Donald Trump’s campaign really is Gamergate being played out on a national scale

[misterhighwasted]

http://www.salon.com/2016/09/15/gamergater/


THURSDAY, SEP 15, 2016 02:34 PM CDT
Donald Trump’s campaign really is Gamergate being played out on a national scale

For those who survived Gamergate, a 2014 dustup over the place of women in the video-gaming world, the 2016 election is instilling a deep and unpleasant sense of déjà vu.
It’s not just that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his acolytes are playing to the same grievance about “social justice warriors” who dare to think that white men should share power with women and people of color.
It’s that Trump and his men are using the same tools as the Gamergaters: gaslighting, projection, working the refs and leaning heavily on often subconscious double standards that allow white men to have more benefit of the doubt than others.

What’s really terrifying is that for a surprisingly long time Gamergate worked: For months, anti-feminists in the tech world were extremely effective at undermining feminists and creating the illusion that a bunch of bullies might have legitimate grievances.
Eventually, most witnesses to Gamergate woke up and saw it for what it was. I have no doubt the same will happen with the Trump campaign

SNIP
There was no evidence of such a thing, of course, but by raising questions, the bigots had their cover story. This was about “ethics in journalism” not misogyny. Targets seemed to be chosen strictly on the basis of feminist views, not any evidence of unethical behavior. But the hand-wringing about “ethics” and “corruption” and demands about “raising questions” worked. Many media representatives and other gatekeepers were cowed into trying to treat Gamergaters as people with legitimate concerns about corruption, instead of participants in a misogynist witch hunt.

“You are a young man who loves video games and hates their increasing corruption by money and hype,” David Auerbach of Slate wrote in what was supposed to be a criticism of Gamergate but ended up reinforcing the notion that people go after a woman’s private sex life because of ethics in journalism.

SNIP
This election is Gamergate all over again. With Gamergate, the real story was one about misogyny and harassment, but for months efforts to discover if Gamergaters had a legitimate grievance distracted from the true issues at stake.
The real story of this election is that an over-the-top bigot like Trump is able to amass such a following, but the media is becoming distracted by evidence-free insinuations and non-scandals about Clinton.

And it’s working. Even though Clinton is basically honest and Trump tells nutty lies at every turn, voters are starting to judge him as more trustworthy. The witch hunt strategy is effective, especially when media gatekeepers just lie down and let it happen.

But this time, it’s not just video-game culture that’s at stake but our very democracy. There’s less than two months to go until Election Day, so representatives of the media better figure this out faster than they did with Gamergate, or this country could be in serious trouble.

MORE AT LINK

[sweetloukillbot]

1. Gamergate is knotted up with the alt-right

You follow it enough and you start seeing articles from Breitbart and names like Milo Yianapoulos surfacing.
Sci-Fi fandom's Sad Puppies are another wing - they claim it is about "old fashioned space adventures" until you drill down and see that it's about not wanting to see women and PoC win awards.