I took the time to watch this episode of Dan Olson’s “Folding Ideas” series and have to say I rather enjoyed it. Listening to someone wax intellectual is always a treat no matter their political ideology or personal preconceptions. His analysis of Man of Steel as making a base assumption of military authority to which society must defer was intriguing and well-argued. Although I would counter that Zod being the villain who murdered Superman’s parents as well as being determined to wipe out all of humanity and Superman openly defying the military by destroying their military surveillance drones runs counter to his argument, it was, all the same, a reasonable inference given his own political stance. My own suggestion would be that Man of Steel communicates the message that the intersection of power and arrogance leads to authoritarian rule as exemplified by the military leadership of both Krypton and Earth, while the intersection of power and humility, as exemplified by Superman, leads to freedom. At any rate, that is neither here nor there, this is about Olson’s statements regarding GamerGate and the base assumptions he makes when constructing his narrative regarding those who support it.

One of the first base assumptions he makes is evident in his choice of representatives for GamerGate. That his choice overwhelmingly consists of white males leaves no confusion as to his intended message. For those who are a bit slow on the uptake he makes sure to clarify this in his three bullet points for “base assumptions” of GamerGate. As Olson presents it, GamerGate is inherently a movement of white men seeking to preserve racial and gender hierarchy in gaming that is being challenged by the emergence of female and minority voices. His base assumption in this case is that any movement where most of the prominent voices are white men and its opposition consists of prominent women, minorities, and self-professed supporters of equality, is inherently a movement for inequality and subjugation of groups generally perceived as victims under his base assumptions. Fundamentally, this is a racist and sexist base assumption that only people who share the identity of a particular victim group can truly understand members of that victim group and that the only reason members of that victim group would side with a movement consisting largely of people not of that victim group against more prominent members of their own victim group is if their very identity had been surrendered.

The reason Olson’s base assumption is so offensive is the presumption that a person is not truly a representative of a victim group unless that person sympathizes with all the concerns espoused by the prominent voices within that victim group. This is the same reason why Republicans of Black African heritage are often regarded as race traitors or Uncle Toms by many voices of the establishment left. It is this base assumption that prevents Olson from considering the possibility that the real reason there are significant minority voices within GamerGate’s support base is because the actual intentions and modus operandi of GamerGate is not the marginalization of minority voices. He believes a woman who is fully aware of her identity as a woman would naturally gravitate towards a feminist critic such as Anita Sarkeesian or a female game developer such as Zoe Quinn. Any women who rejects their influence in the gaming industry must have had their identity subsumed by an ideology constructed by white men in furtherance of the interests of white men in Olson’s view of society.

Merely by acting on this base assumption, Olson has proved why the so-called Social Justice Warriors have been the subject of ire among a faction of GamerGate’s support base. It is in the stifling of dissenting voices in favor of a homogenized group-think within victim groups to represent the “true voice” of such groups that arouses their consternation. People who are members of these supposed victim groups yet support GamerGate will be naturally inclined to resist such denial of their independent agency and usage of the predominant identity of the movement as a bludgeon with which a movement they support can be vilified. In simplest terms, NotYourShield arose from the personal outrage from members of these supposed victim groups that they were being ignored in favor of the predominant face of a movement they supported and prompted a desire to declare “I am here! I am here!” That the ad-hoc nature of the Internet movement invariably meant sock-puppets immediately moved to push the tag is not an invalidation of the identity of those women and minorities who legitimately represent GamerGate, but merely serves as a reminder that all information on the Internet should be regarded with caution.

What makes this base assumption so ludicrous is that it ignores ideological divisions of those purporting to represent a given identity group. Numerous branches of feminism exist and their positions on certain key issues vary widely. From the position taken towards transgendered individuals or the attitude regarding sex workers, feminism itself has many competing ideals that are directly in conflict with each other. Were one to analyze various minority groups and their ideological divisions a similar story would play out. Even further it suggests that supposed victim groups should be first concerned with matters concerning their identity rather than issues of larger import such as general politics and economics. The presumption that women and minorities who support GamerGate have been stripped of their identities is in furtherance of this ignorant posture on political diversity within identity groups. NotYourShield’s very existence suggests these are individuals who still put value in their identity and have not surrendered it to anyone. A desire to ignore identity in the course of discussion is, in fact, a sign of acceptance rather than rejection of women and minorities. It embraces the ideal that, at our core, we are all human and thus fundamentally the same.

