The Curious Case of Nazi Catboys: Part 1

The gang attempts to explain the seemingly paradoxical existence of Nazi Catboys and Fascist Femboys.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Oh, Robert, that's how you start a podcast. This is
it could happen here. That's right, that's Robert talking. That's right.
Also with us accurate Christopher Wong and Garrison Davis do

(00:25):
your podcast. Yeah, So we're all gathering today on on
the day after what I think we'll go down as
the single most momentous moment in the twenty one century.
Will Smith slapped Chris Rock on stage at the Oscars.
So the entire world has pivoted from obsession with the

(00:46):
massive land war in Eastern Europe to discussing how Chris
Rock getting slapped is like the massive land war in
Eastern Europe or or eleven or nine eleven. Yes, yes, yes,
so it's a it's an amazing, like an unprecedentedly incredible
time to be on on Twitter right now. That said,

(01:08):
we're going to talk about Nazi cat boys today. I've
seen everyone's post on the subreddit being like, why aren't
you guys giving blow by blows about the war in Ukraine.
Then this is this is pressing topic and we're going
to talk about Nazi cat boys. Previous to the Chris
Rock slap. This is the most pressing topic of the

(01:28):
twenty one century. Um is why there's Nazi catboys, and
now we're going to talk about it well, because I mean,
the roots of the crisis in Ukraine are the different
kinds of catboys. That's Alinsky and Putin are, yes, Robert
is fan art. Up, It's gonna be fine. I'm sure.
I'm sure we'll find some horrible fan art. Yes, of yeah,

(01:50):
we have. We have to figure out if if Putin's
ever watched Shelsing, and then we'll build to know. So
I don't know what that means, but okay, you're you're
about to find out. So great, So we we have.
We have gathered here today to talk about to talk
about the curious case of why they are Nazi capboys.

(02:11):
UM route throughout one TikTok and Twitter pushed from boys
and cat boys into kind of the cultural mainstream, plunging
these once much more niche subcultures out of the dark
depths of fortune, Reddit, Tumbler and discord and uh the
latest rebirth of these kind of gender bending communities. It's

(02:34):
pretty socially progressive and affirming. Uh. Like generally most most
fem boys catboys are are lefties. There's a whole bunch
of like Twitter communists. I'm sure there's a whole bunch
of cat boys who like stalling or something. Um, but
they're they're generally more generally more on the left. But
but but for for those who've dug deeper into the

(02:57):
history and origins of these Internet subcultures, you may have
found a dark, racist, and hateful underbelly. So we're going
to talk about that today. I do have to note, Garrison,
as soon as you said that, I found a Stalinist
catboy the Twitter. It's an incredible account. So that their
their background image for their Twitter account is a picture

(03:19):
of Dang Xiaoping and the Ayatollah of Iran having a meeting.
Their their PfP is a lavender haired uh, it's like
a it's like an anime pic avatar catboy. Yeah, with
like a Soviet hat and then Marxist Leninist bisexual catboy
stalin did nothing wrong at North Korea. Stand incredible. This

(03:45):
is this is this is why the Left will never win.
That's perfect. I'm pretty sure this is like illegal in
those countries. It's it would have had this person shot
in the second someone tried to describe a catboy to
Joseph Stalwin, he would have had this person executed. Oh yeah,

(04:06):
oh wow, yeah, I see I see it now, that
is that is intense. You know. The thing is, this
type of thing is not going to be uncommon. We're
gonna be again, We're gonna be going into like actual
fascists who are also cowboys, and obviously they would have
been would have been killed for being degenerous as well.
But now we're gonna kind of talk about how this
how this kind of came to be. And I've been

(04:28):
writing this for like over a year. Actually, I've interviewed
a few people for this that I've kind of contributed
to the script. And initially this was going to be
conceived as a video. Um, and you can't only talk
about these things in a video format without dressing up
like a silly character. So I am. I'm wearing a
very actually a very very high quality catboy outfend right now,

