27 votes

Bored Ape Yacht Club is racist and started by Neo-Nazi trolls

25 comments

  1. [9]
    RNG
    Link
    This all feels... like a loong stretch. Here's another perspective [0]. It kind of reminds me of my childhood where the mere ability to articulate links between Santanism and, say, a Monster logo...
    • Exemplary

    This all feels... like a loong stretch. Here's another perspective [0]. It kind of reminds me of my childhood where the mere ability to articulate links between Santanism and, say, a Monster logo was sufficient for concluding it was satanic.

    They actually reached out to folks at the ADL to weigh in:

    However, Mark Pitcavage — a senior research fellow at the ADL’s Center on Extremism who has on many occasions been called as an expert in court cases — tells Input that he sees no connection between BAYC’s logo and the Nazi Totenkopf image.

    “The Nazi Totenkopf is one very specific graphic design of a skull and crossbones,” Pitcavage says. “And the monkey skull resembles it in no way except insofar as all skulls resemble each other to a certain degree.”

    Pitcavage also points out that the Nazis were by no means the first to adopt the Totenkopf — and, in fact, the version used by the Waffen-SS (the combat branch of the Nazi party’s SS organization) predates the Nazi party entirely. “It dates back to the Prussian military, way before Adolf Hitler was even born,” he says.

    Crypto-Fascism is a thing. But we can become too sensitive to it to the point where we can build connections where there aren't any. Each connection feels vaugely possible, but the map at the end is completely divorced from reality.

    If you are a leftist and want to know how those on the right fall for absurd-sounding conspiracy theories, it happens in much the same way as how you may have come to believe that BAYC are secret Crypto-Neo Nazis. You may be primed to believe that based on your knowledge of cryptofascism and of the damage cryptocurrencies are doing to the environment. It hits all of our biases and primes us to view a pattern in the nest of vaguely plausible links that isn't really there.

    [0] https://www.inputmag.com/culture/bored-ape-yacht-club-nazism-racism-claims-yuga-labs-ryder-ripps

    28 votes
    1. [2]
      RNG
      Link Parent
      (Cont.) You may want to rebut, "but there's just too many coincidences here for it all to be innocent" or "when you see them side-by-side, you just know they are related, I mean look at them."...

      (Cont.) You may want to rebut, "but there's just too many coincidences here for it all to be innocent" or "when you see them side-by-side, you just know they are related, I mean look at them."

      Every conspiracy theory out there has the same sort of rebuttals, because they all hijack the same mental pathways. They prey on our biases and our ability to see patterns where they do not exist.

      If you ever watch qanon or 9/11 conspiracy content, they have seemingly damning side-by-sides, symbols that just must be derivative of each other. They even have nests of coincidences that, together must be something more.

      16 votes
      1. cfabbro
        (edited )
        Link Parent
        Along those same lines, another thing worth taking into account is the fact that BAYC has produced 10,000 of those images. So, IMO, only finding 4 hats that can be tenuously linked to...

        Along those same lines, another thing worth taking into account is the fact that BAYC has produced 10,000 of those images. So, IMO, only finding 4 hats that can be tenuously linked to racist/fascist imagery, out of all those images, is actually the opposite of proof that there is secret racist/fascist messaging behind the whole project. Especially since there are only so many iconic pieces of head-wear in the world, and that's one of the few things they change between the images, so they were bound to land on the Prussian helm, green military flat cap, Rising Sun Flag bandana, and bunny ears eventually. And moreover, if you analyze 10,000 pieces of anyone's artwork with an agenda to link them to fascism, and cherry picked hard enough (as they seemed to have here), you could likely end up making a similarly plausible sounding accusation against them too.

        Frankly, I just don't buy it. The whole thing reeks of a moral panic based witch-hunt... and I say that as someone who loathes NFTs, cryptocurrencies, and all they stand for.

        18 votes
    2. [6]
      Whom
      Link Parent
      Worth noting that this is also a defense tactic frequently employed by fascists trying to cover their asses. Most bits of Nazi imagery have historical roots dating back before they put them to...

