to become the most visible source for the Nazi allegations against Renn and Skaard after the beach confrontation’
These stunning and brave folx deserve our eternal gratitude for outing those despicable Nazis.
I read a good online essay on the subject of punching Nazis which I can't now find, I feel like it was a Scott Alexander one or at least a similar style, but if it is I would have expected to find it. Ring a bell for anyone else? Was definitely from the sort of source I would expect BARpers to read.
It basically points out the obvious flaws in the smug, 'well Indiana Jones did it, how do you think WW2 was won' attitude. The Allies didn't just punch the Nazis, they shot them, and bombed their homes and cities and those of their allies, and potentially unaligned neighbours and families in the context of total war. If the idea of that doesn't appeal, then one has to accept that there is a difference.
Also, even before the takeover in 1933, there were those who opposed the Nazis with street violence, in particular the Communists, and that generally went very poorly and was used to drum up sympathy.
A lot of violent acts stem from extraordinarily petty roots - think of virtually every bar fight ever. These people should be required to sit down with one of the few remaining WWII vets and explain to them, in great detail, just what makes their social enemies Nazis.
Thanks for the reporting, Trace.
I guess my main reaction is... these are not serious people. They live in a fantasy world, have become obsessed with it, and it bleeds into real world interaction with real, violent consequences.
And the fantasy I’m talking about is not really the furry identities, but this obsession with and overinflation of the idea that they are all main characters in a serious political struggle of epic import. They are fighting real, actual Nazis. They are planning La Transgenres Resistance against jackbooted government transphobes. Every narcissistic, paranoid, neurotic act up to and including physical violence is justified by the critical importance of their titanic struggle, and every personal conflict is twisted until the players are either heroes or villains within The Discourse.
It’s a weird blend of narcissism and a defense mechanism against a lack of more serious purpose - if I’m just a hard to deal with person who sucks at relationships, I’m pathetic, but if I can be an Oppressed Freedom Fighter whose personal struggles are a front in the great culture battle, and whose shitty boyfriends are not just jerks but The Enemy, well then I Matter.
It’s probably not a coincidence that people who create and sometimes live in (at least online) “fursonas” are more prone to this sort of unseriousness, but I certainly don’t think it’s causal. There are plenty of non furries with exactly the same pathology, so I think that makes this story very much worth pursuing.
I really appreciate this, Trace. Yeah, it's really niche; but the Nazi-punching mania took over my social circles pre-pandemic for a while, and while it turned out to be yet another stupid "progressive" fad, it really messed with my understanding of some of the people I know. I'm not a furry, but this was all over the place, and still is in some non-furry Internet subcultures and among some people.
It's not exclusively men who fantasize about this kind of violence - plenty of my friends who longed to deck a brownshirt in a quiet residential neighborhood in Seattle were women, taking self-defense classes in the desperate hope someone evil would appear and let them be the superhero who defended "the community." But I was most... disturbed, honestly, by the obsessive violent rhetoric among men I knew. These were nerds across the board, guys whose inability to fit in with everyday casual machismo culture had been socially defining for a lot of them in the past. And now they had an outlet - a language of constant threats of violence, a group to share their fantasies of being the big tough man with. A few of them turned Internet-cop, constantly scouring their hobbyist Facebook groups and Discord servers for Nazis, code at that point for "Trump voter," to harass.
These were not "internet autists." These were people with normal jobs, mainstream geeky hobbies, spouses and close families, and lots of IRL friends. They've all abandoned this now, thank God, but I sometimes wonder - and never ask - how much of that time they remember and what they think of how they behaved then. None of them ever punched, or got within punching distance of, a perceived Nazi, it goes without saying; probably some of them only participated secretly knowing that they would never have to make good on any threat. Are they embarrassed? I don't know. But I'm still afraid they'd have Silverbeak and Dogpatch and co.'s justifications ready to go. And I still wonder, if any of them had ended up in a similar situation as the beach barbecue, whether they would have behaved like the assailant did. Probably not... but I can't forget that they actively aspired to that.
Interesting. There's a lot of talk in the comments suggesting this is about Furries, but I think I've seen similar (though obviously much less dramatic) situations in other communities. If I was trying to define it, I'd say it's the difference between personal and political justification/reasoning.
There's been a lot of talk for a long time about the personal being political and one related phenomenon is that 'I don't like you, please stay away from me' feels a lot less acceptable than 'you are problematic/evil, go to hell!'
Not liking someone is a matter of taste and invites discussion/debate and is, in the end, as much about you as about them (and opens you up to all sorts of armchair psychologizing, do you not like them because they're racist, or because you're racist, because they're anti-fa, or you're anti-fa?) but 'you're a commie/nazi' really doesn't, so it's a safe way to avoid that.
