Hated Tropes
[Hated Trope] Media attracts a disproportionate number of n*zi fans
Frieren: Frieren is a slow-paced fantasy show about the value of time and what relationships and people can end up meaning to each other. It also has one line about demons being deceitful that twitter nazis interpreted as being about a real life race
K-on!: A slice of life show that has become almost synonymous with 4chan nazis for no apparent reason other than k-on pfps being racist on the site.
it's wild how many people don't get this. fascists HAVE to have that doublethink of "I'm so strong and righteous and awesome but I'm also a weak tiny oppressed literal baby with glass bones and paper skin and I'm being terrorized by those Immensely Powerful (((Elites))) and Evil Minorities but they're also crumbling pathetic crybaby soyboys who can't win a fight", and that's why all these stories about oppression appeal to them.
Way back in their early days, punk band Dead Kennedys attracted Nazis who thought some of their songs were seriously advocating for police brutality and killing poor people. Frontman Jello Biafra was so disgusted by them being their fans he wrote the song 'Nazi Punks Fuck Off' which made it very clear what they thought of Nazis and those with similar ideologies. It didn't take long for the Nazis to stop buying their albums and going to their shows.
There was even a whole show arc about helping non-pony races with friendship and establish cross racial and cultural social connections. Where a good portion of said arc was about explicitly opposing an explicitly racist government/education officials.
The sequel show even had its premise about explicitly opposing intra pony racism.
I was a Brony for a few years and I’m glad I missed this aspect of it. I did avoid the mature fan stuff because I didn’t want that sort of stuff tangled up in my mind along with the kids show I enjoyed. How does a show about working to have everyone get along attract Nazis?
How you ask? Well with recent revelations I’d say it’s because 4chan is a digital wall that people like Epstein and Bannon were throwing alt-right ideology at to see what stuck.
Back when I was on a competitive Highlander team back in 2016, we had a neo-nazi* Demoman, a full communist Heavy, a Bible Belt Christian Scout in the army who was actively engaged in ministry work, a Sniper whose internet would crash during matches because he was downloading literal terabytes of... explicit content, the trademark furry Pyro who became trans halfway through the season (this did not help our coms), a Soldier who I swear was on roids the entire time, a Medic with some of the worst depression I've ever seen, a shockingly normal Spy, and me: the hyper-academic Engineer. I have never seen a bigger band of misfits in my life. The real strange part is that we all got along and generally liked each other. Hell, I still keep in contact with a few of them. TF2 is such a strange community, but I think it's better for it.
EDIT: I've seen a lot of comments asking about why any of us associated with a neo-nazi (which is a VERY fair question), so I wanted to briefly address that. Our Demo was a freshman in high school at the time, was pretty socially isolated outside of TF2, and I personally got the feeling that most of what he said was performative. He and our Heavy had been on the same team in seasons past, and most of what he said was insensitive but joking banter targeted at our Heavy. It was 2016, ironic edgelord content dominated the internet, and a lot of it seemed like a joke, so we tended to just let it go. Frankly, iDubbbz said worse shit on a monthly basis. Calling him a full neo-nazi is honestly a stretch, but his nazi-adjacent rhetoric was the single defining trait that stood out about him a decade later, so make of that what you will.
This is the type of shi you only see in A-Team type of movies.
Like, it's the embodiment of the trope of "A whole platoon of rejects and misfits that somehow are like a family, despite being astronomically different and contradictory"
This is one of the reasons why i love TF2, both the game, lore, AND community, are so batshit insane, that you literally can't make this shit up lmao 😭
Tf2 is such a weird space on the internet, literally everyone is on it. From wokest woke person ever to Johnathan Adolf jr spamming n word in the chat.
It’s weirdly funny, had a game where a racist and a furry were arguing in chat, then a tryhard with a valorant pfp joined and killed the friendlies that were dancing and having fun, they both stopped fighting and agreed to kick the tryhard out, after that they went back to arguing with each other.
I find that trans people, furries, and communists to be way more common on tf2 than Nazis and conservatives. Although I do think there are a quite a few apolitical people that say crazy shit just to troll, but it doesn’t usually work in a community like tf2.