      Pitcavage also points out that the Nazis were by no means the first to adopt the Totenkopf — and, in fact, the version used by the Waffen-SS (the combat branch of the Nazi party’s SS organization) predates the Nazi party entirely. “It dates back to the Prussian military, way before Adolf Hitler was even born,” he says.

      Worth noting that this is also a defense tactic frequently employed by fascists trying to cover their asses. Most bits of Nazi imagery have historical roots dating back before they put them to use, and a whole lot can be waved away if you position yourself as just a history buff or someone who just appreciates the use of those aesthetics, but your intended audience knows what you're really about. Especially among the Terminally Online like those running crypto scams, that symbol means one thing. What's more likely, even completely disregarding who we're talking about: someone uses that imagery because they're huge history buffs who are fascinated by the Prussian military and aren't aware of the message that symbol will send out, or that they're fascist sympathizers / fascists?

      This is sort of why I wish they stuck to the more blatant bits of evidence here. Fascists do put to use anagrams and love all that roundabout shit, but including it here just weakens the more important bits to onlookers. It is worth asking yourself if you're falling into the same mental patterns as harmful conspiracy theorists, but it is not worth letting you second-guess yourself out of what's staring you right in the face.

      13 votes
      1. RNG
        Link Parent
        I just pulled one quote from Pitcavage. It's hard to really see any of this as "evidence" after reading his tear down of the claims.

        I just pulled one quote from Pitcavage. It's hard to really see any of this as "evidence" after reading his tear down of the claims.

        7 votes
      2. [4]
        skybrian
        Link Parent
        One thing to keep in mind is that if it's a secret message then most people won't see it and its impact will be very limited. It's also a very weird way to send a secret message. Why not use...

        One thing to keep in mind is that if it's a secret message then most people won't see it and its impact will be very limited. It's also a very weird way to send a secret message. Why not use Signal?

        Unless... it's like one one of those alternate reality games that were popular for a while. The supposedly "secret" message is actually a form of publicity.

        But you aren't going to get a whole lot of people to notice unless you get them to play your alternate reality game.

        So perhaps we can think of "Were the Bored Apes Started By Neo-Nazis" as a premise for an alternative reality game. Putting the premise out there is a tactic to get people to play the game, to start seeing things you wouldn't normally see. To what end?

        Maybe the best way to deal with this possibility is to not play their games? The conspiracist mindset is one where playing alternate reality games becomes addictive. And that's true whether the game was made intentionally or not. If you're oblivious, the anagrams (real or imagined) have no power.

        And why do we even care about Bored Apes? Here's an alternative theory. What if the point isn't to promote fascism, but rather to promote Bored Apes? It wouldn't be the first time an alternative reality game was used as publicity to sell product.

        (Or at least, these are the excuses I use to justify not investigating. This looks like bullshit to me. I don't care who's behind it or what they are marketing. I find myself very reluctant to look into it. Outside-view heuristics only go so far, though, so I'm glad someone else looked into it a little.)

        6 votes
        1. [3]
          mtset
          Link Parent
          This is a problem with the overloading of the word "secret". It's not a secret in the sense that you don't want anyone but a known, small group of recipients to know what it says; it's a secret in...

          One thing to keep in mind is that if it's a secret message then most people won't see it and its impact will be very limited. It's also a very weird way to send a secret message. Why not use Signal?

          This is a problem with the overloading of the word "secret". It's not a secret in the sense that you don't want anyone but a known, small group of recipients to know what it says; it's a secret in the sense of a shibboleth, an ingroup signifier. For people who don't care about Nazi shit, it's just a weird skull, but for people who are steeped in the ingroup, it's a marker that increases comfort and provides a nucleation point for community.

