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A rallying cry adopted by For Honor players may sound familiar to those well-versed in the conservative political landscape. Deus vult, a phrase thats become popular with the multiplayer games community, may have origins in 11th-century Europe, but its more recently been associated with the alt-right movement.

Deus vult is Latin for God wills it, which became a stirring declaration for the Crusaders. It concluded a speech made by Pope Urban II, calling defenders of Christianity to action in the fight to win back their Holy Land from its Muslim occupants. It became symbolic not just of pride in the Christian state, but in Western culture as a whole.

The religious, historical nature of the phrase is obvious and inextricable, and thats what accounts for its use by the community of games like For Honor. The action fighting game is set in medieval times, with players choosing between knights, samurai and vikings. In keeping with the time period, players who choose the knight class can often be found cheering Deus vult!

The phrase is a major meme in the For Honor community, and it appears to be recycled from older medieval times-based games. That includes Crusader Kings, which had an expansion called Deus Vult; the phrase also appeared in its sequel. Its used by recent beta testers in a plethora of threads on the subreddit and official For Honor forum. There are jokes about the meme and how common it is, but more often than not, players just post it as a rallying cry much like how it was originally intended.

Very important day tomorrow..

FOR HONOR BETA FUCK YES. KNIGHTS KNIGHTS KNIGHTS KNIGHTS KNIGHTS KNIGHTS KNIGHTS KNIGHTS KNIGHTS DEUS VULT!

Despite the lighthearted use of the phrase by the For Honor community, rooted in pre-existing video game culture, the alt-right had resurfaced the age-old battle cry months earlier for more sinister purposes.

Members of the alt-right movement, which propagates racist, misogynistic, xenophobic and other hateful ideologies, co-opted Deus vult for its purposes during the 2016 election season. The group turned the phrase into a hashtag that accompanied its political tweets, and reports of it graffitied in public places followed.

Ishaan Tharoor of the Washington Post wrote last November of why the alt-right, and particularly supporters of then-President elect Donald Trump, was so drawn to Deus vult as a symbol of Judeo-Christian pride.

Both Trump and those in the seething online churn of the alt-right a catchall term for a coterie of neo-fascists, white supremacists, ethno-populists, anti-feminists and other far-right extremists who cheered Trump's electoral victory on Nov. 8 also embrace a clash of civilizations, he wrote. The president-elect signaled as much in a major foreign policy speech in April, when he rejected the idea of universal values and trumpeted the promotion of Western civilization.

The alt-rights memeification of Deus vult is just one part of whats seen as the groups larger obsession with anti-Islamic discourse and medieval imagery. While this connection has been debated some argue that the phrases popularity is only attributable to Crusader Kings the prevalent understanding is that Deus vult in the alt-right context is just another code word for hate-mongering. (Its also another example of the movement re-appropriating iconography for its purposes. Refer to the history of the Pepe the frog meme for more on that.)

The current surge of Deus Vult does not seem to be part of [Crusader Kings], but part of a growing hatred for islamification, proved by simply reading the comments that come with that phrase, explained one Redditor to another asking about the phrases proliferation last October.

In the case of For Honor, Deus vult is just a phrase used by the community without any political associations. (Weve contacted Ubisoft for comment and will update if we hear back.) The meme, too, is divorced from the alt-right movement. Instead, its just one uncomfortable way that the games burgeoning community intersects with one of the internets most incendiary.

Link:
For Honor's accidental alt-right connection - Polygon

Yesterday, Netflix premiered the trailer for Dear White People, a series based on a film that was released in 2014 and doesnt seem to have made much of an impact on the worlds supply of white people. But since the online communities who like to call people sensitive snowflakes are also big into projection, trollish alt-right types who frequent 4chans /pol/ board and Reddits r/the_donald (where else?) are freaking the fuck out about the trailer, calling for white people to #BoycottNetflix over the companys brazen act of anti-white discrimination and white genocide, i.e., acknowledging the existence of people of color in its customer base.

