Joshua Wise
Joshua Wise is an Active Duty soldier in the US Army who when not jumping from helicopters and shouting at Privates, plays and writes about the games he's been playing for nearly twenty years.
Opinions expressed belong to the author, and do not represent the United States Army, DOD, or any governmental body.
Twitter: @sergeant_josh
PS+: henry_silverlake, there is a story behind that
Since its beginnings, GamerGate has been accused of being a right-wing movement, a claim so stupid and wrong that it’s starting to make me nauseous. Hell, most GGers were more offended to be called conservatives or Republicans then fat, basement-dwelling virgins. Any look at the GamerGate Twitter hashtag will show people following it who are vehemently anti-Right.
Where does this accusation come from, and why do SJWs like Bob Chipman and Arthur Chu keep coming back to it?
Some of the reasons are more obvious than others, so let’s start with… the obvious.
1. GamerGate was coined by Adam Baldwin
Adam Baldwin as Jayne Cobb in Firefly.
Actor Adam Baldwin, famous from shows like Firefly and Chuck and films like Full Metal Jacket, was the one who coined the now infamous hashtag. A simple joke attached to a tweet linking Internet Aristocrat, and the rest is history. The fact that Baldwin is right-wing is meaningless to anyone but a SJW.
Outside of a few Tweets, Baldwin’s been fairly quiet on GamerGate. Feminists have tried and failed to get him banned from conventions for supporting a hashtag he really isn’t that involved with. There is no question whose side he’s on, but to say he’s involved is reaching.
2. GameJournoPros was leaked by Breibart
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
I would say that GameJournoPros, the secret email list where game journalists engaged in corruption and collusion, was leaked by Milo Yiannopoulos, but that has little to do with it. No one gets immediately outraged over Milo’s involvement. If you remember who Andrew Breitbart was, you’ll understand why he made liberals lose their minds. I think the guy who personally dismantled a corrupt organization like ACORN would have loved to help GamerGate unravel the threads of collusion and incestuous friendships in the IGDA and GDC.
Breitbart’s involvement is interesting for an even larger reason: most GGers are left-wing. How corrupt is the mainstream gaming press and mainstream press at large when William Usher thought Breitbart was more trustworthy? On that note, how corrupt are those institutions when Breitbart published it and young, Democratic liberals believed it. Let me repeat that: liberals trusted Breitbart!
3. Milo (of course)
Milo gives no fucks. (Picture from Youtuber Donald Dickbutt.)
While I did say Milo is not as important as the website he writes for, he’s still a reason none the less. Of the few openly right-wing people in this conflict, he’s the most widely known. Regardless of what you think of his politics, he is a figurehead of GamerGate. His involvement has been called opportunistic, and I’d say I agree to a certain extent. The namesake of his publication once said that “politics is downstream from culture,” so he is merely taking a side against his opposition in the ongoing culture war.
Milo has said some fairly inflammatory things about gamers in the past, but we know that already. It’s been disclosed, discussed, and he did it before anyone asked him to or called him out on it. His opinion on gamers was from ignorance, and I believe and accept his apology to gamers, and many others have. He’s the only one involved who has ever apologized to gamers for what he’s said about them. The other side doubles down on their comments.
Milo merely saw a group of people being viciously attacked by his usual opponents, looked into it, and reported what he found.
That’s the obvious reasons. The next reason is conjecture.
4. SJWs are hard left ideologues
The easiest way to know what everyone wants is to kill anyone who wants something different.
While the fact they are leftist is obvious, what that implies isn’t. The thing about the hard left is that anyone who disagrees with them is right-wing by default. They believe in “them or us.” Just look at the group response that anyone receives if someone has the audacity to suggest that GamerGate isn’t ISIS.
If anyone could disprove people like Milo wrong, as far as GG is concerned, they would. The next best thing to proving him wrong is calling him a conservative and part of a conspiracy to take over the gaming press for the political right.
If GamerGate was a right-wing take over, why isn’t Fox News reporting on it? If GamerGate truly is a right-wing assault, why is it when I go on Fox News’ site and search for “GamerGate,” do I only get three articles that make a passing mention to the hashtag? All three articles refer to GG as a hate campaign, and one links directly to a Telegraph hit piece as their source on GG.
I didn’t stop there. I went to the websites for popular conservative radio hosts Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, and Michael Savage. Those are the big names people blurt out when they think “right-wing nut job.” Levin’s and Limbaugh’s sites have approximately zip on GG. Michael Savage’s site doesn’t have a search function, but a quick Google search reveals he probably doesn’t care about GamerGate.
GamerGate has two articles on Glenn Beck’s site The Blaze, and one article on Glenn Beck’s main website had results on a GG keyword search. Both of the Blaze articles had nothing to do with the hashtag, and the other was about doxxing, citing GG as an example.
Do you seriously believe this is a concentrated attack from the right when none of the big names of the right will give GamerGate the time of day?
Are there right-wingers in GG? Sure. I’m one of them. But trust me when I say that we’re in the minority.
Read More: Arthur Chu And Friends Try To Stop #GamerGate Meetup By Harassing Venue