          This is not exclusive to right-wing movements. For example, there are trans symbols beyond 🏳️‍⚧️ and "pronouns in bio". Depending on the context, a 🦞, a 🦀, "f64", 🦕, anime characters with cat ears (nekomimi), references to the idea of spinning around while wearing a skirt and letting centrifugal force cause it to flare, selfies putting up a peace sign while on a train, otherwise innocuous photos of the side of a long-haul truck, and a dozen other things that are not in any way related to trans issues or people directly, can act as very effective ingroup signifiers.

          9 votes
          1. [2]
            userexec
            Link Parent
            I'm not contributing to the discussion at all here, but something you said piqued my curiosity. I used to drive for a mid-sized company called TransAm. Does that have anything to do with their trucks?

            I'm not contributing to the discussion at all here, but something you said piqued my curiosity.

            otherwise innocuous photos of the side of a long-haul truck

            I used to drive for a mid-sized company called TransAm. Does that have anything to do with their trucks?

            2 votes
            1. mtset
              Link Parent
              Yep, that's exactly it! Tons of companies shorten transportation to "trans" and then add a mark, like TransAm, TransX, etc. That in itself was a joke, but it's now gotten to the meta level of...

              Yep, that's exactly it! Tons of companies shorten transportation to "trans" and then add a mark, like TransAm, TransX, etc. That in itself was a joke, but it's now gotten to the meta level of posting pictures of trucks with no logo at all. It's very silly.

              3 votes
  2. [9]
    knocklessmonster
    Link
    To be honest, most of those clues are things that I wouldn't have taken as a Nazi thing, and I'm definitely not going to check for hidden anagrams in names. When a few of these clues are put...

    To be honest, most of those clues are things that I wouldn't have taken as a Nazi thing, and I'm definitely not going to check for hidden anagrams in names. When a few of these clues are put together, with additional context, and the depth of some other hints (simianization) is explained, it becomes a clear picture. But the breadcrumbs are laid out far enough apart for the average person, such as myself before reading this, to miss them. Especially if one doesn't know what they're looking for.

    15 votes
    1. [5]
      PapaNachos
      Link Parent
      That's by design. The distinguishing feature of crypto-fascism (as opposed to regular fascism and unrelated to the crypto in crypto-currencies) is that they use lots of subtle cues and references...

      That's by design. The distinguishing feature of crypto-fascism (as opposed to regular fascism and unrelated to the crypto in crypto-currencies) is that they use lots of subtle cues and references that you have to be familiar with in order to recognize. That way they have 1)plausible deniability, 2)ability to recruit people who aren't fascists to provide both a wider audience and cover 3)if you try to explain them to someone else, you sound paranoid.

      And since the meaning is often hidden they do lead to a fair number of false positives, so this sort of thing can really only be looked at holistically. The way I approach it is that some dogwhistles are more damning than others and the more frequent and egregious the dogwhistles are, the more likely they're doing in on purpose as a signal.

      While I don't agree with every single connection the authors made, the picture as a whole is pretty damning.

      I knew something rubbed me the wrong way about BAYC (other that the obvious scam, I mean), but fucking hell that's messed up.

      16 votes
      1. [3]
        Omnicrola
        Link Parent
        This is what I find myself struggling with fairly often (in a broader context than just fascism, but I'll focus on that for the purposes of this discussion). As you point out it's a lot harder to...

        3)if you try to explain them to someone else, you sound paranoid.

        This is what I find myself struggling with fairly often (in a broader context than just fascism, but I'll focus on that for the purposes of this discussion).

        As you point out it's a lot harder to determine if someone is promoting fascism when only one or two aspects don't seem quite right, than if someone wearing swastikas and doing a Nazi salute. The part I struggle with is trying to determine my own measuring stick. Trying to develop a sense of "ok that's enough, that's definitely not coincidence". Every time I run across something like the breakdown in OP I always get the same feeling I get when someone describes various conspiracy theories, and offer a series of anecdotes "proving" it exists. In a large enough system with enough noise, straight up coincidences do happen, and people love to find patterns in things that have no actual pattern.

        To be clear, I'm not disputing anything about OP, just expressing my internal frustration/confusion about trying to figure out how to better develop my own internal filter for actual evidence vs conspiratorial nonsense.

