Glanton’s article on #GamerGate attracted a surprising number of commenters claiming that the intrepid movement was, if anything else, apolitical. This is, at best, a tepid kind of contrarianism; reflecting the logic of ceci n’est past une pipe, it is assumed that what is apparent is never, or at best rarely, what it appears to be. Is #GamerGate apolitical? From the outside looking in, it’s hard to avoid the impression that the claim of apoliticality is a political claim. “It is wrong for our opponents to politicize this, as it is intrinsically apolitical,” the claim appears to be. Is it really?

There is a tendency of humans to revert to monkey politics. There is always an implicit assumption that whatever is particular to an enemy, is a defining feature of the enemy. This isn’t always incorrect; as a heuristic, it works just fine when associating what is merely symbolic to its respective exosemantic content. In the primordial tribal environment that contributed to our evolution as a species, true innovations were rare, and whatever was particular to a group of humans was merely cultural. On the other hand, sometimes what is particular to an enemy represents a true innovation in terms of understanding or acting on the world. These accidentally exosemantically loaded signs eventually become dispersed and adopted by outgroups, at which point the advantage bought by the innovation disperses and the next innovation must come from somewhere else.

These innovations can come in the form of technology; witness the Luddite response to automation and industrialization, or the Marxist response to capitalism. Over time, these groups, inasmuch as they continue to have any form of existence or influence, tend to reconcile themselves to these intractable realities, producing syntheses intended to produce something in line with the original intention. (Compare accelerationism and Roemer’s socialism.)

What is it to be political? It is intrinsically attached to the notion of justice, which appears best elucidated by Plato down to this day: justice is the question of what a person is owed. Notions of injustice necessarily flow contingent on this understanding, and whatever allows one to point to an instance of potential justice, but actual injustice, is to invoke the underlying political nature of some action in which there is a question of social interaction. Inasmuch as some activity has the potential for shaping and influencing our actual and potential orientation to other people, it is precisely that political. Ignorance of the political nature of an activity does not amount to demonstrating its apoliticality. This is, as I see it, a mistake, but given the inability of conservative commentators to engage with and, as I prefer, use them against leftists, the exosemantic associations leave the conservative powerless in making a rigorous reply. This is an example of the edge leftists presently have over conservative commentators; they have developed a number of epistemic and social-metaphysical innovations which correspond to realities that conservatives feel they must prove don’t exist, which assumes the frame pushed by leftists and the corresponding values thereof.

To respond that some activity is apolitical when an opponent is focusing on its political elements is essentially to bring a knife to a gun fight. When another insists on politicizing, responding that this politicization is somehow incorrect is to argue to an invading army that war is wrong; maybe you’re right, but it won’t stop them from subjugating your country. The only correct response, assuming there is something valuable to your culture, your people, your thede, is self-defense. Within the realm of politics, this is to reply with equal veracity and at the same level.

Is #GamerGate political? Yes. That is the source of its strength and power; it is the political statement that the politics of the far left have no right, no justice, in attempting to forcibly appropriate the culture gamers enjoy. Video game culture, just like any other culture, abides by some political presumptions. These are mundane and, to my mind, not worth stressing over (but then I’m conservative), perhaps the most controversial of these being that a man has a right to enjoy breast physics. To leftists, however, who are dedicated to the complete and total(itarian) appropriation of any culture that is not explicitly and dedicatedly leftist, the insufficiently political character of video game culture is an offense against their finely-tuned sense for victimhood. You may remember Jack Thompson, a conservative who thought there was a causal link between violence depicted in video games and actual violence; he was roundly and robustly attacked and discredited, but then he was a conservative and there were no vested interests in the media or academia concerned with the discrediting of a cultural conservative. Anita Sarkeesian is but the leftist mirror, who appears to believe there is a causal link between the depiction of women and gender roles in video games and actual gender roles and sexual violence; but then, Sarkeesian is forwarding a view attuned to the interests of media and academia, and thus an attack on her is an implicit attack on these bastions of leftist orthodoxy as well.

The typical response by the less (and to zealous leftists, insufficiently) leftist “conservative” is to say no such implication follows. But then, you observe conservatives noting the leftist slant of popular media, and it seems there is something. The strongest response is not to say the leftist may be right about gender roles being oppressive, only their depiction is somehow apolitical; rather, what is depicted is more congruent with a better reality. This is really the only view to take. Personally, I am in favor of traditional gender roles; I understand most find this distasteful or unnecessary, given the years of indoctrination in school and media hammering the messages of feminism, multiculturalism, and progressivism. We have all been trained to react like Pavlov’s dogs to accusations of sexism and racism, and it is only when that accusation is trained on us despite the clearly sexually and racially neutral content of our denoted claims that the illusion breaks. #GamerGate is not sexist, but that is the narrative the media has chosen and it will stick to, since it has worked so effectively for literally decades. There is a parallel to Niemöller’s First they came for the socialists, only it is First they called poor Southern whites racist…

I do not think #GamerGate will be successful, in the sense of stopping the leftist onslaught on gamer culture. Gamers are, and I mean no insult, not introspectively political types. I’m willing to guess most believe in democracy, and perhaps even believe their vote might accomplish something meaningful in the grand scheme of America’s trajectory towards eventual collapse some decades down the road. Video game culture was not the first culture leftists appropriated; science fiction has already fallen prey to Alinsky’s tactics of entryism and destruction, without the major actors in that culture even noticing what was going on until it was finished. The movement is not worth co-opting, but if I may make an appeal in order that some lesson was learned:

Now that you have seen what it is like for the media to manipulate the mass of the people against a group of people that threatens its hegemonic and virtually complete access to the minds of the average person, you might now understand how those same tactics are and have been used time and again to fix the narrative in other issues and on other groups of people. What #GamerGate has done is refuse to be cowed and disperse for having been painted as reactionary sexists by their betters at Gawker and Kotaku. The reason there is such a massive coordination in the media is precisely because the movement threatens to uncover the illusion of unbiased journalism. In reality, media is understood by its true believers as a weapon for waging a war against undesirable cultures, to bring them into line with their narrow and close-minded precepts.

You are on the cusp of truly dangerous ideas; turn back now, lest you wish to see how deep the rabbit hole truly goes. Most of #GamerGate is not up to it, and will fail to understand the reason for the event’s significance.