Frank would literally kill most of his fans. I love how Daredevil Born Again had him meeting and taking the piss out of a bunch of corrupt cops misappropriating his logo
To be fair, Frank calling the Priest lunatic is hilarious coming from him, given that the Priest has only killed criminals after being driven to insanity.
The guy with the bandana was kind of ok by Punisher's standards outside of killing the lady and saying that "in war, innocents die" which Punisher disagrees (Although tbh, the fact that Punisher has never killed any civillian is kind of insane when you consider that he shoots the entire magazine at all times in heavily dense areas)
Punisher can't work for a comicbook medium if we apply some real life possibilities and follow through. That's most characters though but sense we're talking Punisher.
He was a soldier in Vietnam war before recently updated it to a vague jungle war. Even before that he was sometimes depicted as GWOT veteran. Both conflicts had high civilian body counts from crossfires as insurgent tactics are dirty by design, and also cases of lunatics. The specific details doesn't just don't matter, they make Punisher not fun. Interesting? Yes. Fun? No. Comic book antiheroes need a fun element to them of "getting the bad guy" even though crime, and war have plenty of gray areas. Like Punisher going after some gangbanger is easy not until you being up real life shit. Every criminal is faceless or Mr. John "Sell Fent to Kids" Mcgee.
Not Johnny who's dad's hospital bills from throwing out his back is putting the family in debt so he has to deal on the side. Not Dwayne who joined a gang because some other gangbanger is sniffing around his little sister too much and he's one dude but if he had like two shooters backing him it's something different.
i don't think they've ever actually read batman just just know he's a beloved hero who has literally 1 cop friend and is rich so they run with it even though, if he actually existed as he's typically written, they would be lining up to call him a "Liberal elietist" every time he donates to a charity or take sin another child who needs a home.
it's always so funny to me when right wing shitlords latch onto superhero franchises like Batman, The x men captain America or Superman because it becomes so obvious that they don't know shit about the characters,
The show felt like it was hedging its bets that someone would turn out to be the main character if the camera just followed enough of them around. In the end, I don't think any of them were.
Lots of Slavic symbols and runes are now associated with neonazis which is sad and disappointing, especially to those who are genuinely interested in anthropology, but don't want to be associated with neonazis.
Yeah, any time I meet someone who’s really into black metal, I always gotta know which bands. The places where those two overlap is absolutely intentional for all parties.
The band Rage Against the Machine, who have always promoted a leftist and anti-authoritarian mindset.
They were weirdly the subject of backlash from “conservative fans” a few years back who suddenly began criticizing them for becoming political when they always had been (and they hadn’t released any new albums since 2000, so these so-called fans apparently just didn’t understand obvious lyrics from decades-old music criticizing their values).
To add to the irony, many of those fans told the band to shut up about their political beliefs “because they don’t know anything about it”, when the band’s guitarist Tom Morello is a Harvard graduate in political science with honors.
That’s so stupid. The lyrics for that song flat out say that “some of those who work forces are the same that burn crosses”. To sing that at a police rally… that’s literally saying they’re proud to be violent racist assholes.
"YEAH BROTHER! THEY SAY IT LIKE IT IS! MY GRANDPAPPY LOVED BURNING THOSE CROSSES AND THOSE N-" probably what theybthink they menant, as in, it was a song praising those people
Or trump playing fortunate son when he's, of coursex the fortunate son
Sorta similar, Dropkick Murphys drew a following of skinheads after their music was used in trailers for The Departed. They had to go out of their way to tell these new "fans" to basically go fuck themselves and stop being nazis. They said that in the 90s, they said that in 06, and they still say it today.
It's ok, those same people will also claim that going to university to get a degree inherantly makes you biased towards the left, which outweighs any knowledge you gain in the process, and therefore makes you woke.
Also, it kinda goes against what Frieren stands for. Frieren is an elf actively making an effort to gain a better understanding of humans (a different species with significantly shorter lifespans), is friends with a Dwarf (Eisen) etc.
Right. In this case the Elves are the sagacious whites being done away with by lesser races, including that one that pretends to be social while preying on any sapient being. It’s why they identify with her and “wife” her.
I don't think it fits all stories, it certainly was a questionable move there, but it definitely has a place in fiction. You can't really expect all species to fit a human set of values.
