It Could Happen Here - The Curious Case of Nazi Catboys: Part 1

Episode Date: March 31, 2022

The gang attempts to explain the seemingly paradoxical existence of Nazi Catboys and Fascist Femboys.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech

brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit.

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No, that's how you start a podcast. This is It Could Happen Here. That's right. That's Robert talking. That's right also. With us today is Christopher Wong and Garrison Davis. Do your podcast. Yeah.

Uh-huh. Thanks, Sophie. So we're all gathering today on the day after what I think will go down as the single most momentous moment in the 21st century. Will Smith slapped Chris Rock on stage at the Oscars. So the entire world has pivoted from obsession with the massive land war in Eastern Europe to discussing how Chris Rock getting slapped is like the massive land war in Eastern Europe to discussing how Chris Rock getting slapped is like the massive land war in Eastern Europe. Or 9-11. Or 9-11, yes, yes, yes.

So it's an amazing time, like an unprecedentedly incredible time to be on Twitter right now. That said, we're going to talk about Nazi Catboys today. I've seen everyone's posts on the subreddit being like why aren't you guys giving blow-by-blows about the war in ukraine uh no no this is this is the most pressing topic and we're going to talk about nazi cat boys previous to the chris rock slap this is the most pressing topic of the 21st century um is why there's Nazi catboys.

And now we're going to talk about it. Well, because, I mean, the roots of the crisis in Ukraine are the different kinds of catboys that Zelensky and Putin are. Yes, Robert, that is true. We'll mock some fan art up. It's going to be fine. I'm sure we'll find some horrible fan art, yes. Yeah, we have to figure out if Putin's ever watched Hellsing, and then we'll be able to know. I don't know what that means, but okay.

You're about to find out. Oh, great. So we have gathered here today to talk about the curious case of why there are Nazi catboys. Great. today to talk about to talk about uh the curious case of why there are nazi cat boys um throughout throughout 2020 and 2021 tiktok and twitter pushed femboys and cat boys into kind of the cultural mainstream plunging these once much more niche subcultures out of the dark depths of 4chan reddit tumblr and discord and uh the the latest rebirth of these kind of gender bending communities it's pretty socially progressive and affirming uh like generally most most femboys catboys are

are lefties there's a whole bunch of like twitter communists i'm sure there's a whole bunch of catboys who like stalin or something um but they're generally more on the left. But, but, but, for those who've dug deeper into the history and origins of these internet subcultures, you may have found a dark racist and hateful underbelly.

So we're going to talk about that today. I do have to note, Garrison, as soon as you said that, I found a Stalinist catboy. That's, see, this is... It's an incredible account. I do have to note Garrison as soon as you said that I found a Stalinist cat boy see it's an incredible account so their background image for their twitter account is a picture

of Deng Xiaoping and the Ayatollah of Iran having a meeting oh boy their PFP is a lavender haired it's like an anime Pit Crew Avatar cat boy. Yeah, with like a Soviet hat and then

Marxist-Leninist bisexual cat boy Stalin did nothing wrong at North Korea-stan. Incredible. Incredible. This is why the left will never win. That's perfect. I'm pretty sure this is like illegal in most of those countries. Stalin would have had this person shot in the second someone tried to describe a cat boy to Joseph Stalin.

He would have had this person executed. Oh, yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, I see. I see it now. That is that is intense. Outstanding. You know, the thing is, this type Yeah, I see it now. That is intense. Outstanding. I love it. The thing is, this type of thing is not going to be uncommon. Again, we're going to be going into actual fascists who are also cowboys, and obviously they would have been killed for being degenerates as well.

But now we're going to kind of talk about how this kind of came to be. and I've been writing this for like over a year actually I've interviewed a few people for this that have kind of contributed to the script and initially this was going to be conceived as a video and you can't really talk about these things in a video format without dressing up like a silly character

so I am wearing a very actually a very high quality Catboy outfit right now which the audio will just have to you'll have to see it through the audio so good luck with that synesthesia um yeah yeah yeah so you are at the same time you've done that enough that i don't know that anyone really noticed i've never dressed as a catboy for a recording before you dress as something every other recording that is true i just as something i generally dress as something every other recording. That is true. I dress as something. I generally dress as something.

