As the United States takes stalk of the violent riot of Trump supporters at the Capitol last week, led in part by people wearing Nazi shirts and carrying Confederate flags, I thought back to the behavior of Trump supporters in Second Life before the 2016 election — mobbing the virtual HQ of Bernie Sanders, for instance. And not just to troll his left-leaning Second Life followers, but to confront them with a clear symbol of hate:
“There is a picture I managed to capture of one of the flags spewing from a particle dispenser at HQ,” Sanders support group member Macaria Wind tells me, handing over an image file of a Trump swastika. “Left there by one of Trump's supporters when no one was around.”
Racist behavior like this led to at least one Trump group being expelled from Second Life and their private island, aptly called The Wall, where they had rezzed a massive version of the Nazi Party's eagle-headed Parteiadler. Online activity like this was eerily similar to that on other sites where Trump's most extreme supporters congregated, including Reddit and 4Chan. At the time, Trump supporters in Second Life (as with other online sites) insisted this fascist behavior was simply a bad apples anomaly, or meant ironically, or both. The events of last week definitely show this justification to be tragically, horribly wrong: As it turns out, there were more than enough bad apples to threaten democracy itself — and far few of their members to stop them.
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 
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