Like most right-wing boycotts, the only ones who are being punished here are the boycotters themselves, who now will never know how The Santa Clarita Diet ends. And Netflix makes a point of not releasing ratings for its shows, so even if the boycott does make an impact (it wontthe company added 1.45 million subscribers in the U.S. during the fourth quarter of 2016, and has more than 93 million subscribers worldwide, so it couldnt give less of a fuck about a handful of easily offended white people), Netflixs stock wouldnt be affected either way.

If youve been keeping track, this now means that white supremacists can no longer drink Coke, Pepsi, or Budweiser (or Budwiser, as they spell it), eat Oreos, go to Starbucks, watch Star Wars movies, or binge on Netflix. Oh well, more bandwidth and corn syrup for the rest of us.

[via Gizmodo]

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Alt-Right trolls boycott Netflix because they're scared of Dear White People - A.V. Club

BTW

AmidDonald Trumps mercurial ascent into presidency, internet fans have created a puzzling musical movement, "Trumpwave."

According to knowyourmeme, the originating movement is called fashwave. It takes elements of glitchy, internet-spawned electronic musicvaporwave and synthwave, mostlyand adds references to Trump via '80s yuppy-inspired artwork.

BuzzFeed's Reggie Ugwu wrote about fashwave as:

Now, Trump branding is leading the musical releases.

Andrew Anglin, from white supremacist website Daily Stormer, called itthe official soundtrack of the alt-right. (The alt-right is a loosely organized white supremacist online movement.)

The forms of music associated with previous White Nationalist movements, various forms of rock music, are pretty dated, explains Anglin. In the end, the solution to this problem had been staring me in the face all along. The Whitest music ever: Synthwave.

Its become a serious issue among vaporwave artists, to the point that an emergency summit was called last year to mitigate the scenes creeping fascism.

The banality of the comments in these videos alone is mortifying. But luckily the music sucks.

H/T Thump

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'Trumpwave' emerges as the alt-right's meme-heavy soundtrack - The Daily Dot

ROMEWhen covering PopeFrancis, the story is often reduced to liberals versus traditionalists. Yet spending 15 minutes at a bar in Rome, or pretty much anywhere else in the world with a semi-strong Catholic culture, would prove that not everything is so black and white.

In reality, the vast majority of Catholics sit in the middle, not to mention those interested in the Church even though they might profess another faith, consider themselves religiously unaffiliated or deny the existence of God.

Often, I find myself working from a Roman bar or coffee shop. Sometime thats because Im in-between meetings, or working on a deadline, or simply trying to avoid the temptation (I wish!) of doing laundry and cleaning. In any event, Ive continued this tradition I picked up from my mom back in Argentina.

In an attempt to improve my Italian skills, when I can afford the time, I try to engage whoever is around me in conversation, and after two or three sentences, the cat comes out of the bag: Im a reporter covering the Vatican.

This usually leads to a monologue from the other person.

Some people throw out theusual concatenation of misinformed and misguided facts, ranging from the pope has one lung to how can the Church speak about x, y or z when every priest is a pedophile?

But more often than not, I run into one of the many Catholics in the middle, who listens to and respect the popes because the office comes before the person. These are generally people who see in Francis a man whos done many good things, but also some they find questionable.

A minority of the men and women I speak with have actually read Franciss document on the family Amoris Laetitia, and they often ask me what all the buzz is about: Most never read footnotes, including the famous footnote 351 on the divorced and civilly remarried. Then there are those who have read it all, and who usually say they wish the pope had been more black or white, or had made it part of the text, or had not included it at all.

But beyond this document, virtually everyone I engage with has a list of both praise and criticism, which doesnt make them either Francis-haters or Francis-lovers.

The pope himself has said on several occasionsthat he appreciates criticism.

Yet, more and more, the voices of those capable of both praise and reproachare missing from the conversations being held in the media: they dont hold press conferences, nor do they send out snarky tweets. Finding them requires looking beyond the contacts tab in smart phones and emails.

It implies getting out of the comfort zone, to engage those who might not agree with ones view. It also implies leaving aside the preconceptions on all sides.

I meet people who reduce those who want to raise any criticism regarding the pope to a small set of extremist cardinals who nobody likes anyway, wearing all this medieval plumage cheered by groups of ultra-traditionalists who believe the earth is flat and it doesnt revolve around the sun.

