Kill All Normies Paperback – June 30, 2017

Eye-Opening, Illuminating, Chilling, DisturbingThis excellent book is written for all those out there who are baffled why or how Donald Trump got elected as President. Specifically, it is written to the Non-Millennials, to the Baby Boomers, and everyone else to whom the internet, internet issues and electronic social media, is anything other than another body appendage. This book provides an answer and shines a light on the dramatic social changes which are currently going on in this country.This is a fascinating book containing elements of political theory, social and cultural commentary, and historical analysis. This is a compelling read, but disturbing.Most of us dinosaurs are familiar with the normal public discourse of political commentators on television, in the print media. Well, according to this chilling and disturbing — yet excellent — book, the rise of the Alt-Right and the ascendency of Donald Trump owes a great debt to a nebulous online netherworld which can only be described with reference to that well-known introduction to the Tales from the Darkside, a television show, ... Namely, ... “We all live in the sunlit world of what we believe to be reality. But there is, unseen by most, an underworld, a place that is just as real, but not as brightly lit. ... The Darkside.” This “darkside” is the world investigated by Kill All Normies. And, brother, if you thought the Alt-Right (read, Neo-Nazi) was a weird bunch, fasten your seat-belts because the characters and doctrines described in this book is a rocky ride!The political base for Trump and the Alt-Right is a nebulous, amorphous bunch of computer Geeks and shameless, opportunistic frauds. According to the author Nagel the Alt-Right had a major boost in Gamergate, an online controversy among gamers which rapidly escalated into a rabid political dialogue, peppered with misogyny, racism, sexism, homophobia, nativism, and a general antagonism to any liberal or progressive causes or personalities. Nagel shares some of that dialogue in her book, and it is some vile, demented, stuff. This political base gained further prominence by co-opting the practices, methods, and attitudes of the political left from the 60s and applying these tactics into their alt-right agendas. It is a wildly successful tactic, but not flawless. A notable example is Milo Yiannopoulos. Adopting an in-your-face, confrontational, what Nagle terms, “transgressive,” attitude, Yiannopoulos once famously advocated that pederasty is a good thing, and presently sits as a well-deserved persona-non-grata.The political left also engages in this cyberwar clash of cultures. Nagel describes the online activities of leftist websites like Tumblr and others. While these websites match the passion of alt-right sites, they are fractured, disjointed, disunified, you know, typical lefty stuff, and cannot hold a candle to the primal ferocity of alt-right cybergeeks.The only real draw-back of Kill All Normies is that the author assumes the reader is familiar with the names, websites, message boards, and movements tossed about in the book. For example, Gamergate, for a Baby-Boomer like myself, is an event not adequately covered by the print media, but even if it was covered adequately would be like reading about the planet Mars.While this is a real drawback, it emphasizes the subtext of Nagle’s book. Much of what is described in this book hovered below the political radar, neither known nor fully appreciated by a majority of the general public. Most of the general electorate are not aimless, layabout gamers with way too much time on their hands, spewing hate speech into their computers. These are precisely the people, however, who allowed Trump to be elected, and provided the raw fuel powering the alt-right movement. Nagle’s book, therefore, gives great pause about the political direction of this country.This book is essential reading, should be read and must be read.

TL;DR worth reading, limited, ignores Jordan Peterson (probably because it was written slightly too soon)This is a short book about a topical subject. The author does a decent job of taking one for the team by visiting the more insalubrious, mysogynistic and racist parts of the Internet and describing what she sees. While she mostly concentrates on the male and "right" side of the internet, she also gives a reasonable overview of the unpleasantness of the crab-bucket SJW left and its purity spirals.The book also provides a certain amount of context for what we are currently seeing comparing it to past movements and seeing how the balance of power and rebellion has moved over the last couple of decades. I thought there might have been a bit too much Nietsche but in many ways his writings do seem appropriate to the subject.All that is good. And it is well worth paying the $7.something for it in kindle format. Unfortunately the subject cries out for more.Firstly it seems to me that while everything the author reports is undoubtedly true she is somewhat selective. One thing that jumped out was her failure to mention the anti-zionist left that shades into antisemitism in, IMHO, at least as unpleasant a manner as that on the right. That isn't the only lack but it is symptomatic, she concentrates much more on the "right" than on the "left", which I feel is a lack because when she does focus on it she is acute in her observations and criticism. It would, IMHO, be better if she could have delved further into the intersectionalist "grievance studies" parts of the Internet to provide a counterbalance and an illustration of what the misogynist right is reacting to.Secondly it would have been useful if she could have given an estimate of numbers. 10 racist misogynists are annoying, 1000 slightly more worrying, but 1 million is far more concerning and so on. She does make a useful distinction between the "alt-light" and the "alt-right" (disclosure in her terminology I'm probably one of the former) but she doesn't make any attempt to quantify how many alt-lighters there are vs alt-righters and whether there is a significant trend of radicalization. Ditto for the left BTWThirdly I think her background - as far as I can tell she's a moderately traditional feminist liberal - means she misses a few points about the "right". Specifically the "right" has become very good at creating short-term transient alliances between disparate groups of people who may share certain beliefs and desires but not others. Gamergate - a topic she gives a fairly good but abbreviated leftish summary of - is a good example of this. There were lots of gamers with a whole spectrum of political views who felt upset at the behavior of the games journalists and developers who seemed to be pushing one particular sort of game on the world. I think it is fair to say that many disliked the tactics of some of their fellow gamergaters but that didn't stop them from preferring to ally with them to facing a future with SJW only games. Since she misses this she also fails to grok why traditional religious conservatives are willing ally with the transgressive channers - essentially both are threatened by the all powerful "liberal" statism and it's requirement that all conform or else.A greater lack is not so much in the coverage as in a general failure to identify of what the root causes are and thus what a potential solution might be. As far as root causes the author seems to dance towards stating what she sees them to be and then skate away. She presents absolutely no suggestion about how to reduce the vileness or hwo to reduce the number of young men (and women, but her focus is more on the men) who find the racist and misogynistic parts of the internet to be attractive.It seems to me that her book was possibly slightly too early because she missed the Jordan Peterson phenomenon and how that might answer some of these questions. In particular I think her analysis of his bestseller  12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos  would be interesting. Perhaps there will be a sequel that talks about him and about how he might manage to provide a less extreme philosophy than either the SJW left or the alt-rightAnyway, read this book. Then ponder it.

