Random things I am unfortunately qualified to comment on:
The Brony fandom became a hotbed for right-wing radicalization, and this shouldn’t surprise you.
First, why so many men became Bronies in the first place:
It started out as a bunch of men who just so happened to enjoy the cartoon, but toxic masculinity reared its ugly head. The men who enjoyed the show created their own sub-fandom, the Brony Fandom. For awhile it was used by exclusively men who enjoyed the show, but eventually it became a term for all adults who enjoyed the show, regardless of gender.
Toxic masculinity reared its head again, and there became a massive push for Brony spaces to once again be ONLY be for men, who had the “unique challenge” of being men who liked a show for little girls. Adult women who enjoyed the show were relabeled as “Pegasisters.”
So now we have a very large, very visible part of the fandom claiming to be marginalized, on the grounds that, as men who visibly broke gender norms, they were being targeted by the media and in memes.
This COULD have opened up conversations about toxic masculinity, and the way patriarchy hurts men, but it didn’t.
We eventually wound up with spaces that had forced out all the non-men, and were full of men who really, genuinely bought into the idea that they were oppressed for liking the show about cartoon horses.
Naturally, this began to attract men who felt oppressed for not meeting society’s standards of masculinity, not because they liked the fun pony show, but because there was a ready-made space of angry men willing to accept and validate them. There were countless Bronies who didn’t really watch the show, but used the characters and memes to form an extremely MRA-adjacent subculture.
This of course created an absolute hotbed for toxic, dangerous ideas to flourish.
Back in the early days of Pony Fandom, as all of this was starting to develop, there was a large and aggressive section of the Brony community that used the fandom’s catchphrase, “love and tolerate” as a weapon. They used it as the basis for manifestos about how if we are to truly “love and tolerate” in the spirit of the show, that means we don’t have to kick out the bad parts of the community. We should “love and tolerate” bad behavior away.
Some of this was perpetuated by people who wanted to get away with bad behavior right out of the gate, some of it was perpetuated by the “UwU we should all just get along, no drama in our fandom spaces!!!!!” people. This is something that has always caused issues in fandom, but it was particularly intense in the MLP: FIM fandom.
The shitty parts of the fandom used it as a shield, and the centrists do what centrists always do and “refused to pick sides.” The overwhelming majority of fan spaces, whether due to vocal shittiness or passive allowance, became a hotbed for really nasty stuff.
This contributed immensely to the issue of non-men and children being pushed out of MLP fan spaces, because under the cudgel of “you have to love and tolerate!!!” things like hate speech, untagged pornography and violent fanfic, and general bullying/harassment became even harder to fight back against.
This caused a massive fandom rift, and it was about that time that I and a lot of others stopped watching the show, because the community was so awful that it ruined our genuine enjoyment in the cartoon.
The result of this? A vacuum that led to an echo chamber of proto alt-right men who felt rejected by society, who had already spent countless hours fighting against accountability and content tagging and safe fandom spaces, united in their conviction that the world was out to get them.
It didn’t take long for this to develop into fascist thought. It didn’t take long at all.
As your city councilmember, I’ve fought tirelessly over the
last five years to represent working people and help bring your voices
into Seattle City Hall. Together we’ve built powerful movements and won historic victories!
I’m proud to have helped lead the way in making Seattle the first major city to pass a $15 minimum wage, through a powerful coalition with labor unions, 15 Now, Socialist Alternative,
community organizations, and grassroots activists. As your City
Councilmember and a rank-and-file member of the American Federation of
Teachers Local 1789, I’ve stood in solidarity with union bus drivers,
paramedics, maintenance workers, and educators when they’ve gone on
strike. Our council office has worked alongside movements
to win millions of dollars for affordable housing, passed a series of
landmark renters’ rights victories,
replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous People’s Day, stopped the
“Stepping Forward” public housing attack which would have raised rents
by 400%, passed crucial funding for LGBTQ services, protected the
Showbox, and won many more gains for working people and oppressed
communities in Seattle and District 3.
