Summary of Andrew Marantz's Antisocial

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The DeploraBall was a party and a media spectacle. It was a mix of both fans and media crews. Fairbanks was dressed not for the people in the room but for the fans at home.
#2 The DeploraBall was an independent pre-inauguration party hosted by and for the internet trolls and ultranationalists who had memed Donald Trump into the White House. The event took place at the National Press Club, in downtown D. C.
#3 Fairbanks was a political correspondent for Sputnik, an international news agency owned and operated by the Russian government. She was also a frequent contributor to left-wing clickbait sites such as US Uncut and Addicting Info.
#4 The New Yorker was associated with monocled snobbery and Waspy wealth. The magazine was also center-left, and its corporate ownership was criticized by some people.

Sujets

• Politique
• Nationalism
• Patriotism
• Political Science
• Political Ideologies

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 17 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822511743
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Andrew Marantz's Antisocial
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The DeploraBall was a party and a media spectacle. It was a mix of both fans and media crews. Fairbanks was dressed not for the people in the room but for the fans at home.

#2

The DeploraBall was an independent pre-inauguration party hosted by and for the internet trolls and ultranationalists who had memed Donald Trump into the White House. The event took place at the National Press Club, in downtown D. C.

#3

Fairbanks was a political correspondent for Sputnik, an international news agency owned and operated by the Russian government. She was also a frequent contributor to left-wing clickbait sites such as US Uncut and Addicting Info.

#4

The New Yorker was associated with monocled snobbery and Waspy wealth. The magazine was also center-left, and its corporate ownership was criticized by some people.

#5

The DeploraBall was not to include any Pepe imagery. When the Press Club agreed to host the event, their only stipulation was that no Pepe iconography be worn inside the venue.

#6

The DeploraBall was an invite-only event where the VIPs mingled with one another and with supporters of Trump. They shared a common set of enemies: the Clintons, the Bushes, the globalists, and the mainstream media.

#7

These online influencers knew that to get anywhere in the new media world they needed to push the boundaries, and they did so by generating content that was attention-seeking and provocative. They were not standing athwart history yelling stop, but they were holding liberal democracy in a headlock, yelling stop or I’ll shoot.

#8

In September 2016, Hillary Clinton spoke at a campaign fund-raiser in New York City. She said that half of Trump’s supporters were in the basket of deplorables, which was widely mocked. The social media ultranationalists flooded Reddit and Twitter with parody images.

#9

Gavin McInnes was the founder of the Proud Boys, an all-male fraternal organization that was founded in 2016. He was a right-wing extremist who had resigned from Vice Media in 1994 after the magazine published an article about his views on rape. He had also written columns for extremist-friendly web publications such as The American Conservative and Taki’s Magazine.

#10

I went to the Proud Boys’ Washington, D. C. , meetup, which was led by Gavin McInnes. He explained to the group that he was going to kick my ass if I ever wrote anything about them that made them look bad.

#11

I, too, grew up in anodyne liberal suburbia. I was special because I was a contrarian, blowing up the system and questioning everything. I never saw a Kurt Cobain poster that said Some norms are worth preserving.

#12

I eventually realized that institutions can have significant upsides. Some norms, such as welcoming the stranger or respecting the dignity of women, are worth preserving. It's non-edgy to affirm these things.

#13

The hosts of the roof deck were Mary Clare and Yonathan Reim, a couple in their late twenties who were engaged to be married. They lived in one of the condos downstairs. Mary Clare was a policy wonk who had problems with Trump’s education policies.

#14

The Deplorables had a meet-up at the Trump International Hotel, which was open at the time. They included Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist and founder of Infowars, who was streaming live on Facebook.

#15

The Proud Boys are a far-right group that was founded in part by Gavin McInnes, who wrote that the group would be accosted by social-justice warriors while celebrating the inauguration. They read a passage from his book that argued that Western Man was the only hero in the history of slavery.

#16

Atwater’s strategy was not invented by him, but rather used by Barry Goldwater in 1964 and then Richard Nixon in 1968 to win election. It was a paleoconservative strategy that promoted racial segregation.

#17

Buckley’s purges were often only semi-successful. The charge of anti-Semitism clung to Buchanan for years, yet it did not end his career. In 1992, he ran for president as a Republican, and in 2000, he sought the nomination of the Reform Party.

#18

The next day, the media covered the showdown, with pictures and video of the brave Proud Boys protecting the innocent women of the world.

#19

Some protesters found a way to get around the police line and stood in-between the Proud Boys and the entrance. McInnes, trying to lure one of them into a fight, licked the man’s face, but he didn't fight back. Another protester, wearing a black ski mask, passed by McInnes without incident.

#20

Stone stood in the Press Club lobby, radiating indignation. The organizers of the DeploraBall hadn’t provided enough tickets under Stone’s name, so he and his entourage left. This is an insulting absurdity, Stone said.

#21

At the Deploraball, I overheard several people use the word MAGA as a verb, adjective, and interjection. You’re not going to write something nice about us, are you. one man asked me. I had a simple rule for these situations: never lie.

#22

At one point, I was invited to talk to the crowd. I stood there and told them exactly what I had told the wrestler: that I lived in Brooklyn, wrote for The New Yorker, and had a single-speed bike. The crowd was amused by this.

#23

The mood inside the ballroom was mirth with a base note of rage. Any familiar three-syllable chant, such as Drain the swamp! or Lock her up! could be initiated by anyone at any time.

#24

Before the DeploraBall, I asked Gavin McInnes what he planned to discuss. The usual: race and IQ, he said. And the JQ, of course. By race and IQ, he meant an idea that had been repeatedly debunked but had never fully gone out of style: that white people were genetically smarter than black people.

#25

Many in the media were intimidated by the financial precarity of their industry, the plummeting cultural authority of their institutions, and the unpredictable dynamics of social media outrage. They clung to one of the few professional axioms that still seemed beyond dispute: in all matters of political opinion, a reporter should strive to remain neutral.

#26

While some, like Mike Cernovich, tried to distance themselves from the alt-right, Richard Spencer’s rhetoric was clear about his views on race and ethnicity. He believed in creating a white ethnostate.

#27

The alt-right became synonymous with neo-Nazism, and it was difficult to find a replacement for the term. Some civic nationalists started using the term New Right to refer to their half of the movement, while white supremacists continued calling themselves the alt-right.

#28

Cassandra Fairbanks, who was passing by, hugged Cernovich and pushed him into the photo booth, where they took a few sets of photos. Are you convinced we’re not Nazis yet. Fairbanks asked me. I reminded her that her mother was Puerto Rican.

#29

I was standing next to Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech investor, who was there with a group of young men pitching him business ideas. I heard him ask who was going to go after any other media outlets.

#30

I waited for Thiel to finish his speech, and when he was done, I approached him and asked him why he had decided to attend the DeploraBall. He said that he knew some people there, and was probably leaving soon. He said that most people thought there was a reliable correlation between how good something is and how popular it will be, but he thought that technology mattered more.

#31

When Facebook was founded in 2004, it was billed as an online directory that connects people through social networks at colleges. Within a few years, its mission statement had morphed into giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.

#32

The DeploraBall ended around midnight, and everyone spilled onto the sidewalk. Richard Spencer was there, waiting for them. He posed for a photo with Laura Loomer, who draped a hand on his shoulder. I’m Jewish, you know, she said. Yeah, no shit, Spencer responded.

#33

Many people gravitated toward Spencer, but he gravitated toward me, the only mainstream journalist within his line of sight. He spent more than an hour at the DeploraBall’s after-party, antagonizing everyone he could find.