An episode of the Fusion Networks' TV series Trumpland directed by Leighton Woodhouse was based on the book. On the right is the now-notorious alt-right, divided between the 'alt-light', typified by meme-making/gleefully antagonistic trolling/use of 4chan-derived argot, and the more genuinely fascistic tendencies often masked by the headline-grabbing behaviour of alt-light figures such as Milo Yiannopoulos. Thus there are hundreds of genders, Marxist universalism is misogynist, and effacement of agency requires reparations through any number of micro-payment platforms. She makes sure to let you know it was done by/for Islam, saying he was an Islamist and how he swore allegiance to ISIS and Al Baghdadi. The vile nature of many of the troll armies and men’s rights vloggers is made clear without being overly preachy or excessive, and often using their own words to explain their views.

Nagle then puts forward her explanation for the behavior and attitude of 4chan and the alt-right: Transgression.The core contradiction of Alt-Right ideology is that its strategies, because they are co-opted from and practiced in an environment of social liberalism, require liberalism to exist. I decided to see if that claim was potentially true (since the author doesn’t bother verifying it) so I went on Google Trends. Ms Nagle: Irony and transgressiveness have been aesthetic tools mostly used by the political left for a long time, certainly they've been ever-present since 1968. Like Nagle, I am perhaps overly familiar with the forms of online discourse she describes; and that she was able to do so so accurately makes me trust her on everything else - for instance, on the fascinating history of how representations of "the mainstream" have been gendered. Richard Spencer decries homosexuality and drug use as symptoms of Western decline, whereas both are celebrated by Milo Yiannopolis.

Another question to be asked could be if a newly reinvigorated left aesthetics is possible along the lines of Guy Debord, Beatniks and others or the 1960s wave of transgressive left-wing aesthetics is completely compromised by the alt-Right. It seems to me that the book could have been an important and momentous document of the internet „wars“ of recent times, but that it got rushed and a little hamfistedly thrown into publication before reaching a decent level of finishedness. She doesn’t explain why we should oppose No-Platforming aside from relying on the supposed ridiculousness or ‘hysteria’ of the No-Platformers, and saying that the people being No-Platformed are people of importance. Nagle mentions a few names to explain the supposed horrors of No-Platforming, such as Germaine Greer, Maryam Namazie, and Jordan Peterson.Nagle’s measured prose, her commitment to both context and dialectics, contradiction and convergence as well as her stark imperturbability in the face of deeply disturbing materials make her the ideal reader of both liberal and academic hypocrisy as well as alt-right instrumentalization of transgression as politics. Columnist Ross Douthat of the New York Times praised Nagle's "portrait of the online cultural war", [12] and the Times columnist Michelle Goldberg said that Kill All Normies had "captured this phenomenon".

It could have been longer, for example, and could have touched upon many things that I felt should deserve more detail (e. Ms Nagle: One of the darker products of the sexual revolution is that you have a generation of young men raised on very grim pornography and being able to be like the Marquis de Sade in the virtual or imaginary world but in the real world they have less agency, less human contact, fewer prospects and less stake in their community and society than ever before. Nagle explains that an online culture that only responds by blocking and hiding in safe spaces has completely forgotten how to hold an argument and adequately respond when the need arises.Gamer groups, various white nationalist and Christian conservative groups, and the remnants of the pick-up artist community congealed into a loosely affiliated, predominantly male movement referred to as the Alt-Right.

There's SO MUCH to critique and point out about the left - and rather than look at that from an honest and informed perspective and raise valid and insightful criticisms, Nagle seems to regurgitate alt-right hyperbole and get the majority of her information from a game of Telephone. A highly unsympathetic cyber genealogy of the 'alt-right' that is at the same time an unsparing account of the vicious stupidity of woke liberal twitter shaming. She wants to map an Internet cultural history, one that explains how we got to this point, where the alt-right came from, how the left has changed during this, and how their battles ('culture wars', in her own words) are playing out. The title comes from the name given to normal people in some online chatrooms, particularly 4chan and 8chan. Are trauma and disabilities often undiagnosed, with some people finding help in diagnosing their problems that are ignored?

Suddenly when Trump got elected, liberal or left leaning journalists were trying to catch up and work out what was ironic and what was real. This isn’t to say that the left doesn’t have to provide answers or education to people, but Nagles idea of a feedback loop of transgressiveness dumps the blame on the left for the Alt-Right (who spend much of their time looking for examples of oppressed people to mock/attack) or unrelated individuals. A reader can't expect you to present information completely or accurately if you say a game you've never played is shit, seemingly because you hate how you assume the game works based on a biased view of a person involved in making the game. She claims that Pepe Memes and Otherkin are examples of a feedback loop of transgressiveness between the Alt-Right and Tumblr left. The Alt-Right is anti-authoritarian, decentralized, and often anonymous, although it has many (frequently at odds) figureheads.