The Anonymous Comrades Collective has figured out who StoneToss is....

[Archer]

I'm not terribly impressed with StoneToss' work as it seems to occur mostly within the political diegesis rather than outside of it, but judging from what I've seen, it isn't particularly egregious on the whole. You might cite this rather misguided strip https://stonetoss.com/comic/on-second-thought/. For the most part though his comics appear to be a satire of political media, not a defense of fascism or genocide.

https://stonetoss.com/comic/the-whole-nine-inches/
https://stonetoss.com/comic/reden-macht-frei/
https://stonetoss.com/comic/sausagefest/
https://stonetoss.com/comic/on-the-nose/
https://stonetoss.com/comic/you-and-what-army/

I don't think his caricature of the "left" is representative of the public itself (outside a certain lunatic fringe), but if one takes it as a lampoon of a contrived media trope it's not far off. The point is this - if he is dishonest, deceptive or misleading then make the argument on those grounds rather than by throwing around defamatory labels, which is not a serious or dialectical form of argument. That sort of mudslinging is Wikipedia's bread and butter but it shouldn't fly here.

[ericbarbour]

For the most part though his comics appear to be a satire of political media, not a defense of fascism or genocide.
https://stonetoss.com/comic/the-whole-nine-inches/

That one is kinda snappy though cruel. Otherwise, I still think he's just another douchey white nerd who thinks it's the height of comedy to trigger people with emotional problems. Frat houses are full of guys like this, and therefore so are Wall Street and the corporate boardrooms. They tend to not actually be funny, despite struggling to be funny. Any decent standup comedian could wipe the floor with Hans.

[Archer]

For the most part though his comics appear to be a satire of political media, not a defense of fascism or genocide.
https://stonetoss.com/comic/the-whole-nine-inches/

That one is kinda snappy though cruel. Otherwise, I still think he's just another douchey white nerd who thinks it's the height of comedy to trigger people with emotional problems. Frat houses are full of guys like this, and therefore so are Wall Street and the corporate boardrooms. They tend to not actually be funny, despite struggling to be funny. Any decent standup comedian could wipe the floor with Hans.

Fair enough, but nobody can reasonably be called a "neo-Nazi" just for that. Doesn't stop WIkipedia of course; his BLP is little more than a smear article.

[Archer]

Why is the stonetoss comic popular despite its average wit and half-assed illustration? Because it actually makes fun of the status quo while most other humorists with political material do not, which defeats the purpose. For example this comedy act from Nick Mullen. I've not seen much of his work, only a few clips of his older podcast, which were damned funny, and this post-lobotomy standup routine. He checks all the boxes; transphobia bad, take your vaccine, get your abortion, the south is racist/stupid, etc. - all qualified with an air of indiference and nihilism. Christ, I'm not even halfway through it yet. It only seems normal because most other comedy acts and sketches are equally mirthless and hackneyed.

"Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable. It can never permit either the truthful recording of facts or the emotional sincerity that literary creation demands. But to be corrupted by totalitarianism one does not have to live in a totalitarian country. The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible for literary purposes. Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy — or even two orthodoxies, as often happens — good writing stops." -Orwell

Unsurprisingly the status quo does not use Orwell's phrase "enforced orthodoxy" in reference to the priorities and 'values' they impose upon the public. They prefer to invent euphemisms like 'political correctness' and then abuse them ad nauseam, making them so trite and unfashionable that nobody even wants to use them in public, not that they should anyway.

Here's something downright uncanny: "When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases – bestial atrocities, iron heel, blood-stained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder – one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity." Change the 'familiar phrases' and Orwell's description would fit perfectly. What an incredible man.

Modern comedy is awful and will continue to be awful so long as people are willing to tolerate being harassed, intimidated and defamed for saying what they think. The first sentence of Stonetoss' wikipedia biography reads "StoneToss is a pseudonymous American neo-Nazi political cartoonist who publishes a webcomic of the same name." I do not know the man, but does he actually deserve that? Certainly not just for writing the stonetoss comic, which is far from amazing but does make a salient and socially-relevant point every now and again.

[Archer]

Not to labor the point, but sweet christ, how does a comedian go from this -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bNmD6KmZmM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUFPpwNVYaw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9BEB7SD1mw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a1bX1ZNqts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMfOU0EKMxA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7C1rNwPZAI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO1hPl19yaM

to a standup act like this -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBlQBm5pReQ ?

I don't have much a talent for comedy but I can certainly appreciate it, and the latter is most definitely not funny. I wouldn't even bitch about this if it didn't seem like every time I come across something interesting, insightful or funny apropos politics and look up the person responsible, either they've become a hollowed-out, impotent parody of themselves, or have been smeared and defamed past the point of return for their trouble, or are dead. It's a small wonder that so many people cannot even face their own existence without SSRIs, xanax, marijuana and a wheedling psychiatrist. Fuck.