So first, section one. What is a cat boy? What is this? But first of all, a few ground rules we'll be circling back to often. One, not all cat boys and femme boys identify as LGBT or queer. And two, gay people can still be racist. These are two points that we're going to be coming back to over the course of these deep dive episodes. So first things first, let's define what a catboy is for all of the boomers in the audience.

And if you are a boomer listening to this, how? I am. How did you find this? Why did you choose to listen to this? Garrison, the instant I became a boomer listening to this uh how i am why how did you find this why why did you choose to listen to this garrison the instant i became a boomer was the first time you tried to describe explain catboys to me like i i i suddenly developed a strong opinion on hr haldeman because of because of you so that was a nixon administration joke but most simply, a cat boy is this, what I'm doing right now. So someone who is kind of boyish, who sometimes enjoys dressing in cat-like apparel, I guess.

It's like cat ears. It is different from furries, and we will get into this. That's good i mean but i'm definitely less boyish than i first was when i wrote this like a year ago uh now that i'm on recreational estrogen but nevertheless uh someone who's a boyish and dresses or likes to dress in cat-like kind of uh outfits generally on an anime trajectory of aesthetics uh now this is this is this is different from furries for multiple reasons. The physical attributes on Catboys are mostly confined to ears and paws,

sometimes with tails, but it's iffy. Whereas, you know, furries like to have the full fursuit thing going on. Whereas Catboys, they still have human faces and they wear human clothes. So this is actually a very key difference. Lots of maid costumes. and yes a lot and the other other big kind of recurring trope um is that is that well they well cat boys generally usually wear clothes is that they usually dress up in something similar to like a french maid outfit um or or like different

outfits that like anime girls will wear so like the tennis skirt thing, but generally an anime outfit to anime trajectory. So despite the animal ears, despite the furry cat ears, the cat boy or cat girl thing has much more in common with the femboy community than the furry community in a lot of instances, but more

on that later. So after some initial research into the Nazi cat boy meme, I decided it would be useful for tracing back the roots of this kind of odd online phenomenon to broaden the scope of research to include femboys as well, which is succinctly just cat boys without the cat part. It's like boys or generally male identifying people who dress in like feminine ways. Not a lot of femboys will turn out to be trans not all of them do a lot of femboys identify as straight uh but you know like to wear you know boys

generally kind of in the twink variety who likes to wear skirts dresses whatever so i'm about to move into section two which gets a little bit more silly um but but yeah so femboys more silly uh great it's excited this this doesn't get less silly as we go on but but yeah cap boys femboys femboys identify as male dress up in more stereotypically feminine ways there's a lot of similarity and uh crossover between femboys and cap boys um but since femboys have more of an established online history uh including them in the research seems like the best way to kind of dig into the fascist femboy, Nazi catboy idea. So speaking of, section two, the racist femboy meme.

The past few years, there's been kind of a growing meme and perception across social media that femboys are like really racist and just kind of pretty fashy in general, even really homophobic and transphobic in a lot of senses. As much as a homophobic or transphobic femboy may seem contradictory at first, but again, more on this later. So when I'm talking about this going forward, I'm probably gonna be mixing words and terms like Nazi and fascist and alt-right or far-right.

Now, not all of these racist femboys are what I would call Nazis by any means. And not all advocate for or even joke about genocide, but there were absolutely recruitment attempts from self-described Nazis. And, you know, the line between jokes and actual beliefs is intentionally very foggy in this kind of internet subculture. So I'll kind of be lazily lumping together everything from racist to far, far right wing folks for the sake of simplicity, because it's all like in the same spectrum. And like I mentioned at the beginning, not all femboys and catboys identify as being queer and gay people can still be racist. These

are points we're going to be circling back to a lot. So at this point, the alt-right femboy meme has kind of actually overshadowed the actual phenomenon of it happening, right? In the past few years, the popularity of leftist femboys has skyrocketed. Yet if you still do digging on like Twitter or Discord, you can de-infide users who appear to be femboys, but are also everything from racist to just openly fascist. Now, naturally, that leaves people wondering how can one have such a kind of

contradictory lifestyle and belief system, which leads us to section three, the internet. And that's it. That's kind of the answer. We can kind of pack it up here. That's the answer. It's the internet. That's why this has happened. So it's Al Gore's fault is what I'm getting out of this.