(04:49):
which the audio we'll just have to you'll have to
you'll have to see it through the audio, So good
luck with that synesthesia. Um yeah, yeah, yeah, so you are.
At the same time, You've done that enough that I
don't know that anyone really noticed. I've never dressed as
a cat boy for recording, before you addresses something. Every
other recording that's true, I addressed as something. I generally

(05:11):
addresses something. So first section one, Section one? What is
what is a catboy? What? What is what is this?
Um So? But first of all, of a few ground
rules will be circling back too often. UM One, not
all catboys and femboys identify as LGBT or queer. Um
and two, gay people can still be racist. These are these,

(05:33):
These are these, These are two points that we're gonna
be coming back to over the course of these of
these Deep Night episodes. So first things first, let's let's
just define what a cat boy is for all of
the boomers in the audience. Um And if you are,
if you are a boomer listening to this, how why
how did you find this? Why are why did you
choose to listen to Garrison? The instant I became a

(05:53):
boomer was the first time you tried to describe explain
cat boys to me, Like I I suddenly developed a
strong opinion on HRC because of me. You so most
administration joke, but most simply m a cat boy? Is
this what I'm doing right now? So someone who is

(06:15):
kind of kind of boyish who who? Who? Who sometimes
enjoys dressing in cat like apparel. I guess it's like
cat ears. It is different from furries from and we
will we will get into this, um. I mean, but
I'm I'm definitely less boyish than I first was when
I wrote this like a year ago, now that I'm

(06:37):
on recreational estrogen. But nevertheless, someone who's a boyish and
dresses or likes to dress in cat like kind of
outfits generally on an anime trajectory of aesthetics. Uh now
this is this is this is different from furies from
multiple reasons. The physical cat like attributes on catboys are
mostly confined to ears and pause sometimes with tails, but

(07:00):
it's it's iffy um. Whereas you know, furries like to
have like the full first suit thing going on, whereas
catboys they still have like human faces and they wear
like human clothes. So this is actually a very key difference,
which will lots of made costumes like and yes a lot.
And the other other big kind of recurring trope um
is that is that well they well catboys you usually

(07:21):
wear clothes. Is that they usually dress up in something
similar to like a French made outfit um or or
like different outfits like anime girls will were so like
the tennis skirt thing, but generally on a made outfit
to anime trajectory. So despite, despite the animal ears, right
despite like the furry cat eers, the catboy or cat
girl thing has much more in common with the fenboy

(07:42):
community than the furry community and a lot of instances
but more more more on that later. So after some
initial research into the Nazi catboy meme, I decided it
would be useful for tracing back the roots of this
kind of odd online phenomenon to broaden the scope of
research to include fem boys as well, uh, which is
succinctly just cat boys without the cat part. It's like

(08:03):
boys who or generally male identifying people who dressed in
like feminine ways. Um, not a lot of fen boys
will turn out to be trans and not all of
them do a lot of fen boys identify as straight.
But you know, I like to wear you know, boys
generally kind of in the twink variety who likes to
wear skirts, dresses, whatever, So I a much of it,

(08:26):
a dissection to which gets a little bit more silly.
Um but but yeah, so M boys. It's excited this
This doesn't get less silly as we go on. But
but yeah, catboys, feen boys. Feen boys identify as male
dress up in more stereotypically feminine ways. There's a lot
of similarity and crossover between fen boys and catboys. Um.
But since fenboys have more of an established online history, uh,

(08:48):
including them in the research seems like the best way
to kind of dig into like the fascist femboy nazi
catboy idea. So, speaking of section two, the racist femboy
meme the past the past few years, there's been kind
of a growing meme and perception across social media that
femboys are like really racist, um and just kind of
pretty fascy in general. Um, even really homophobic and transphobic

(09:12):
and a lot of in a lot of senses, as
much as a homophobic or transphobic femboy may see them
contradictory at first. But again, more more on this later. Um.
So when I'm talking about this going forward, I'm probably
gonna be mixing words and terms like nazi and fascist,
all right or far right now not not all of
these racist femboys are what I would call Nazis by