This year’s city elections will be a referendum on who runs Seattle - Amazon and big business or working people.
We need to build a powerful grassroots campaign to defend our seat for
working people in City Hall and to defeat the attempts of big business
to buy the elections. Last year’s Tax Amazon struggle showed how far Amazon and big business are prepared to go.
Jeff Bezos threatened 7,000 jobs to try to defeat the Amazon Tax, then
applied intensive backroom pressure to force its repeal a month after it
was unanimously passed by the City Council. We need more, not fewer,
working-class representatives who will stand up to corporate bullying.
That’s why I’m working to build a grassroots alliance of progressives
and socialists in 2019 to fight for the city we need and kick the
corporate politicians out of City Hall.
Seattle is rapidly becoming a playground for the rich, while working people, small businesses, people of color, and LGBTQ people are being rapidly gentrified out of our city. The
for-profit housing market has failed us. Our city has been the national
leader in the number of construction cranes three years running, yet the
crisis of affordable housing in Seattle remains among the worst in the
country, with the average rent now over two thousand dollars a month. We
need to build tens of thousands of units of social housing, paid for by
taxing Amazon and big business, to provide a public alternative to the
broken private development system.
We need rent control as an emergency measure to stop Seattle’s
skyrocketing rents. In the midst of this crisis, luxury apartments are
sitting vacant all over downtown and South Lake Union — we need a
vacancy tax on big developers and property-owning corporations.
Meanwhile, skyrocketing housing costs and weak tenant rights laws have combined to lead to an epidemic of evictions. On average, one of our neighbors in District 3 is evicted every other day,
while three out of four people who were evicted reported that they
could pay all or some portion of the rent owed if a reasonable payment
plan was offered. Meanwhile, the total amount of back rent owed by
everyone facing eviction in 2017 was a little under $1 million, less
than Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos makes in a single day.
Our transportation systems, schools,
healthcare, and other vital social services are at the breaking point.
This crushing reality falls hardest on working class people, women,
immigrants, the indigenous community, communities of color, and our
LGBTQ neighbors. We need to tax big business and the super rich to create a world-class, free mass transit system and fully fund public services.
In the era of Trump, we need city
councilmembers who will consistently stand up against his bigoted,
billionaire-backed agenda and fight alongside those in the crosshairs of
his attacks.
Over the last five years as your city
councilmember, I’ve seen firsthand the corrosive effects of corporate
power and lobbyists in the back rooms of City Hall. That’s why my campaign is not for sale.
As always, to be fully accountable to working people in Seattle, I
don’t take a dime from corporations or big developers. My campaign is
fueled entirely by grassroots donations. I accept only the average
worker’s wage, donating the rest of my $130,000 salary to grassroots
social movements.
As a member of Socialist Alternative,
I wear the badge of socialist with honor, and I’m excited to see
candidates identifying as socialists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
winning elections across the country.
This shows that millions of Americans are looking for a different kind
of politics, based on the needs of working people and the environment,
not the interests of the billionaire class and big business. I think a
key part of that process is building a new political party completely
independent of corporate money, that fights unapologetically for working
people and the oppressed, and is rooted in social movements, community
organizations, and labor unions. I hope you will join me in the struggle
for a democratic socialist society — a society based on cooperation and
solidarity, run democratically by and for working people, where
everyone can work and live in dignity.
This year, I’m excited to see
socialist and working-class candidates running for Seattle City Council
to challenge the corporate domination of City Hall.
Like you, I want to live in a city rooted in social justice and affordable to all.
But fighting unapologetically for working people also means making
powerful enemies. Big business and profit-driven developers know the
high stakes of this election and will spend huge amounts of corporate
cash to try to drive socialists and genuine progressives out of City
Hall and bring back business-as-usual. What’s at stake for working
people, small businesses, people of color, and LGBTQ people is our
future in Seattle. But defeating Amazon and the corporate political establishment in this election cannot happen without you getting involved.
