Neoreaction a Basilisk: Essays on and Around the Alt-Right

by Elizabeth Sandifer

And while Gamergate usually doesn’t have a product to sell in quite the same literal way, it’s worth noting how, for instance, two doors down from them is someone like Stefan Molyneux, whose output amounts to 30-60 minute PowerPoint presentations consisting of a by-now familiar sort of low-content dissembling, and whose business endgame is literally a cult. We might also think back to Andrew Auernheimer identifying Gamergate as a tool for white nationalist recruitment. But the difference between Gamergate and a free samples scam or a cult is as significant as the comparison. There are plenty of pro-Gamergaters pulling healthy profits making this crap, Sargon among them, but for the most part it’s not really all that profit-focused, nor that celebrity-focused. It’s cultish and scammy, but the “-ish” and “-my” matter there. Yes, Gamergate stokes its members to spend hours upon hours every day tending their garden of Twitter sockpuppets and spreading dank memes about raping Anita Sarkeesian, but what’s surprising is the extent to which they manage to sell ideological gratification as its own reward. (I mean, the Russians have to actually pay people.) Vox Day’s “Gamergate will save western civilization” claim is the most grandiose version of this, but it’s striking more in its apparent indifference to how ridiculous it sounds than in its extremity. This has been a feature since the beginning, with the bewildering inflation of Zoe Quinn’s alleged infidelity into a vast web of c...