The Curious Case of Nazi Catboys: Part 1

So the entire world has pivoted from obsession with the massive land war in Eastern Europe to discussing how Chris Rock getting slapped is like the massive land war in Eastern Europe or or eleven or nine eleven. Yes, yes, yes, so it's a it's an amazing, like an unprecedentedly incredible time to be on on Twitter right now. That said,

we're going to talk about Nazi cat boys today. I've seen everyone's post on the subreddit being like, why aren't you guys giving blow by blows about the war in Ukraine. Then this is this is pressing topic and we're going to talk about Nazi cat boys. Previous to the Chris Rock slap. This is the most pressing topic of the twenty one century. Um is why there's Nazi catboys, and now we're going to talk about it well, because I mean, the roots of the crisis in Ukraine are the different

kinds of catboys. That's Alinsky and Putin are, yes, Robert is fan art. Up, It's gonna be fine. I'm sure. I'm sure we'll find some horrible fan art. Yes, of yeah, we have. We have to figure out if if Putin's ever watched Shelsing, and then we'll build to know. So I don't know what that means, but okay, you're you're about to find out. So great, So we we have. We have gathered here today to talk about to talk about the curious case of why they are Nazi capboys.

UM route throughout one TikTok and Twitter pushed from boys and cat boys into kind of the cultural mainstream, plunging these once much more niche subcultures out of the dark depths of fortune, Reddit, Tumbler and discord and uh the latest rebirth of these kind of gender bending communities. It's pretty socially progressive and affirming. Uh. Like generally most most fem boys catboys are are lefties. There's a whole bunch of like Twitter communists. I'm sure there's a whole bunch

of cat boys who like stalling or something. Um, but they're they're generally more generally more on the left. But but but for for those who've dug deeper into the history and origins of these Internet subcultures, you may have found a dark, racist, and hateful underbelly. So we're going to talk about that today. I do have to note, Garrison, as soon as you said that, I found a Stalinist

catboy the Twitter. It's an incredible account. So that their their background image for their Twitter account is a picture of Dang Xiaoping and the Ayatollah of Iran having a meeting. Their their PfP is a lavender haired uh, it's like a it's like an anime pic avatar catboy. Yeah, with like a Soviet hat and then Marxist Leninist bisexual catboy stalin did nothing wrong at North Korea. Stand incredible. This is this is this is why the Left will never win.

That's perfect. I'm pretty sure this is like illegal in those countries. It's it would have had this person shot in the second someone tried to describe a catboy to Joseph Stalwin, he would have had this person executed. Oh yeah, oh wow, yeah, I see I see it now, that is that is intense. You know. The thing is, this

type of thing is not going to be uncommon. We're gonna be again, We're gonna be going into like actual fascists who are also cowboys, and obviously they would have been would have been killed for being degenerous as well. But now we're gonna kind of talk about how this how this kind of came to be. And I've been writing this for like over a year. Actually, I've interviewed a few people for this that I've kind of contributed to the script. And initially this was going to be

conceived as a video. Um, and you can't only talk about these things in a video format without dressing up like a silly character. So I am. I'm wearing a very actually a very very high quality catboy outfend right now, which the audio we'll just have to you'll have to you'll have to see it through the audio, So good luck with that synesthesia. Um yeah, yeah, yeah, so you are. At the same time, You've done that enough that I don't know that anyone really noticed. I've never dressed as

a cat boy for recording, before you addresses something. Every other recording that's true, I addressed as something. I generally addresses something. So first section one, Section one? What is what is a catboy? What? What is what is this? Um So? But first of all, of a few ground rules will be circling back too often. UM One, not all catboys and femboys identify as LGBT or queer. Um

and two, gay people can still be racist. These are these, These are these, These are two points that we're gonna be coming back to over the course of these of these Deep Night episodes. So first things first, let's let's just define what a cat boy is for all of the boomers in the audience. Um And if you are, if you are a boomer listening to this, how why how did you find this? Why are why did you

choose to listen to Garrison? The instant I became a boomer was the first time you tried to describe explain cat boys to me, Like I I suddenly developed a strong opinion on HRC because of me. You so most administration joke, but most simply m a cat boy? Is this what I'm doing right now? So someone who is kind of kind of boyish who who? Who? Who sometimes enjoys dressing in cat like apparel. I guess it's like cat ears. It is different from furries from and we