Then there are those who reduce Franciss supporters to kumbaya-dancing, tree-hugging, papal Kool-Aid drinkers who are incapable of perceiving the Argentine pontiff as anything other than Gods greatest gift to humanity.

Though both of those extreme categories do exist, the majority of those who dare say something outside the pope good-pope bad narrative are not deeply weird lunatics.

They might often come offas if they are, however, because for a liberal [or, for that matter, conservative] media to include the voice of a smart, articulate alternativevoice that doesnt fit the frame is apostasy.

And yes, there are articulate voices on both sides of the trenches. Ive met them, run into them at random places in Rome.

Most of those folks, however, are found far away from the magic realm of Twitter, because strong and nuanced arguments can rarely be made in 140 characters.

For journalists to reduce thecoverage of the Catholic Church to supporters v. enemies of the pope is too easy an exercise.

Sure, five minutes on Twitter will confirm that there are people blindly supportive of and blindly hostile toFrancis, of his predecessorsor the Church in general, just like there are people out there extremely in favor of or against Tom Brady and those wholove to hate Roger Federer, or hate those who dont love him.

But this reductionist take doesnt do justice to how most people actually think. It does nothing to address the real conversations being had at coffee shops or among friends all over the world.

Even worse, it deepens this seemingly unstoppable trend towardsgated societies, where we only interact with people who think like us, dress like us and binge-watch the same TV shows that we do.

Thus, the challenge for journalists those covering the Church, and beyond becomes being able to reach out to every side, listen to what they have to say and give them a fair shot at expressing their points of view.

Perhaps that would lead to authentic conversations, and not only with random strangers in coffee shops and bars.

Continued here:
Media frame of 'Francis-lovers v. alt-right wackos' doesn't cut it - Crux: Covering all things Catholic

Katie Hopkins entering the Celebrity Big Brother house in 2015. Photograph: Ian West/PA

Barely four minutes after the conclusion of the most recent Celebrity Big Brother, I am intrigued to see a rash of headlines speculating as to who will be in the summer line-up. Previously a once-a-year-event, Celebrity Big Brother now appears to be a rolling facility a sort of career spa to which celebrities can repair to take the waters when recovering from the other formats. Just as the jet set use the seasons as a verb to describe the migration from Gstaad to the Amalfi coast, there are now people who winter in the jungle and summer in Elstree.

And yet, is it not time to give these shows a thermonuclear modern boost? In short: when is reality television going to accept its new repertory company, and formally embrace the alt-right? Admittedly it has dipped in the toe of its hazmat suit Katie Hopkins has done a grand tour of the formats. But in an age where the most prominent political satire on TV is a panel show onits 52nd series, I should like to see a dedicated far-right edition of Celebrity Big Brother. Or Im a Celebrity. Or Celebrity Survivor. Or any of them, really, except Love Island.

There are easily enough characters available now, and Im sure the last thing they would be is too chicken to bring their ideas to an even wider audience. Hopkins could be persuaded back, obviously. Then theres Milo Yiannopoulos, and that Paul Joseph Watson who broadcasts to Infowars from Battersea, of all hilarious locations. Another tweedily bespectacled one popped up on Channel 4 news this week with comments so silly that I yearned to see him forced to repeat them at Tribal Council and not get picked off. And Im sure you could get a couple of the American ones over.

When a reality star was elected US president, there was a sense that the genre had no mountains left to climb. Yet given how well suited the relentless attention-seeking of the far right is to reality TV, perhaps that is not the case. People say that sunlight is the best disinfectant, but the actual best disinfectant is being cloistered in a McMansion or on an island, and forced to fight and scheme your way to dominance while everyone at home shrieks at how unbelievably ghastly you are. Please just picture Milo having to cooperate with Katie in a raft-building challenge, and tell me there wouldnt be tears before bedtime. And tears of laughter for us, of course. If only British TV commissioning editors werent so serially frightened. At some point they should at least consider confronting the age, before aneven worse one comes along.

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The next Celebrity Big Brother? It'll be alt-right on the night | Life and ... - The Guardian