(09:34):
any means, um and not not not all advocate for
even joke about genocide, but there were absolutely recruitment attempts
from self described Nazis. And you know, the line between
jokes and actual beliefs is intentionally very foggy in this
kind of internet subculture. So I'll kind of be lazily
lumping together everything from racist to far far right wing

(09:56):
folks for the sake of simplicity, because it's all like
in the same spectrum. And like I mentioned at the beginning,
not all femboys and cat boys identify as being queer
um and gay people can still be racist. These there
are these are points we're going to be circling back
to a lot. So at this point, the alright femboy
meme has kind of actually or overshadowed the actual phenomenon

(10:17):
of it happening. Right in the past few years, the
popularity of leftist fem boys has skyrocketed, Yet if you
still do digging on like Twitter or Discord, you can
indeed fed users who appear to be fem boys but
are also everything from racist to just openly fascist. Now,
naturally that leaves people wondering, how can one have such

(10:37):
a kind of contradictory lifestyle and belief system, which leads
us to Section three. The Internet and that's it. That's
kind of that's kind of the answer. We that's we
can kind of pack it up here. Um. We that's
the answer. It's the Internet. That's that's why that that's
why this has happened. That's what I'm getting out of this. Yeah, sure, whatever, whatever,

(10:58):
it's it's Garrison. Are you you are? Have you been
caught up on why people say al Gore invented the Internet?
On where that joke came from? You you have to
you have to remember Chris Carrison's Oh no, So there
was like al Gore was among a bunch of different

(11:19):
people who like voted to fund some of the different
government kind of projects that became the Internet, right, like
you have the r pnet and ship all that stuff.
Like he was one of the people who like pushed that.
And then in the debate with George Bush while running
for president in uh two thousand, he uh like basically
made some claims that you could uncharitably translate as him

(11:42):
saying that he invented the Internet. Um, he didn't actually
say that. It was more like he was saying, well,
I you know, supported from an early stage the development
of the Internet, but it got turned into like al
Gore claimed to have invented the Internet because it was funny.
Ab yes, and and so now that that's that's the
joke is even though he didn't really he just was

(12:04):
not you know. But anyway, so we can we can
blame Nazi cowboys on on al Gore. Absolutely well, that
that does it for us today. Um you can find
us on Wait okay, we still have a we still
have like half an episode to do. Alright, well, here's
here's speaking of of of al Gore and the Internet.

(12:25):
Here's some ads brought to you by the Internet. Ah boy,
those ads were so good they made me wanna be
a cat. Okay, all right, Wow, moving on. If you're

(12:51):
in any way familiar with facism, you are probably aware
that one of it's more consistent traits is that it's
notoriously ideologically inconsistent. Um So, for for this project, I
interviewed multiple people who have a more personal history in
the cat boy and femboy online communities than I do.
Um So, those interviews, plus my own online digging through

(13:12):
like hundreds of threads from various form websites. I've I've
literally looked through hundreds hundreds of the cat boy posts
on Fortune. But doing doing all that has been very
helpful for understanding kind of this intersection of politics and subculture.
And since I did all this research, you don't need
to so there you go. Um. But one of the
first kind of big takeaways I had after the research

(13:33):
and interviews is that the Nazi femboy cat boy thing
is not actually unique at all in terms of Internet radicalization.
It just has some aesthetic abnormalities that can confuse on
liquors or normalise, which makes the internet phenomenon seen more
outlandish than that actually is. But before we dig deeper
into this litter box of hate, I would like to

(13:54):
divide the femboy and catboy kind of racism spectrum into
actually to two assistinct categories. First, um, we have we
have type one, which I'm calling the fem fast people
who are initially into the femboy community and aesthetic and
then got introduced into far right politics online. And then
we have type two, the fasci fem people who were
already into far right politics and only then got introduced

(14:18):
to the femboi community online. So I usually break down
lots of instances of fascists mixing with various subcultures into
these like similar like to two categories of people starting
off with politics and then getting into the culture, and
people starting off with the culture then getting into politics.
I think it's actually kinda it's useful for understanding a
whole bunch of how there's like differences between different types