        10 votes
        1. TemulentTeatotaler
          (edited )
          Link Parent
          I struggle a lot with that, too, coupled with the upcoming epistemological nightmare of good-as-reality AI on a number of fronts. Anomaly hunting is the term I'm familiar for that sort of pattern...

          I struggle a lot with that, too, coupled with the upcoming epistemological nightmare of good-as-reality AI on a number of fronts.

          In a large enough system with enough noise, straight up coincidences do happen, and people love to find patterns in things that have no actual pattern.

          Anomaly hunting is the term I'm familiar for that sort of pattern of thought. You see it in numerologists and 9/11 truthers, but also in good investigative journalists.

          It starts like a brainstorming session. Just find the patterns, with very little filtering. When it goes bad is when you don't do the second step of actually challenging how unlikely the events were, or what plausible alternative explanations there were.

          A woman behaving "oddly" in an interview after the loss of her child at Sandyhook gets added to the pile of proof without checking if she may have been medicated or how many bereaved parents out of the X involved act like that.

          In the case of this article, the "simianization" claims could have something to them, but it's ignoring that "chimps together strong" has been a rallying cry for amateur investors (ala Gamestop), preceded by Gorillaz/Harambe/"return to monke" or any number of other examples of non-malicious uses of anthropomorphic apes.

          There's a lot of cognitive biases that you can try to be aware of (and it sounds like you are, such as how much "noise" was there for people to find false patterns in). It's can be prohibitively effortful to debunk stuff that way, but it's at least an option for conspiracy theories.

          The problem is that doesn't really help with crypto-fascism. In the same way GANs use the adversary to get better, crypto-fascists can always just step back from "frenworld" asking if 6 million is too big a number or whatever else plays their hand too openly. You stop one generation and improve the next. It's about finding that boundary of plausibility, and it isn't hard to shift from 15% of references having some light dog whistles to them to 10%.

          Like a decade ago 4chan /b/ raids were already doing basic red teaming. They'd agree in advance to say they were "from 9gag" or "le reddit army", with internal pushback if something wasn't plausible.

          Per the article @skullkid2424 shared (appreciate the pushback, btw), it seems like a better explanation that the name Yuga came from the Zelda villain that turned himself into 2d art. It's just that if more concrete information about the views of the BAYC came out (the flag was the most damning and not really justified) it wouldn't be surprising. Sure, alt-righter gamers must have already made that Zelda connection and added it to the meme pool.

          It sucks, and short of drastic and implausible changes to the culture of pseudonymity and social reputation bookkeeping there isn't any great way of dealing with it that I can think of.

          The only consolation is that usually the truthfulness of claims doesn't have much of a bearing on how to act.

          Getting some un-savvy moderate to think you're overreacting isn't helping. Spending hours researching claims probably isn't helping (unless shared broadly). Engaging in some way that makes the game fun for crypto-fascists probably isn't helping. Looking through that lens--for me at least-- usually results in "make a small mental note and downvote monkey art".

          15 votes
        2. PapaNachos
          Link Parent
          Yeah, it's a real problem and I don't know of any simple way to address it. They are trying to be understood and so they can't make their messages completely indecipherable, but it's also always...

          Yeah, it's a real problem and I don't know of any simple way to address it. They are trying to be understood and so they can't make their messages completely indecipherable, but it's also always shifting, so you have to keep updating your lexicon. Even then unless someone completely drops their mask it's still mostly a probability thing.

          I don't even know if I would recommend most people learn about parsing dogwhistles. On one hand it's useful, but on the other it's fucking miserable.

          If you want a good place to start the ADL's Hate Symbol Database can help if you need to look something up. But it's especially important to look for their notes about legitimate uses of certain symbols, especially with respect to the stuff about numbers. IMO they identify too many different numbers as having potentially hateful context for it to be a useful tool.