[Archer]

Of course, Mullen & co. must understand that the cultural and political status quo is bullshit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSG80yyxCUk&t=2047s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgCFFPeAQUU&t=1300s (He's doing an impression but seems to agree with it - point is, I don't buy for a minute that Mullen's more recent standup is genuine, with lines like "yeah I don't understand transphobia you know".)

Meanwhile, stonetoss was making material like the following, which seems even more relevant now than when he wrote it.
https://stonetoss.com/comic/body-mods/
https://stonetoss.com/comic/the-pen-is-mightier/

Some of his comics do strike me as misguided, but at least a few of them are on point and make obvious some of the absurdities and double standards in the present enforced orthodoxy, to borrow Orwell's phrase (because I refuse perpetuate the term 'political correctness'). So I'm not going to pile onto stonetoss when he's one of the few political humorists not constantly bullshitting his audience.

[ericbarbour]

So I'm not going to pile onto stonetoss when he's one of the few political humorists not constantly bullshitting his audience.

Okay---but instead he bullshits himself.

That seems to be the common denominator for "comedians". The vast majority of them are miserable, unhappy, often unpleasant people regardless of political orientation.

If you don't understand why they're laughing, you're the joke.

[Archer]

So I'm not going to pile onto stonetoss when he's one of the few political humorists not constantly bullshitting his audience.

Okay---but instead he bullshits himself.

That seems to be the common denominator for "comedians". The vast majority of them are miserable, unhappy, often unpleasant people regardless of political orientation.

If you don't understand why they're laughing, you're the joke.

I don't quite know what you mean, Eric.

[Strelnikov]

For the most part though his comics appear to be a satire of political media, not a defense of fascism or genocide.
https://stonetoss.com/comic/the-whole-nine-inches/

That one is kinda snappy though cruel. Otherwise, I still think he's just another douchey white nerd who thinks it's the height of comedy to trigger people with emotional problems. Frat houses are full of guys like this, and therefore so are Wall Street and the corporate boardrooms. They tend to not actually be funny, despite struggling to be funny. Any decent standup comedian could wipe the floor with Hans.

Fair enough, but nobody can reasonably be called a "neo-Nazi" just for that. Doesn't stop WIkipedia of course; his BLP is little more than a smear article.

Oh, Hans Kristian Graebner is a neo-Nazi whose entire reason for being so is a medical circumcision he says they botched when he was an infant. He tried to talk up his "Aryan" bona fides on a trip to Japan, because he has a limited mind. His cartoons (the original RedPanels and now StoneToss) are all he has left, and in that, he shares a lot with Scott Adams of Dilbert fame. I've read oodles of StoneToss comics and I know the dogwhistles he uses, because they are common in White Power online spaces.....14/88 references, "magic dirt theory", a lot of transgender suicide jokes, "race-mixing is suicide" references, and so on. Graebner is an awful person with a crap ideology, and should be held in the same regard as any Grand Wizard of whatever fragment of the KKK you run across.

[Archer]

That one is kinda snappy though cruel. Otherwise, I still think he's just another douchey white nerd who thinks it's the height of comedy to trigger people with emotional problems. Frat houses are full of guys like this, and therefore so are Wall Street and the corporate boardrooms. They tend to not actually be funny, despite struggling to be funny. Any decent standup comedian could wipe the floor with Hans.

Fair enough, but nobody can reasonably be called a "neo-Nazi" just for that. Doesn't stop WIkipedia of course; his BLP is little more than a smear article.

Oh, Hans Kristian Graebner is a neo-Nazi whose entire reason for being so is a medical circumcision he says they botched when he was an infant. He tried to talk up his "Aryan" bona fides on a trip to Japan, because he has a limited mind. His cartoons (the original RedPanels and now StoneToss) are all he has left, and in that, he shares a lot with Scott Adams of Dilbert fame. I've read oodles of StoneToss comics and I know the dogwhistles he uses, because they are common in White Power online spaces.....14/88 references, "magic dirt theory", a lot of transgender suicide jokes, "race-mixing is suicide" references, and so on. Graebner is an awful person with a crap ideology, and should be held in the same regard as any Grand Wizard of whatever fragment of the KKK you run across.

Not that you're necessarily wrong about Graebner in particular, but such rhetoric is frequently abused. For example, if someone criticizes central banking, criticizes the pro-Israel lobby and holds a few socially conservative viewpoints, it would not be fair or dialectical to extrapolate that they are an antisemite and use this (or any other slur) as an ad hominem. It's sometimes an easy and facile return since these points are frequently conflated with antisemitism, but not a valid counterargument. If you made the critique that stonetoss (the comic) perpetuates this conflation (or some variant), I'd probably agree. I'm not particularly interested in Graebner himself though.