Dogpatch Press

(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.

When a company weeds out potential customers like that, money talks and bullshit walks. But if you still hear Altfurry denials, here’s a screenshot to prove beyond a doubt why they’re unwelcome on Discord. This was posted in the group – and then there’s a phone call with organizers who admit making a special channel for this.

When they claim to support “freedom”, that includes explicit Holocaust denialism. When they claim “diversity”, that includes for spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories. And when they claim to oppose “SJW’s”, that’s code for evading limits on trolling and rule violation, as well as a tactic to scapegoat their targets (up to and including Jews).

After being banned from Discord, now they’re on a recruiting spree.  That’s one way to compensate for steady losses (you’d be overestimating their intelligence to tell them to give up already). ZeloxQuo, who staffed the group responsible for hate speech, and was previously exposed for assisting white supremacists with trolling, has been baiting FurAffinity users for attention. This calls for pointing out bad faith manipulation.

These manipulation tactics may work on oblivious or less involved members of Altfurry (and “alt-lite” catchment groups). Exposing exactly what they represent can ensure that the public won’t be fooled too.

For context about bans and recruiting, let’s look at the main organizer for Altfurry Discord, “Len Gilbert”, AKA Casey Hoerth.

Altfurry’s Diet Führer herds the sheep.

Some of Casey’s greatest hits of trolling and hate that he organized: (1) Urging members to attack Califur with swatting calls, contributing to its possible closure. (2) Supporting violence at the neo-nazi march in Charlottesville in August 2017, which contributed to the death of a former furry.

Casey styles himself as a Richard-Spencer type, PR-savvy white supremacist; the oily kind who tries to avoid open slurs and hides racist hate behind plausible deniability, euphemism and code. But sometimes it slips out anyways. Below is a video where Casey admits inviting alt-right hate groups into fandom.

His group shifted between Discord servers to dodge scrutiny, but always maintained a core of the same low hundred or so members. One of their final organizing phone calls happened on February 16, 2018 before Discord banned them. Below is an hour and a half recording plus casual transcript. You can hear Casey admit making a channel for “The Jewish Question” and call Zelox his “Gatekeeper” to help draw young kids into the group.

Transcript

The first 1/3 is all Casey, and worth most attention. It gives a feel of how he is focused on manipulating a group.

Casey was proud of getting 70 or so people to merge with his group from another one run by neo-nazi Blumiere (AKA Romulus.) They were afraid of security because the merger required a public link for a short time but it changed to vetted only. They had a “dummy” server where newbies were contained and vetted in by staff (including Zelox). Casey says his AltFurry server is different from Blumiere’s because it’s not public and has a litmus test for members being right wing, and the other one attracts a younger group, more from the alt right. He talks about lowering age to get in to 16, and how young white kids are “more right wing and tribal minded”. To introduce new members to his group, he shares his idea of what AltFurry is for and sets a goal of maybe posting a mission statement on Twitter.

Next, funny enough, he says there’s no litmus test because they’re open minded. The contradiction with his previous statement doesn’t seem to matter because he’s talking to sheep. (It’s a good example of him manipulating by saying two things at once and picking which one fits). Being “open minded” means herding together with a getting along principle. That’s mentioned at 18:40, and at 20:30, he admits that when Legofreak was going on about the “Jewish Question” and making debate a “contact sport” – he got his own special channel where Holocaust denial was welcome.

Another of their principles is being “creative” (that’s funny, because then they go on about meming, stealing art to do it, and trolling an artist who got upset about it.) They say they all do trolling, but that’s not what the group is really for – it’s really for fighting “SJW’s”. They think the left has been like a united army, and they have had people with big ideas clashing, but will fix it with organization now. (Isn’t it great how that worked out? Back to square 1…)

At the 1/3 point Casey opens channels to everyone, for boring talk about how to have artists in a channel. They stopped trying because of fear of consequences of being openly AltFur. At 1/2 way is trolling talk. One member jokes about getting homoerotic art of Casey and things get very awkward. They laugh about how “it’s all guys there” and that makes things easier.  At the 2/3 point Casey makes jealous, resentful attacks at myself and @Deotasdevil. At the 3/4 point Casey leaves and there is groupie praise for how “alpha” he was (to a tiny group with zero self awareness about being rejected losers). At 85%, a member talks of having worked with database admin and organizing/recruiting members for game servers. He conceptualizes furry fandom as a game with sides and bosses to beat. They use the term redpill about recruiting for AltFurry.

Bonus info

There’s a look behind the false front. It should be emphasized that despite Casey’s oily togetherness talk and euphemisms – the group’s purpose supported a whole channel for hate speech. Here’s some more of what was in it from “Legofreak”, who appears to be Jeremiah Maier, age 19, a Californian living in east Oakland. His Youtube channel was actually started at age 12 for sharing Legos.  (That means Casey, a 30-something year old man, is encouraging teens into Holocaust denialism.)