Baphomet

Actually, It’s about Ethics in Stockholm Syndrome

Posted by

1

Typical #Gamergate celebrity reaction to any discussion of Baphomet.

Typical #Gamergate celebrity reaction to any discussion of Baphomet.

Often when I write about Gamergate and Baphomet, #Gamergaters demand I clarify how I am certain Gamergate and Baphomet are linked. They often point out to me that Gamergate top bananas get their share of harassment, with the implication that it is feminist extremists sending these threats. In most cases, Gamergate top brass blame specific instances of harassment on “aGG” individuals such as myself.

But in three cases I know of, top #Gamergate talking heads were actually targeted by Baphomet. I archived threads from Baphomet discussing the attack as it was in progress and documented these attacks in this space. In each case, I hoped that these Gamergate de facto leaders would actually look at the Baphomet threads, but none of them seem to want to see the sausage getting made, as it were. Still, it seems important enough for me that I want to review these attacks, to illustrate how Baphomet will hurt people within #Gamergate, the group that shelters Baphomet and profits off Baphomet’s work.

  1. Ralph Retort

Ralph Retort (aka Ethan Ralph) has a personal beef with Baphomet, which makes him the only GGer to explicitly disavow the group. In a February post reacting to Baphomet’s theft of Social Security Numbers, titled “Cancerous Baphomet Allegedly Gutted Over Credit Cards and SSN Postings”, Ralph wrote:

The fact is, they’re a cancer on 8chan. They should not only be gutted, but they should be deleted from the board altogether. Prominent GamerGate members have been tormented thanks to the baphomet board (if not the members themselves) time and time again (Liz, Remi, etc). Today they even started fucking with me, and I’ve been told to expect more attacks from those quarters. Instead of fear, I spent all day laughing at the bastards. One of the mods in particular actually tried to threaten your intrepid editor. It didn’t work, though, because baphomet is a paper tiger. They don’t scare me, and they shouldn’t scare anyone else. …

As I said on Twitter today, baphomet is a cancer, and their members are scum. Anyone in their clown crew who has broken the law, needs to be put in fucking jail. There is no middle ground for me. They’ve tarnished GamerGate with their bullshit long enough. Let me say publicly that I denounce their group, their members, and any operation that comes from their disgusting little board. I would encourage anyone else with good sense to do the same, but you are of course free to make your own judgments on the matter.

In response, Baphomet (and in particular, Vince, whom Ralph repeatedly called out by name) doxxed Ralph, his parents, his girlfriend, and allegedly compromised Ralph’s credit card information. Baphomet also attempted to frame Ralph for a SWAT attack they co-ordinated, and one Baphite sent Mercedes Carrera a picture of what they claimed was Ralph’s dick. Someone even set up a Twitter impersonator “@TheRaiphRetort”, which worked much the same as my own Baphomet impersonator “@idiediletante”.   Ralph may be tops on Baphomet’s list of #Gamergate people to harass, and Ralph definitely bears Baphomet no love.

But Ralph Retort is not above taking advantage of the fruit of Baphomet’s labors, either; for example, he wrote numerous articles about Sarah Nyberg in the wake of Baphomet claiming to have hacked her, all of which relied upon the leaked information. So although Ralph Retort is against Baphomet in principle (and especially when they attack him personally), Ralph does not generally excoriate Baphomet when they’re doxxing, harassing, or hacking his adversaries.

2. Milo Yiannopoulos / CH Sommers / Koretzky

Both Milo Yiannopoulos and Christina Hoff Sommers have had #Gamergate events spoiled this year by bomb threats. At one of them, a Baphomet user who calls himself “Eclipso” took responsibility for a bomb threat which cut short the afternoon panel of Airplay, a #Gamergate convention.

Gamergate should be out looking for this guy. But I don't think they will.

The Baphomet user who took responsibility for the Airplay threat.