(14:38):
of fascist people in various subcultures. So these two types
I'm gonna I'm gonna be using to help to help
talk about these different kind of strains of of the
fascist femboy. For for now, we're gonna focus on the
first one, the fem fast. So let's let's let's wind
let's wind the clocks back. Let's say a decade. Broadly,

(15:01):
gay people can't get married, and to most kids, trans
people are ostensibly a myth um. So what kind of
person is going to become a femboy in this in
this type of in this type of environment. Simplest answer
is like a certain sect of social outcasts and anime nerds,
as well as some people who maybe don't consciously know
or accept that they're queer yet really the only way

(15:23):
to get initially exposed to the fembo aesthetic back then
was via anime, manga, hanti porn, and you know, select
video games specifically multiplayer games, and random and internet browsing.
Right this, this is this is how you're gonna get
exposed to this type of aesthetic. In fact, one of
the probably the oldest example of a Nazi catboy is
from an anime called hell Singh where they had they

(15:45):
had this Nazi catboy character who is the who was
the source of a lot of Nazi catboy memes on
four Chan, like the it's very very popular meme figure um.
And this is I think a lot of where that
aesthetic tied to fatchism actually really start from. But of
course there's a lot of fascist fans of anime in general,
so that the type of aesthetics that the type of

(16:07):
aesthetics of femininity that animey kind of presents get used
by fascism a lot. Even among like they're more like
a cottage core styles, it's still of that very like
patriarchal um type of femininity that is popular among Japanese animation.
So now the reasons that someone might be drawn to
this specific community can vary from person to person. Maybe

(16:27):
they just don't feel as connected to like the hyper
macho masculine style that American culture promotes. Maybe it's a
way to get attention and validation, or maybe you just
like wearing skirts or find it kind of hot. There's, there's,
and there's there's always the possibility that someone is transfer
gain they just don't fully know it yet. This is
the case with a lot of these people actually, Um,
but some of some of you may be surprised to

(16:49):
hear that before our modern TikTok femboy craze, most femboys
did self identify as straight ancests. Uh. There is a
lot of reasons for this, including like increased to aphobia
and transphobi back then, plus, like non binary was hardly
even the thing like culturally at that at that point. Um.
One of the people I interviewed for this project talked
about how some of the sis straight fem boys he

(17:11):
knew back then now do identify as trans or queer. Um,
but back then that wasn't really the case. Um. The
other person I interviewed for this called themselves the sis
gender femboy at the time of the interview, but has
now since come out as trans so like it says,
it is definitely a recurring pattern, but it's not a
thing for everybody, Like there is definitely like a lot
like a lot of these people do call themselves straight

(17:32):
even still now um, and that is something that a
lot of kind of people don't have a don't have
the easiest time kind of comprehending. That's I'm gonna what
I'm gonna kind of try to get into. So let's
let's let's say you're a kid, young teen and like eleven,
you're getting into anime and video games. What kind of
websites are you gonna gravitate to? Right, You're gonna gravitate

(17:53):
to read it, You're gonna gravitate to four Chan especially
in right. These are the these are kind of the
cultural meccas of of those types of type type types
of subcultures. So what is prelevant on these websites? Well,
on four Chan we have a slash b which is
their random channel um which also has a not Safer
work designation, and it's was often flooded with femboy picks

(18:16):
UM and since there are so few female users of
that site, you see a lot of hentai and occasionally
boys dressing up like not safer work female anime characters,
just because there's people still like femininity, but there's so
few actual girls using those sites that the femininity that
you see is either through anime or it's through kind
of cross dressing. Um. And then there's also the slash

(18:37):
d page which is just completely dedicated to Henta I,
So you get a lot of a lot of a
lot of that type of like anime style of femininity
through kind of that that type of appropriation and and
fetishization on the slash d page. So there's there's a
decent chance that anime and gaming nerds that browse their
interests online will get exposed to fen boy staff at

(18:58):
some point. Right nowadays it's discord, used to be four Chan,
used to be Reddit, So it becomes this type of
figure right infinity loop of people who are exposed to
something and then start propagating it and get exposed to
new people to it, and it's just like continuous cycle.
Because if if you're a kid who discovers they kind
of like this super niche, almost taboo thing, where are

