By David Futrelle
When rumors began to spread yesterday afternoon that the YouTube shooter was “a woman wearing a head scarf,” many on the right assumed that their gut instinct was right: the attack on YouTube, although it took no lives other than the shooter herself, was an act of Islamist terrorism. When the name of the shooter was released, and it turned out to be Nasim Aghdam, this was all the confirmation the Islamophobic right needed.
The truth, it quickly emerged, was far stranger than these fantasies. Aghdam wasn’t a Muslim terrorist, or even a Muslim, but Baha’i. She was also a vegan, an animal rights activist, and a prolific, if highly eccentric, YouTube creator who had posted an assortment of dance and exercise videos alongside political rants, in a strange retro style that either indicated deep graphical incompetence or a love of retro seapunk aesthetics.
But it wasn’t, apparently, her animal right activism that inspired her would-be murder spree at YouTube headquarters: it was her anger at the ways, she said, YouTube had “filtered” and “discriminated [against]” her videos, depriving her of the views (and ad revenues) she felt she deserved. YouTube, she charged, was actively working to “censor and oppress people” — like her — “who speak the truth.”
This was a message that turned out to be strangely popular amongst many of those not normally sympathetic to people from the Middle East and nearby environs. These days, many on the right are equally furious at YouTube “censorship,” complaining endlessly that videos from Alt-Rightists and other reactionary shitlords are being demonetized or deleted.
Many of these people — ranging from Trump-loving deplorables to outright Nazis — have taken up the hashtag #CensorshipKills on Twitter and other social media platforms, blaming YouTube for the carnage Aghdam inflicted upon it. Some are basically endorsing her “message” without quite endorsing her actions.
https://twitter.com/zemfirad1lrz/status/981549688167063560
#CensorshipKills#NasimAghdam pic.twitter.com/cQe3QsbA1h
— Visionary (@John407116161) April 4, 2018
But it doesn’t take long browsing the #CensorshipKills to notice that there are more than a few of her apologists who don’t see the wannabe mass-murderer as a (possibly misguided) “victim” of the evil YouTube. Some see her as a free speech “martyr” if not an outright heroine.
https://twitter.com/TheeCurrentYear/status/981400662088003585
https://twitter.com/YoutubeWaco/status/981438685483819008
The enthusiasm for was clear even if some wrapped their fandom in layers of faux-irony.
https://twitter.com/KimCrimsonKills/status/981568305357082624
https://twitter.com/bro_leaf/status/981467530844868608
https://twitter.com/ValhallNS/status/981493461424668672
But nowhere was the celebration of this newly christened “Patron Saint of Online Speech” more fervid than on 4chan’s /pol/ board, where countless anons have embraced “our girl” Nasim as free speech martyr, “goddess of retribution,” pinup girl, dream waifu, and worthy successor to mass murderer and incel hero Elliot Rodger.
“Saint Nasim’s” apotheosis began in earnest more or less as soon as /pol/ discovered that she wasn’t Muslim, that she hated YouTube “censorship” as much as /pol/ regulars do, and that she was, as one put it, both “odd looking [and] oddly attractive.”
The threads devoted to her were (and as of this writing, are) suffused with a mixture of male anger, anti-Semitic hate, hunger for violence, incel sadness and sexual yearning. Denuniciations of “JewTube” alternate with pics and videos of /pol/’s new it-girl designed to highlight her “true aryan beauty” and/or her “Iranian crazy vegan super tities!!!”
For a considerable number of anons, she was the whole package, as these screenshots from just one page of comments on /pol/ will make abundantly clear.
For a few, it was less about Nasim than it was about the alleged evil that is YouTube.
Did I say YouTube? I meant JEWTUBE.
But most were utterly smitten with their new, late queen:
For many anons, the horniness was tinged with sadness:
Lamenting her death, a few spun fantasies of what might have been!
But this horny anon managed to take her death in stride.
Most agreed that she would live on in memory:
For some, she was basically the second coming of Elliot Rodger.
Naturally, there were memes. Perhaps the most memorable was a reworking of a currently popular meme contrasting a poor incels with his nemesis Chad (click on the image for a larger version).
There were a few detractors, of course, including one who found it incomprehensible that /pol/ was falling in love with “a woman? And a brown woman, at that?” And there were those who insisted — damn the media reports to the contrary! — that she really was Muslim, a charge that inspired some energetic rebuttals. 
Some didn’t approve of her veganism, seeing it as a sign of SJWishness. But others didn’t mind.
Others saw her veganism as a sign of her Aryan purity.
And there was an ongoing debate whether she was “all woman” or a “100% transgender trap,” to use 4chan’s favorite transphobic slur, though many of her fans didn’t care either way.
4chan being what it is, it wasn’t long before a few anons dug up some enigmatic but apocalyptic comments posted before the rampage yesterday that seemed to predict it; most seemed to believe that their new queen had indeed paid them at least one brief visit before, er, martyring herself. Since all comments are anonymous, there’s no way to know if this is true — and indeed, similar claims are made after almost every shooting.