          5 votes
      2. knocklessmonster
        Link Parent
        I'm well aware of the concept of crypto-fascism but you helped me better understand why it's so effective, even if I already know a bit about how it is so effective. I was really surprised at how...

        I'm well aware of the concept of crypto-fascism but you helped me better understand why it's so effective, even if I already know a bit about how it is so effective. I was really surprised at how many layers some of them have. The rest just hinges on knowing specific symbols.

        I started to feel a little crazy explaining it to my brother, but I guess that's how it works.

        6 votes
    2. Seven
      Link Parent
      The alt-right loves using coded languages and numbers to belie their true intentions. The biggest example I can think of is when the Trump campaign ran 88 ads whose first sentence each had 14...

      The alt-right loves using coded languages and numbers to belie their true intentions. The biggest example I can think of is when the Trump campaign ran 88 ads whose first sentence each had 14 words, "88" being code for the 8th letter of the alphabet, "H", with "HH" meaning "Heil Hitler", and "14" being code for the number of words in the white supremacist slogan "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children." Neo-nazis absolutely love this stuff, and it's a very effective dogwhistle against those who aren't aware of it.

      9 votes
    3. [2]
      Whom
      Link Parent
      I'd say the logo is VERY blatant on its own, but I haven't seen their material enough to know where you come across that. it's so blatant that I almost think some of the looser ones aren't worth...

      I'd say the logo is VERY blatant on its own, but I haven't seen their material enough to know where you come across that. it's so blatant that I almost think some of the looser ones aren't worth bringing up.

      7 votes
      1. Seven
        Link Parent
        The logo is definitely the most blatant out of everything, but the other stuff is worth bringing up to cement the case imo

        The logo is definitely the most blatant out of everything, but the other stuff is worth bringing up to cement the case imo

        5 votes
  3. [4]
    skullkid2424
    (edited )
    Link
    I hesitate to even post on such a potentially controversial topic...but I read through the site and there is a lot of reaching. Maybe that is indeed "crypto-facism" at work to be subtle...but I'm...

    I hesitate to even post on such a potentially controversial topic...but I read through the site and there is a lot of reaching. Maybe that is indeed "crypto-facism" at work to be subtle...but I'm not seeing the "comprehensive research" - most of the links are tweets, twitter searches, or links to definitions that don't really back up the points. Some of the points are pretty valid - the logo being awfully similar to a nazi emblem is definitely not a good look. But you also have a lot of things that are probably based in meme culture or even just pop culture. Maybe its just Hanlon's Razor - did they pick the "Kamikaze Headband" for the "sushi chef headband"? Or did they google for japanese headbands and picked "Divine Wind" - one of the common phrases that are on those headbands? And then you have points like :

    Another co-founder goes by Gordon Goner, says he picked the name because it sounds like "Joey Ramone".. being that the group frequently uses anagrams and that it doesn't at all sound like Joey Ramone, maybe this is an anagram. Sure enough its a whole word anagram for, Drongo (Gordon) Negro (Goner), Drongo is common 4chan and Australian slang for stupid, its in the dictionary as such, second definition.. So, his name means "Stupid Negro." Writers often use anagrams for character names and they are also often incorporated within videogames, some of which Yuga Labs have stated they play.

    Ahhhh yes. They confessed to playing video games, therefore anagrams.

    I'll simply leave a rebuttal article - which dives into some of these points and does some actual research and includes responses from the creators. That isn't to say that there isn't anything there...but blindly trusting a random webpage isn't great. I'd suggest delving deeper and seeing how legitimate the points are. The rebuttal article also notes that the author of the site is known for attention-seeking stunts:

    We can’t close this article without talking about Ryder Ripps. He’s a shock artist who’s reportedly obsessed with disrupting the peace. And that’s paraphrasing rapper Azealia Banks, his former fiancee. They both have an audio-only sex tape that they sold as an NFT, as an example of attention-seeking behavior.


    That all being said - I'm not a fan of NFTs as a concept and my personal advice would be to stay away from investing into them.

