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Ultra right-wing nutjob supe Firecracker is one of the latest characters to join the cast of The Boys in season 4, and actress Valorie Curry is elated to be mocking her character and the people she represents in real-life.

Introduced in the latest season of Amazons satirical superhero show, Firecracker is shaping up to be a powerful antagonist this season as she begins spouting conspiracy theories and anti-LGBTQI+ rhetoric in the show. Mirroring Trump-era politics, the show is commenting on the way that politicians hold sway over followers increasingly detached from reality.

Speaking to The Advocate, Curry said that she loves playing Firecracker because I think it should be one of our own that gets to make an ass out of her, that gets to satirise and make a clown out of her.

And also, to lampoon these people and their absurdity and their ignorance and their violence, Im glad its coming from within the community, getting to take these shots.

The Boys has never shied away about including incisive commentary on the real world, with series villian Homelander reflecting the height of American fascism and an early storyline openly tackling sexual assault post-#MeToo.

Now, in season 4, Firecracker is being used to reflect the real world hatred of hardcore Trump supporters like Kristi Noem and Lauren Boebert as she overtly punches down on the LGBTQI+ community.

Often some of the worst things that Firecracker says are quotes from elected officials, says Curry, and so Im glad they didnt make it general and they didnt soften it. I hope it serves that purpose, to show really whats happening. And yes, she is a joke, but this isnt a joke.

Meanwhile, The Boys season 4 has been stirring up an alleged controversy for being politically charged, despite the fact that the show has been overtly mocking right-wing culture and politics since its debut in 2019.

After being review-bombed on Rotten Tomatoes, the fourth season of the show currently sits at 51% with reviewers lamenting that the show has gone downhill or, even worse, gone woke.

However, for showrunner Eric Kripke, thats always been the point. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he said that hes perfectly fine if he loses audiences with his views.

New episodes of The Boys air every Thursday, with four episodes having already been released.

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Lesbian The Boys Actress Valorie Curry Glad Shes Mocking The Alt-Right - Star Observer

Valorie Curry has opened up about playing a right-winged superhero in The Boys.

Spoilers ahead.

Since 2019, TV viewers around the world have immersed themselves in the action-packed comedy, which streams on Prime Video.

Based on Garth Ennis and Darick Robertsons comic book of the same name, the series focuses on a team of vigilantes who aim to take down the corrupt members of The Seven; the worlds supreme superhero team (think Justice League or The Avengers).

Back in August 2022, showrunner Eric Kripke announced that Curry known for her previous roles in Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 and The Tick would be joining the fourth season of The Boys as a new Supe named Firecracker.

While he refrained from giving specifics about her character, he did tease that she was one of the best and craziest superheroes ever written for the show.

You are going to love them. And by love, I mean be absolutely horrified & a tiny bit nauseous, he wrote when discussing Firecracker and another new character, Sister Sage (Susan Heyward).

After nearly two years of waiting, fans were officially introduced to Firecracker when the first three episodes of the fourth season premiered on 13 June.

Like Kripke teased, the red-headed character is horrifying due to her being an alt-right superhero celebrity who uses her platform to spew outlandish conspiracy theories and anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric.

In a recent interview with The Advocate, Curry spilt the tea on her role and why she enjoys stepping into Firecrackers shoes as a lesbian actor.

I love that I get to play her because I think it should be one of our own that gets to make an ass out of her, that gets to satirize her and make a clown out of her, she explained to the news outlet.

And also, to lampoon these people and their absurdity and their ignorance and their violence, Im glad that its coming from within the community, getting to take those shots.

Elsewhere in her interview, Curry praised the shows writers for not holding back on Firecrackers right-winged extremism and viewpoints adding that the characters dialogue is nearly identical to rhetoric spewed by real-life political figures.

I was happy that the writers chose to go as far as they did with her rhetoric because thats the rhetoric we actually see that is truth, she said.

Often, some of the worst things that Firecracker says are quotes from elected officials. And so Im glad that they didnt make it general, and they didnt soften it.

Currys recent interview came a few days after Kripke revealed to Variety that far-right politician Marjorie Taylor Greene heavily inspired Firecracker.

