Angela Nagle

I had much higher expectations for this book. I think the author has a legitimate point to make about the similarities between online cultures on the left and the right that is worth exploring. However, the book is poorly edited, the author does not cite her sources properly which I suspect results from shoddy “research”, and the text is full of out-of-nowhere comments that are just dripping with acid, which are usually directed at sex positive and queer feminists. I don’t need to know that the author hates feminist porn, but I do know it. Does the author hate nazis? Unclear. Weird!… (mehr)

“Kill All Normies” is a useful if ghoulish documentation of the Alt-Right movement in contemporary America. It covers the travails of Milo Yianopolous and other sordid commentators.

It also covers some of the worst misogynist and racist rant in 4chan and its cousin 8chan online bulletin boards.

I don’t recommend this book for pleasant summer reading but it is nevertheless useful to know what is going on outside the bounds of civil public debate.

What the book lacks and so many quasi-academic journalistic accounts do these days is context. It seems that these vicious verbal attacks — primarily against women — spring out of nowhere. It’s as though they were creatures solely of the invention of these online forums.

Some of it is plain evil and evil has been with us a long, long time and to this day remains difficult to stop or even properly define.

I am not a particularly religious person, but I must admit to the mysterious nature of such behaviour.

Nagle also recounts for us the terrible saga of Gamergate where a female game programmer is pilloried in the forums for the sin of dumping her boyfriend. Bullies abound in this book.

I also felt the book could have been improved with simpler sentences and better explanations of the time frames: when you’re talking about trends or the evolution of ideas it’s useful to hold the reader’s hand a little more often. These things are not so obvious to all but those deeply immersed in the subject.

Which, in the end, made me question whether I was the targeted reader for this book.

NOTE: I was writing this essay in the aftermath of the senseless killing of two young woman and the wounding of many others mere steps from one of my businesses in downtown Toronto. The events frightened us all, and we were even involved in the cleaning up afterward. I cannot stress enough that we must be extra vigilant when women are singled out for terror and revenge. The fabric of our neighbourhoods is at stake.… (mehr)