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Meet Linkara, Future SJW
I’d happily say the political saga of Youtuber Linkara. A man I’ve personally corresponded with, is endemic within the state of the Left. He may not count himself one of them, but I’d say he ticks the most essential boxes quite nicely. Please consider.
Lewis Lovhaug, AKA Linkara, was an early pioneer on YouTube, emerging in the late aughts, back when liberalism still predominated the Left, and it hadn’t yet started alienating comedians and other freethinkers like artists, he .snarkily mocked comic books MST3K-style; I only came across his videos in the late-twenty-tens, but his fifteen-minute vids mixed with humor and info held up well for me, leading me to binge-watch the whole of his back-catalog.
His Growing Leftist Bias
He was far from a big YouTuber, more of a niche player, largely due to his favored subject matter, critiquing silly/bad comic books, but I liked him, even as he kept doing a ton of virtue-signaling on the side, before the term had even come into common parlance, not that I hadn’t come across the type before, even going so far as to bring up gay marriage (this was around 2008) to say he was rethinking his position on it, despite it bearing zero relevance to the video’s topic whatsoever.
Maybe it’s just a midwest thing, if not blatant imitation, but he was dressed like the more-famous, more-popular, (and also left-leaning) Nostalgia Critic, in a suit, hat, glasses, and sometimes tie. And beyond that, Lewis was also a gun fan, given how much he loved to fake-shoot it off, even as he never really virtue-signaled over gun-rights, of all things.
He also seemed to emulate in style the man he seemed to hate the most, comic book writer Frank Miller, who also likes the hat-and-jacket look. A living legend in the comic book industry for his influence, Lewis seemed to mock him most of all, calling him racist, sexist, and being just an all-around jerk. In retrospect, though, I suspect his revulsion was simply a mask for envy, but then again, what do I know?
Interestingly, Lewis considered himself essentially politically neutral, citing that as the key reason he didn’t send up an over-the-top “Barack the Barbarian” comic book at one point. He loved to call out sexism, or what he seemed to be sexist, but then again he also regularly played a clip from MST3K dissing big government as “the reason nothing works.” He also joked about not starting land wars in Asia, forgetting Korea or the Gulf War, but at a convention in 2015 he went so far as to call himself a “conservative”—right after joking about Republicans being environmentally insensitive, claiming being a conservative gave him the right to say it, essentially.
Even so, I could not help but feel his virtue signaling was leftist in nature, and different from someone like the Nostalgia Critic, who doesn’t really virtue signal at all, and the peak of his anti-Frank Miller vendetta came with his critique of Miller’s Graphic novel Holy Terror, coming in parts One, Two, and Three, particularly taking umbrage at Frank for depicting a main character who paralyzes a terrorist, inspiring Lewis to give a speech, wherein he says:
Holy Terror says that you should be unkind. It says you shouldn’t trust people. It says that compassion will be repaid with violence, and that violence can only be answered with more violence. And that violence is strength, and that violence can only be answered with more violence, and that violence is strength, that hurting others is not only enjoyable and desirable, but that it should be employed first when dealing with threats….It says that revenge is a worthy cause….It tells us to fear the other (emphasis mine)….Terrorism is about making someone so afraid that they’ll do what you tell them to. And the grand message of Frank Miller's Holy Terror is: Be afraid, be terrified, and let’s give in to that fear and embrace dark, sick and inhuman part of our souls as a result and do everything to them that they will do to us.
Frank, you must be so proud.
After this review, then, Linkara proceeds to literally burn this comic book, which filled me with all sorts of unease. I always associated book burnings with Nazis, and also Islamic fundamentalists, for that matter, but but he just went along and did it, ignoring the negative associations, whatsoever, and without irony. It was a warning sign, right there. If he’s acting like a leftist, I thought, why’d he do that? Isn’t such behavior antithetical to their beliefs?
After Trump became president, Lewis didn’t directly reference him, but he did quite clearly intimate his unhappiness, not that I, who had voted Democratic presidentially for the first time in my life in 2016, was complaining.