Firecracker came from like, Hey, isnt Marjorie Taylor Greene scary? And just that type of personality, he explained.

Like you had Trump, but now you have these Trump spawn that are trying to outdo each other for how outrageous and sexualized and gun-totting and slavishly obedient they can be.

The first three episodes of The Boys season four are now avaialble on Prime Video.

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Here's why lesbian actress Valorie Curry enjoys playing a right-wing role on The Boys - Gay Times

1.0 Introduction

Since 2017, the desire for a safe online space for fringe and extremist beliefs has given rise to a parallel alternative media space. During the 2010s, these loosely moderated alternative social media sites began to be collectively referred to as Alt-Tech (short for alternative tech). [source] Branding themselves as bastions of free speech and the anti-woke agenda, Alt-Tech has attracted prominent conservative and far-right figures from Alex Jones to Tommy Robinson. [source]

Since the mid-2010s, the far-right has been increasingly deplatformed by mainstream social media companies. Big Tech firms such as Google, Facebook and Twitter have been heavily criticised for allowing extremist groups to congregate and organise violent attacks using their sites. In 2017, the movement towards tighter social media moderation was catalysed by the violent white supremacist Unite the Right Rally which was fermented on media sites hosted by Big Tech. [source]

The term Alt-Tech refers to two things: a right-wing libertarian tech-movement and the conglomerate of social media platforms this tech movement has yielded Judith Bessant et. al. define Alt-Tech, 2021.

Alt-tech traces its roots back to the internets wild-west days, a world before the advent of social media megaliths; one where online communities could gather on unrestricted forums. In particular, modern Alt-tech platforms have sought to emulate 4Chan, a forum site created in 2003 by Christopher Moot Poole.

4Chan was not unlike any other early 2000s enthusiast forum, the site was a space for niche communities to share and post content. However, unlike other forums, Poole did away with usernames and avatars enabling 4Chan users to browse and post on the site anonymously. 4Chans anonymity and relatively relaxed rules meant the forum quickly became a safe haven for controversial views and hate speech. [source]

Throughout the late 2000s and early 2010s, the rise of social media giants largely relegated forums. The mass adoption of smartphones also propelled social media into the mainstream, enabling more people to communicate and share more ideas than ever before. By 2012, social media had become an integral element of the information space.

However, unlike other information or media providers, social media firms remained largely self-regulated. A lack of oversight or accountability meant that firms were typically slow to moderate their sites. Therefore, far-right and extremist groups were free to use social media sites to spread propaganda, recruit new members and organise political activism. [source] [source]

2018 was the year we (sort of) cleaned up the internet The headline of Mashables 2018 year in review.

2018 was the year of deplatforming. In 2017, the deadly #Pizzagate conspiracy theory had intensified pressure on social media companies to remove far-right figures from their platforms. At the forefront of the alt-right conspiracy theory scene was Alex Jones, the host of fake news show InfoWars. [source] By 2018, #Pizzagate had placed Alex Jones firmly in the cross hairs of social media firms. [source]

On 5 August, Apple would be the first to pull the trigger, removing all Alex Jones-affiliated content from iTunes. The tipping point for social media sites was a legal case brought forward by families of the Sandy Hook shooting. Alex Jones had repeatedly claimed the shooting was a hoax and encouraged harassment of the victims families through his online shows. Within 48 hours of Apples actions, Facebook, Twitter and Spotify followed suit, effectively removing Alex Jones from the mainstream. [source] The 2018 deplatforming of Alex Jones, the poster child of the alt-right conspiracy scene, set a precedent and sparked the mass-deplatforming of the far right.

The Big Tech movement to deplatform and restrict extremist content in 2018 drove a far right mass migration to Alt-Tech sites. Prominent Alt-Right figures began to frame Alt-Tech as a protected space for controversial ideas, safe from the Big Tech purge. [source] More importantly, Alt-Tech themselves exploited the far-rights ideological perception of persecution and weaponized victimhood in their marketing. [source]

In 2017, Andrew Torba established Gab as an alternative news media platform to the likes of Facebook and Twitter which he decried as the left-leaning Big Social monopoly. [source] Although Gab did not explicitly market itself as a far-right space, the sites relaxed moderation drew in users who felt rejected by the mainstream media space.

