The online discourse among Trump supporters and the “alt-right” took a hit earlier this year when Matt Furie, who created Pepe the stoner frog that’s become the sigil of the house of white supremacists, killed off his cartoon creation in an effort to stem the hateful tide. When that didn’t work, he took legal action against infringers and prominent members of the “alt-right” for willfully ignoring his copyright. Now Motherboard reports that, in addition to being bereft of their favorite symbol, these folks, trolls, or what-have-you have now lost their largest and most influential digital meeting space. And for once, they can’t blame it on the gummint or deep state—it was an anime-inspired coup that led to their downfall, plain and simple.
For the last year or so, Centipede Central was the spot on the Discord platform—which is basically Slack for gamers—for the far-right to gather to organize or discuss politics, as well as work on their dank Trump memes. According to Motherboard, Centipede Central, which was the “largest and most important Trump server,” was run by a poster who goes by Based_Brit. This British bloke came under fire with other posters for a couple of different reasons, which eventually led to one of the weirdest mutinies ever. Chief among the complaints about Based_Brit were the fact that some of the moderators didn’t want a British person running an American message board; he was often inactive; and he tried repeatedly to establish an anime channel. Oh, and also Based_Brit is allegedly a “crypto furry—a closeted furry.”
Such things were not to be borne by the Pepe lovers, and so, led by Hova and Pefimous, they basically burnt down their misguided realm and replaced it with “The Right Server.” This new server is not strictly pro-Trump; it allows for some criticism of Dear Leader, but presumably not any discussion of Cowboy Bebop or Ghost In The Shell. (And in case it wasn’t clear, there’s absolutely no furry stuff).
Based_Brit defended himself against these accusations, telling Motherboard that he was only ever inactive “for a short period,” and that he had even “covered for other administrators when they took time away from the site,” though, presumably they didn’t go to anime conventions and come back to fill Centipede Central with anecdotes about the best cosplay.
His ouster notwithstanding, Based_Brit says he wasn’t even trying to turn Centipede Central into Anime Central.
If you look at the subreddit the_donald, there are a lot of right winger gamers—it’s a common theme—of people who like anime. Personally, I have no issue with it. This is a channel we had in the past for a long long time. When [the anime channel] was deleted it spills into the other chats and more people get angry. So I said, “Put it in a channel, contain it.”
And from this ignoble ending comes a shameful new beginning—Motherboard found that one of the most popular channels on the new Right Server is chock full of “enthusiastic investigation of the Las Vegas shooting as a false flag perpetrated by liberals.” Although user Hova said the group had banned another user for posting a congratulatory message about the shooting, the channel’s users were recently in a discussion about whether the gunman, Stephen Paddock, was actually an FBI arms dealer.