    14 votes
    1. [3]
      Seven
      Link Parent
      I'm not sure if I can trust a website called "World NFT News" to report neutrally on the creators of one of the biggest NFT projects that exist.

      I'm not sure if I can trust a website called "World NFT News" to report neutrally on the creators of one of the biggest NFT projects that exist.

      6 votes
      1. PapaNachos
        Link Parent
        It's not even a rebuttal. In some cases it straight up agrees with the original article or just takes claims from Yuga Lab's twitter account at face value. At best it's more context, I guess. But...

        It's not even a rebuttal. In some cases it straight up agrees with the original article or just takes claims from Yuga Lab's twitter account at face value. At best it's more context, I guess. But then it ends by essentially saying "BTW the author of the original is a shock artist so who is to say one way or another" which is a weird criticism to end on from a site that doesn't credit their authors.

        7 votes
      2. skullkid2424
        Link Parent
        Its not really one source vs another or who is neutral. Its about getting more context and information. I'll reiterate: That includes going beyond the original site and beyond the article I posted...

        Its not really one source vs another or who is neutral. Its about getting more context and information. I'll reiterate:

        ...blindly trusting a random webpage isn't great. I'd suggest delving deeper and seeing how legitimate the points are.

        That includes going beyond the original site and beyond the article I posted as an example.

        4 votes
  4. [2]
    Seven
    Link
    The author does some pretty comprehensive research into not just the surface-level racism of the ape NFTs, but discovers a lot of neo-nazi imagery and antisemitism throughout the project. Some...

    At first glance, the apes in Bored Ape Yacht Club might seem innocent, but there are several traits that indicate that they are intended to represent Black people and Asian people, such as the gold chains trait called "hip hop," the gold/diamond grills trait or the Kamikaze headband from fascist Imperial Japan, offensively labeled "sushi chef headband".

    Myself and many others have noticed the issues with the images, it is clearly simianization. If you run a Twitter search you can find people have been talking about this since the project started.

    Knowing the history of alt-right/4chan types in crypto I started looking into it. I found what I believe to be definitive evidence that the group behind the creation of these images are neo-nazis, or neo-nazi trolls.

    The author does some pretty comprehensive research into not just the surface-level racism of the ape NFTs, but discovers a lot of neo-nazi imagery and antisemitism throughout the project. Some concerning stuff considering how many celebrities are now getting involved with BAYC and how much notoriety it's getting.

    9 votes
    1. papasquat
      Link Parent
      It's really not very comprehensive at all This line especially stood out to me: Ignoring the fact that hip hop isn't exclusively performed or enjoyed by black people, even if they did, naming a...

      It's really not very comprehensive at all
      This line especially stood out to me:

      there are several traits that indicate that they are intended to represent Black people and Asian people, such as the gold chains trait called "hip hop," the gold/diamond grills trait or the Kamikaze headband from fascist Imperial Japan, offensively labeled "sushi chef headband".

      Ignoring the fact that hip hop isn't exclusively performed or enjoyed by black people, even if they did, naming a gold chain after it wouldn't be any more racist than naming a pink spiked mohawk "punk".

      On the second point,
      While you could retroactively make the argument that pre war Shōwa era Japan had a lot of similarities with fascism (insofar as any authoritarian government does), they didn't describe themselves that way, unlike Mussolini's Italy or Hitler's Germany, so using the label is a little awkward.
      Secondly, on that point and kind of ironically, calling a Hachimaki (the headband the author is referencing) a "Kamikaze headband from fascist Imperial Japan" is far, far more offensive than calling it a "Sushi chef headband".

      The headband has been around for hundreds of years in tons of different contexts. Sushi chefs also do commonly wear them. In fact, I'd wager that more sushi chefs have worn them than Kamikaze pilots.

      The rest of the article struck me the same way, with a very base high school level of understanding of the iconography he's talking about.

      12 votes
  5. EgoEimi
    Link
    They're just drawings of hipster apes.

    They're just drawings of hipster apes.

    3 votes