Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Tag: hate groups

May 29, 2018

FurAffinity updates Code of Conduct, backlash by hate groups promoted by 2 Gryphon

by Patch O'Furr

IN THIS ARTICLE: FurAffinity bans hate groups – click through the Twitter threads to see many screenshots of what they were promoting. 

The true story of FurAffinity account bans

Furry art is full of cute, cuddly cartoons. Many FurAffinity users wanted to know – why was the site being used for hate imagery? If the art has to be edgy, couldn’t they just stick to good old-fashioned Hyper Diaper Pokemon Porn or whatever? At least sex is positive and life-affirming.

On the site and on Twitter, protest rose against activity that seemed to violate the Code of Conduct, while complaints were being dismissed by site staff. The CoC looked toothless because promotion of hate groups was excused with an exception for “fictional” activity.

What furry stuff ISN’T fictional? And depicting hate imagery in a positive light IS promotion. That’s part of the history of propaganda. And making excuses that it’s just historical interest reminds me of when I used to sell rare books at an antique mall; let’s be honest here, that chicken-necked skinhead with a swastika on his elbow wasn’t visiting that creepy dealer down the lane just for memorabilia. (His money was no good to me.)

During the protesting, FurAffinity users openly claiming to be alt-right trolls were gloating about driving traffic from the site and taunting those who left. That’s like getting acquitted for a hate crime and then mooning the judge. Sometimes nazis dress to impress, but nobody ever accuses them of being smart.

The dumpster fire kept burning until the complaints started tagging FurAffinity’s corporate owner IMVU. Perhaps they got worried about their anime-eyed avatars being the lesser evil on the site.

Soon the Code of Conduct was updated, and dozens of accounts went dark. It seemed to follow a precedent set a few months earlier when Discord Inc. flushed many of the same assholes and their alt-right servers down the drain.

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April 2, 2018

2 Gryphon punches down on a critic – what can we learn from this?

by Patch O'Furr

Quick: What’s the difference between a car driven into a crowd by a terrorist, and a swimming pool? That’s a question about the video below from 2 Gryphon.

He was reacting to a video criticizing his beliefs about hate groups. Like neo-nazi marchers who murdered a woman in 2017 by driving a Dodge Challenger into a crowd – (with participation by haters from the furry community, leading one to kill himself in March 2018.)

2 Gryphon claims to be respectful of the critic Tantroo McNally, AKA Sonious. a furry news writer and Youtuber. At the same time, his reaction was punching down on an easy target with 369 subscribers in front of his 28,000.  That’s unusual. Sonious doesn’t get other ratings like this, and it pushes down search results. With so much unbalance, it’s hard to get both sides. Everyone likes both sides, right? So let’s give a deeper look to what Sonious was criticizing. This was the source of it all:

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March 21, 2018

Discord bans Altfurry hate speech – see what they’re hiding with a leaked organizer phone call.

by Patch O'Furr

(Content warning: antisemitic hate)

Altfurry and the Furry Raiders are toxic trolls on the fringes of fandom. These tiny groups claim to be furries, but they align with alt-right hate groups in the larger culture. Their harassment of a subculture comes disguised with bad-faith claims to support “freedom” and oppose “SJW’s.” Here’s a look behind the false front and a reminder that their hate is like oil and water to this community.

Racist hostility can’t coexist with a group full of queer nerds that’s based on tolerance and creativity. This makes altfurries uncomfortable about their alt-right associations, especially when they try to recruit – making them do two-faced, propagandistic denials that they’re “diverse” and not actually hateful. The denials are contradicted by how they look, talk, and act.

The denials are also contradicted by ban after ban for abuse on the platforms that they use for organizing. From early 2017 to February 2018, altfurries relied on Discord servers that hid behind layers of secrecy. Then on February 28, Discord kicked them out along with numerous other alt-right servers. I’ve been in contact with company reps about their investigation. What they found was as extreme as groups being responsible for murders – but Altfurry and the Furry Raiders weren’t let off the hook for the coordinated bans. They were all violating terms of service against hate.

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March 12, 2018

How I Ended Up in the Alt-Lite, and How I Got Out

by Patch O'Furr

From wikipedia:

The alt-right, or alternative right, is a loosely-connected grouping of white supremacists, neo-Confederates, neo-Nazis, neo-fascists, and other far-right fringe hate groups.

The “alt-lite” is frequently contrasted with and compared to the political alt-right, with which it shares some features, but the alt-lite remains distinct from the alt-right in that it claims to reject identity politics—including the white nationalism and racialism of the alt-right—though they share other key features and beliefs.

Learn more from the Anti-Defamation League – From Alt Right to Alt Lite: Naming the Hate.

Below is a guest story sent in by an unnamed furry, shared for awareness about how hate groups gain influence in a subculture like furry fandom.

– Patch

A springboard into the alt-right.

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March 9, 2018

Ever hear that Altfurries are just trolls? A real Nazi leader is taking them seriously.

by Summercat

Founder of Neo-nazi website The Daily Stormer praises Nazifurs and Altfurs as good examples for his wider movement.

One defense of Nazifurs I’ve heard over the years is that they’re just adopting fascist fashion to get a rise out of you, or even that they’re mocking real Nazis. This doesn’t hold up well to me, as ones I knew in 2005 who said they were joking are mostly taking their act seriously now.