In any case, I emailed him back in 2019 the following:
Sent: Friday, March 29, 2019 1:27 AM
To: linkara@atopthefourthwall.com
Subject: Mailbag! From: Philip Carpenter You Say You're a Conservative, But Don't Talk Like One
Message:
You say you're a conservative in passing, but you talk at length about things long acsoociated with liberal causes like feminism, and make jokes mostly at ones they agree with, like Glen Beck , and none for any on the other side of the spectrum; hey, SOuth Park is more conservative, than you do, taking risks, attacking causes like saving rain forests, whales, and the like. As one conservative to another, if you are, show some steel.
You talk about "women in refrigerators," and take it as a fact, but ignore counter examples, like Uncle Ben, and Zor El; as a conservative, I should think you would be aware, of them; there are what I would consider conservative comic book commentators online but if you are truly a conservative, you spend most your time hiding in the closet.
Instead of criticizing contemporary social trends, you seem to spend a lot of time, endorsing them. When reviewing Stan Lee's remakes of DC characters, you criticized Lee for giving his take on Superman as a woman in refrigerator, but then you miss that in his version of Wonder Woman he proceeds to give her a male equivalent of the trope; instead of critiquing the feminist narrative, you are using feminist narrative to critique, my friend; dunno about you, but I find that sloppy.
Also, whilst eschewing sexualized insults towards females, you on the other hand, are quite willing to refer to men as "dickheads"; dunno, Linkara, but if you are against it for one gender, you sure seem willing to use it for the other.
And that is why I'm against third and fourth wave feminism; because it is actually quite one-sided, and hypocritical. I agree with your criticism of sexism in comics, but you've apparently drunk a lot of cool-aid in the process, at the same time.
Sincerely, Philip Brock Carpenter
And, for his part, he respond with:
I stopped identifying myself as a Conservative when Conservatives stopped associating themselves with conservative values and embraced a monster as their new golden idol. They have shown their true colors and your examples are horsecrap for a number of reasons.
Now for my part, wish that he, being the purported expert, would elucidate me with why he is right, and explain to me, the uneducated rube, the specific reasons my examples are equine waste, but he unfortunately does not do that. Instead, he goes on:
I instead have embraced the idea of bettering myself through education and listening to others and recognizing where I was mistaken in many things. If you don't want to do that, that's fine. But I think I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing.
Lovely.
Even so, I held a bit of a soft spot for him in my heart, him being a fellow Republican like me, alienated by Donald Trump and all. In any case, I was getting mighty fed up by the Democrats, and yet I just could not see myself voting for The Donald, and yet…
The George Floyd Riots & Two Souls at the Crossroads
And then the George Floyd Riots happened, changing everything. The inner transformation of my beliefs which began with the advent of the Russian Intervention of Syria in 2015, was about to reach its culmination, altering my political outlook, forever.
I used to be afraid of being seen as racist. I used to be afraid of being labeled a “warmonger.” Now, after being exposed of the wanton hypocrisy of the left, I was learning how not to be browbeaten. Did leftists apologize when their politicians lied over policies they endorse? No. Did they condemn political violence when it was something they supported? No. And, did they truly believe ends shouldn’t justify the means, when push came to shove? The Left’s bulk reply across that whole, miserable “summer of love” showed me they utterly did not.
Starting out my political journey in the nineties, I believed in moderation. Yeah, we were all conservatives in my family growing up, but my mother still listened to the Newshour on PBS, plus her favorite radio host was left-leaning. Now, I no longer had such trust in the other side.
For twenty-five years I had been lectured by the mainstream media for sundry things, great and small. For twenty-five years I had been defensive, unable to articulate why and how I reached my conclusions.
But now I could, and I had also been radicalized in the process. As such, I decided to contact Linkara again; his situation was a lot like mine (at least after fashion) and frankly I just wanted to see just how far down that leftist rabbit hole he’d gotten.
