OK, this will require a bit of set-up: “Honkler the Clown” is an account that might legitimately be called “hate,” although supporters would probably call it “red-pilled,” i.e., cutting through propaganda to expose reality. But we don’t have to do a deep-dive into the ideological content of “Honkler the Clown” right now; the point is, the account uses clown imagery to advance an “alt-right” message, and this enraged a YouTuber named Bri Washington, a/k/a “Lil Lunchbox,” an obese mixed-race young woman who identifies as a clown:

“I’m ready to go to war. I’m ready to go to motherf–ing war.

You’re not going to take a symbol of happiness and acceptance

and multiculturalism and turn it into something racist

and anti-Semitic and homophobic and transphobic.

You’re not going to do that on my watch.”

“Nurse! Thorazine, stat!”

Why isn’t this person locked up in a padded cell? What kind of person goes to war — “motherf–ing war”! — over such things? Even if you dismiss this as just “Internet drama,” some attention-seeking woman desperate for relevance and video subscribers, isn’t that pathological?

What does it say about this woman that she would spend her time ranting on YouTube in clown makeup for an audience of barely 600 subscribers?

Beyond that craziness, however, is the insanity of how “progressives” have reacted to the “Honkler the Clown” account. Jared Holt, the guy credited with getting Alex Jones de-platformed, wrote this:

Online personalities in far-right and white nationalist online circles are attempting to attribute racism and anti-Semitism to an image of cartoon character Pepe the Frog depicted poorly drawn and as a clown . . .

The clown render of Pepe the Frog, which KnowYourMeme researchers have identified as being known as “Honk Honk” or “Honkler,” began spreading across the internet last year. In recent months, the meme has gained a foothold in the far-right and is bleeding into racist propaganda. . . .

On February 11, users on 4chan’s “politically incorrect” forum board launched “operation honk,” a campaign with the mission of spreading the character across the internet and boosting its popularity, and then returning the character back to 4chan where it could be associated with racism.

Dude, don’t you see that you’re being trolled?

The obvious purpose of the “Honkler” meme was to get “hate”-watchers like Jared Holt to invest their credibility in claiming that clowns are a symbol of racism — an obvious absurdity — and thereby destroy their own credibility. If everything is racist, nothing is racist, see?

By trolling the “hate”-watchers into beclowning themselves this way, the trolls seek to obscure the difference between actually dangerous beliefs and the ordinary attitudes of ordinary people. If you were an anti-Semite trying to mainstream such views, what could be more perfect than getting your enemies to make ridiculous claims: “CLOWNS ARE RACIST!”

It’s like the Jussie Smollett hoax, OK? It’s a self-inflicted wound. If you want the threat of racism to be taken seriously, you don’t run around shouting “RACISM!” at everything and everybody, and you don’t foster a paranoid climate of fear that causes people to freak out over things that are trivial or marginal. Furthermore, if you were serious about fighting “hate,” you wouldn’t engage in the kind of partisan smear-mongering operation that is constantly trying to point the finger at Republicans as purveyors of “hate.” That was how the SPLC destroyed its credibility, expanding its definition of “hate groups” in order to exaggerate the sense of menace by including mainstream conservative groups for the obvious purpose of enabling guilt-by-association smears against Republicans.

Running around applying the “far-right white nationalist” label so promiscuously as to smear all 62.9 million Trump voters? Not smart.

Tim Pool analyzes the “Honkler the Clown” meme:

People need to calm down. Stop panicking over Internet drama. That thing on the Internet you’re “ready to go to motherf–ing war” about? Guarantee you that 99.9% of people have no idea it exists.







Share this: Share

Twitter

Facebook



Reddit



Comments