Regardless of whether or not Nasim Aghdam was literally a channer herself, her new fans on /pol/ are certainly convinced they’ve found their girl.
H/T to Rational Disconnect, whose tweets first alerted me to 4chan’s excitement over Aghdam
It’s espesially distressing to me because anti-semitism is the furthest thing from the Baha’i teachings. The religion has three core values
-The unity of mankind
-The equality of men and women
-The unity of all religions
To expand on the last one: every religion with a prophet is part of god’s plan for the world. Each one has been cultivated for the society in which it originated. So Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, these are all equally from god and the Baha’i faith is only the latest edition.
And I can pull 5 quotes from memory, and over a dozen with a google search, from Baha’u’llah and Abdul’baha on the equality of men and women and the importance of respecting women’s rights.
Thanks for the responses everyone. I’ll be more than happy to do my best to answer anyone’s questions about autism, etc. And wish you all love, hugs, kisses and kittens.
Jules
Thanks for sharing. Sorry wish I knew what to say but yeah Colorism is certainly a problem across the world. There are problems within every race, etc we all just have to be the best we can be and better ourselves and each other.
I find it funny Nazis and other white supremacists talk about how superior they are when most of the stuff they use are from non-white people even the swatiska was once a religious symbol in India and China. They can’t use it anymore. I guess you can call this cultural appropriation.
@kupo
I’m purely speaking on a pseudo psychological analysist/true crime enthusiast level.
I have a passing interest on such subject matter and Nasim is clearly the most fascinating of this batch of recent gun violence committeers.
Her story is ripe for actual experts on the field.
@Fruitloopsie: Hate to “well, actually”, but to most Hindus and Buddhists in Asian countries, that whole “Nazis stole the Swastika” is highly inconsequential. There are still swastikas absolutely everywhere in India and Thailand, can’t speak for other Buddhist-majority countries, but I imagine it to be much the same, precisely because it’s part of a millennia-old culture, and that some wacky europeans decided to use that symbol doesn’t really register as significant in that context.
@MsVanillaRose: I’d like to introduce them to the sXe-vegan Nazi Environmentalists of Mongolia…
Westerners had been using the swastika for a long time prior to its adoption by the far-Right. As ever, Nazis can’t original when it comes to heraldry.
There was a famous (and very good) Canadian ice hockey team prior to the First World War called the Windor Swastikas. Seen with modern eyes they just look odd; like, did they not know what that symbol would come to mean twenty years later?
If you zoom into many far-east locations in Google Maps you’ll find swastikas all over the place. Most of them are Buddhist temple locations.
Ah I didn’t know that thanks for the info
Aye, some stupidity from a bunch of people on the other side of the planet jacking a symbol isn’t going to make them change their culture. And why should it? 😛
Victorious Parasol
After you read the article about Stormfront falling apart, scroll down to read about how 4 of the largest unions in the US have joined together to ask companies what happened to all the money from Trump’s corporate tax break which was supposed to put between $4, 000 to $9, 000 into worker’s pockets – but hasn’t yet happened.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbxpvx/unions-want-to-know-where-the-hell-all-that-trump-tax-cut-money-went
I must have missed Trump saying that salaries would go up at the time, but this is not how economics works.
Theoretically, tax cuts are so businesses can upgrade & expand, which creates more jobs (trickle down economics), but do not directly raise wages. Let’s be honest, why would a company hand a windfall over to people who are already willing to work for less money? It isn’t even rational!
Wages only increase if the expansion of the economy causes a labor shortage – then businesses compete for the scarce workers by offering higher wages than their competitors.
The unions are going public with this – which I think maybe a very good thing. We have seen that you can’t get through to a Trumpite – they dismiss any fact you present as fake news – but if it dawns on them that they aren’t seeing the payoff that Trump promised, it may wake them up before the next Presidential election. And if some of these tariffs kick in, people are going to face a lot of hurt at the grocery store & shopping mall.
Orwell is really getting a second wind these days…
Re the swastika – it does have a very long and very multi-faceted history.
We should keep in mind, though, that it’s not simply a case of an innocent symbol being stolen and corrupted by Nazis. Hindu nationalists have long used it to signify racial/ethnic superiority (during Hitler’s rule, they were very happy for him to use it, because his ideas were so close to their own).
Right now, Hindu nationalism is one of the most dangerous and increasingly influential forces in Indian politics.
(I’m writing “Hindu nationalism” very deliberately, as it’s not the same as Hinduism – I don’t want to tar all Hindus with this particularly nasty brush).
Just to add a bit more about the “Hitler stole the swastika” bit – my best friend is from Guyana, of Indian descent (to be clear, India Indian). He never even heard of Hitler before moving to America. I’ve also heard others from India who were completely oblivious to anyone named Hitler until they came to a Western country.
HAHAHA! I love it when Liberals are confused!