Hello booklovers,
My name is Alin and welcome to my YouTube channel. Today I am going to do something different again, I am going to do a reading vlog and I am going to read this book, ‘Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right’ by Angela Nagle and after every two chapters or so, I am going to tell you what this book is about, and if it’s worth reading or not.
So let’s do this!
First Two Chapters (4chan, 8chan & Transgression)
- After reading the first two chapters of the book ‘Kill All Normies’, I have to say I found it very interesting, as it talks about how it was possible the development of the alt-right movement in the United States.
- Nagle observes the culture developed around websites like 4chan and 8chan based on memes and online abuse coupled with a rejection of political correctness and feminism made possible the appearance of the alt-right discourse.
- She also examines the similarities between these new countercultures and old countercultures and the concept of transgression which has been part of important avant-garde movements, like dadaism or surrealism, became an important element in the 4chan and 8chan cultures. And this type of transgression it’s targeting both left ideology and Christian morality.
Middle Chapters (Alt-Right & Conservative Culture)
- In these two chapters, Angela Nagle discusses the ‘intellectual origins’ of the alt-right movement and who are the main figures who influenced the alt-right. We can see the names of Oswald Spengler who wrote about the decline of Western Civ, H.L. Mencken and his reactionary thought, the Italian writer Julius Evola, and the paleoconservative Samuel Francis.
- She also discusses the figures who gave voice to the alt-right and some of them I didn’t know before reading this book, like Mark Cernovich or Gavin McInnes. I knew the most vocal figures like Milo, Lauren Southern, Ben Shapiro, Robert Spencer, Alex Jones and so on.
- It also discusses the similarities between Pat Buchanan and Milo Yiannopoulos and how both imagined the war against the Western culture and what role America should play in the world.
Last Chapters (Tumblr & the Manosphere)
- In the last three chapters, Nagle talks about Tumblr and how the liberal left was able to push their ideas into the online subcultures and the problem of the manosphere and how this movement intersects with the alt-right.
- She mentions some of the important figures manosphere and their misogynistic attitude towards women and hatred of feminists and she quotes some disgusting things that some these guys say, like Roosh V in ‘How to Stop Rape’:
“If rape becomes legal under my proposal, a girl will protect her body in the same manner that she protects her purse and smartphone. If rape becomes legal, a girl will not enter an impaired state of mind where she can’t resist being dragged off to a bedroom with a man who she is unsure of—she’ll scream, yell, or kick at his attempt while bystanders are still around. If rape becomes legal, she will never be unchaperoned with a man she doesn’t want to sleep with. After several months of advertising this law throughout the land, rape would be virtually eliminated on the first day it is applied.” - In conclusion, Nagle criticizes people on the left and right for contributing to this online cultural war. This is an interesting and entertaining book about what is happening at the moment in the online world and gives you some insights on how to approach these online subcultures.
I hope you enjoyed my video!
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