StoneToss

Last updated

StoneToss
StoneToss.png
NationalityAmerican
Area(s)
  • Cartoonist
    • Pseudonym(s)StoneToss
    Notable works
    		StoneToss
    Current status/scheduleOngoing
    Launch dateJuly 18, 2017 [1]
    Publisher(s) Self-published (webcomic)
    Genre(s) Far-right political cartoon [2]
    Original languageEnglish
    stonetoss.com

    StoneToss is a pseudonymous American neo-Nazi political cartoonist who publishes a webcomic of the same name. [3] [4] [5] [6] Launched in June 2017, the comic espouses racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic, and antisemitic views, including Holocaust denial, [2] [1] [7] under what the author claims is "edgy humor", using "simple and colorful imagery". [3] [6] [1]

    Contents

    In March 2024, after an antifascist group published materials claiming to have revealed his identity, [2] [8] he sought help from Twitter's owner Elon Musk. Twitter then suspended multiple users who included StoneToss' alleged real name in their tweets, and amended its privacy policy to prohibit disclosure of others' real names. [3] [7] Critics took the move as evidence of Musk's preferential treatment for neo-Nazis, antisemites, and white supremacists. [7]

    Career

    StoneToss debuted his webcomic in July 2017, [1] which has since gained popularity in right-wing online communities, [3] receiving millions of views on Twitter. [7] He also publishes the cartoons on his website, where he describes himself as an "independent cartoonist" and "NFT artist". [3] [8] Discussed in 2024 as a neo-Nazi creator by The Washington Post [4] and Wired , [3] he conveys various extreme ideas through his content, with antisemitism a pronounced element. [7] Global Network on Extremism and Technology researchers Hampton Stall, David Foran, and Hari Prasad have described him as a "crypto-Nazi cartoonist", [5] who "pulls from neo-Nazi views and makes them more palatable for a broader audience". [9] In 2021, the Jewish organization Anti-Defamation League described him as a "far-right illustrator", citing the example of a comic with Jewish deicide as its theme. [10] In a commentary piece for the think tank European Center for Populism Studies, researcher Heidi Hart wrote that the cartoons include Holocaust denial dog whistles, and also sexist tropes. [6] Some of his cartoons use suicide among transgender people as a punchline. [7]

    Reddit and Discord banned their respective official StoneToss communities in 2019. [1] On Facebook and Instagram, as of 2021, some of the cartoons were posted by the author in heavily pixellated versions to prevent them from breaching those platforms' policies. [11] StoneToss has used the comic to fundraise by selling non-fungible tokens on websites such as OpenSea before being banned from the websites. [12]

    In a 2022 Global Studies Quarterly article titled "DIY Cruelty: The Global Political Micro-Practices of Hateful Memes", political scientist Renee Marlin-Bennett and researcher Susan T Jackson studied a pair of politically polar-opposite subreddits and identified StoneToss as an "extreme rightwing cartoonist known for his bigoted work", whose cartoons are prominently featured in the right-wing subreddit. [13] According to them, his cartoons were not posted "as memes but as non-meme posts that the community agrees with and is entertained by." They further wrote that "meme creators take his simple line drawings and edit them to make new memes, often called "stonetossedit" or "stonetoss is a nazi"", and that both Reddit communities have adapted StoneToss' work for their own purposes, thereby increasing the visibility of the cartoons. [13] Hart wrote that the cartoons rely on "edgy humor", and while internet users on the left have been trying to appropriate the cartoons, adding "layers of irony", the subversion of their message is not easily understood by most. [6]

    The "amogus" strain of internet memes draws its origin from the initial amogus meme of a StoneToss cartoon combined with an Among Us character. [14]

    Alleged revelation of identity

    In March 2024, Anonymous Comrades Collective and Late-Night Anti-Fascists claimed to have revealed the identity of StoneToss using leaked information from Gab, a social media website with a far-right userbase. [2] [8] According to the material they published, he is a Texan former security guard and IT professional, [15] who had been putting significant effort into remaining anonymous. [2] The group said that he had also created the RedPanels webcomic, [2] [3] described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a neo-Nazi comic [16] and by Matt Binder of Mashable as "even more overtly pro-Nazi" than StoneToss. [17] As of late March, media organizations reporting on the event have been indicating that they have not independently verified the results of the groups' research. [7] : n.pag.  [17] : n.pag. 

    StoneToss denied being a neo-Nazi [7] and sought protection from Twitter's owner Elon Musk through individuals who had contacts with him. [3] This was followed by a controversy after Twitter suspended multiple users who posted the author's alleged real name, with media taking special note of civil rights attorney and transgender rights activist Alejandra Caraballo's suspension. [15] [2] [18] [lower-alpha 1] Rob Beschizza of Boing Boing commented that, while "no-one outside of extremely online spaces cares", the controversy was intensified via the Streisand effect. [2] The episode was followed by renewed concerns about content moderation on Twitter under Musk, especially regarding content that promotes far-right ideas. [15] After a few days, Twitter amended its privacy policy—which at the time expressly excluded real names from what it considers private information—to prohibit disclosure of others' real names. As this behavior had been previously tolerated when it came from right-wing accounts, critics took the move as evidence of the platform under Musk affording preferential treatment to that group of users. [7] [19] [20]

    See also

    Notes

    1. ↑ She had tweeted and changed her username to the effect of maximizing the visibility of the disclosed information. [4] [15]

