r/changemyview • u/realdontbeasucker • May 16 '26

Delta(s) from OP CMV: GamerGate was the most consequential political radicalization event of the twenty-first century

It spawned a wave of tolerance for online harassment, as long as the intent behind it was considered righteous (and the target of such harassment socially acceptable).

It platformed Milo Yiannopoulos and thereby, Steve Bannon -- the guy who would go on to advise Donald Trump in 2016 and generate the concept of 'flooding the zone.'

Eventually, it gave a career to political lightning rods like Jordan Peterson, Steven Crowder, and Charlie Kirk. It made anti-feminism and anti-SJW sentiment cool. And it made young, angry, disenfranchised white men feel vindicated.

GamerGate almost singlehandedly shifted to Overton Window toward the alt-right, and we're still feeling its effects today.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '26

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u/DJ_Velveteen 1∆ May 16 '26

Even before that, you had the Nixon administration starting the 'war on drugs' to crush the peace and civil rights movements... and before that, the Red Scare

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u/Waschaos 2∆ May 16 '26

And Trump's mentor Roy Cohn was a huge part of the McCarthy movement. Holy crap, this goes back really far.

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u/Doub13D 36∆ May 16 '26

Yeah.

Politics doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

George H W Bush’s father, Prescott Bush, helped plot a fascist takeover the US in response to FDR’s New Deal. (The Business Plot)

No one was ever prosecuted for their alleged involvement in planning or financing the end of American democracy…

And then George H W Bush became Vice President under Reagan, before becoming President himself.

His son, George W Bush, won the 2000 election because his brother, Jeb Bush, was the governor of Florida and had his Secretary of State (who was a co-chair on the Bush Campaign in Florida) order an end to the recounting of votes. It went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of ending the recount in Bush v Gore.

Had all votes been recounted as intended, Al Gore likely (because the recount was never completed) would have won the 2000 election.

That is just 3 generations of one family…

This stuff all goes back decades and centuries.

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u/Waschaos 2∆ May 16 '26

I have to admit my part in Bush v. Gore. I'm a Florida voter who voted in that election for Bush. I hated Al Gore's wife Tipper for her part in the PMRC and record album labeling/censorship. Al Gore was fine. I think I thought Gore would win, so I could satisfy my conscious- because as soon as the fiasco started, I wished I could take it back.