At the time, I was unsure whether the threat was called in as a “fuck you” to the moderator Koretzky, who wasn’t being as co-operative as #Gamergate hoped, or as air support for Yiannopoulos, who was losing his cool during the afternoon panel. But this wasn’t the first time a joint appearance by Yiannopoulos and Based Mom has been spoiled by bomb threats, nor is it the first time they’ve blamed these threats on SJWs (despite a lack of evidence.) Both Yiannopoulos and Sommers hold Arthur Chu responsible for sending a bomb threat to their #GGinDC meetup, although there’s no evidence that Chu is actually responsible. (Chu had written the venue before the event, urging them to research Gamergate and consider cancelling; but there’s no evidence Chu sent a bomb threat once diplomacy failed.)

Although Yiannopoulos and Sommers both represent that these threats are really no big deal, they also have experienced firsthand how disruptive they can be. And to wit, Yiannopoulos has starting bringing escorts to his appearances, and Sommers seems not to want to appear at #Gamergate events without Yiannopoulos to act as her escort.

If I were to speculate, Yiannopoulos can’t call out Baphomet for spoiling his events with bomb threats because he’s dependent upon Baphomet for tips. Likewise, Sommers is reluctant to call out Baphomet on her own, since she knows she could be targeted hard, just like Ralph Retort was. In some ways, these people have no choice but to blame “SJWs” for the bad shit Baphomet does to them, because they’re indebted to Baphomet for doing their dirty work for them.

3. Sargon of Akkad

Sargon of Akkad (aka Carl Benjamin) was a career anti-SJW even before #Gamergate made that a viable way of supporting oneself. However, as Sargon became more popular, some fans complain that he has also become more moderate, more compromising for the sake of appealing to more than just #Gamergate. I don’t think this is the case – Sargon has become more mendacious, but not more moderate – but the impression that he might give quarter in the interest of keeping his Patreon open has made certain gamers pig-biting mad. And nobody’s madder about Sargon’s moderateness per se as the extremists on Baphomet: 

I just view it this way. He and his youtube buddies always think there is some conspiracy against him, even when fox new monetizes a vid he makes with fox news footage. If he is [doxxed], fucked with, or finds out about it, they will think its some SJW fem conspiracy against him. Then him and his youtube buddies will be triggered and make a bunch of retaliation vids and other things and him and KiA will go crazy.
As I said, I do not care about GG or SJWs. Im not either, although if I picked it would be GG. I just see the perfect oppertunity for lulz
To wit, Sargon was sent Google Street View images of his home the following day. But this isn’t even the first time Gamergate has trolled Sargon’s home address. He was also doxxed nearly a year prior to this, receiving a flatware set from Amazon which he opened on video. The flatware came with a note saying “please thrill yourself” from “EvilBobDALMYT and /gg/”. This was similar (if more polite, maybe) to the time Gamergate sent Chris Kluwe a dildo after his debate with Mike Cernovich.
Sargon always tries to put a laugh on it, but the fact is that he’s vulnerable to trolling from Baphomet whenever he says or does something they feel is not extreme enough. Sargon’s only response to this is to throw up blinders, opting for the “bury your head in the sand” strategy favored by ostriches and right-wing politicians. He will even choose to remain in ignorance if I send him archived Baphomet threads, so he can plausibly deny Baphomet’s involvement in one doxxing scandal or another. I assume this is because (like everyone else I discussed here) Sargon is simply too dependent on Baphomet for advantages over the SJWs to take a meaningful stand against them, even if that puts his own family at risk.
Gamergate’s Golden Handcuffs
In going through these cases, what strikes me is how Gamergate’s top brass seem to be vulnerable to harassment from their own fans. Ralph couldn’t speak out against Baphomet without getting targeted; and when other Gamergate figureheads saw Ralph getting harassed, they didn’t speak out about it either.
I can’t speak for why nobody defended Ralph’s hard stance on Baphomet identity theft (since #Gamergate would like to represent itself as against harassment), but I suspect the reason Mercedes Carrera laughed & played along with Baphomet’s trolling was because she knew she could be next. Likewise, I suspect that the reason Yiannopoulos and Sommers are intent on blaming bomb threats sent to their events on SJWs is because they know that speaking out about Baphomet will only make things worse for them. Similarly, Sargon of Akkad prefers to remain ignorant about what happens on Baphomet, because even though they know his address and have trolled him before, he’s better off with Baphomet as part-time allies than as full-time adversaries. And since Baphomet can be relied upon to stalk SJWs more often and more intensely than #Gamergate figures, perhaps #Gamergate’s superstars reason that so long as they ignore Baphomet, Baphomet will ignore them.
But the fact is, Gamergate allows Baphomet to hide in its ranks. Most Baphites are Gamergaters too, which is why Baphomet focuses its ire on “aGG” people with such intensity and regularity. Baphites are a subset of Gamergate’s fandom, and they demand to be catered to. If you stop short of 100% satisfaction, Gamergate (and by extension, Baphomet) typically pitches a tantrum. To quote Koretzky, “What happens when you give GamerGate panelists almost everything they want at AirPlay? They threaten to quit.”  Indeed, all the Gamergate celebrities I’ve mentioned here seem to regard getting doxxed and harassed as an inevitable cost of doing business on the Internet; like they’ve all developed Stockholm Syndrome from rubbing shoulders with Baphomet for too long.
This is why, I think, no #Gamergate figurehead (with the exception of Ralph Retort) is willing to stand up to Baphomet – they believe if they give Baph everything they want (which is mostly anyonymity and invisibility within the movement) that Baphomet will leave them be. But historically, this hasn’t been the case, so I don’t think it’ll happen going forward.