Yeah, sure. Garrison, have you been caught up on why people say Al Gore invented the internet on where that joke came from? No. Wait, what? Oh, boy. You have to remember, Chris. Oh, no. Right, you were born after 2000 i was so there was like al gore was among a bunch of different people who like voted to fund some of the different government kind of projects that became the internet right

like you had the arpanet and shit all that stuff like he was one of the people who like pushed that and then in the debate with george bush while running for president in uh 2000 he uh like basically made some claims that you could uncharitably translate as him saying that he invented the internet um he didn't actually say that it was more like he was saying well i you know supported from an early stage the development of the internet but it got turned into like from an early stage the development of the internet, but it got turned into like Al Gore claimed to have invented the internet because it was funny.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Abstraction essentialism. Yes. And so now that's the joke is even though he didn't really, he just was not, you know, anyway, that's the joke here. So there you go.

So we can blame Nazi Catboys on Al Gore. Great. Absolutely. Well, that does it for us today um you can find us on wait okay we still have a few we still have like half an episode to do um that's good all right well here's here's speaking of uh of of al gore and the internet here's some ads brought to you by the internet. Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum,

Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by

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and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian.

Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom.

At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, boy, those ads were so good.

They made me want to be a cat. Okay. All right. Wow. Moving on. If you're in any way familiar with fascism, you are probably aware that one of its more consistent traits is that it's notoriously ideologically inconsistent. So for this project, I interviewed multiple people who have a more personal history in the Catboy and Femboy online communities than I do.

So those interviews, plus my own online digging through like hundreds of threads from various forum websites. I've literally looked through hundreds of Catboy posts on 4chan. But doing all that has been very helpful for understanding kind of this intersection of politics and subculture. And since I did all this research and interviews is that the Nazi femboy, catboy thing is not actually unique at all in terms of internet radicalization. It just has some aesthetic abnormalities that can confuse onlickers or normies, which makes the internet phenomenon seem more outlandish than it actually is. But before we dig deeper into this litter box of hate, I would like to divide the femboy and catboy kind of racism spectrum into actually two succinct categories first. We have type one, which I'm calling the femfash, people who are initially into the femboy community and aesthetic, and then got introduced into far-right politics online. And then we have type two, the fashfem, people who were already into far-right politics and only then got introduced into far-right politics online. And then we have type two, the fash-fem, people who were already into far-right politics and only then got introduced to the femboy community online.

So I usually break down lots of instances of fascists mixing with various subcultures into these similar two categories of people starting off with politics and then getting into the culture, then people starting off with the culture, then getting into politics. I think it's actually kind of,

it's useful for understanding a whole bunch of how there's like differences between different types of fascist people in various subcultures. So these two types I'm going to be using to help, to help talk about these, the different kinds of strains of the fascist femboy. For now, we're going to focus on the first one, the femfash. So let's, let's femfash. So let's wind the clocks back,

let's say, a decade. Broadly, gay people can't get married. And to most kids, trans people are ostensibly a myth. So what kind of person's going to become a femboy in this type of environment? Simplest answer is like a certain sect of social outcasts and anime nerds, as well as some people who maybe don't consciously know or accept that they're queer yet. Really the only way to get initially exposed to the femboy aesthetic back then

was via anime, manga, hentai, porn, and select video games, specifically multiplayer games, and random internet browsing. This is how you're going to get exposed to this type of aesthetic. In fact, probably the oldest example of a Nazi Catboy is from an anime called Hellsing, where they had this Nazi Catboy character who was the source of a lot of Nazi Catboy memes on 4chan.

It's a very popular meme figure, and this is, I think, a lot of Nazi cat boy memes on 4chan. Like it's a very, very popular meme figure. And this is, I think a lot of where that aesthetic tied to fascism actually really starts from. But of course there's a lot of fascist fans of anime in general. So the type of aesthetics that the type of aesthetics of femininity that anime kind of presents get used by fascism a lot, even among like,

they're more like cottagecore styles. It's still that very like patriarchal type of femininity that is popular among Japanese animation. So now the reasons that someone might be drawn to this specific community can vary from person to person. Maybe they just don't feel as connected to like the hyper macho masculine style that American culture promotes. Maybe it's a way to get attention and validation. Or maybe you just like wearing skirts or find it kind of hot. There's always the possibility that someone is trans or gay and they just don't fully know it yet.