will we will get into this, um. I mean, but I'm I'm definitely less boyish than I first was when I wrote this like a year ago, now that I'm on recreational estrogen. But nevertheless, someone who's a boyish and dresses or likes to dress in cat like kind of outfits generally on an anime trajectory of aesthetics. Uh now this is this is this is different from furies from multiple reasons. The physical cat like attributes on catboys are mostly confined to ears and pause sometimes with tails, but

it's it's iffy um. Whereas you know, furries like to have like the full first suit thing going on, whereas catboys they still have like human faces and they wear like human clothes. So this is actually a very key difference, which will lots of made costumes like and yes a lot. And the other other big kind of recurring trope um is that is that well they well catboys you usually

wear clothes. Is that they usually dress up in something similar to like a French made outfit um or or like different outfits like anime girls will were so like the tennis skirt thing, but generally on a made outfit to anime trajectory. So despite, despite the animal ears, right despite like the furry cat eers, the catboy or cat girl thing has much more in common with the fenboy community than the furry community and a lot of instances

but more more more on that later. So after some initial research into the Nazi catboy meme, I decided it would be useful for tracing back the roots of this kind of odd online phenomenon to broaden the scope of research to include fem boys as well, uh, which is succinctly just cat boys without the cat part. It's like boys who or generally male identifying people who dressed in

like feminine ways. Um, not a lot of fen boys will turn out to be trans and not all of them do a lot of fen boys identify as straight. But you know, I like to wear you know, boys generally kind of in the twink variety who likes to wear skirts, dresses, whatever, So I a much of it, a dissection to which gets a little bit more silly. Um but but yeah, so M boys. It's excited this This doesn't get less silly as we go on. But but yeah, catboys, feen boys. Feen boys identify as male

dress up in more stereotypically feminine ways. There's a lot of similarity and crossover between fen boys and catboys. Um. But since fenboys have more of an established online history, uh, including them in the research seems like the best way to kind of dig into like the fascist femboy nazi

catboy idea. So, speaking of section two, the racist femboy meme the past the past few years, there's been kind of a growing meme and perception across social media that femboys are like really racist, um and just kind of pretty fascy in general. Um, even really homophobic and transphobic and a lot of in a lot of senses, as much as a homophobic or transphobic femboy may see them

contradictory at first. But again, more more on this later. Um. So when I'm talking about this going forward, I'm probably gonna be mixing words and terms like nazi and fascist, all right or far right now not not all of these racist femboys are what I would call Nazis by any means, um and not not not all advocate for even joke about genocide, but there were absolutely recruitment attempts

from self described Nazis. And you know, the line between jokes and actual beliefs is intentionally very foggy in this kind of internet subculture. So I'll kind of be lazily lumping together everything from racist to far far right wing folks for the sake of simplicity, because it's all like in the same spectrum. And like I mentioned at the beginning, not all femboys and cat boys identify as being queer

um and gay people can still be racist. These there are these are points we're going to be circling back to a lot. So at this point, the alright femboy meme has kind of actually or overshadowed the actual phenomenon of it happening. Right in the past few years, the popularity of leftist fem boys has skyrocketed, Yet if you still do digging on like Twitter or Discord, you can indeed fed users who appear to be fem boys but

are also everything from racist to just openly fascist. Now, naturally that leaves people wondering, how can one have such a kind of contradictory lifestyle and belief system, which leads us to Section three. The Internet and that's it. That's kind of that's kind of the answer. We that's we can kind of pack it up here. Um. We that's the answer. It's the Internet. That's that's why that that's why this has happened. That's what I'm getting out of this. Yeah, sure, whatever, whatever,

it's it's Garrison. Are you you are? Have you been caught up on why people say al Gore invented the Internet? On where that joke came from? You you have to you have to remember Chris Carrison's Oh no, So there was like al Gore was among a bunch of different people who like voted to fund some of the different government kind of projects that became the Internet, right, like you have the r pnet and ship all that stuff. Like he was one of the people who like pushed that.