Baphomet Alleges Moderator “Vince” is Dead. But Is He?

Posted by
Rest in Peace, you little shit.

Vince: 6 feet under, or simply on the lam? (Source: The Observer)

 

One of Baphomet’s moderators has allegedly been killed. According to the 8chan’s one-stop shop for doxxing, identity theft, and guides to viewing child pornography, moderator “Vince” was killed “in a raid by the feds”. Although rumors are running rampant amongst Baphites, I can confirm that Vince’s Twitter account has been radio silent since October 18. With no public notice posted as to where he’s going or what he’s doing for his Internet hacker friends, it does seem possible that Vince is really truly dead. Or at least, that Vince wants it to look that way.

I’m more than a little skeptical of this story. Vince (like everyone else on Baphomet) is a mendacious asshole looking to exploit people in any way he can. So it seems likely to me that this is a ruse, posted by Vince and his most trusted friends so that he can change aliases; the better to evade police attention and possibly prison time.

“Vince” is/was one of the top moderators on Baphomet; his biggest and most recent claim to fame was the Patreon hack which stole the personal information from virtually all clients of the crowdfunding platform. As reported by The Observer, Vince claimed responsibility for the Patreon hack and seems to have been one of the first to know about it. Although Patreon initially claimed no confidential information had been taken, it was: Vince even claimed to have retrieved the last 4 digits of user’s credit cards from the database. And in hindsight, it’s apparent that Patreon’s security was woefully inadequate. 

It was, in layman’s terms, a massive fucking leak; the kind that gets FBI attention to go with your Internet notoriety. Obviously, exploiting a database like this and publicly taking credit for it makes Vince’s name a bit of a hot topic; if he sticks with it he’s likely to get arrested, just like his Baphomet buddy Joshua Goldberg got arrested last month. That is why I am not convinced this whole “killed in a raid thing” isn’t a very large, very complex lie cooked up by Vince to allow him to switch aliases and ensure only a select catre of insiders (i.e. folks like Biddix and Eclipso) know who he really is, while the rank and file in #Gamergate and Baphomet spout the Big Lie that he was shot to death by the FBI, or something.

On the one hand, this is conjecture on my part. On the other, I’d be an idiot to take what I read on Baphomet at face value. Lacking any verifiable proof that he is dead, I’m proceeding with the expectation that Vince is alive and will resurface with a new name in a couple of months; and get introduced to the community as a “new” moderator who just happens to have the same skill set as Vince and just happens to live in the same time zone. That’s exactly the kind of shit post I expect from Baphomet, and it’s exactly the kind of bullshit story #Gamergate has become accustomed to swallowing.