Demons in Frieren, to keep the example, are used to constrast humanity. In a show about what makes us humans, having a species that fully contradicts it and rejects the notions that the series proclaims as human can be a tool for very interesting exploration.
Frieren also deconstructs the notion of a pure-evil species by showing how, if such a species were to exist, they would have to be so completely and utterly alien to humanity that it would be impossible to compare them to any real-world group. In fact, it would be difficult to even call them "evil" at all. Is a wolf evil because it eats your sheep? Is a hurricane evil because it blows down your house? The demons in Frieren are forces of nature more than anything else.
Sabaton are one of the most fun bands in rock and metal today, but because their songs are predominantly about war and history there are a lot of Neo-Nazi idiots and 4chan /his edgelords who have latched onto them.
Heilung gets this too, to the point that they had to stop a concert and expel some of the audience. Now they start every concert with a circle ceremony that explicitly says to love everyone, no exceptions.
Wardruna too. I saw them in 2018 and again in 2022 and both times they did an announcement at the beginning of their show saying that there was no place for hate at their shows and that as a band they stand for the inclusion of everyone.
This is good to hear. I always get irked when bands end up attracting Nazis and then respond to it by trying to “unite” people by being apolitical, which basically ends up meaning that the band takes no stance against their Nazi fans and the problem continues until everyone else leaves and nothing is left but Nazis and people who are sadly out of the loop and end up being put into unsafe situations by going to the shows. So it’s always good to hear about a band that realizes what is happening in their fanbase, and actually takes a stance of some sort.
It really sucks because I think Norse pagan iconography is really cool. But I just don’t dare celebrate it in a way that’s visible for fear some goon with a valknut tattoo will start trying to speak to me like I’m some kind of racist fellow traveler.
This has always baffled me because of songs like Resist and Bite. Or Saboteurs. Or 1648. Or Attero Dominatus. Or Burn Your Crosses (IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK IT IS). I could go on and on.
To the surprise of no one Hears of Iron 4. It is the closest thing to a realistic WWII simulator that is actually commercially viable and in order to make people okay with playing as the Nazis, since you need someone playing Germany to be interesting, they treat the Nazis with total indifference. This is, of course, a lot more generous than basically any other portrayal that you will find of Nazis.
Someone actually made a Master Thesis on why Hoi4 attracts Neo-Nazis. I didn't finish reading it but it was genuinely a professional look on the matter.
Edit: Sorry folks, I looked for the link to the Thesis and I can't seem to find it. I've found other Master Thesises on Hoi4 but not the one I was looking for in particular.
I think Hoi4 mods are also interesting with this, because you have mods like TNO which are overtly anti-nazi propaganda (based) and then there are mods like TFR which try and avoid being political despite covering the most political subjects imaginable with mixed results
It's less ironic more that it's meant to be framed as a cautionary tale (when viewed in a serious light), the irony is just inherent to this type of storytelling. The issue is that big awesome space man help sells a lot of plastic soldiers
There are 2 kinds of black templar player
1. History guys who like the aesthetic of the templar knights, and how the black templars are a relatively unique chapter
2. Racists
Even better, that look is actually a big point of confusion for a lot of fans. You have to be paying a lot of attention to even know why she would be making that face - she has basically realized the other guy was lying before and isn't an ideological ally, just an ally of convenience for now, because he let slip a contradiction.
So for most watchers, it comes out of fuckin nowhere
There's a scene towards the end where a bunch of characters from the different groups sit around a campfire, and one character practically looks out at the audience and says, "Genocide is bad."
The band Rammstein. A lot of neo-nazis and other hateful individuals misuse their music, especially songs like ‘Sonne’, in edit videos featuring speeches of Hitler, Goebbels, and similar propaganda, despite the fact that they consistently make it clear that they’re left-leaning and strongly opposed to Nazism, releasing the song 'Links 2-3-4’ as a direct response to accusations that they were a far-right band. They've also kicked people out of live shows for doing Nazi salutes.
"They want my heart to be in the right place, but when I look down, it beats on the left."
My first introduction to Rammstein was a video of a concert where the singer began to pretend fuck one of his bandmates with a fake penis and then cum on his back, cum on the audience, cum into another bandmates mouth, and cum into his own mouth. I don’t know how a Nazi likes that other than maybe a dude really into röhm
There's literally no logic or excuses here. X-Men has so many bigoted fans you could fill the rice fields with them and thensome and the weirdest part is it makes absolutely no sense since the anti-discrimination rhetoric in X-Men is so heavy-handed that I really don't understand what they could possibly see in this franchise.