Something about staring into the void, I guess. Or maybe I was a shitty judge of character when I spent time with them as a naive 20 year old? It could be a bit of both. Friends of mine have looked on former mutuals with horror when I’ve pointed out how far some have gone.

But people still claim that we’re being ridiculous if we take this seriously. They say that real Nazis could never be – or accept – Furries.

That denialism gets weaker and weaker when real Nazis look at nazifurs and love what they see.

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February 26, 2018

Article archived

by Patch O'Furr

9/26/19: In 2018 an article was published because of a request for help by tippers. A year and a half later, the issue is in the past and no further requests about it have been received, except patient requests for removal to leave negativity behind. Parts (1) (2) (3) are now archived with a note that it isn’t current info and should only be judged by current responses, for progress and goodwill.

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February 7, 2018

A deep dive into the Altfurry mission to “redpill” fandom with hate – Part 2

by Patch O'Furr

In their own words.

Part 1 gives background about how the Altfurry hate group works. Now here’s the screenshots.

The source is “Altfurry Mead Hall,” a Discord server that grew after the neo-nazi march at Charlottesville.  It documents months of chat from late 2017, specifically from their private channel for trusted staff. That filters out memes and filler and shows what they’re really about. The server is run by Casey Hoerth/”Len Gilbert”, AKA “The Furred Reich”. These chat logs add to a long mission of hate shown by previous leaks from his Altfurry Discord group.

Screenshots are duplicated in imgur galleries for another reading option. One user named Kilton had their ID blanked when this leaked.

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February 7, 2018

A deep dive into the Altfurry mission to “redpill” fandom with hate – Part 1

by Patch O'Furr

Background of a hate group.

Fandom is about imagination, but it’s made of people with a real community. Having a healthy community means discussing issues in it like grown-ups, from politics to risks. That includes happenings in the wider culture that affect a subculture full of loveable college-aged oddballs. These stories connect to “Altfurry”:

The alt-right is a racist fringe group that defines itself in opposition to others (like the mainstream, minorities, and people who aren’t racist). It can’t exist on its own, so they try to creep in, recruit and manipulate for power. Like two-faced chameleons, they wear an outer face to hide a disturbing inner narrative. They sugarcoat it, but the end goal is hateful bigotry. You can see through it when you know what “cryptofascism” is and how it works.

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January 3, 2018

Furry Raiders attack a nonfurry business, get chased off with a positive solution for hate.

by Patch O'Furr

  • Raiding: A hostile invasion or forcible entry to destroy or steal something; predatory warfare.
  • Furry Raiders: a Colorado-based and online group that overlaps with “altfurry”, a fringe of furry fandom with a goal to connect racist hate groups inside and outside it.

It’s 2018, and many people have New Years resolutions to accomplish. But a few people are stubbornly against being better. That means the Furry Raiders. This week they gained attention for violent threats meant to silence criticism – (because when they say they want “free speech,” it’s only for them). Their threats followed labeling themselves as “Nazis” – (a look at their member activity in the altfurry chat logs proves it’s really true). Until now their trolling has mostly been inside fandom. But then there was the time when they targeted innocent non-furry outsiders.

We did Nazi that coming! 

On Halloween of 2017, a Colorado event space had a “Big Gay Costume Party”.  Foxler and Kody, the Furry Raiders founder and partner, went in costume with nazi armbands that replaced swastikas with paws.  With nobody else’s help, the staff recognized what the symbolism stood for. The Raiders were kicked out for bringing hate to their space.

Foxler and Kody’s excuses like “it’s just a paw” didn’t work. Anyone can see they’re making a clear reference to nazi iconography. This is good evidence that trolling isn’t just a fandom issue with “both sides” fighting and so-called “SJW’s” inside. Outsiders know these trolls are the source of the problem.

When a business kicks someone out, that’s free market power, freedom of association, and free speech opinion by staff. (A protected social class can claim discrimination, but Nazi isn’t a class.)  Reasonable people would move on and drop it.  But reasonable people doesn’t include a troll whose name means “Fox Hitler”. Again, when they say they want “free speech,” it’s only for them. 

The Furry Raiders retaliated by trolling the business with bad reviews. The review bombing was spread from their Facebook group by trolls who are active in alt-right hate activity (including their member Vetus, who supported trolling FurAffinity with hate images). The story was twisted by people who had never been there; they lied that there was no hate symbolism and pretended a “Big Gay Costume Party” rejected them for being gay.

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November 29, 2017

How low can they go? Altfurry is grooming kids to retaliate against critics.

by Patch O'Furr

Last week was a very bad week to be a nazi furry. (Every week is bad for that, but this one was exceptional). Call them the Incel ISIS, or just a bunch of trolls, but the week kept bringing reminders that the furry fandom is past the limit of tolerance for their hate. There was a wave of critical attention:

  • Newsweek published a deep look at the racist alt-right origins of alt-furry.
  • Dogpatch Press posted an expose by a mole inside the Furry Raiders, and their hate group activity led former members to repudiate it.
  • @Deotasdevil posted an essay about neo-nazis recruiting in nerd groups. It reached far outside of fandom, including 41,000 watchers of Sonicfox5000.
  • More evidence was found in a video from Casey Hoerth/”Len Gilbert”, an altfurry recruiter/bottom-feeder. He soon regretted his words in the video and tried to bury it with a whack-a-mole game of DMCA claims. His rare moment of candor was too revealing about their private narrative.

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