In Second Life, Anti-Fascist Furries Furiously Fight Furry Fascists

"The Furred Reich: The truth about Nazi furries and the alt-right" is a New Statesmen article that went fairly viral this week, and the moment I saw the title, I was sure Second Life would somehow be involved. And there it was:

“It’s obviously not a swastika,” claims Foxler – who also insists his furry name is a portmanteau of “Fox” and his real surname, “Miller”, not “Hitler”, as many online argue. Foxler says he first began wearing the armband – which features a paw print in place of a swastika – after he dropped out of high school and started playing the online role-playing game Second Life, in which the band was available as a character accessory.

So yes, at least some Second Life furries are sporting a fascist-like paw print armband. I wasn't totally surprised by that, because there are anti-fascist furries too:

@motherboard @waypoint I have been in many virtual brawls with fascists...our furry BDSM sim will stand against the bastard and fool Trump

— GULENS 'N GHOSTS (@3dfxAstroglide) February 4, 2017

This from the Vice Twitter thread on Avatars Against Trump. And so a deadly serious real world issue reaches the most obscure corners of the virtual world, and around them, furry forces collide.

Comments

[Amanda Dallin]

Furries are people too, with all the good, bad and ugly that brings.
Meaning people in SL are just like everyone else and you can find the same broad range of opinions and attitudes in SL as in RL.

[Carlos Loff]

Either you are a fascist that happens to be a Furry, either you are a furry that happens to be a fascist, lol, what comes next ??? An anti Fascist-Furry-Vegetarian-Capitalist-TinyAvi movement ??? Make love not war, get Real, or better - Get Virtual, lol

[Han Held]

I got virtual but then I got over it.

[Iggy 1.0]

There is a Smokey Bear ad on this page. He's my favorite furry of all time.

[WolfBaginski]

Those pawprint armbands have been around for a long time, sometimes as part of outfits that have been very suggestive of Nazi Germany. The Third Reich was big on the party uniforms, and when I see somebody who could have been clad by Hugo Boss it's time to wonder.

OK, somebody has to role-play the bad guys, and if they keep it in a sim for that, I can live with it. I write stories set in a furry 1930s that have some very real Nazis. Real-world, you had to be a Party Member for a lot of things, though it wasn't for far from some respectable elements of our modern political mainstream.

And if you can't see similarities, you don't really know any of the history.

But if you get blatant about the symbolism, you will get yourself in a whole heap of trouble. And it doesn't make much difference whether you're furry or not. I'm old enough to have heard stories from my parents, from people I knew. I knew an old guy who had two distinct families, one on Poland and one in England.

This stuff isn't trivial. It isn't a joke.

I am not anywhere close to laughing.