Sent: Friday, August 21, 2020 7:00 PM
To: linkara <linkara@atopthefourthwall.com>
Subject: I HATE Trump, But I Plan on Voting For Him Now
I was furious over his isolationism and being anti-immigration, but if he is racist, the left is far more racist. I've recently gone to college, and tried to talk to the black students in my class about what could be done to subvert support for Colin Kaepernick and later the riots, but never really got any answers. If you're someone like me that supported police reform all along, since before Trayvon Martin, what can be done? I opposed Trump out of fear of destabilization, but support for riots over men who've already been proven to break to the law, and are pretty clearly gonna be punished severely? Anger against corruption is fair, but they're using it to justify hatred against law enforcement in general!
You lived near ground zero of the Floyd riots; has that in any way changed your mind about Trump? I still loathe him, but social cohesion and rule of law comes first.
From: linkara atopthefourthwall.com <linkara@atopthefourthwall.com>
Sent: Friday, August 21, 2020 7:42 PM
To: Philip Carpenter
Subject: RE: I HATE Trump, But I Plan on Voting For Him Now
No, they do not.
As someone who lives near the riots: they were entirely justified. Social cohesion and rule of law do not come first when the law is unjust. The police here are corrupt and even the businesses that WERE hit continue to support the protestors. They’re insured and will recover. The community has come together, dealt with outside agitators who did the more extreme stuff, and just in general helped one another far more than any cops have. I live every day in fear that my wife will be targeted by a cop for being black.
If you vote for Trump, you can stop watching my show immediately. Lives are more important than property, and black lives are threatened. Immigrants are still in cages. The republican party is doing everything in its power to be corrupt and make things worse and if we don’t get Trump out of office, I fear for ANY future elections at all.
You will not sway me on this, so don’t bother replying. Trump must go.
Lewis Lovhaug
Behold the cold, ruthless interior of a so-called bleeding heart, ladies and gentlemen. “Hate begets hate,” the Left repeatedly told us. Rushing to judgment (like over Iraq) was wrong on principle, they repeatedly lectured. But now? Whilst many on the right were defensive, many were indeed denouncing the double standard, but this was just skirting a more systemic issue.
In retrospect I’d been far too tolerant of the Left’s bad behavior, letting them frame the issues just because they had a point, but then allow them to use that to get me pull my punches when attacking their worst offenders. Fear largely led me to vote for Hillary in 2016, fear of being labeled racist, but now, seeing the left-wing violence unfold, and the excuses they used, I finally had the answer, and it came in the form of fools like Linkara.
I had come across a video on Youtube from 2019 of a left-leaning female twenty-something, who had started following libertarian and other anarchical right-of-center videos unil she was shocked by one of them laughingly aiming fireworks at illegal immigrants crossing a river, and also another casually throwing out hiel Hitlers in a bar; I don’t know she was similarly shocked by the Left’s endorsement of rioters in 2020, but it sure wasn’t in the spirit of “when they go low, we go high,” was it?
I had thought whole selling point of anti-racism was to promote things like social cohesion, but here it was being used to justify violence. The whole furor over George Floyd stemmed from the cop that killed him breaking the law to do so, so what was Lewis doing, defending rioters because the law was unjust, when if the cop had just followed the law, George Floyd would still be alive?
“I live in fear,” said, and thus he was now supporting non-state political violence. Also known as terrorism. Lewis criticized Frank Miller for peddling a narrative that minorities should be distrusted, “that violence can only be answered with more violence,” and that we should “fear the other.” Well, as opposed to minorities, whom he was siding with, his other was now cops, and random, indiscriminate violence was now justified, and clearly following Frank Miler’s advice when it came to his enemies.
Of which I, of course, was now one.
A Warning to Leftists
Leftists, if any of you are listening, allow me to say something. Oxford Language says a bigot is “a person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group”; dare I say it, anti-racist activists, or, more accurately, reverse racist activists, like Lewis Lovhaug AKA Linkara, who outright defend terrorism are bigots, bullies, and worse, so when I say you are the party of terrorism, it is anything but hyperbole, but solid, substantiated fact.
As to the rest of my audience, I confess I used to be ashamed. I used to be intimidated by the moral arguments of the left, but now no more—I woke up. Their activists have no shame in their hypocrisy, so why should we tremble from their scorn and reproaches? I’ll admit it’s a habit I’m still recovering from, but dare I say I’m making progress.
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