The Fandom That Feared Itself by Perri Rhoades

This is the story of how I discovered something truly horrible had happened to Furry Fandom. It all started one day when I noticed a video on YouTube from 2 Gryphon making a statement about Anthrocon. And my mind instantly jumped to thoughts of some kind of terrorist attack having occurred at the con. Well, it did turn out to be a terrorist attack, but not of the nature I was imagining. So I looked at the video with dropped jaw. Here was the unflappable 2 Gryphon, all but in tears, saying goodbye to a convention he had become a regular feature of for over a decade. And I was thinking, “How can this be? Is he ill? Is he dying? He certainly doesn’t look well.” And then he revealed that he had been banned from the Anthrocon stage after having been accused of being a Nazi by Social Justice Warriors. And I was thinking, “This is some kind of joke. It’s an April Fool’s gag. This can’t possibly be real.” But apparently it was real.

So I did some Googling around and came up with an article called “Even Furries Are Fighting Fascists,” which basically states that a political organization called “Antifa” was setting up a branch in Furry Fandom in order to teach Furries how to react to Nazis with physical violence. And my reaction was at first to laugh. “Nazis flourishing in the most tolerant fandom Geekdom has yet produced? This has got to be a parody news article.”

But then came a second video from 2 Gryphon verifying that a group of Social Justice Warriors, stoked on this idea that Nazi’s existed in the fandom and they were justified in treating them as if they had no human rights, had indeed trolled one of the most successful performers in the fandom out of a job. So I looked around for some discussion on the subject and quickly learned that 2 had an enemy on the Anthrocon staff; an enemy named Xydexx. And Xydexx is someone I know from the past as a Burned Fur zealot and a troll. And I wondered, “What was Uncle Kage thinking putting that kind of power in the hands of such a historically notorious nutcase?”

But that couldn’t be all there was to it. Even a nut like Xydexx can’t troll somebody without ammunition. So I started looking for the videos that supposedly contained the unforgivable transgressions that had rendered 2 “Less than human.”

The main video being sited involved a group called “The Furry Raiders,” who were also being accused of being Nazis and being regarded as having no human rights. But the gist of 2’s video was that he couldn’t find any evidence to justify these accusations. And I wasn’t inclined to believe real Neo-Nazis in Furry Fandom was even a possibility. So I decided to do my own investigation.

Finding info on The Furry Raiders was not difficult. Finding anything connecting them to Nazis was. Evidence being used against them basically boiled down to a hand full of screen caps that seem shocking at first glance, until you realize that they contain no context for the statements. And if one has been dealing with trolls for any length of time one knows not to buy anything that is offered without context.

So I ended up watching hours and hours of Furry Raider videos, putting together the context of the screen caps, as well as the history of the group. I learned that the leader’s name, Foxler, is a mixture of Fox and Miller, rather than Fox and Hitler as detractors would have us believe, the Furry Raiders name is a Fallout reference, the focus of the group is tolerance and inclusion, and most significantly that the group is not only multiracial, the leader is a gay half Asian in a relationship with a black man. Thus the very idea that anyone could see something Nazi-like in all this is truly laughable. It’s pretty much the joke of the century.

But there-in lies the problem. The leader, Foxler, is not a great writer, and has serious problems explaining himself in print; particularly when constrained to the limits of a tweet. So his tweets come out reading “I hate blacks” when what he’s really trying to say is he hates the idea of human color distinctions. He sees everyone in the context of Furry, where all color distinctions cease to have meaning.

Not a complicated or at all uncommon sentiment in the fandom. But just because “I hate blacks” is part of his lead in to the concept, trolls insist that line is incontrovertible proof the man’s a racist, when the concept itself indicates he’s the exact opposite of a racist. Race means absolutely nothing to him. However, if you watch Foxler’s videos, you quickly come to understand that the inarticulate and seemingly shy impression his text based communications give off belies a bubbly and fun loving fur with an impish sense of humor. He knows all this Nazi stuff is a big joke, and he takes delight in leaving what he calls “Easter Eggs” for his trolls. But the humor is lost on the trolls, and they just become more insistent in their condemnation.

People watching from the outside world, including actual Neo-Nazis, have chimed in to say that they get the joke and are laughing their asses off. As the former Funny Animal Fandom, we’ve never been funnier. But, of course, on the Furry Fandom level, all drama is serious business. At the point where the actual Neo-Nazis wrote into Flayrah to praise our hilarious comedy show and explain in no uncertain terms why Foxler was not a Nazi, I thought the matter pretty well settled. After all, the joke was exposed. The thing should promptly die after that. Unfortunately, Foxler, The Furry Raiders and even 2 Gryphon had become the favored kick toys of too many mean spirited people who were not just going to let it go.