With few possibilities to meet in public without opposition, the Alt-Right has relied on creating an abundance of online media, forums and opportunities for engagement that require internet infrastructure for the survival of their movement Donovan et. al., 2018.

Since 2017, the success of Gab has encouraged a series of other Alt-Tech platforms. In 2018, John Matze Jr. established Parler as a conservative Alt-Tech social media site. Despite marketing the site as a free speech-focused unbiased alternative to Twitter, Parler users criticised the sites restrictive moderation. [source]

2021 could be considered the second great year of deplatforming. The 5 January Capitol Insurrection prompted Twitter to suspend Donald Trumps twitter account as well as many of his close allies. Amazon Web Services also suspended their hosting of Parler. [source] The shutdown of Donald Trump who is viewed by groups like QAnon as a saviour figure, only added fuel to the far-rights persecution complex. Once again in 2021, a large number of far-right or alt-right figures were deplatformed driving a second notable migration to Alt-Tech sites.

Although Alt-Tech has attracted a significant proportion of the far-right, the alternative media landscape is miniscule in comparison to Big Tech. For example, in 2022 Gab had 100,000 active users compared to Facebook over 3 billion. It is also important to remember that the alt-right is a fringe movement within the far-right which is of itself a radical sect of broader conservatism. [source]

Nonetheless, a 2019 report on Britain First revealed that despite migrating to a smaller platform the groups engagement increased. The study found that the lack of moderation on alt-tech platform gab had encouraged the normalisation of hate speech. The lack of self-censorship by far right groups such as Britain first therefore drove engagement by the alt-right. [source]

Since 2017, Alt-tech has cloned nearly every facet of the internet, expanding beyond social media to create a self supporting far right media landscape. Notably, alt-right figures have established alternative revenue streams having been deplatformed by mainstream crowdfunding sites such as Patreon.

Alt-tech has carved out a niche online in the online landscape, providing safe space for those who feel excluded by mainstream media and Big Tech. While Alt-tech has claimed to be a champion of free-speech, sites such as Gab have devolved into echo chambers rife with conspiracy theories and misinformation. In this unrestricted online space users have been radicalised and motivated to carry out real world violence.

Going forward, Alt-Techs survival is a delicate balancing act. Alt-Techs great appeal is its relaxed moderation which allows users, disillusioned with mainstream media, to freely express their opinions. The relaxed moderation also however draws in the far-right and other controversial groups. Extremism not only damages the reputation of Alt-Tech sites but it also invites potential shutdowns from app stores and governments.

See more here:
Alt-Tech: Down the Far Right Rabbit Hole - Grey Dynamics

In the middle of May, a viral video circulated showing people outside of a bar in Sylt, an island in Germany, chanting Foreigners out, Germany for the Germans! to the tune of the Italian Gigi DAgostinos 2000 techno hit LAmour Toujours. The song has nothing to do with ethnic purity or xenophobia. Its about passionate love, but not for this crowd: at least one man was reportedly seen giving a Nazi salute, while some guests allegedly made a racist remark at a young Black woman and punched her in the face. To prevent more extremist actions like this, Oktoberfest organisers have since banned the tune from being spun at the yearly festival; the Austrian Football Association also prohibited it from being played at stadiums.

LAmour Toujours is one of a growing swarm of songs that far-right trolls have co-opted into a made-up genre they call Save Europe music. Internet creators use these tunes, which are often sped up to delirious nightcore insanity, in YouTube edits and TikTok memes with racist, anti-immigrant calls to make Europe fully white, as well as explicit neo-Nazism. One popular page has clips with hundreds of thousands of views saying North Africa and the Middle East are a creeper farm and the only problem places out of the worlds 195 countries. There are now dozens of popular Save Europe-themed Spotify playlists and YouTube channels dedicated to the style, like Aryan Classic, with millions of views. Viewers brag in the comments about how theyre pure-blooded and worship Nazi state sculptor Arno Breker. Some fervent fans even remix the music by weaving in audio of chief Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. And yet somehow, platforms havent caught wind of the overt racism in these clips and comment sections.

