The Anonymous Comrades Collective would like to introduce you to one of the original Alt-Right "thought leaders" Evan Zenker of Coxsackie, NY aka internet troll and white nationalist propagandist Paul Town. Content Warning: Racism, Sexism, Antisemitism, Mental Health, etc.
The subject of correlation vs. causation of racism and other forms of bigotry with mental health is complicated & disputed. Neurodiversity and mental illness are not the same thing and both are commonplace in the broader society and should not be stigmatizing.
The weird & wonderful human brain governs us all, many are neurodiverse, many have graappled with some form of mental illness. Neither of these are excuses for racism, anti-semitism, & bigotry.
One clear delineation between the Alt-Right and preceding white nationalist and neo-Nazi movements was the very effective technology driven recruitment efforts.
Rather than leaving fliers on car windows in grocery stores or stuffed in random mailboxes, the Altright weaponized pop culture strategically targeting children and young adults through memes, Disney song parodies, and cartoon characters like Pepe the Frog and the “Groyper.”
One cruel aspect of this was the specific targeting of vulnerable people in various social media and gaming platforms. The Alt-Right aggressively targeted the socially isolated, the neurodiverse, and the mentally ill.
Celebratory terms like “weaponized autism” and variations on "autiste" and “sperg” were used to radicalize and encourage neurodiverse people into increasingly reckless and hateful online behavior, the sole reward being plaudits from other anonymous participants.
The anonymity behind the cartoon avatars divorced the online actions from real life accountability and encouraged accelerated outrageous rhetoric and behavior.
In the early days of the burgeoning Alt-Right movement, several figures amassed large internet followings through aggressive shitposting, meme creation, and general obnoxiousness.
This activity often crossed over into criminality in the form of harassment, threats, & election tampering etc. Some characters like Ricky Vaughn (Douglas Mackey), & Vic Mackey (Andrew Casarez) encountered serious real life & legal repercussions from their online activities
Paul Town was a major force in the alt-right explosion of 2016-17. His constant stream of racist, anti-semitic, & misogynistic content was so off-the-wall it seemed like some sort of bizarre performance art parody of the budding hipster white nationalist movement. But it wasn’t.
Using multiple twitter handles and his own website and podcasts, Paul Town became an Alt-Right celebrity, amassing tens of thousands of followers who egged on his increasingly outrageous antics. He was the clown prince of the Alt-Right.
One of Paul Town/ Evan Zenker's most successful troll campaigns involved him taking shared credit for the usurpation of the Pepe the Frog character as the de-facto Alt-Right mascot in a national media interview.
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This got a lot of play on the far right.
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Paul Town was a contributor to neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, whose founder Andrew Anglin personally endorsed and promoted his work.
Evan Zenker aka Paul Town was also a contributor to the Right Stuff website, authoring articles with titles such as “Why Do Anti-Racist Republicans Hate the Free Market?” and “A Critical Analysis of the Jewish Identity”
On his own paultown website he published numerous articles on subjects ranging from Gamergate to current politics. His shtick was a disaffected irony, couching racist and antisemitic content in a joking manner.
A classic example would be “In Support of Hitler” where he ironically posits that the 2015 Baltimore protests against police brutality are valid because of systematic state oppression.
Evan Zenker aka Paul Town rationalizes that Hitler was equally justified because, “Using 100% nurture based morality, it appears that Hitler can’t really be any blamed for his poorly thought out actions”
“An aspiring painter, Hitler experienced what could only be described horrid discrimination. He was denied acceptance into Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts. Some people say it’s because he wasn’t qualified enough, but they are just racist. He tried real hard. "
"After all this targeted persecution by a school controlled by Jews, what was left for Hitler but to act out in violence? Can a man who experienced such systematic oppression be blamed for his actions? Any enlightened man or womyn will agree that Hitler is not really at fault.”
In “What is the Alt-Right?” Evan Zenker aka Paul Town lays out the general movement philosophies that “The Alt-Right is a movement for white people interested in preserving their countries” and that racial equality is “nonsensical.”
According to Evan Zenker aka Paul Town Jews are ‘not White” and act in ways that are “detrimental to white ethnic groups.”
web.archive.org/web/2015050816…
"the Alt-Right is against behaviors such as drug use, miscegenation (which introduces further diversity & thus further societal conflict), promiscuity (spreads disease, harms family cohesion), homosexuality & transsexualism (both net negatives on society, health morality wise).
Paul Town’s internet presence became increasingly erratic as his popularity grew. And then at the height of his “fame”, he disappeared from the public eye and his website went offline.
In April of 2018. a then 23 -year-old Evan Zenker was arrested in Coxsackie, NY after starting a fire in barn and fighting with police when apprehended.. He was charged with felony burglary and arson and misdemeanor trespassing and resisting arrest.
dailyfreeman.com/news/catskill-…
By Evan Zenker’s own accounts, he had struggled with mental illness and autism with arrests, months in prison, and involuntary psychiatric commitments.