This is the case with a lot of these people, actually. But some of you may be surprised to hear that before our modern TikTok femboy craze, most femboys did self-identify as straight and cis. There is a lot of reasons for this, including increased homophobia and transphobia back then, plus non-binary was hardly even a thing culturally at that point. One of the people I interviewed for this project talked about how some of the cis straight femboys he knew back then now do identify as trans or queer.

But back then that wasn't really the case. The other person I interviewed for this called themselves a cisgender femboy at the time of the interview, but has now since come out as trans. So like it is definitely a recurring pattern, but it's not a thing for everybody. There is definitely a lot of these people do call themselves straight, even still now. And that is something that a lot of people don do call themselves straight, even still now. Um, and that is something that a lot of kind of people don't have a, don't have the easiest time kind of comprehending. That's what I'm going to kind of try to get into. So let's, let's, let's say you're a kid,

young teen in like 2011, you're getting into anime and video games. Uh, what kind of websites are you going to gravitate to? Right. You're going to gravitate to Reddit. You're gonna gravitate to 4chan. Um, especially in like 2010, right? These are the, these are kind of websites are you going to gravitate to? You're going to gravitate to Reddit, you're going to gravitate to 4chan, especially in 2010. These are kind of the cultural meccas of those types of subcultures. So, what is prevalent on these websites? Well, on 4chan

we have SlashB, which is their random channel, which also has a NotSafeWorks designation. And it was often flooded with femboy pics. And since there are so few female users of that site, you see a lot of hentai and occasionally boys dressing up like Not Safe

for Work female anime characters. Just because there's... People still like femininity, but there's so few actual girls using those sites that the femininity that you see is either through anime or it's through kind of cross-dressing um then there's also the slash d page which is just completely dedicated to hentai so you get a lot of a lot of a lot of that type of like anime style of femininity through kind of that type of uh appropriation and fetishization on the slash d

page so there's a decent chance that anime and gaming nerds that browse their interests online will get exposed to Femboy stuff at some point, right? Nowadays, it's Discord, used to be 4chan, used to be Reddit. So it becomes this type of

figure eight infinity loop of people who are exposed to something and then start propagating it and get exposed to new people to it. And it's this like continuous cycle. Because if you're a kid who discovers they kind of like this super niche, almost taboo thing, where are you going to go to find other like-minded people? You're going to go back to online multiplayer gaming, Reddit and 4chan. It's all the same circles. So even if you don't get exposed to it in places like 4chan, you're probably going to end up there or somewhere similar regardless.

And the other, other, and the other thing that's important to talk about, which is going to talk about like how, how the femboys start getting into politics is like, who else is very prevalent and actively recruiting on these types of sites on like on multiplayer gaming, on Reddit, on 4chan.

It's, it's Nazis, right? The people who are into very far-right politics try to mask some of their beliefs initially in humor and memes. A large part of internet radicalization is done through

memes, especially back in 2010. There's so many memes as a social and recruitment tool were very, very common, especially on like, you know, if you're on like an image board, that's the whole point is that you're sharing images. So a big part of this over-representation of racists in the femboy community was simply the online proximity between these groups of people, between the femboys and then the

fascists on 4chan, early Reddit, and certain online games, whether it be, like, Second Life, whether it be, like, MMOs, you know, all these types of places. Any place that you can, like, design your own character as well, you got a lot of this type of, like, anime femboy type thing because a lot of these games that are made in Japan can, like, give, give like more feminine options for like

male characters or just have like cat boy like ears and stuff available as a cosmetic option so a lot a lot of this fetish fetishization that we see on 4chan and on the and in the early 2000s and 2018s is now is now applied to discord like this did kind of carry over uh 4chan's obviously not the kind of cultural behemoth that it used to be. A lot of this stuff just happens on Discord now, where you can kind of cultivate online communities that are more self-contained.

Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales

from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

get your podcasts. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, películas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you

love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo

actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field,

and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge, and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry, and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian.

Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.. His father in Cuba. Mr. González wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami.

Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian González story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

So throughout the entirety of the 2018s, fascism was pretty successful in festering among nerd spaces, right? Nerds and geeks of many types, whether that be gaming or anime or these more like esoteric communities. Esoteric as in like a niche. But these communities, generally they attract people who are more disenfranchised, right? And femboys generally feel disenfranchised in one way or another, which just pushes them into this, you know, less mainstream subculture. At this point, they could be pretty easy targets for fascist recruiters to start suggesting that maybe some of their problems in the world are actually coming from feminism, immigrants stealing jobs, affirmative action, and slowly leading into talk of like IQ and racism and anti-Semitism. IQ and racism and anti-Semitism. So for those who found these ideas initially abhorrent, it can be explained that all this talk is simply edgy jokes and irony attempting to trigger the normies, which was a big part of that type of propagation of this type of humor and then

politics masked this humor on these sites and on these gaming chats. This isn't unique to femboys or catboys in any way, right? The more people I interviewed and the more kind of old forums that I read, I started to actually see stuff that seemed much more familiar. And there's a lot of parallels between this far-right femboy thing and the far- right furry phenomenon, which I know Robert and the Worst Year Ever podcast put together two episodes that do a great job kind of talking about the far right. The only real episode of the worst year ever that we ever got to do. Yeah.

But yeah, could you, I guess, just briefly kind of talk about the furry kind of thing and how that, because there's a lot, even though these cultures are different between femboys and furries the tactics that fascists use to get into these communities is is exactly the same um and it kind of plays on the same same tropes yeah i mean it's weird so you've got i think it kind of harkens to the fact that like whenever you have a fandom no matter kind of what the fandom is about or the message of the media it's about you're going to have like nazis in it um and and that's obviously like star wars right where the point of star wars is empire bad empire basically spades nazis bad guys and there's a whole bunch of people who have just like made that into their life and get tattoos of the imperial sigil or whatever on their fucking chest.

Or you've got like Disney movies where like there's these there's weirdos who will take far right nationalist messages out of like every like everything. Everything has its Nazis, the punk community, right? Punk music is supposed to be anti authoritarian and kind of inherently left wing. But there's Nazi punks. So like it's all – like every community has their Nazis and the furries are no different. One of the things that does make the furries different is I think because of how – and this is something probably you're a little too young. I mean I guess a lot of our audience may have missed out on aspects of.

But like early on in the internet internet and i'm talking like the first decade of actual internet culture from like 1995 or 96 to like 2005 or 6 which is really the first decade of like mass internet culture the punching bag of the entire internet was was furries like they were the people that like it was the safest to make fun of, jokes about like killing them, all sorts of really fucked up shit. And so I think they developed kind of this very strong defensive impulse within the community. And so while every subculture has their Nazis, the furries have gone kind of the furthest in documenting and working to like ostracize those people and they've done they're on the level with like punks in terms of the the degree to which they have like that has become kind of a guiding principle for a lot of furries um yeah is that kind of what you were looking for yeah because a big a big and

the thing you mentioned about like furries being such the punching bag oh god yeah that's that's something that nazis even definitely kind of grasp onto as a way to do grooming and recruitment, right? Is if fascists can present themselves as friends to these people who are always punched down upon, then they can kind of put them into their in-groups, right?

They can support them, give them a sense of validation, give them a sense of community, tell them that they belong, you're always going to be kicked out of real-life social groups, right? You can only exist here with us, we understand you, right? They can kind of foster this thing, even though obviously it's dealing with things that are not the most cis and straight thing in terms of like regular heterosexuality um we look

at a lot a lot of furries are straight but like in terms of like the way they approach that is is definitely different uh than a lot of regular people but they so white supremacists and different fascists can like grasp onto this respond to this kind of disenfranchisement and offer this sense of community um be you know be very friendly very friendly initially, being very kind of open to these people and start, you know, the term would be like red pilling them, right? Talking about that a lot of their social issues are actually, you know, the fault of SJWs,

talking about these, you know, all of these Jewish bankers. You know, you can start crafting the propaganda very carefully if you're friends with them first and then only start slowly introducing them into your more extremist kind of view of politics yeah it's just no one's really surprised when an anime nerd or like a capital g gamer starts spewing far-right talking points but when a femboy does that just seems off because like aren't they also a degenerate right like like it's like there is a bit of a cognitive dissonance there um and like yes and no right you may be over