Save Europe memes have existed for over a year, but the trend really exploded a few months ago on TikTok. A slew of people made viral clips saying they didnt agree with the Save Europe hordes racism but loved their music taste, inadvertently boosting the toxic subculture. One user even made a popular Top 10 Save Europe bangers list with stuff like Lil Texas pummeling edit of Ke$ha's Die Young and a squeaky-speedy revamp of Malo Tebyas SEREBRO. The comments on these ostensibly anti-Save Europe videos are rife with people admiring Save Europe tunes and adherents trying to lure passersby into the movement. In one clip, looksmaxxing influencer Kareem Shami says he doesnt like Save Europe but cant deny they got some bangers, and nearly every top comment promotes the ideology and has thousands of likes. I heavily fuck with save europe music! And the ideas too, goes one.

Theres no single explanation behind extremists christening certain songs as racist-core. Some of the most common were already popular long before their troubling takeover, like ATCs eurotrance classic All Around the World (La La La La La) and a manic version of a section taken from Scott Browns Taking Drugs? Maybe the most chilling track is a slow-yet-hardstyle edit of Peter Schillings stratosphere-soaring Major Tom (Coming Home). The way its remixed feels anaemic and hyperreal, like a soundtrack for zombie warfare. Save Europe truthers have used it in videos obliquely urging viewers to Defend Europe, calls for an Anglo-American takeover of Yemen, and hyper-Christian rallies for violence. Defend the cross and your nation, one person commented.

Most of the tunes are distorted and overheated accelerated to a fever pitch, injected with the militant ferocity of slamming hardstyle kicks. The combo of aggro hypermasculinity and nightcore edits may seem bizarre, given the remix styles association with anime girl imagery and Kawaii aesthetics. But it makes sense: the alt-right has always been obsessed with feverish intensity. More recently, there was the Nazi-themed vaporwave offshoot fashwave, and the late bodybuilder Zyzz inspired a fad of gym pump-up playlists with hardstyle versions of pop bops like Nicki Minajs Starships. The clips show absurdly ripped dudes flexing while Katy Perry chipmunk-chirrups over blistering kicks. These deranged vocals and unruly rhythms capture what most of these Save Europe videos are trying to convey: an imminent battle to protect the West. Its a perfect soundtrack for imagining youre watching humankind crumble before your eyes, the rise and fall of the new Roman Empire in one hectic hype montage.

Save Europe also has a strain of slowed-down themes, many of which use the otherworldly MGMT track Little Dark Age. In the last few years, the song has become a longtime fixture of alt-right meme videos, becoming the surprise anthem for a slew of homophobic and misogynistic YouTube videos. Some of these older clips juxtaposed images of Harry Styles in a skirt with Greek statues and a horrifyingly buff Arnold Schwarzenegger to whine about how soft the new generation is. Others fantasised about teleporting to the mythical Greek world of Hyperborea and Agartha, a legendary kingdom that Hollow Earth conspiracy theorists believe is hidden in the middle of the globe (ancient Greece remains very popular in alt-right circles). In the comment sections, men talk about returning to these clips whenever they need encouragement and share vices theyre trying to overcome: Quitting Porn, Focusing on my career, physical and mental health, one person wrote on a Masculinity edit. For some, its obviously cathartic: a space to meet fellow stans of platonic Masculinity, who are also fighting against feelings of societal impotence.

Theres a similarly motivational air to the Save Europe videos rush of images and rave-rabid sounds. Instead of denouncing Harry Styles, Save Europe creators catastrophise about a future where Islamic thought conquers Europe. Theyve also created a whole language of in-jokes to help evade platform detection. There are phrases like millions must listen, a riff on the meme character Chudjak, who was intended to parody alt-right 4channers with the catchphrase The West Has Fallen, Billions Must Die. Rather than taking it as a joke, the Save Europe throng parrots it sincerely, along with the racist dogwhistle well well well and the intentionally misspelled now yuo see, which has a history of being deployed in antisemitic content.