This was as far away from a furry beach fight as one can get, but some of the Discourse (TM) in the wake of the Will Smith Oscar Slap made me feel like I was taking crazy pills. To me, it was obvious that physically striking someone was wrong, regardless of how offensive they were being. But there were people actually arguing that it was justified because Chris Rock mocked a "disabled Black woman" (alopecia being the disability). This was the same contingent that call words "violence" and call out "harm" in all kinds of situations. But when it came to actual violence, apparently that didn't count. I went full Constanza "you know, we're living in a society" that week.
Wow, hard to pick a side when all dramatis personae are delusional mental cases who spend way too much time online, like adjudicating a squabble between the voices in the head of a schizophrenic.
But in reality world this sure looks like an assault.
I got lost right here:
> Despite the meetup being voluntary, masked, and outdoors, two other admins from the area, a nonbinary furry who goes by Scout Pawfoot and a trans woman who goes by Silverbeak (herself a longtime friend of Teskine), pulled the two into a chat group with other local meetup admins to press them to cancel their meetup. According to Renn, people in the group claimed they would be murdering people by hosting it, and called Renn and Skaard Nazis.
If you don't think it's safe to attend an event, then wouldn't the rathional response be to simply "not go?" Perhaps state the concern for safety on the forum if you're really concerned? And that's it!
This sounds insane.
I also have a problem with calling people Nazis -- even dispicable people -- who aren't Nazis. "Nazi" should mean a specific things. Israelis who are under constant existential threat from their neighbors don't call them Nazis. (I spend about 4 months/year in Israel and have never heard the word Nazi used to refer to anyone other than the Germans and perhaps a few modern European and American groups who directly borrow their doctrines and symbology.)
I’m not very online, but this was a moving piece. Thank you Trace for taking so much time to do the investigative work and thoughtful analysis that this article required.
Easy for something like this to be written off by most as weirdos being weirdos, but the themes and tendencies of this behavior are all too human and universal across all groups regardless of where they’re from.
I wish more people could approach conflict in general with the mindset Trace expressed in his writing, and that we could avoid dehumanizing behavior across the board for the betterment of everyone.
Regardless of who did what, the entire community seems like it has a high prevalence of neurotics.
You're a national treasure Trace
If ever an episode deserved an editorial companion, it is this one!
Great article.
I actually think someone who went largely unscathed from all of this is probably (in my mind) the most responsible for it: Serah.
They and this Skaard fellow had a contentious break up. After this happens, this Serah character goes on the warpath to impugn Skaard and spread false rumors about them.
Doing what they can to gain sympathy and ostracize their ex boyfriend, Skaard, from the group.
As far as I can tell, all roads lead to that.
So really, this whole story is a tale as old as time.
Hell hath no fury like a Furry Trans Woman scorned.
I've been worried about this trend for a while, which I've mostly seen among young people but can believe cuts across many ages. Ironically, I've come to call some of these people "fascist youth" in my mind (but not out loud) because that is what they remind me of. Either that or Maoists. The neat trick where you call anyone with whom you disagree politically a "Nazi" or "TERF" (as you pointed out) and have now removed them to a level where you can physically harm or kill them with impunity is being reproduced across a varied array of activist groups. It scares me.
The recent story about Oxfam creating a caricature of JK Rowling in a short animation reminiscent of Nazi propaganda against Jews was a chilling example.
I've never seen more proof of terminal Internet autism. How many words is this masterpiece on "Nazifurs" and one incident at some random beach that not one soul would've cared about if not for some degenerates dressed in suits.
How hot was it? Even Mx Purrzog said "imagine the smell"
‘Despite the meetup being voluntary, masked, and outdoors, two other admins from the area, a nonbinary furry who goes by Scout Pawfoot and a trans woman who goes by Silverbeak [...] pulled the two into a chat group with other local meetup admins to press them to cancel their meetup.’
‘Their falling-out was ugly and deeply personal in both directions, with Serah (herself a trans woman) furious that Skaard “deadnamed” Silverbeak [...] Serah would go on to become the most visible source for the Nazi allegations against Renn and Skaard after the beach confrontation’
These stunning and brave folx deserve our eternal gratitude for outing those despicable Nazis.
I read a good online essay on the subject of punching Nazis which I can't now find, I feel like it was a Scott Alexander one or at least a similar style, but if it is I would have expected to find it. Ring a bell for anyone else? Was definitely from the sort of source I would expect BARpers to read.
It basically points out the obvious flaws in the smug, 'well Indiana Jones did it, how do you think WW2 was won' attitude. The Allies didn't just punch the Nazis, they shot them, and bombed their homes and cities and those of their allies, and potentially unaligned neighbours and families in the context of total war. If the idea of that doesn't appeal, then one has to accept that there is a difference.
Also, even before the takeover in 1933, there were those who opposed the Nazis with street violence, in particular the Communists, and that generally went very poorly and was used to drum up sympathy.
A lot of violent acts stem from extraordinarily petty roots - think of virtually every bar fight ever. These people should be required to sit down with one of the few remaining WWII vets and explain to them, in great detail, just what makes their social enemies Nazis.