Update: Ralph Retort claims to have chat logs from within Baphomet proving my theory. You can see his Oct 31 post about it here and the logs themselves here. Thx for the research, Ralph!

Milo Yiannopoulos & The Curious Case of Shaun King

Posted by

1

Baphomet hacker Joshua Goldberg was the source for Yiannopoulos's hit piece.

Baphomet troll Joshua Goldberg was a source for Yiannopoulos’s hit piece about Shaun King.

 

Having covered Milo Yiannopoulos’s personal history and work with #Gamergate in depth, I want to turn now to a different episode in the life of this sad hack.

First, the facts: Last summer, Yiannopoulos accused Daily Kos staff writer and #BlackLivesMatter activist Shaun King of lying about his race, accusing him of “pretending to be biracial in order to qualify for an “Oprah scholarship” to historically black Morehouse College.” To back up his claims, Yiannopoulos provided a police report from when King was assaulted at age 15 (in which the officer listed King’s race as “white”), and a copy of what he claimed was King’s birth certificate (which names two white people as King’s parents.)

Yiannopoulos claimed his source for this story was an “investigative blogger” named Vicki Pate, but in reality Yiannopoulos was initially contacted by a /Baphomet/ troll, who provided Yiannopoulos with photographs and the general gist of the story, including the hook that King is “much like Rachel Dolezal.” (More about this troll later in this post.)

Now, there are two things about this case which don’t pass the sniff test. First, the obvious comparison and chronological proximity between this story about Shaun King and the Rachel Dolezal scandal leave me suspicious that this isn’t wishful thinking on Yiannopoulos’s part. Secondly, the fact that Yiannopoulos (and by extension Breitbart) have to carefully select (or maybe even manipulate) pictures of King so that he looks as pale as possible suggest that they’re fudging his complexion to lend verisimilitude to their claims. Indeed, a simple image search for “Shaun King” returns photos which pretty clearly represent Yiannopoulos’s baseless accusations as just that.

Put it this way: If Shaun King is white, then so too is Julian Bond. But this didn’t stop more reputable papers, like the New York Times, from covering Yiannopoulos’s story as if it might be true.

King responded to the allegations by writing on Daily Kos:

The reports about my race, about my past, and about the pain I’ve endured are all lies… I have been told for most of my life that the white man on my birth certificate is not my biological father and that my actual biological father is a light-skinned black man. … It is horrifying to me that my most personal information, for the most nefarious reasons, has been forced out into the open and that my private past and pain have been used as jokes and fodder to discredit me and the greater movement for justice in America. I resent that lies have been reported as truth and that the obviously racist intentions of these attacks have been consistently downplayed at my expense and that of my family.

This seems reasonable. I certainly can think of people close to me whose biological fathers aren’t the ones listed on their birth certificates. There are various reasons this might be the case, but misattributed paternity (or, as men’s rights activists prefer to call it, “paternity fraud”) is a known known, and it occurs on average for 1-2% of live births (though in some sample populations, it is significantly higher.) And it really isn’t anybody’s business except the parties involved, or at least, it shouldn’t be. King continues:

For my entire life, I have held the cards of my complicated family history very close to my chest. I preferred to keep it that way and deeply resent that I have been forced to authenticate so many intimate details of my life to prove who I really am. This, in and of itself, is a form of violence.

King goes on to relate various experiences he’s had growing up being viewed as black within his own community:

When I was 8 years old and in the second grade, black children first began asking me if I was “mixed.” … After that day when I was first asked if I was mixed, while I was still a very young child, kids and their well-intentioned parents began telling me they knew who my black father was, that I was so and so’s cousin, etc… It happened regularly for years on end. By the time I reached middle school, I fully identified myself not even as biracial, but just as black. A white classmate of mine from middle school just posted her recollection of this. … I was seen as black, treated as black, and endured constant overt racism as a young black teenager. Never have I once identified myself as white. …

I was consistently called nigger, spat on, had a jar of tobacco spit thrown in my face, forced into fights, and on two different occasions chased by pickup trucks attempting to maul us. … In March of 1995, it all boiled over and a racist mob of nearly a dozen students beat me severely, first punching me from all sides, then, when I cradled into a fetal position on the ground they stomped me mercilessly, some with steel-toed boots, for about 20 seconds.