And then in the debate with George Bush while running for president in uh two thousand, he uh like basically made some claims that you could uncharitably translate as him saying that he invented the Internet. Um, he didn't actually say that. It was more like he was saying, well, I you know, supported from an early stage the development of the Internet, but it got turned into like al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet because it was funny.

Ab yes, and and so now that that's that's the joke is even though he didn't really he just was not you know. But anyway, so we can we can blame Nazi cowboys on on al Gore. Absolutely well, that that does it for us today. Um you can find us on Wait okay, we still have a we still have like half an episode to do. Alright, well, here's here's speaking of of of al Gore and the Internet. Here's some ads brought to you by the Internet. Ah boy, those ads were so good they made me wanna be

a cat. Okay, all right, Wow, moving on. If you're in any way familiar with facism, you are probably aware that one of it's more consistent traits is that it's notoriously ideologically inconsistent. Um So, for for this project, I interviewed multiple people who have a more personal history in the cat boy and femboy online communities than I do. Um So, those interviews, plus my own online digging through

like hundreds of threads from various form websites. I've I've literally looked through hundreds hundreds of the cat boy posts on Fortune. But doing doing all that has been very helpful for understanding kind of this intersection of politics and subculture. And since I did all this research, you don't need

to so there you go. Um. But one of the first kind of big takeaways I had after the research and interviews is that the Nazi femboy cat boy thing is not actually unique at all in terms of Internet radicalization. It just has some aesthetic abnormalities that can confuse on liquors or normalise, which makes the internet phenomenon seen more

outlandish than that actually is. But before we dig deeper into this litter box of hate, I would like to divide the femboy and catboy kind of racism spectrum into actually to two assistinct categories. First, um, we have we have type one, which I'm calling the fem fast people who are initially into the femboy community and aesthetic and

then got introduced into far right politics online. And then we have type two, the fasci fem people who were already into far right politics and only then got introduced to the femboi community online. So I usually break down lots of instances of fascists mixing with various subcultures into these like similar like to two categories of people starting off with politics and then getting into the culture, and people starting off with the culture then getting into politics.

I think it's actually kinda it's useful for understanding a whole bunch of how there's like differences between different types of fascist people in various subcultures. So these two types I'm gonna I'm gonna be using to help to help talk about these different kind of strains of of the fascist femboy. For for now, we're gonna focus on the first one, the fem fast. So let's let's let's wind

let's wind the clocks back. Let's say a decade. Broadly, gay people can't get married, and to most kids, trans people are ostensibly a myth um. So what kind of person is going to become a femboy in this in

this type of in this type of environment. Simplest answer is like a certain sect of social outcasts and anime nerds, as well as some people who maybe don't consciously know or accept that they're queer yet really the only way to get initially exposed to the fembo aesthetic back then was via anime, manga, hanti porn, and you know, select video games specifically multiplayer games, and random and internet browsing. Right this, this is this is how you're gonna get

exposed to this type of aesthetic. In fact, one of the probably the oldest example of a Nazi catboy is from an anime called hell Singh where they had they had this Nazi catboy character who is the who was the source of a lot of Nazi catboy memes on four Chan, like the it's very very popular meme figure um. And this is I think a lot of where that

aesthetic tied to fatchism actually really start from. But of course there's a lot of fascist fans of anime in general, so that the type of aesthetics that the type of aesthetics of femininity that animey kind of presents get used by fascism a lot. Even among like they're more like a cottage core styles, it's still of that very like patriarchal um type of femininity that is popular among Japanese animation. So now the reasons that someone might be drawn to

this specific community can vary from person to person. Maybe they just don't feel as connected to like the hyper macho masculine style that American culture promotes. Maybe it's a way to get attention and validation, or maybe you just like wearing skirts or find it kind of hot. There's, there's, and there's there's always the possibility that someone is transfer

gain they just don't fully know it yet. This is the case with a lot of these people actually, Um, but some of some of you may be surprised to hear that before our modern TikTok femboy craze, most femboys did self identify as straight ancests. Uh. There is a lot of reasons for this, including like increased to aphobia and transphobi back then, plus, like non binary was hardly

even the thing like culturally at that at that point. Um. One of the people I interviewed for this project talked about how some of the sis straight fem boys he knew back then now do identify as trans or queer. Um,