(19:21):
you going to go to find other like minded people
that you're gonna go back to? Online multiplayer gaming, Reddit
and four chune. It's it's it's it's all. It's all
the same circles. So if if even if you don't
get exposed to it in places like four chune, you're
probably gonna end up there or somewhere similar regardless. And
the other other and and the other thing that's important
to talk about I which is going to talk about

(19:41):
like how how the femboys start getting into politics is
like who else is very prevalent and actively recruiting on
these types of sites with on like on multiplayer gaming,
on Reddit and four chan. It's it's nazis right that
the people who are who are into very far right
politics try to mask trying to mask some of their

(20:01):
beliefs initially, and like humor and memes. You know, a lot, large,
large part of Internet radicalization is done through is done
through memes, especially especially back in there's like so so
many like memes. A memes as a social and recruitment tool,
we're very very common, especially on like you know, if
you're on like an image board, that that's the whole
point is that you're sharing images. Um. So a big

(20:23):
part of this overrepresentation of racists in the femboy community
was simply the online proximity between these groups of people,
between the femboys and then the fascists on four Chan
or have they read it in certain online games, whether
they be like Second Life, whether it be like MMS.
You know, all these types of places, and in any
place that you can design your own character as well,

(20:44):
You've got got a lot of this type of like
anime femboy type thing, because a lot of a lot
of these games that are main in Japan can like
give like more feminine options for like male characters, or
just have like Copboy like years and stuff available as
a cosmetic option. So a lot a lot of this
fetish fetishization that we see on four Chune and on

(21:07):
and in the early two thousands and tens is now
is now applied to Discord. Like this you did kind
of carry over for trans obviously not the kind of
cultural behemoth that it used to be. A lot of
this stuff just happens on Discord now um where you
can kind of cultivate online communities that are more self contained.

(21:33):
So throughout the entirety of the fascism was pretty successful
infesting among nerd spaces, right nerds and geeks of many types,
whether that be gaming or anime, or these more like
esoteric communities esotericism like niche um. But these communities generally
they attract people who are more disenfranchised, right, and them

(21:53):
boys generally feel disenfranchised in one way or another, which
just pushes them into these, you know, less mainstream subculture.
At this point, they could be pretty easy targets for
fascist recruiters to start suggesting that maybe some of their
problems in the world are actually coming from feminism, immigrant
stealing jobs fromative action, and slowly leading into talk of
like i Q and racism and anti semitism. So for

(22:16):
those who famil these ideas initially like abhorrent, uh, it
can be explained at all this talk and simply etgy
jokes in irony attempting to trigger the enormies, which was
a big part of that type of propagation of this
type of humor and then politics masses humor on these
sites and on these like gaming chats. This isn't unique
to fem boys or cathboys in any way. Right. The

(22:39):
more people I interviewed and the more kind of old
forms that I read, I started to actually see stuff
that seemed much more familiar. Um, And there's a lot
of parallels between this far right femboy thing and the
far right fur phenomenon, which I know Robert and the
Worst Your Ever podcast put together two episodes that do
a great job kind of talking about the far right.

(23:00):
The only real episode of the Worst Year Ever that
we ever got to do. Yeah, yeah, it could you
because I guess just briefly kind of talk about the furry,
the furry kind of thing and how that because there's
there's a lot of there's even though these cultures are
different between fen boys and furries, the tactics that fascists

(23:21):
used to get into these communities is exactly the same.
Um and it kind of plays on the same same tropes. Yeah,
I mean it's weird, so you've got I think it
kind of hearkens to the fact that like whenever you
have a fandom, no matter kind of what the fandom
is about or the message of the media it's about,
you're going to have like Nazis in it. Um And

(23:43):
and that's obviously like Star Wars, right where the point
of Star Wars is Empire, bad Empire. Basically space Nazis
bad guys and there's a whole bunch of people who
have just like made that into their life and get
tattoos of the imperial sigil or whatever on their fucking chess.
Or you've got like Disney movies where like there's these
there's weirdos who will take far right nationalist messages at it.