Even if you don’t want to believe King’s own statements, numerous other accounts have been posted, by King’s family, friends, and eyewitnesses to his 1995 assault; all of which substantiate his story. Hell, even the police officer who checked the “white” box on Shaun King’s police report was contacted by the media, and he denied Yiannopoulos’s claims:

“I believe that [King’s] biracial. I could just tell when I saw him. I marked him white because he’s very light complected. He was there with his white mother. My crime report there’s only two things you can check: black or white. It doesn’t say biracial…anyone from around here who knew him knew he was mixed.”

Now, I suppose a particular breed of asshole might not want to believe any of these accounts, or insist upon a DNA test to prove that the father listed on King’s birth certificate isn’t his biological father. But anyone who isn’t Milo Yiannopoulos should accept the overwhelming proof King’s brought against these accusations, stand down, and offer him an apology in their national papers (as far as I know, none have.)

And anyone with critical thinking skills might want to consider Yiannopoulos’s own history before taking his pronunciations about other people’s racial makeup at face value. Not only is Yiannopoulos a half-Greek, half-Irish immigrant who misrepresents himself as an English upper-class stereotype, but Yiannopoulos has written numerous times about his conception of black men as hypersexualized stereotypes.

He’s even written about hiring a black man (porn star Jovan Jordan) to escort him at #Gamergate event, referring to Jordan entirely in terms of his dick:

As Breitbart readers will know by now, video games are serious business. Over the past year, I’ve been the target of not one but two bomb threats, just because I wanted to talk about gaming.

So when I was invited to another meetup of gamers in Los Angeles this past weekend, I decided I needed protection. Over 6 feet of protection, specifically, with rippling black muscles and an unfathomably gigantic appendage. Enter Jovan Jordan.

Yes, I hired a black porn star to protect me at a GamerGate meetup. Haters and losers will accuse me of being a vain, exhibitionist homosexual attention-seeker with a fetish for black men, blowing his expense budget on trivial, ego-feeding social media bait. I don’t know where they get their ideas. …

No doubt people are still wondering why I hired a porn star, and not a regular bodyguard. But isn’t it obvious? My most ardent haters are feminists, and their fear of penises is well-known. It was vital, therefore, that I sought the services of a man believed to have the biggest dick in the porn industry.

They fear both actual minorities and the patriarchy, and Jovan Jordan was the most magnificent specimen I could find of both – and also quite a badass, and the perfect gentleman. …

Some readers may be left undecided that my choice was effective. A hung jury on Jovan! But, I assure you, it stretches the limits of credibility to disbelieve that he was capable of defending me with every inch of his manhood.

And it worked! Jovan and his penis kept the mad feminists away, just as I predicted. See, I knew a member that size would scare off any sex negative-feminist scold…

To sceptics who think this was all some kind of stunt, I say this. Would I really hire a porn star with my bodyguard allowance just because I find online threats to be a joke and it’s a hilarious way to get attention? Does that sound like me at all? Thank you.

I only hope that other critics of feminism realise the effectiveness of this strategy, and make a point of advertising their large penises ahead of public meetings. No ulterior motive here, I’m just trying to help.

I’ve heard of synecdoche, but this is ridiculous. Milo Yiannopoulos seems to really only value black men for one thing, which he mentions in this article titled “16 Movements Less Ridiculous than Black Lives Matter”:

BLACK DICKS MATTER
It is an incontrovertible fact that the darker the berry, the sweeter the juice, and it is time for an activist group to stand up for this cause. Expect the donor pool to include a lot of gay men and white women. (I speak from experience.) This means the coffers will be overflowing because let me tell you, us chi-chi men got dollar.