On the surface, this digital trend might seem more likely to pacify terminally online racists than actually birth a new army of incel warriors. But its clearly having a real-world effect, rewiring old songs into bigoted Bat signals for lunatics who hear them in the wild. YouTube uploads of LAmour Toujours are now full of xenophobes celebrating what happened at the Sylt bar: Millions need to visit Sylt, billions even, one wrote in a comment with hundreds of likes. Take back Europe, another urged. Keep the invaders out! (Theres even a channel called PartyEnjoyerFromSylt with a popular remix of DAgostinos song using chants from the bar.) Some viewers have written about how the musics veneer of cool pushed them down the rabbit hole, inspiring them to dig deeper into the ideology and slowly get into it, as one user commented on a clip.

Platforms need to moderate this content more aggressively, and yet theyre failing. Rather than just blocking the hashtag SaveEurope, TikTok should track the coded, dogwhistle language; on YouTube, theres an onslaught of overt Nazi fetishism and xenophobia the platform could easily remove.

The takeover of sweet, classic anthems makes it especially fraught. Artists like DAgostino dont want their music prohibited online or in public spaces, since it wasnt created with malice. I felt especially icky watching Save Europe clips with Coming Home. I have a core memory of dancing around my familys apartment to it as a toddler, gleefully freaking out at the chorus. I imagined I was the guy in the song, blasting off into the galaxy aboard a rocket ship. We can only hope if these trolls listen enough, theyll be shipped away to Agartha themselves and quit terrorising Europe.

More:
Save Europe: the alt-right movement spreading hate with dance music - Dazed

(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Stills)

Fri 14 June 2024 23:00, UK

The internet can be a dark, dangerous, desperate, and unruly place at the best of times, with Matt Furie powerless to stop his comic book creation Pepe the Frog become co-opted to such a degree by right-wing politics that its now officially listed as a hate symbol.

The artists comic Boys Club #1 was released in 2005, with the innocent enough by online standards, anyway drawing of a frog with his trouser around his ankles taking a piss and uttering what would soon become his catchphrase of feels good, man quickly spreading like wildfire on the internet.

Reaction memes have been part of online culture for a long time, so a deadpan amphibian with a signature phrase that was applicable to a wide variety of situations was seized upon as a malleable, infinitely reusable source of mirth among users. By the mid-2010s, Pepe was basically a hero to millions and one of the internets most popular memes until it became political.

After gaining increasing traction among alt-right groups, by September 2016, the Anti-Defamation League had added Pepe to its list of hate symbols, a roster that also includes the insignias of Adolf Hitlers Nazi party and the Ku Klux Klan. Suffice it to say, this was not what Furie had in mind for his creation.

Right-wing supporters and white supremacist groups had taken an unsettling shine to Pepe, with racist and antisemitic variants of the meme being popularised, shared, and spread across social media. The ADL issued a statement decrying those groups for abusing the image of a cartoon character one that might at first seem appealing to harass and spread hatred on social media.

Pepe even infiltrated mainstream American politics when the alt-right fully embraced Home Alone 2 star Donald Trumps presidential candidacy. The former host of The Apprentice and his inner circle shared and retweeted Pepe memes on social platforms, with his opponent Hillary Clinton insisting that cartoon frog is more sinister than you might realise.

It obviously wasnt his intention, with Furie voicing his disdain for what had become of his most famous creation in an interview with Esquire. Describing its alt-right status as a runaway train, he expressed regret for indirectly being responsible for something that was entirely out of his control.

The people who are driving this train are these anonymous internet trolls who dont stand for anything except for nihilism and getting a rise out of whatever racist or sexist or disgusting thing they can do, he said. Its just an idiotic joke. They kind of seem like this group that tried to intellectualise white power, and theyve appropriated Pepe for that. It sucks, but I cant control it more than anyone can control frogs on the internet.

He didnt agree with the ADLs decision to make Pepe a hate symbol, either, because from his perspective: Its not going to do anything other than give this fringe racist group more attention than they need. Nobody really seems sure how it ended up becoming a far-right staple in the first place, but the fact of the matter is that no matter how hard anybody tries to reclaim it, the frog remains forever tainted by association.

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How has Pepe the Frog become a far-right icon? - Far Out Magazine