(24:07):
Like every like everything everything has its Nazis. The punk community, right,
punk music is supposed to be anti authoritarian um and
kind of inherently left wing, but there's Nazi punks, so
like it's all like every community has their Nazis, and
the Furies are no different. One of the things that
does make the Furries different is, I think because of

(24:27):
how and this this is something probably you're a little
too young, and and I guess a lot of our
audience may have missed out on aspects of but like
early on in the Internet, and I'm talking like the
first decade of actual Internet culture, from like ninety six
to two thousand five or six, which is really the
first decade of like mass Internet culture, the punching bag

(24:49):
of the entire Internet was was Furries. Like they were
the people that like it was the safest to make
fun of um jokes about like killing them all sorts
of really fucked up shit. Um. And so I think
they developed kind of this um very strong defensive impulse
within the community. And so while every subculture has their Nazis,
the Furries have gone kind of the furthest in documenting

(25:12):
and um working to like ostracize those people. And they've done.
They're on the level with like punks in terms of
the degree to which they have like that has become
kind of a guiding principle for a lot of Furries. Um. Yeah,
is that kind of what you're looking for? Yeah, because
a big a big and the thing you mentioned about

(25:32):
like Furries being such the punching bag, that's something that's
that's something that Nazis even definitely kind of grasp onto
as a way to do grooming and recruitment. Right is
if if if if, if fascists can present themselves as
friends to these people who are always punched down upon,
then they can kind of put them into their in groups,
right they can They can support them, give them, give

(25:52):
them a sense of validation, and give them a sense
of a community. Tell them like that they they they belong.
Your your your always going to be kicked out of
like like real life social groups. Right, you can only
exist here with us. We're gonna we understand you. Like right,
they can. They can kind of foster this thing, even
though obviously it's dealing with things that are not the
most like, not the most like systems straight thing in

(26:16):
terms of like regular heterosexuality. Um got a lot of
a lot of furries are straight, but like in terms
of like the way they approach that is is definitely
different than a lot of regular people. But they so
white cremacists and different fascists can like grasp on to
this gr respond to this kind of disenfranchisement and offer
this sense of community. Um, be you know, be very

(26:36):
friendly initially, be being very being very kind of open
these people and start and start you know, the term
would be like red pilling them, right, um to talk
about that a lot of their social issues are actually
you know the fault of Stw's talking about those, you know,
all of these Jewish bankers. You know, it can start,
you can start crafting the propaganda very carefully if you're
friends with them first and then only start slowly introducing

(26:58):
them into your more extremist kind of view of politics. Yeah,
it's just no one's really surprised when an anime nerd
or like a capital G gamer starts spewing far right
talking points, but when a femboy does, that just seems
off because like, aren't they also a degenerate right like
like it's like what, there is a bit of a

(27:19):
cognitive dissonance there, um and like yes and no, Right,
you may be over estimating some people's commitment to the
fascist cause here, because a recurring pattern I found when
talking to people with history in these communities, especially if
they're more of like the fem fashion variety, right, starting
up starting off with them boys headaches, then getting into
being racist and and and like like pretty racist and

(27:41):
then getting into fascism. Is that look looking back these
people and they say, like themselves and others, all of
their kind of parenting of racist and fascist talking points,
especially online, was like they claim much more due to
having to like fit in with these with these already
pretty reactionary online spaces um and make friends at seemingly

(28:04):
one of the few places that people with similar interests gather.
You know, some people deep down don't really care about
the political beliefs that much, and we're more still looking
for a community and it just so happened that back then,
in the early the places where these communities of outcast
found each other were also places that other outcasts used
racism as a lazy, attention seeking shock comedy and like

(28:25):
the triggering of normies, which was basically like a sport
on these on on these forums. Now, obviously this is
not excusing any horrent behavior and or horrible things, is that?
But that whole idea, plus the active like grooming and
the active recruitment from Nazis made the nerdy outcast to
fascist pipeline that we see today. That's really how it