but back then that wasn't really the case. Um. The other person I interviewed for this called themselves the sis gender femboy at the time of the interview, but has now since come out as trans so like it says, it is definitely a recurring pattern, but it's not a thing for everybody, Like there is definitely like a lot like a lot of these people do call themselves straight even still now um, and that is something that a lot of kind of people don't have a don't have

the easiest time kind of comprehending. That's I'm gonna what I'm gonna kind of try to get into. So let's let's let's say you're a kid, young teen and like eleven, you're getting into anime and video games. What kind of websites are you gonna gravitate to? Right, You're gonna gravitate to read it, You're gonna gravitate to four Chan especially in right. These are the these are kind of the cultural meccas of of those types of type type types

of subcultures. So what is prelevant on these websites? Well, on four Chan we have a slash b which is their random channel um which also has a not Safer work designation, and it's was often flooded with femboy picks UM and since there are so few female users of that site, you see a lot of hentai and occasionally boys dressing up like not safer work female anime characters, just because there's people still like femininity, but there's so

few actual girls using those sites that the femininity that you see is either through anime or it's through kind of cross dressing. Um. And then there's also the slash d page which is just completely dedicated to Henta I, So you get a lot of a lot of a lot of that type of like anime style of femininity through kind of that that type of appropriation and and

fetishization on the slash d page. So there's there's a decent chance that anime and gaming nerds that browse their interests online will get exposed to fen boy staff at some point. Right nowadays it's discord, used to be four Chan, used to be Reddit, So it becomes this type of figure right infinity loop of people who are exposed to something and then start propagating it and get exposed to new people to it, and it's just like continuous cycle.

Because if if you're a kid who discovers they kind of like this super niche, almost taboo thing, where are you going to go to find other like minded people that you're gonna go back to? Online multiplayer gaming, Reddit and four chune. It's it's it's it's all. It's all the same circles. So if if even if you don't get exposed to it in places like four chune, you're

probably gonna end up there or somewhere similar regardless. And the other other and and the other thing that's important to talk about I which is going to talk about like how how the femboys start getting into politics is like who else is very prevalent and actively recruiting on these types of sites with on like on multiplayer gaming, on Reddit and four chan. It's it's nazis right that the people who are who are into very far right politics try to mask trying to mask some of their

beliefs initially, and like humor and memes. You know, a lot, large, large part of Internet radicalization is done through is done through memes, especially especially back in there's like so so many like memes. A memes as a social and recruitment tool, we're very very common, especially on like you know, if you're on like an image board, that that's the whole

point is that you're sharing images. Um. So a big part of this overrepresentation of racists in the femboy community was simply the online proximity between these groups of people, between the femboys and then the fascists on four Chan or have they read it in certain online games, whether they be like Second Life, whether it be like MMS.

You know, all these types of places, and in any place that you can design your own character as well, You've got got a lot of this type of like anime femboy type thing, because a lot of a lot of these games that are main in Japan can like give like more feminine options for like male characters, or just have like Copboy like years and stuff available as a cosmetic option. So a lot a lot of this fetish fetishization that we see on four Chune and on and in the early two thousands and tens is now

is now applied to Discord. Like this you did kind of carry over for trans obviously not the kind of cultural behemoth that it used to be. A lot of this stuff just happens on Discord now um where you can kind of cultivate online communities that are more self contained. So throughout the entirety of the fascism was pretty successful infesting among nerd spaces, right nerds and geeks of many types, whether that be gaming or anime, or these more like

esoteric communities esotericism like niche um. But these communities generally they attract people who are more disenfranchised, right, and them boys generally feel disenfranchised in one way or another, which just pushes them into these, you know, less mainstream subculture.

At this point, they could be pretty easy targets for fascist recruiters to start suggesting that maybe some of their problems in the world are actually coming from feminism, immigrant stealing jobs fromative action, and slowly leading into talk of

like i Q and racism and anti semitism. So for those who famil these ideas initially like abhorrent, uh, it can be explained at all this talk and simply etgy jokes in irony attempting to trigger the enormies, which was a big part of that type of propagation of this type of humor and then politics masses humor on these sites and on these like gaming chats. This isn't unique

to fem boys or cathboys in any way. Right. The more people I interviewed and the more kind of old forms that I read, I started to actually see stuff that seemed much more familiar. Um, And there's a lot of parallels between this far right femboy thing and the far right fur phenomenon, which I know Robert and the Worst Your Ever podcast put together two episodes that do a great job kind of talking about the far right. The only real episode of the Worst Year Ever that

we ever got to do. Yeah, yeah, it could you because I guess just briefly kind of talk about the furry, the furry kind of thing and how that because there's there's a lot of there's even though these cultures are different between fen boys and furries, the tactics that fascists used to get into these communities is exactly the same.