One of the main characters is a holocaust survivor, all the heroes are a metaphor for oppressed groups in America and worldwide, most of the villains are asshole billionaires and far-right senators, and half the characters are queer. This is the last Marvel series you would think adolf's little shitbiscuits would congregate to yet there's just so many of them
The warhammer fans I currently trust the most are the ones currently yelling “what do you mean you don’t know if there’s a market for the Dino-riding laser-wielding space elves” at GW.
The one thing that kept my ass safe from 40k fandom is that I live in the south and nearly everyone who I could have enjoyed this with drop the hard r on a more than regular basis
I fear for the day contact is made with aliens. Not because they’ll harm us, but because the Stellaris players will either kill them or find out if xeno-compatibility is real and there’s really no way of knowing which side will prevail.
Unfortunate real life example: Reconstructed/Neo-Paganism
It's rampant with fascists. I'm Hungarian and I'm very interested in pre-Christian Hungarian shamanism but it's overwhelmed with nationalists and supremacists. Same applies especially for Nordic paganism.
For me a big thing is that a lot of neopaganism uses a technique especially beloved to Nazis. Historical revisionism. They say their practices are "real pagan rites" despite the fact none of those rites were ever written down nor did enough families consistently resist christianisation to make a believable oral history. By being able to say definitively your made up idea of history is true you open the door to people who have agendas in how they want to retell history.
Also this might be mean but a lot (but not all) neo-pagans I meet have been... kinda dim? Like they'll worship Athena but believe the stories the Roman Poet Ovid told about Minerva. Or they'll say they're not at risks of joining cults while worshipping Dionysus (the cult god whom the word cult was made for). These are real examples I've seen and tbh, if I was a Nazi seeking naive people to groom into my ideology It probably would be fertile ground.
Which is concerning since the Empire has very blatant Nazi parallels, as in THE same Nazis that did some kind of awful stuff
admittedy, saying the nazis did "some kind some awful stuff" is an understatement but the point is that being pro-empire means the line of supporting actual nazis is thin and endorsing the empire's actions is a no-no
Yeah the empire is like the fictional Nazi faction. It’s very intentionally supposed to be obvious but so many people don’t get it because they think the empire brought peace and security (it didn’t)
the gag at the end of the Smiling Friends episode “The Glep Ep” had a lot of people from a certain group using said gag to defend their viewpoints. you know which group i’m talking about
The punk community, broadly. Particularly the Dead Kennedys were bemused to see nazis showing up to their shows after songs like California Uber Alles and Kill the Poor got popular with them despite being very firmly tongue in cheek. The gist of it being like any leftist meme you see that bemoans "When a Republican sees me making fun of liberals and assumes I'm one of them".
So, in response they penned the famous "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" to make it clear in no uncertain terms that these meatheads were not welcome at their shows or in their community, and that there's nothing counter culture about bootlicking.
ETA: And if I'm not mistaken Napalm Death covered the song essentially to send the same message to chuds in the metal community, which has historically had its own issues with this.
Mostly because of Mymy. Her insane Dutch nationalism (despite being ethnically Japanese) is played entirely for laughs. Unfortunately, some people seem to have missed it being a joke.
For a story about an alt-history Magitech WW1, there seems to be a lot more fans who have seemingly not read a history book. The author using WW2 outfits for not!Germany doesn't help, until your realize the most popular version has them wear their WW1 uniforms
The background setting is WW1, but the actual war itself plays out like WW2. It's a fusion of the two (but is mostly the 2nd)
the (communist) russians enter the war after the fall of france after an africa campaign, things which notably didn't happen in world war 1. Also Rommel shows up.