(28:46):
built up and became such a powerful tool, you know,
in around um. But there is there is the other.
All of this just generally more applies to the people
who were into fend boys addicts and then got kind
of railroaded into into nationalism and too fascism. Right, it's
because they they're fem boys on these platforms. There's also
racists on these platforms, so these things start to kind

(29:08):
of mix. But there's still that other type of femb
boy nazi um, the one who started off online with
far right views and then discovered fem boys and started
to feel things well, we're starting by talking about them
next on on on part two. But I guess does
anyone anyone have any any questions at least to close
off part one about the more kind of fem fast

(29:29):
variety of people who are generally kind of more regular politically, um,
but are into into like femboy and cowboy kind of
aesthetics and then and then get put into into into
more reactionary ideas. Mm hmmm, uh stay off the internet. Yeah,
that's not a question. But yes, that is that is

(29:49):
a that is a good uh, there's a good mission statement.
But yeah, in terms of like, in terms of like
the you know, this topic can whenever whenever I bring
it up, I thought of a lot when I've tried
to explain it to people, there's always a bit of
like that, how that doesn't make any sense? And I'll
be getting into some of the more kind of semantics

(30:10):
of it um in in part two, but at least
at least for like the initial initial kind of dive
into how the online community aspect is used as such
a powerful tool for people who are feeling so alone
that just the the idea of their being an online community,
whether it be racist or not can is just super

(30:31):
appealing because if if everyone thinks that you're weird in
an outcast, if these other people who are also weird
and outcasts start kind of trying to make friends with you,
then it can be a very powerful like recruitment tool. Um.
Which then of course they'll they'll they'll be people, they'll
be people who eventually try to like take them out

(30:51):
of the whole femboy stetics in a lot of in
a lot of ways. Um. But a lot of fascists
also get into the femboy stetic because of the because
of the proximity issue, right, because these things are so
like next to each other. Well, the thing you're the
kind of important broader realization there. And this is something
that a radicalization scholar named Scott Atran has been talking
about for ten years now, probably more is that people

(31:14):
get radicalized in communities. People like when we talk about radicalization,
like why, Like I guess the other half of the
explainer that I started this with being like, you know,
every subculture has their Nazis. It's not because like the
reason every subculture has their Nazis is that subcultures are
like people get radicalized as part of communities as part

(31:37):
of subcultures. They don't get radicalized as individuals, just like
people don't aren't just walking out in the world and
decide to become a Nazi. They become a Nazi because
a Nazi reaches them in something they're already into, right,
like that, That's just the way it happens. Yeah, there's
definitely a large part of this is like a group
of like group dynamics, especially in places like forums. Well

(31:58):
you're you know, try trying to trying to get like
this like a tension battle. Um. And I guess the
other other big part of about them boy kind of idea,
especially on image boards is like it is such an
attention seeking, in validation seeking place right you you want
to you want to post things that gets you a
lot of comments, likes, upboats, whatever. The kind of the
metric is, um, So people will do things that get

(32:20):
them visibility. Even if even if half the people interacting
with you are calling you a degenerate, at least there's
people still looking at you. Right at least you feel seen, um,
and then the other half people will be like, no,
it's actually fine, you know. So as long as there's
that visibility, that that sense of community. Then a lot
of the more cognitive cognitive dissonance aspects can kind of
be passed by. But we'll we'll we'll get into more

(32:42):
of that for for for for part two. Um anyway, Uh,
you can find us on Twitter, Instagram at to Happen
Here Podon cole Zone Media, you can find me uh
talking about cowboys occasionally on Twitter at Hungry bow Tie
and about it. Well, it's you know, I've I've been

(33:04):
I've been trying to edit down this episode because the
script was way too long. We're trying to make it
more sistinct the past few days. So my my, my, my, my,
I am. I am pretty excited to be to to
to close this Google doc at the end of the day. Well,
congratulations on all your hard work, Garrison and listeners at home.

(33:25):
Go dress like a cat boy. Yeah, and and don't
be a Nazi. Yeah, I mean that's also important. It
could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zone media dot com, or check us out on

(33:46):
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to podcasts. You can find sources for it could
happen here? Updated monthly at cool Zone media dot com,
slash sources, Thanks for listening.