BLACK SEX DRIVES MATTER
See above.

BLACK HOLES MATTER
Minds out of the gutter, please! This group is focused on equal rights for black holes, the most powerful celestial bodies in the universe but viciously slandered as “dangerous.” Yet another example of how the word “black” is applied to powerful and dangerous plane-swallowing entities. But expect some confusion at rallies from punters expecting this to be a sister movement – amirite?! – to Black Dicks.

In an article titled My Grindr Profile Says “No Whites” – Am I Racist?, Yiannopoulos says it pretty explicitly:

“In the heterosexual world, for instance, black women don’t get a lot of action. … Black gay men, on the other hand, are lusted after ceaselessly.

And (of course) Yiannopoulos has this whole fantasy mixed up with notions of blackness as “belonging to the criminal underclass”:

I’ll never forget the precise moment I chose to be gay. It was the endpoint in a process of rebellion against my white middle-class parent that climaxed with me smuggling a black drug dealer into my bedroom at 3 a.m. on a school night aged 15.

They have a word for this in America. Bratty young white girls who shack up with African Americans (preferably belonging to the criminal underclass) are known as coalburners.

Is this the kind of guy whose opinions about race are worthy of public discussion? The guy who fetishizes black men as “rippling” musclebound hunks with “unfathomably gigantic appendages”? The guy who thinks Barack Obama is a “pretty white president”, the “product of elite American insitutions and corrupt Chicago politics”, and that “Donald Trump Would Be the First Real Black President?” Is that the opinion to which the NYT decided to lend legitimacy? No wonder this country has problems with racism.

 

Although Yiannopoulos claims his source for the Shaun King story was “investigative blogger” Vicki Pate (who, according to Yiannopoulos, “provided key documents”), evidence suggests Yiannopoulos was first contacted about the story by troll/master sockpuppeteer Joshua Goldberg, who currently facing federal charges of terrorism. Goldberg, who created numerous fake internet personae (including a straw feminist “Tanya Cohen” on Daily Kos), was arrested on September 10th for providing an FBI informant with bomb-making instructions while playing the part of an ISIS guerrilla online. Goldberg substantially confessed to distributing this information when confronted by the FBI. (When this happened, Milo went into full damage control mode, deleting all public correspondence between himself and Goldberg and wildly pinning the blame on Brianna Wu, who was also targeted by Goldberg under the “Tanya Cohen” persona.)

This Goldberg guy is linked to /Baphomet/, the same group which sent bomb threats to at least one of Milo’s speaking engagements this past year. How can I be sure Goldberg was involved with Baphomet? Here’s a screencap of Goldberg talking shop with Benjamin Biddix, owner of /Baphomet/,specifically about creating sockpuppet Twitter accounts. Surprisingly, Yiannopoulos was willing to overlook (or simply didn’t bother looking into) Goldberg’s connections to a group of illegal hackers when he reached out to Milo on Twitter.

And Goldberg, for his part, was so proud to help Yiannopoulos that he also posted their emails about Shaun King publicly:

"This is right up my alley. Do we have a line to the parents?" - Milo Yiannopoulos

“This is right up my alley. Do we have a line to the parents?” – Milo Yiannopoulos

 

So, it would appear Yiannopoulos used an alleged terrorist from /Baphomet/ as a source in his hit piece against Shaun King – which is of a piece with other untrue hit pieces Yiannopoulos likes to present as fact. Considering that Yiannopoulos has his own terrible opinions about race, it’s a surprise anyone paid attention to this story at all. Perhaps the Rachel Dolezal story primed people (and the media especially) to suspect every light-skinned black person of being “secretly white” – or maybe it’s subconscious racial bias directed towards King for being articulate and educated, for not suiting the stereotypes Milo Yiannopoulos enthusiastically fetishizes.

There’s at least one more post about Yiannopoulos in the works; a sort of tasting menu of some of the worst opinions he’s adopted in the interest of getting attention from the press. I hope you’ll join me for that, but until then, thanks for reading.