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.Â
“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
Nice to know these people exist; you know, the ones who can take a terrible event and make it even more horrifying. Fucking scum.
Well, that didn’t take long for them to move on from Dylann Roof’s sister.
She posted some comments on her website about how all governments were dictatorships, and encouraged abuse of non-human animals and sexual degeneracy (among other things) to control populations, so I’m confused.
A fluke in details but not in kind
Another event tossed to a hive mind
If the initial news
Gave you the blues
Turn away and rewind
God only knows what was in her head
At least there was only one left dead
But the fallout soon left
May leave us bereft
Of our thoughts and leave curses instead
And it drifted to where none of us wanted it
Over a most inhumane cesspit
I don’t know why or how, or in what way I should care
All I know is that I don’t ever want to be there
Grotesqueries, hypocrisy, and so little I don’t want to unsee
Well, fuck me sideways
I’m headin’ for the highways
Where maybe I’ll get some mercy
@Falconer
In other words the “satanic-Jewish-Illuminati” invented lgbtq+ people like me to something something “Jew-world order” because its always Jews unless its really (((lizard people))),
she sounds like one of those people who reads naturalnews for the conspiracies and a trillion dollars says she thinks vaccines cause autism.
These people really have a funny idea of what censorship is. Being able to make money off of YouTube videos is suddenly a human right now? Does this apply to everyone on YouTube? Because these people probably are gamergaters or at least approved of GG and were actively trying to drive Anita Sarkeesian out of the YouTube video money making business. Remember how just a few years ago, it was unspeakably terrible that she raised lots of money to make Feminist Frequency videos?
I also find it really gross when they refer to women they like as ‘waifus.’ They just can’t bring themselves to call women ‘women’ can they? Not even when it’s women they supposedly approve of. It’s always females, waifus, cunts, plates, Staceys, bitches, anything but woman. Very, very telling.
I’ve seldom seen admiration so thoroughly dyed in hate.
@weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee
Knowing these people they honesty believe an in depth analysis of how women are treated/portrayed in videogames=(((communist))) censorship,
while driving a vehicle trough a protest (or any mass casualty attack against (((SJWs))))=the highest form of free speech.
And as “waifu” comes from a alleged practice of some Japanese forming romantic relationships with fictional characters yeah it is pretty dehumanizing.
@WWTH,
i keep rewriting this reply.
I have to wonder if it’s a failure of imagination – an inability to imagine the minds of other people
or if it’s just raw brazen entitlement. Like, “I want this thing, you’re not giving it to me, therefore it’s bad thing. Bad thing in this context is censorship – this is censorship!”
Self-centred reasoning. So much philosophical blood has been spilled to create a centreless reasoning system – science being one of them – but I have to wonder how much has been spilled on picking apart the self-centred reasoning system? Philosophy is about removing the self, often; I’m not sure how well it can handle that sort of thing.
I guess Ayn Rand would be the starting place for that investigation. Interesting that the school of philosophy she started was called Objectivism, considering how self-centred it is.
I’m doin me a ramble. These channers have failed to surprise me; I guess I can’t see a bottom to the depths of their hate anymore.
@weirwoodtreehugger:
only beta cuck soyboys treat women with respect. c’mon. obviously.
@Scildfreja
Seems to me nearly all western philosophy starts from the self.
YouTube demonetization isn’t censorship, but it must be a blow to people who expected to base their income on the medium. I hear it’s also unevenly applied (offensive content by popular YouTubers going unregulated, etc., unless too many people complain).
That said, of COURSE it’s no excuse for shooting anyone or getting violent at all. I *sort* of understand the person who said they felt “violent” when they couldn’t use Twitter, since it’s frustrating to be denied something you think you’ll have access to, but it’s not a good idea to legitimize that line of thought. That’s classic abuser talk: “They made me do it.” Not cool.
@Scildfreja
Fascists only want free speech in order to get a platform. Daddy Trump seems to care about free speech when its about silencing his bigotry but is perfectly willing to open up libel laws to sue criticisms of him.
This technique is used on gullible conservatives and libertarians who can be used as useful idiots for fascism’s agenda.
Re philosophy: I’ve been reading Julia Kristeva’s Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection since one of my students is doing an essay on it (well, only on the first chapter, but I got curious and wanted to read the rest: I’m at chap. 2 now.)
Part of me likes it, part of me is frustrated by the difficulty of the writing, and part of me wonders how she can be seen as a feminist when she bases so much of her theory on Freud.
Anyway, she has interesting things to say about the self. Some ideas so far: abjection, a reaction of disgust/horror/etc, stems from things we want to ban from the self – things that exist in an unclear space between subject and object (in French, sujet/objet/abjet are more clearly traceable to the verb “jeter”, to throw or throw away). This comes from the separation from the mother (at birth and at weaning). So the mother represents what’s rejected, and becomes abject.
I assume this part is not an essentialist argument, despite references to biological functions: it is these functions represented through a patriarchal symbolic order (…?)
Anyone else who’s read Kristeva, please feel free to clarify my impressions. Yay French philosophy!
#CensorshipKills, but I bet most of these people are the same that will fight you to the last on whether guns or people, in fact, kill people
@Epitome
Try Journal du Voleur by Genet instead. Virtually the same ideas, except he’s slightly more readable.
Oh boy, wait till they find out that youtube isn’t a constitutional right, but rather a privately owned business that has the right to do whatever the hell they want with THEIR website. Wait till they learn what freedom of speech actually is, and how websites work, and that the world isn’t responsible for catering to their entitlement. Won’t they feel like quite the fool!
@Dr Thang
I’ll make sure the kids put some skates in my coffin then.
Unsurprisingly, various TERF and alt-right factions have come together to propagate the idea that Nasim was a trans woman. The #YouTubeShooter hashtag is a rather sickening display of people pouring over her pictures, pointing out what they feel are overly-masculine features.
Birds of a feather…
@Tessa
What gets me is that don’t TERFs believe in body positivity? Or is that only for white, cis women that are a few pounds under or over weight in TERFs circles? I guess those ladies in those 80s/90s aerobic tapes are also in suspect in their eyes and don’t get them started on women bodybuilders.
Hello.
Seriously ? This is close to addiction, at this point…
And reading “Nasim” all over their comment make me feel like reading “Nazism” almost each time. I may be really tired…
Have a nice day.
Female bodybuilders do get a lot of shit though. I know a little about bodybuilding since I have a friend who competed as a woman (I say “as a woman” since he came out as trans about five years ago) in bodybuilding at a championship level in the 1980:s and still keeps track of the scene. Back then female bodybuilders often looked really masculine (he used to have short hair too, and was perceived as a man a lot of the time when he had his clothes on, despite not having come out yet), and that was always controversial. Later on, we got this trend among female bodybuilders where they all started wearing long, glamourous hair, lots of make-up, silicon boobs and so on, basically put on as many feminine features as possible to make up for the manly muscles. And now it’s unclear whether female bodybuilding has any future at all as a sport – it’s getting cut from all the big body sport contests, whereas we have the new discipline “bikini fitness” where you’re not supposed to be “too big” or masculine looking in order to win. Although, interestingly enough, since bikini fitness was first introduced a number of years ago, winners have gotten steadily bigger and bigger, so who knows? Eventually it might become the new women’s bodybuilding under a different name.
But yeah. Women building huge muscles that make them look more masculine has always been controversial, and they’ve always been accused of not being “real women”.
if you are locked from posting on Twitter for 12 hours and feel violent that is your problem – not Twitter or censorship. it means you are a entitled fuck who needs to learn some self-control and compassion.
Should all these tweets be reported for inciting violence?
/pol/ was a mistake