estimating some people's commitment to the fascist cause here because a recurring pattern i found when talking to people with history in these communities especially if they're more of like the femme fash variety right starting up starting off with femme boy aesthetics then getting into being racist and and like like pretty racist and then getting into fascism is that look looking back these people and they say like themselves and others all of their kind of parroting of racist and fascist talking points especially online was like they claim much more due to having to like fit in with in with these already pretty reactionary online spaces and make friends at seemingly one of the few places that people with similar interests gather. Some people, deep down, don't really care about the political beliefs that much

and were more so looking for a community. And it just so happened that back then in the early 20-teens, the places where these communities of outcasts found each other were also places that other outcasts used racism as a lazy, attention-seeking shock comedy and like the triggering of normies, which was basically like a sport on these forums. or horrible things said. But that whole idea, plus the act of grooming and the act of recruitment from Nazis made the nerdy outcast to fascist pipeline that we see today.

That's really how it built up and became such a powerful tool around 2016. But all of this just generally more applies to the people who are into femboy aesthetics and then got kind of railroaded into nationalism and to fascism, right? It's because they're femboys on these platforms. There's also racists on these platforms. So these things start to kind of mix.

But there's still that other type of femboy Nazi, the one who started off online with far-right views and then discovered femboys and started to feel things. We'll be starting by talking about them next on, on, on part two, but I guess, does anyone, anyone have any, any questions at least to close off part one about the more kind of

fem fash variety of people who are generally kind of more regular politically, but are into, into like fem boy and cat boy kind of aesthetics and then and then get put into into into more reactionary ideas hmm uh stay off the internet yeah that's not a question but yes that is that is a that is a good uh it's a good mission statement but yeah in terms of like in terms of like the i know this topic can whenever I bring it up, I thought about this a lot when I try to explain it to people. There is always a bit of like, how? That doesn't make any sense.

And I'll be getting to some of the more semantics of dive into how the online community aspect is used as such a powerful tool for people who are feeling so alone uh that just the the idea of there being an online community whether it be racist or not is just super appealing uh because if if everyone thinks that you're weird and an outcast if these other people who are also weird and outcasts start kind of trying to make friends with you, then it can be a very powerful recruitment tool. Which then, of course, there'll be people who eventually try to take them out of the whole femboy aesthetics

in a lot of ways. But a lot of fascists also get into the femboy aesthetic because of the, because of the proximity issue, right? Because these things are so like next to each other. Well, and the thing you're, I, the kind of important broader realization there, and this is something that a radicalization scholar named Scott Atron has been talking about for 10 years now, probably more, is that people get radicalized in communities. People, like when we talk about radicalization, like why, like I guess the other half of the explainer that I started this with

being like, you know, every subculture has their Nazis. It's not because, like the reason every subculture has their Nazis is that subcultures are, like people get radicalized as part of communities, as part of subcultures. They don't get radicalized as individuals. Just like people get radicalized as part of communities, as part of subcultures. They don't get radicalized as individuals, just like people don't, aren't just walking out in the world and decide to become a Nazi. They become a Nazi because a Nazi reaches them in something they're already into, right? Like that's just the way it happens. Yeah. There's definitely a large part of this is like a group of like group dynamics especially on places like forums where you're you know trying to trying to get like this like attention battle um and i guess

the other other big part about the femboy kind of idea especially on image boards is like it is such an attention seeking and validation seeking place right you you want to you want to post things that gets you a lot of comments likes upvotes whatever the kind of the metric is yeah um so people will do things that get them visibility even if even if half the people interacting with you are calling you a degenerate at least there's people still looking at you right at least you feel seen um and then the other half people will be like no it's actually fine you know so as long as there's that visibility and that sense of community, then a lot of the more cognitive dissonance aspects can kind of be passed by. But we'll get into more of that for part two. Anyway, you can find us on Twitter and Instagram at HappenHerePod and CoolZoneMedia.

You can find me talking about Catboys occasionally on Twitter at Hungry Bowtie. And yeah. I'm happy about it, Garrett. Well, I've been trying to edit down this episode because the script was way too long. I've been trying to make it more succinct the past few days. So I am pretty excited to close this Google Doc at the end of the day.

Well, congratulations on all your hard work, Garrison. And listeners at home, go dress like a cat boy. And don't be a Nazi. Yeah, I mean, that's also important. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

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