From this base assumption we gain insight into one of his other base assumptions, which is essentially a composition fallacy. His base assumption is that where a member of a large undefined group engages in an action or propagates a belief that benefits the group overall no member of that undefined group can truly distance themselves from that action or belief without distancing themselves from the group in its entirety. Underlying this is the base assumption that any group in society must have a common outlook and ideology. You can see this evident in his insistence that female and minority GamerGate supporters must surrender their identity to be a legitimate supporter of GamerGate. In fact, every protest movement or cultural current in society is going to represent a diverse array of voices. Some of these voices will be opportunists looking to have their voice heard to improve their cultural reach or otherwise seeking to direct the message towards their own political aims. Were one to do a cross-examination of the attitudes and behaviors protesters in Ferguson you would undoubtedly find violent agitators among them who exploit the unrest to engage in looting and other criminal acts, just as you would find peaceful activists who solely identify with the concerns about the actions of a predominantly white police force in a predominantly black community.

In many respects this composition fallacy in his base assumption contributes to the very attitudes that inform the subjugation of women and minorities in a society. Ponder how Olson’s words would sound if he likened the African-American community to a swarm of bees with the actions of its worst members benefiting the whole, even if the majority does not support them, by instilling a fear of African-Americans that allows them to maintain an insular community free of the influence of white society and thus no African-American can distance his or her self from the actions of any one African-American. His suggestion would be rightly viewed as racist and prejudicial. By presenting his rhetoric in a racial context we can see that it places an undue burden on the group to maintain absolute control over the worst of its members beyond the capacity of any governing authority in order for any of them to avoid being perceived in a negative fashion by association. Many GamerGate supporters have worked diligently to restrain harassment and threatening behavior to the point where even their most vociferous opponents will quickly bring harassment concerns to the GamerGate community in the hopes of getting them promptly addressed, but per Olson’s base assumptions nothing they do will ever allow them to avoid being vilified even as they fight vigilantly against the very people being used to vilify them.

Even worse is that there can be no question that Olson’s standards deriving from these base assumptions are not applied equally. He would not hold all opponents of GamerGate to the same standard no matter how horrendous their behavior or how closely they were associated with him. Any who do not act with the same moral fortitude he is demanding from all of GamerGate will simply be dismissed as “not of the body” and unrepresentative of his side and his beliefs. In truth, the above base assumptions should not be understood as absolutes as he undoubtedly recognizes these as falsehoods even as these assumptions serve as the basis for his criticism of GamerGate. Olson certainly recognizes that opposition to GamerGate attracts people with a variety of political ideologies and most likely understands that some of these people are acting primarily or solely in the interest of advancing their own personal profiles on the backs of that opposition. Yet, he will not extend that same courtesy to GamerGate, which is where we get to the most important base assumption underlying his criticism.

Moreso than anything, Olson’s overriding base assumption is that those he opposes act mostly out of self-interest, while those he supports are motivated more by altruistic intentions. It is for this reason that he so blindly accepts a media narrative characterizing GamerGate as a force opposing change with harassment and terrorism. Rather than allowing the possibility that the media has a vested interest in discrediting a movement that challenges corruption within it and is thus not predisposed to seriously evaluating its concerns and interests, he presumes they are informing him of the facts distilled into the most objective and accurate narrative feasible then acts accordingly. He also does not allow that people proclaiming support for equality in line with his desired vision of it would seek to promote a project or message in an unethical or deceitful fashion or that their message or methods would be legitimately at odds with anyone interested in equality. Looking at the core of his message, the one thing a person can safely surmise about Olson is that he has a very strong opinion on the subject and is unavoidably biased in favor of it to the point where he ignores or rationalizes all contradictory information.