Um and it kind of plays on the same same tropes. Yeah, I mean it's weird, so you've got I think it kind of hearkens to the fact that like whenever you have a fandom, no matter kind of what the fandom is about or the message of the media it's about, you're going to have like Nazis in it. Um And and that's obviously like Star Wars, right where the point

of Star Wars is Empire, bad Empire. Basically space Nazis bad guys and there's a whole bunch of people who have just like made that into their life and get tattoos of the imperial sigil or whatever on their fucking chess. Or you've got like Disney movies where like there's these there's weirdos who will take far right nationalist messages at it.

Like every like everything everything has its Nazis. The punk community, right, punk music is supposed to be anti authoritarian um and kind of inherently left wing, but there's Nazi punks, so like it's all like every community has their Nazis, and

the Furies are no different. One of the things that does make the Furries different is, I think because of how and this this is something probably you're a little too young, and and I guess a lot of our audience may have missed out on aspects of but like early on in the Internet, and I'm talking like the first decade of actual Internet culture, from like ninety six to two thousand five or six, which is really the first decade of like mass Internet culture, the punching bag

of the entire Internet was was Furries. Like they were the people that like it was the safest to make fun of um jokes about like killing them all sorts of really fucked up shit. Um. And so I think they developed kind of this um very strong defensive impulse within the community. And so while every subculture has their Nazis, the Furries have gone kind of the furthest in documenting and um working to like ostracize those people. And they've done.

They're on the level with like punks in terms of the degree to which they have like that has become kind of a guiding principle for a lot of Furries. Um. Yeah, is that kind of what you're looking for? Yeah, because a big a big and the thing you mentioned about like Furries being such the punching bag, that's something that's that's something that Nazis even definitely kind of grasp onto

as a way to do grooming and recruitment. Right is if if if if, if fascists can present themselves as friends to these people who are always punched down upon, then they can kind of put them into their in groups, right they can They can support them, give them, give them a sense of validation, and give them a sense of a community. Tell them like that they they they belong. Your your your always going to be kicked out of like like real life social groups. Right, you can only

exist here with us. We're gonna we understand you. Like right, they can. They can kind of foster this thing, even though obviously it's dealing with things that are not the most like, not the most like systems straight thing in terms of like regular heterosexuality. Um got a lot of a lot of furries are straight, but like in terms of like the way they approach that is is definitely

different than a lot of regular people. But they so white cremacists and different fascists can like grasp on to this gr respond to this kind of disenfranchisement and offer this sense of community. Um, be you know, be very friendly initially, be being very being very kind of open these people and start and start you know, the term would be like red pilling them, right, um to talk about that a lot of their social issues are actually you know the fault of Stw's talking about those, you know,

all of these Jewish bankers. You know, it can start, you can start crafting the propaganda very carefully if you're friends with them first and then only start slowly introducing

them into your more extremist kind of view of politics. Yeah, it's just no one's really surprised when an anime nerd or like a capital G gamer starts spewing far right talking points, but when a femboy does, that just seems off because like, aren't they also a degenerate right like like it's like what, there is a bit of a cognitive dissonance there, um and like yes and no, Right, you may be over estimating some people's commitment to the

fascist cause here, because a recurring pattern I found when talking to people with history in these communities, especially if they're more of like the fem fashion variety, right, starting up starting off with them boys headaches, then getting into being racist and and and like like pretty racist and

then getting into fascism. Is that look looking back these people and they say, like themselves and others, all of their kind of parenting of racist and fascist talking points, especially online, was like they claim much more due to having to like fit in with these with these already pretty reactionary online spaces um and make friends at seemingly one of the few places that people with similar interests gather.

