• enkers@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      Pepe is a beloved internet meme, not a symbol of hate. Rightoid asshats need to leave pepe and doge the fuck alone. >:(

        • Grumpy@sh.itjust.works
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          1 month ago

          Wtf pepe is considered alt-right because alt-right uses them sometimes??? I hear they also use English! Maybe English needs to get banned!

          • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            They didn’t just use it sometimes, they were using it as an intentional dog whistle, that is the difference. Part of dog whistling is choosing something that, otherwise, has had no real relationship to the thing it is being used as a dog whistle for.

          • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            Yeah, I’m very much in the camp of “fuck you, you don’t get to have it” when it comes to extremist groups trying to co-opt other symbols.

            It’s extremely doable–the LGBT population has largely succeeded at doing exactly that with “queer”, for example–these days, basically nobody utters that word as a pejorative. Fuck you, it’s ours now. See what I mean?

            There are way more of us than them, we could literally do this for everything these dipshits try to ‘claim’.

        • petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 month ago

          They did, but I don’t think they still have them.

          Pepe is now (or again) a beloved element of Twitch chat, and the OK symbol… I dunno, that was eight years ago. I just don’t hear anybody talking about it, unless it’s to half remember that it’s bad now or something.

    • Darohan@lemmy.zip
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      1 month ago

      Wait, is just using a Valknut considered a hate symbol? I was under the impression that it was a pretty common “I like Vikings/Odin/Paganism” type symbol… Same with Tyr tbh.

      • Virkkunen@fedia.io
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        1 month ago

        The issue is that the Venn diagram of people interested in vikings/odinism and racists bigots is almost just a circle

        • Paranomaly@sh.itjust.works
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          1 month ago

          This is hyperbole. A large amount of racists and bigots are into norse stuff? Maybe. Almost all people in the norse stuff are racists and bigots? High doubt, and shouldn’t be allowed to be coopted anyway. Loki is one of the few ancient figures with some gender fluid markings as it is.

          • Default_Defect@midwest.social
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            1 month ago

            You’re right, but 100% of the people I’ve encountered that were REALLY into Norse stuff specifically, rather than a general interest in history, were white supremacist.

            • Paranomaly@sh.itjust.works
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              1 month ago

              This is fair. I am usually not in spaces where I’d see it much but have heard tell. Part of why I say it is to not have people feel shamed if they just generally like the culture/pop aesthetic involved without any baggage and to encourage people to do what they can to counter co-opt attempts

          • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            A large amount of racists and bigots are into norse stuff? Maybe. Almost all people in the norse stuff are racists and bigots? High doubt

            In my experience, people are, on average, extremely susceptible to this very basic logical fallacy, and truly believe the two sentiments above are equivalent. In other words, believing that “most X are Y” implies “most Y are X”.

            It’s fucking everywhere, pervasive all over the political spectrum too, it’s universal. Radical feminists use the fact that most physical assailants are male to malign half of the human population. Racists use statistics about what percentage of violent crime is committed by a race, to draw conclusions about what percentage of that race commits violent crime. Hell, Reefer Madness, a propaganda piece with a well-deserved reputation of being completely full of shit, rests its premise on the exact same fallacy: “practically everyone dying from hard drug use is/was also a weed smoker, so we’ve concluded weed use leads to hard drug use”.

            I see it over, and over, and over again, online and in real life. It makes you want to grab someone by the shoulders and shake them while yelling “all oranges are fruits, does that mean all fruits are oranges?!”, lol.

            That’s enough venting for tonight, though, haha.

        • Darohan@lemmy.zip
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          1 month ago

          Not sure I believe that for a minute. There’s definitely a group there, nobody can deny that, but Norse mythology is incredibly popular among leftists too - I say this as somewhat of a Norse mythology leftist, whose favorite viking/odinist/pagan band preaches unity and kindness among all people and is fronted by a polyamorous bisexual - there’s a lot to love in the mythos and the factual history, and it appeals to a wide variety of people for a wide variety of reasons.

        • tootoughtoremember@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          I enjoyed the Vikings tv series, particularly the early seasons with Ragnar. I especially liked when they wove in religion and mysticism into the episodes. A lot of people enjoyed the series at the time, it was objectively popular. Having an interest in something well represented in popular culture does not make you a de facto racist bigot.

          There’s a more likely argument to make, that within the population of white nationalist racist bigots, there’s an overrepresentation of interest/obsession with Vikings/Odinism.

    • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Google says Steam has 132 million monthly active users. Even if you count Pepe (which is absurd, the vast majority of use of it has nothing to do with anything hateful), that’s still far under 1% of users.