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Cathy YoungCathy YoungSep 26, 2016

Palmer Luckey and the outrage mob: How to make Trump fans look good

In the past few days, there has been a hue and cry about the revelation that Palmer Luckey, the 24-year-old multimillionaire co-founder of the Oculus Rift virtual reality company, has been backing a pro-Donald Trump political organization called Nimble America, which apparently specializes in "shitposting" and anti-Hillary Clinton memes. After The Daily Beast broke the story, Luckey was widely denounced; a number of gaming and VR developers have announced that they're dropping Oculus from their platforms and will not collaborate with the company unless Luckey steps down. Luckey has made a Facebook post expressing regret for the negative impact of his actions; he also says that while he contributed $10,000 to Nimble America because he liked its "fresh ideas on how to communicate with young voters," he is a libertarian who plans to vote for Gary Johnson, not Trump. He also denies making several Reddit posts attributed to him on a pro-Trump board, under the handle "NimbleRichMan." There is evidence that on another occasion he confirmed making those posts. The facts remain murky. (I tried to get a comment from Milo Yiannopoulos, who was apparently also involved in the creation of Nimble America and was Luckey's liaison to the r/The_Donald subreddit, but Milo did not respond to my email.)

Anyone who follows me knows that I yield to no one in my loathing of Trump and the Trump phenomenon. I think Trump is a con man and his followers are at best willfully deluded. I think a Trump victory would bring American political culture dangerously close to that of Vladimir Putin's Russia. I could go on and on.

But that does not justify the ridiculous outrage-mobbing of Luckey -- and, as collateral damage, of his girlfriend Nicole Edelmann (formerly Nikki Moxxi on Twitter), who was "exposed" as a Trump supporter and GamerGater by Gizmodo the day after the Daily Beast exposé of Luckey and soon deleted her Twitter account due to harassment (shrugged off by some progressive Twitter users).

Nor does it justify the over-the-top and often unsupported or entirely wrong allegations made about Luckey and his activities.

For instance, Anil Dash, the entrepreneur, technologist, and blogger who has been a leading "social justice" champion in the tech world, tweeted this:

https://twitter.com/anildash/status/779127115191025664

Daily Kos blogger Annette K likewise asserted that Luckey had "filled the Internet with anti-Hillary, racist sleaze." But in fact, there is zero evidence that he has financed any Internet activities other than Facebook ads; Salon reports that "a financial statement available on Nimble America's website accounts for $2,711 in spending for Facebook ads and billboards." What's more, Nimble America's stated goal was to bring "shitposting" (i.e. provocative, aggressively mocking comments) into "real life," mainly via T-shirts and billboards. Were the ads racist? The only one I have seen mentioned was a "Too big to jail" anti-Hillary meme, which is pretty tame by the standards of political Internet in 2016.

A number of stories also suggested that Luckey had ties to "the alt-right," the white nationalist fringe that has been aggressively campaigning for Trump on the Internet. (Dash accused Luckey of "explicitly funding white supremacy.") It should be noted that Nimble America's two co-founders are moderators of r/The_Donald, which has a strong alt-right influence. But is there any evidence that Luckey himself is an alt-right sympathizer?

Vice collected a number of Twitter "likes" by Luckey that they say illustrates alt-right and "Islamophobic" views. But their evidence is pretty thin. Yes, Luckey favorited a March 22 tweet by Nikki Moxxi suggesting that proponents of "unchecked Muslim immigration" were similar to someone sitting in a burning house and claiming that everything is fine. As much as I oppose Muslim-bashing, I would not go so far as to say that this tweet is bigoted. (I will say that if Luckey agrees with this sentiment, it undercuts his claim of being a Gary Johnson supporter, since Johnson opposes immigration restrictions.)

Luckey also favorited this tweet by Mike Cernovich:

https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/775536471017070592

Cernovich is indeed, as Vice says, an "alt-right polemicist," and I don't have anything particularly good to say about him. But while Vice describes the tweet liked by Luckey as "criticizing Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau for speaking at a mosque," that's actually not the case: it criticizes Trudeau for speaking at a mosque that practices sex segregation.

The rest of Luckey's double-plus-bad wrongthinkful likes are for tweets that refer to Clinton's alleged corruption and poor health (many of them from Wikileaks) and tweets that claim Trump's views on immigration have been wrongly portrayed as racist and extreme. One tweet, by Scott Adams, asserts -- correctly, as far as I know -- that CNN's onscreen text described Trump as being in favor of "racial profiling" to stop terror when he did not use the word "racial." (Ironically, the context for this was Trump's praise for Israel's anti-terror profiling.) Another accuses the media of hypocrisy by highlighting the fact that one of Trump's statements about illegal immigration was identical to a statement made by Bill Clinton in 1995. I don't think it proves hypocrisy; Clinton's comment, unlike Trump's, was not made in a context of other, far more extreme statements. But it's an attempt to soft-pedal Trump's views, not amplify them with overt racism as the alt-right does.

As far as pro-Trump posting goes, it's all pretty innocuous.