You know, some people deep down don't really care about the political beliefs that much, and we're more still looking for a community and it just so happened that back then, in the early the places where these communities of outcast found each other were also places that other outcasts used racism as a lazy, attention seeking shock comedy and like the triggering of normies, which was basically like a sport

on these on on these forums. Now, obviously this is not excusing any horrent behavior and or horrible things, is that? But that whole idea, plus the active like grooming and the active recruitment from Nazis made the nerdy outcast to fascist pipeline that we see today. That's really how it built up and became such a powerful tool, you know, in around um. But there is there is the other. All of this just generally more applies to the people who were into fend boys addicts and then got kind

of railroaded into into nationalism and too fascism. Right, it's because they they're fem boys on these platforms. There's also racists on these platforms, so these things start to kind of mix. But there's still that other type of femb boy nazi um, the one who started off online with far right views and then discovered fem boys and started to feel things well, we're starting by talking about them

next on on on part two. But I guess does anyone anyone have any any questions at least to close off part one about the more kind of fem fast variety of people who are generally kind of more regular politically, um, but are into into like femboy and cowboy kind of aesthetics and then and then get put into into into more reactionary ideas. Mm hmmm, uh stay off the internet. Yeah, that's not a question. But yes, that is that is a that is a good uh, there's a good mission statement.

But yeah, in terms of like, in terms of like the you know, this topic can whenever whenever I bring it up, I thought of a lot when I've tried to explain it to people, there's always a bit of

like that, how that doesn't make any sense? And I'll be getting into some of the more kind of semantics of it um in in part two, but at least at least for like the initial initial kind of dive into how the online community aspect is used as such a powerful tool for people who are feeling so alone that just the the idea of their being an online community, whether it be racist or not can is just super appealing because if if everyone thinks that you're weird in

an outcast, if these other people who are also weird and outcasts start kind of trying to make friends with you, then it can be a very powerful like recruitment tool. Um. Which then of course they'll they'll they'll be people, they'll be people who eventually try to like take them out of the whole femboy stetics in a lot of in a lot of ways. Um. But a lot of fascists also get into the femboy stetic because of the because of the proximity issue, right, because these things are so

like next to each other. Well, the thing you're the kind of important broader realization there. And this is something that a radicalization scholar named Scott Atran has been talking about for ten years now, probably more is that people get radicalized in communities. People like when we talk about radicalization, like why, Like I guess the other half of the explainer that I started this with being like, you know,

every subculture has their Nazis. It's not because like the reason every subculture has their Nazis is that subcultures are like people get radicalized as part of communities as part of subcultures. They don't get radicalized as individuals, just like people don't aren't just walking out in the world and decide to become a Nazi. They become a Nazi because a Nazi reaches them in something they're already into, right,

like that, That's just the way it happens. Yeah, there's definitely a large part of this is like a group of like group dynamics, especially in places like forums. Well you're you know, try trying to trying to get like this like a tension battle. Um. And I guess the other other big part of about them boy kind of idea, especially on image boards is like it is such an attention seeking, in validation seeking place right you you want to you want to post things that gets you a

lot of comments, likes, upboats, whatever. The kind of the metric is, um, So people will do things that get them visibility. Even if even if half the people interacting with you are calling you a degenerate, at least there's people still looking at you. Right at least you feel seen, um, and then the other half people will be like, no, it's actually fine, you know. So as long as there's

that visibility, that that sense of community. Then a lot of the more cognitive cognitive dissonance aspects can kind of be passed by. But we'll we'll we'll get into more of that for for for for part two. Um anyway, Uh, you can find us on Twitter, Instagram at to Happen Here Podon cole Zone Media, you can find me uh talking about cowboys occasionally on Twitter at Hungry bow Tie and about it. Well, it's you know, I've I've been I've been trying to edit down this episode because the

script was way too long. We're trying to make it more sistinct the past few days. So my my, my, my, my, I am. I am pretty excited to be to to to close this Google doc at the end of the day. Well, congratulations on all your hard work, Garrison and listeners at home. Go dress like a cat boy. Yeah, and and don't be a Nazi. Yeah, I mean that's also important. It could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.

For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for it could happen here? Updated monthly at cool Zone media dot com, slash sources, Thanks for listening.