Angela Nagle’s book is essential reading for those who want to understand and, perhaps, respond to the intolerance, irrationalism, and tribalism of today’s extreme right and extreme left.The two factions, with their totalizing and totalitarian habits of thinking and acting, have invited themselves into our lives. How did that happen? Too many people are, understandably, afraid to engage with and stand up to left- and right-wing bullying, doxxing, and punching. But the price of not saying or doing anything can be just as high, and often higher, than “playing it safe.”Finally, if you’re alt-right- or SJW-curious, do yourself a favour and read this book. Then think about how much fun you’ll have fighting the Good Fight, until your former comrades/fascist friends come for you. Purges and the punishment of “traitors”—the definition of the word changes from day to day—always comes with the territory.Is there an escape from extremism? Only if we take the time to study it and then deal with it. Angela Nagle's book helps us do just that.

First off, was die Kritiker auf Amazon.com sagen stimmt. Es sind sehr viele Typos in dem Buch übrig geblieben. Allerdings ist der Inhalt dermassen gut, dass ich trotzdem 5 Sterne vergebe und jedem rate das einfach zu übersehen und das Buch trotzdem zu lesen.Nagle liefert hier etwas sehr seltenes, ein ungeschöntes und schonungsloses Buch über die Online culture wars. Hier geht es nicht um russische Hacker, sondern um die Subkulturen des Netzes, die die Trump Wahl ermöglicht haben. Nagle beschreibt, die faschistoiden, frauenhassenden Abgründe, die sich auf der Seite der der Alt-right und auf 4chan auftun. Allerdings macht sie nicht den Fehler, das mit herkömmlichen Konservativismus gleich zu setzen, sondern beschreibt auch den allumfassenden Zynismus und Nihilismus, der dieser Kultur zugrunde liegt.Sie lässt auch die Online Spaces der Linken nicht aus und beschreibt wie eine enorm aggressive Identitätspolitik die Linke in den letzen Jahren von innern zersetzt und kampfunfähig gemacht hat.Enorm lesenswert.

Great book - I gave my copy away to friend after reading and then bought another copy for a colleague.

Kill All Normies, based on Nagle's thesis, is a lucid read of contemporary culture wars online. She explains the mechanisms by which representatives of the alt-light and alt-right rose to power by appropriating the subversion of 60s counter-culture, and how this process eventually led to a strong enough movement to sweep Trump into power, while the left was torn asunder between Hilary supporters and so-called Bernie Bros. Without denying the importance of identity politics, she is nonetheless unafraid to point out the absurdities of certain aspects of online politicization and the chilling effect that "call-out culture" has had, by polarizing the right ever further while also dividing the left. She traces the development of a “troll ethos” one whose total rejection of social norms and political correctness gave it an edgy counter-cultural feel.For this brave act she will surely receive criticism not only from the troll army, which is to be expected, but also from left, and indeed, there are are already a few “kill-pieces” out there. Thankfully, to those who are paying attention and have actually read the book, these pieces quickly fall apart, with the reviewers revealing themselves to be rigid ideologues who misinterpret/ refuse to acknowledge her point about the stength of a "counter-cultural" right and lose themselves in circular logic. One would hope that these reviews do not dissuade curious readers from picking up an excellent piece of cultural history and journalism.

This should be required reading for every teacher in the land. As a high school teacher I have been incredibly dispirited in the last few years by the amount of young (always) boys who bring up Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro and and assorted other Lord Haw Haws of the alt-right as the pinnacle of political and philosophical thought. This is usually accompanied by a breathtakingly callow and clueless disdain for feminism. They don't even know where they're getting this stuff - they believe it's their own 'common sense'. This book clarified a lot of my thinking about this problem.