Gizmodo also reports that Luckey has favorite tweets mocking "SJWs," or "Social Justice Warriors," describing it as "a concept encompassing a sort of liberal boogeyman for members of the alt-right." Come on, Gizmodo. "SJW" is an alt-right concept now? This year-old Washington Post article calls "Social Justice Warrior" a "GamerGate insult" but traces its history fairly accurately to Internet conflicts that have nothing to do with the alt-right. If mocking SJWs makes you alt-right, then I'm alt-right (I'm sure the alt-right would beg to differ!). So is the liberal British paper, The Independent. So is Will Shetterly, the sci-fi/fantasy writer and left-wing blogger who calls Trump a "right-identitarian" and does not mean it as a compliment.

Again: I don't know what Palmer Luckey's beliefs are. He's 24 years old and probably not a very deep thinker. If he is the author of the "NimbleRichMan" post on Reddit, he sounds like a right-libertarian who regards Clinton as a nanny-statist and a "warmonger." He may well support Trump, either because he thinks Trump will advance a libertarian-ish agenda (in which case, he is like many other Trump supporters who support their own fantasy Trump) or because he knows it annoys the grown-ups (or both). He may well have lied about his role in Nimble America in an attempt to do damage control. He may or may not have lied about being pro-Gary Johnson. (He was spotted at a Trump rally in April wearing a pro-Trump T-shirt.)

What I do know is that baying for Luckey's blood, scrutinizing his fairly innocuous Twitter footprint for signs of heresy, attacking his girlfriend (who is not a public figure, except for a now-defunct Twitter account with about 1,500 followers), and trying to force him out of the company he co-founded, does not make progressives look good. It also really doesn't help make the case that Trump opponents are standing firm against a tide of authoritarian intolerance.

I had an interesting correspondence about this with a Twitter acquaintance named Chris (I'm withholding his last name at his request), an East Coast resident in his mid-20s who works in the tech industry. Here's what he wrote about his reaction to Luckey's attempted blacklisting:

I consider myself liberal and have no love for Trump, but all the same it disturbs me to see that charity donations made by CEOs with their own money would have any bearing on evaluating how fit they are to run a company. Given how increasingly volatile America has become culturally, it makes it hard to predict what charities or groups I could donate to without potentially causing a backlash. For instance, while I'm left-leaning I believe strongly in the second amendment and responsible carry and have admired the work that the Pink Pistols organization [a pro-self-defense, pro-gun rights group] has done. If in the future I were to become successful enough that I could give substantial donations to groups like them, would I have to do it anonymously in order to avoid a scandal? I just think it's futile to demand ideological lockstep from CEOs down to their private charity donations.

Liberals and progressives, take heed. These are people you're pushing away.

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What do you think? Reply to Cathy Young.
@bhxspecter@bhxspecterSep 26, 2016154 views
Palmer Luckey and the outrage mob: How to make Trump fans look good In the past few days, there has been a hue and cry about the revelation that Palmer Luckey, the 24-year-old multimillionaire co-founder of the Oculus Rift virtual reality

I thought the article was okay, but I took issue with the line of pointing out Luckey's age and then assuming he isn't a deep thinker. I've seen 8 year old children that are deep thinkers. Outside of that It was a nice read. As a personal note, I'm a Republican and I was really bouncing back and forth on who to vote for (as I see serious flaws with all running; Trump, Clinton, and Johnson), but it is progressive and liberal attacks like the ones done against these two that make me seriously consider voting for Trump; and at this point either one winning is a disaster for the White House. Trump will make most of the US hate him, Clinton will make the US a safe space for SJWs, and Johnson is a fairly unknown that most likely won't stand behind. I also see everyone say Trump is a threat to national security while ignoring that the FBI flat out said Clinton has already been a threat to national security due to her handling of the emails. It's also interesting that they are attacking both for their views, but haul butt to the media claiming victimhood if the roles are reversed. Yet another case of SJWs bullying people for having different views than their own and being oblivious to the fact that Luckey is a billionaire and likely doesn't lose any sleep over what people think of him, but likely mad at them pulling his significant other into this whole ordeal.

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@janscott@janscottSep 27, 2016157 views
Palmer Luckey and the outrage mob: How to make Trump fans look good In the past few days, there has been a hue and cry about the revelation that Palmer Luckey, the 24-year-old multimillionaire co-founder of the Oculus Rift virtual reality
Not a day goes by without several examples of crybullying by SJWs. Today it was SJWs calling a college student a white bitch and harassing her to the point of switching schools, all because she penned an article they didn't like. One of the scariest aspects of Hillarys run is that she openly encourages the worst kind of behaviour from SJWs and BLM anarchists. People really don't want an America where if you dare call into question political dogma then you are tarred and feathered and run out of town. But that is exactly what Hillary voters support. So even if you think Trump is a narcisstic rube that is totally in over his head, he still looks like the lesser evil. The woman on the street, especially the mother, drinks this all in and imagines life for her kids at the mercy of these cry bullies, especially when they get state funding to run brown shirt ops. This article helps remind us of the unintended consequences of tolerating the intolerant.
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