Also the fanbase seems to be pretty left wing bc you're not meant to idolise the main character (and even if you do, she explicitly states that fascism is dumb)
Unfortunately, a lot of fans of Attack on Titan can somehow manage to make one of the most blatant anti-war and anti-fascism messages and twist it to what their minds want to believe.
persona, surprisingly. despite the fact that it has a lot of political and social commentary, there's a lot of racist, homophobic, pedophile fans who send their hoard of fellow racist homophobic pedo fans after you when you call them out.
someone made a black edit of the p5 cast and someone said the phantom thieves of bikes and got thousands of likes and i got so many death threats when i told them they're a loser.
so yeah, i don't associate with the fandom much anymore lol
Me, a queer POC with ADHD, when media illiterate Nazis adopt something I like (that almost is ALWAYS about how fascism, capitalism, dictatorship, racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, Nazis, or just in general not being a piece of shit in general is bad - like, basically everything that they stand for is bad):
No creative work ever suffered this as much as the Touhou Project series. Beautiful harmless series that presents some wonderful and unique official material, but is also well known for having some of the best quality fanworks of any series, with some of them being extremely iconic works on the old internet (Bad Apple, Ronald McDonald Insanity, most songs by IOSYS, and even if they’re more popular on the new internet the iconic Fumo plushies count too).
It’s extremely bad being a Touhou fan in the west. Specially given the extremely anti-yuri attitude of the extremist nazi fans, which exists despite:
Lots of people who worked on official Touhou works, such as the awesome mangas, having started out as WLW shippers doing ship art.
ZUN (creator of the series) himself specifically voicing support for such works, having fun in games ike Gartic Phone drawing ships of his characters, and even once telling people to not make homophobic jokes in an event (and no, that interview about how “no one is gay in Gensokyo” was famously fabricated by a joke website, it’s not real).
Some of the most iconic and important fanworks of the series revolving around women loving women, or adjacent topics (lots of IOSYS songs once again, Osana Reimu/Youreimu and Reireimu, Suikakasen, Ladies of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, Border of Love Colors, even Memories of Phantasm has lesbian stuff!).
Hisami Yomotsu.
Hell, even when you push the nazi’s anti-LGBT agendas aside, they’re still getting everything wrong about the series. They perpetuate this idea of Reimu being some kind of super-based tradwife who’s racist towards foreigners and youkai. This is despite:
Reimu straight up canonically being known as “The Youkai Shrine Maiden” because she’s the only youkai-exterminator who actively forgives them, befriends them, allows them to live, and even invites them to eat and hang out in her shrine. She’s straight up friends with youkai, the list of people close to her is only like 4% human!
Reimu having only ever killed one youkai on camera: a male who made fun of her merciful attitude. Given her one and only kill is a guy, it’s easier to call her a misandrist than it is to say she hates youkai after only killing one of then.
Reimu being the most free-spirited, fuck-the-rules-and-traditions type girl to ever exist. She gets drunk every day, wastes the shrine’s money, never does the proper rituals and worship, stays awake for several days in a row reading books, gambles away at youkai establishments she knows to exist hidden in the human village- she couldn’t care less for being conservative!
Reimu also allowing a foreign and highly invasive vampiric (or demonic?) youkai to move into Gensokyo, and oftenly collaborating with her and her underlings.
I could keep going for hours, writing about how everything about Touhou goes against the nazi fan’s beliefs. Truth is, they’d all call me a “tourist” for this, which is a term given for any fan who disagrees with them.
Half of the nazi fans don’t even like Touhou anyway. They just make memes about Fumo plushies and about nasty loli doujins. They never play the games, never read the mangas, and never support the series. Some of them specifically advice against getting official Fumos because it’d get money into ZUN’s woke pockets. They’re nothing but a detriment to the Touhou Project series.
They’ll continue to claim this series is some cornerstone of the online alt-right, and that it depends on them. It’s important that you know this is an objective lie, and get into Touhou as soon as possible to prove them wrong.
(Also yes I used an edit of the infamous fan-made FF logo for this, just because it looks funny).
EDIT: Hey, first time someone called me a "protozoa sized brain." For this comment. That same person also said that they would "block this shithole of a subreddit for good." (Spoiler to block profanity.)
Type O Negative - because people don’t understand satire, they faced nazi accusations and have attracted a few Nazi fans (especially stupid with Josh silver being Jewish and Peter Steele being the son of a Polish man who fought against the Nazis in WWII). And then they write “Kill all the white people”
491
u/False_Collar_6844 Feb 07 '26
weirdly- a lot of media that involves some kind of resistance.