Then something even more unthinkable happened. The Antifa Furs killed RMFC through threats of violence, resulting in unmanageable security costs. This could well be regarded as the most successful troll attack in internet history, accomplished because of the air of legitimacy the Antifa Furs enjoyed as Nazi hunters, while wielding the suspiciously Nazi-like power to condemn and black-list anyone through guilt by association.

And then the inevitable coup de gras that completed this sinister Burned Fur war parody; the controversy made the mainstream press, and it was lights out for all the progress the Furry Community had made in recovering from the damage of the original Burned Fur war. And the community stood vulnerable to becoming a divided battleground again.

However, something happened that exposed who was playing the role of the Burned Furs in the new conflict. It was a riot that occurred in Berkeley, which abruptly focused the attention of the world on Antifa. And suddenly YouTube was a buzz with videos explaining the significance of Antifa’s flags, the majority of them being Anarcho-Communist in nature, while others were just straight up Communist. When this was brought up on A “Certain Site”, a prominent poster revealed that, yes, most of the people there who had been trying to brand me as a Nazi for refusing to condemn The Furry Raiders without believable evidence were indeed Communists. And the first name on her list of Communist furs was the infamous Deo, who had fired the shot that eventually killed RMFC.

So it would seem that an organization which is rapidly becoming vilified as a Communist terrorist group, set up shop in The Furry Community and deliberately singled out innocent people for persecution in order to instigate another Burned Fur style conflict. The object being to divide and conquer The Furry Community in the same way the Gaming and Atheist communities were invaded and devastated by Social Justice Warriors. And this was apparently accomplished with the support of old Burned Fur veterans like Xydexx who once again find themselves the subject of controversy. The unbelievable irony of the situation only adds to Foxler’s joke. He conclusively proved that The
Furry Community is so unworthy of its reputation for tolerance and inclusiveness that it actually sold itself into the hands of Communists over a totally fabricated Nazi scare.

Yes, we should all enjoy a good laugh over this, as the whole business is pretty much the result of the community lacking a sense of humor. But then we can enjoy a good cry, because the Antifa Communists are still here, poisoning the minds of young furs with lies and stoking them for violence. 2 Gryphon remains banned from the Anthrocon stage, and The Furry Raiders remain targets. But on top of all that, all the improvements in the fandom’s reputation and increased attendance at events that were hoped for due to the almost universal acceptance of Zootopia now lie in ruins. And the fandom may now look forward to another decade or so of being the mainstream media’s favorite ratings fodder.

So, where do we go from here? What does The Furry Community need to do to get back the peaceful and accepting atmosphere that was stolen from it. First of all we must acknowledge that actual Nazis in The Furry Community is an impossibility. We have the word of actual Neo-Nazis that Furries are one of the groups of people Nazis would do away with if they could.

So, we can’t have Nazis, but we do have Communists, and these Communists are here specifically to promote intolerance and violence. That’s a big deal breaker for most groups, sites and events in The Furry Community. So we’d be perfectly justified in banning anyone who continues to go around accusing furs of being Nazis.

We also need to recognize that there have been, almost from the very beginning of the community, furs and groups of furs who make WW2 the focus of their creativity. We can not be allowing intolerance to be focused on such people just because images of Nazi characters can be found on their sites. And finally, we must, as a community, reaffirm our stance against censorship. We must be more protective of freedom of speech and freedom of expression than we’ve ever been before, as it is those things that are under attack. We must never fall into the trap of believing a comedian deserves to have his career destroyed just because he said something we didn’t like.

And need I even say that condemning others for association with people we want destroyed for having said something we didn’t like is not going to create a world anyone but a Communist would want to live in?

Fortunately, after the fallout from what happened at Berkeley, you can’t throw a stone in The Furry Community without hitting someone with a negative feeling towards Antifa. Thus I suggest that all the hate and condemnation that was misdirected on 2 Gryphon and The Furry Raiders should be refocused on The Antifa Furs and their supporters. They who have cost this community a convention with their threats of violence, and who continue to run around the community trolling and threatening harm to anyone who dares not agree with them.

The Furry Community always was looked on as a kind of safe space. We don’t need SJW’s running around trying to make it unsafe for the people who came here for the sense of security we used to provide. We just need to remember who we are as a community, and stop giving disreputable people the power to destroy us.

Editor’s Commentary

It has always been a policy of mine no matter who you are, and if you have something to say and I would say Perri Rhoades, (who did an excellent job). That you should be allowed to speak, that no one has the right to shut you down…period. Like some tried to do on Flayrah.

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