The Furred Reich

OK, so the news got weird. Let's look at The Daily Mail (I'm firing their headline writer and going with a spelling-corrected URL instead):

Neo-Nazi Furries Cause Convention Cancellation

For those who live under a rock, "Furries" are people who dress up in anthropomorphic animal costumes. Some are fetishists, some are just having fun. The Daily Mail piece chronicles the cancellation of the Rocky Mountain Fur Con, a convention of these like-minded individuals.

Did I say "like-minded"? My bad. It turns out that some of them have exactly zero sense of humor, despite having a penchant for dressing up in silly animal suits. The target of their ire is one "Foxler Nightfire", whom they claim espouses Nazism. And here is their proof:

via Foxler Nightfire

See what he's wearing there? Obviously that is a swastika and not a paw print.

Well that's what I heard.  I guess you have to squint to see it.

So equally obviously, the dude in the suit must be some kind of intolerant supremacist.

There are a few problems with that:

1. His name, "Foxler", has nothing to do with Hitler. It's a portmanteau of "Fox" (well, look at him) and his real last name, "Miller".
2. The paw print is adopted from his gameplay in Second Life. The armband is a character accessory there.
3. Under the fur, he's half-Thai and half-German.
4. He has a Black boyfriend.
5. The armbands come in a dazzling array of "inclusive" colors.

And though The Daily Mail display these images gleaned from Facebook and Twitter, they show a puzzling (tic) reticence about explaining them with the above facts. Instead, they're just posted without context. Maybe the Mail felt no context was needed: Nazis is craaaazy, man.

So are many furries. For instance, although Foxler says he would never sleep with a Black man, he does exactly that. But Foxler's boyfriend is not a Black man, see, because he's really a Blue Wolf. And when Foxler says he wouldn't sleep with a man, he means human. Which his boyfriend obviously isn't. This has nutcase written all over it, but it's a harmless sort of nutcase that you just smile and nod at. And those armbands... though they started out with no particular political baggage, when people started branding Foxler as a Nazi, he tried his hand at trolling actual Nazis to see how they'd react. I imagine they didn't react any better than the alt-Right, which has disavowed the "alt-Furries".

Furries are more politically diverse than their convention organizers believe, as this New Statesman piece describes.

Foxler himself is a founding member of the Furry Raiders, a group whose stated purpose is to "help improve the Furry Fandom by providing resources and services so everyone has equal opportunity". I got that from their WikiFur page. Good Lord in Heaven, there's a Wikifur. Their website and activities seem completely in line with that goal. The point is that you're never going to make a convincing case that this particular harmless lunatic is a Neo-Nazi, no matter what he might have trolled on the web.

But let's not let facts stand in the way of some old-fashioned Outrage, shall we?

Furry Raiders, being a large block of furries and desirous of attending the 2017 convention, reserved a large block of rooms for said con. That should be unsurprising to anyone. Now, while The Daily Mail quotes Zachary Brooks, the head of Fur Con, as saying that this was a "power grab"; to casual observers it certainly looks as though the Furry Raiders simply got off their tails and planned ahead. And though the organizers claimed that the Raiders refused to release any of those reservations, in fact they did, beginning with a block of 25 rooms, and more, as cancellations were made. But they wouldn't give up the reservations they had made for themselves any more than you would.

Chairman Sorin's statement.
Click to enlarge.

SJWs in the community decided to make known their vigilante predilections. The "Nazis" wearing pawprints at the 2017 Rocky Mountain Fur Con would get beat up.  See, the "tolerant" people were going to physically attack the "intolerant" people . Because that's how "tolerance" works today. And then, of course, others responded that they'd defend themselves, and the whole thing went to shit, with everybody accusing everybody else of the most hateful things they could dredge up.

It ended with the chairman of the event posting a message saying that the Furry Raiders have started to promote intolerance within the furry community, and canceled the event. Click on the image to read it.

Although the Raiders were accused of intolerance, it's clear from every news story that the initial threats of violence were made by the "tolerant" Righteous Left, with whom you apparently can't share a hobby unless you share a political belief.

And that's the least surprising thing about this whole "tail" of woe.