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    References

    1. 1 2 3 4 5 Gilmour, David (May 31, 2019). "Antifa redditors are repurposing anti-Semitic comics for good". The Daily Dot . Archived from the original on March 6, 2024. Retrieved March 17, 2024.
    2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Beschizza, Rob (March 16, 2024). "Nazi cartoonist meets the Streisand Effect after Twitter censors discussion of his identity". Boing Boing . Archived from the original on March 16, 2024. Retrieved March 17, 2024.
    3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Gilbert, David (March 20, 2024). "X Blocked Journalists and Researchers Who Identified a Neo-Nazi Cartoonist". Wired. Archived from the original on March 28, 2024. Retrieved March 28, 2024.
    4. 1 2 3 Oremus, Will; Telford, Taylor (March 25, 2024). "Musk tried to 'punish' critics, judge rules, in tossing a lawsuit". The Washington Post . Archived from the original on March 25, 2024. Retrieved March 27, 2024. ... after she amplified the identity of anonymous neo-Nazi comic artist StoneToss.
    5. 1 2 Stall, Hampton; Prasad, Hari; Foran, David (October 29, 2020). "What's in a Meme? The Rise of "Saint Kyle"". Global Network on Extremism and Technology . Archived from the original on June 28, 2022. Retrieved March 17, 2024. Other such "crossover" events include a meme complaining about the NFL kneeling controversy regarding Colin Kaepernick, a few allusions to the "Boogaloo" modality, an encroachment of "patriot" militia references, use of comic characters from the crypto-Nazi cartoonist Stonetoss, ...
    6. 1 2 3 4 Hart, Heidi (August 4, 2021). "Dog Whistles vs. Slide Whistles: Humor as Weapon and Resistance". European Center for Populism Studies. Archived from the original on March 21, 2024. Retrieved March 20, 2024.
    7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Ingram, David (March 21, 2024). "Elon Musk's X bans revealing the names of anonymous users after scrutiny of antisemitic cartoonist". NBC News . Archived from the original on March 22, 2024. Retrieved March 21, 2024.
    8. 1 2 3 Crimmins, Tricia (March 13, 2024). "Author of far-right comic StoneToss allegedly doxed by left-wing reporting collective". The Daily Dot . Archived from the original on March 17, 2024. Retrieved March 17, 2024.
    9. ↑ Stall, Hampton; Prasad, Hari; Foran, David (December 13, 2021). "Can the Right Meme? (And How?): A Comparative Analysis of Three Online Reactionary Meme Subcultures" (PDF). Global Network on Extremism and Technology . International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation. Archived (PDF) from the original on March 17, 2024. Retrieved March 17, 2024– via King's College London Research Portal.
    10. ↑ "Gab CEO Andrew Torba Broadcasts His Antisemitism Across Social Media Platforms". Anti-Defamation League . December 15, 2021. Archived from the original on January 13, 2024. Retrieved March 17, 2024.
    11. ↑ CEP-staff (May 17, 2021). "Facebook, Instagram Should Deplatform StoneToss". Counter Extremism Project . Archived from the original on February 25, 2024. Retrieved March 21, 2024.
    12. ↑ "7 Trends in Online Extremism to Look Out for in 2022". Gizmodo. January 21, 2022. Archived from the original on September 26, 2023. Retrieved March 22, 2024.
    13. 1 2 Marlin-Bennett, Renée; Jackson, Susan T (February 9, 2022). "DIY Cruelty: The Global Political Micro-Practices of Hateful Memes". Global Studies Quarterly. 2 (2). doi: 10.1093/isagsq/ksac002 . ISSN   2634-3797. Archived from the original on March 21, 2024. Retrieved March 17, 2024.
    14. ↑ Leizarenko, Dasha (September 15, 2023). "Что означает слово «амогус» и как оно связано с игрой Among Us" [Amogus: what does the word mean and how it relates to the game Among Us]. Tinkoff Journal (in Russian). Archived from the original on March 28, 2024. Retrieved March 28, 2024. В итоге мемы с разноцветными космонавтами стали многих раздражать. Тогда появился амогус. Этим словом назвали криво нарисованного космонавта, которого подрисовали к веб-комиксу художника Stonetoss. Оригинальный сюжет переделали в бессмыслицу: белый человечек просто называл космонавта амогусом. (transl. Eventually, memes featuring multicolored astronauts began to irritate many. That is when the amogus came into the picture. The term was coined to describe a crudely drawn astronaut, inserted into a webcomic of an artist named Stonetoss. The original storyline was transformed into a nonsensicality: a small white figure was merely referring to the astronaut as "amogus".)
    15. 1 2 3 4 Wiggins, Christopher (March 19, 2024). "Alejandra Caraballo banned from Elon Musk's X platform". The Advocate . Archived from the original on March 19, 2024. Retrieved March 19, 2024.
    16. ↑ Ward, Justin (April 19, 2018). "Day of the trope: White nationalist memes thrive on Reddit's r/The_Donald". Southern Poverty Law Center . Archived from the original on February 1, 2019. Retrieved March 19, 2024.
    17. 1 2 Binder, Matt (March 20, 2024). "Elon Musk's X suspends users who post alleged name of alt-right comic creator". Mashable . Archived from the original on March 21, 2024. Retrieved March 21, 2024.
    18. ↑ Sprayregen, Molly (March 18, 2024). "Elon Musk shamed for protecting an alt-right cartoonist while letting transphobia flourish on X". LGBTQ Nation . Archived from the original on March 19, 2024. Retrieved March 19, 2024.
    19. ↑ Wiggins, Christopher (March 21, 2024). "X quietly updates policy on doxxing after neo-Nazi reveal". The Advocate. Archived from the original on March 22, 2024. Retrieved March 22, 2024.
    20. ↑ "X sperrt Konten, die die Identität eines rechtsextremen Cartoonisten enthüllen" [X blocks accounts that reveal the identity of a right-wing cartoonist]. Der Standard (in German). March 21, 2024. Archived from the original on March 21, 2024. Retrieved March 21, 2024.
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