Timeline of the Online Culture War 2016

A year of memes, populism, terrorist attacks and race riots

2011-2013 2014 2015

1/5/16: MTV lists “canceled” as a new word for 2016. In an article describing hot new terms for 2016, MTV listed “canceled” as one of the terms. This was one of the first seedlings of the concept of “cancel culture” which would gain prominence in the late 2010s.

1/22/16: Trump retweets “white genocide” account. On this day, Trump retweeted an account with the handle @WhiteGenocideTM. The account, archived version here, listed the location as “Jewmerica”, the username as “Donald Trumpovitz” and listed a link to The Greatest Story Never Told. If you want to relive what a typical edgy alt-right troll was like in the months leading up to Trump getting elected the first time I suggest you scroll through this account.

2/5/16: Twitter announces they suspended thousands of ISIS accounts. Twitter was still relatively permissive with their platform at this point, but one of the first groups to go was Islamic terrorist groups. On this day Twitter announced they had suspended 125,000 terror related accounts. A timeline of Twitter suspensions can be found here.

3/1/16: Identity Evropa founded. Sometime in March (exact date unknown), the white nationalist group Identity Evropa was founded by Nathan Damigo. This group tried to put a more polished face on white nationalism than many of the other groups that existed at the time. Controversially, membership was restricted to non-Jewish whites. This group focused on banner campaigns, trash clean ups and placing flyers in public library books.

3/8/16: Corey Lewandowski grabs Michelle Fields. As Breitbart journalist Michelle Fields was walking towards Donald Trump, campaign manager Corey Lewandowski grabbed her arm, and she claimed it was an assault. This caused division among the Breitbart staff about whether she was actually a victim or exaggerating, with many in the never Trump camp using this incident to attack Trump.

3/9/16: The triggering. Inspired by Lauren Southern a few months back, the #TheTriggering was a day to post politically incorrect facts on social media. Many on the right complained that the triggering was being censored.

3/11/16: AIDS Skrillex and Carl the Cuck filmed at anti-Trump protest in Saint Louis. Outside of a Trump rally these two gentleman who would later affectionately become known as “AIDS Skrillex” and “Carl the Cuck” would get into a debate with Infowars Owen Shroyer about racism and police brutality. Infamously, AIDS Skrillex would proclaim, “You’re fuckin a white male!” to Shroyer. The whole confrontation can be seen here.

3/11/16: Trump rally shut down in Chicago. Thousands of anti-Trump agitators gathered in front of Trump’s rally at UIC in raucous protest. The police decided to shut down the rally for the safety of the attendees. This was one of a few notable violent Trump rallies in liberal cities in 2016.

3/13/16: Chapo Trap House first airs. The socialist podcast Chapo Trap House began on this day. This podcast was heavily associated with the “dirtbag left” subculture which combined socialism and non interventionist foreign policy with extreme vulgarity. Unlike the alt-right which got Trump in to office and possibly changed cultural norms, the dirtbag left failed to accomplish much, and their hero Bernie Sanders flamed out of the primaries twice.

3/18/16: Gawker lawsuit decided. Gawker was sued by Terry Bollea AKA Hulk Hogan for publishing his sex tape. The lawsuit, partially bankrolled by Peter Theil, was decided on this day which eventually led to Gawker declaring bankruptcy. Many on the left viewed this incident as a billionaire using his wealth to quash an unfavorable media outlet.

3/22/16: Brussels Terrorist Attack. Bombs went off at the Brussels airport and in the subway. The attack was linked to ISIS and killed 32 innocents in total. Sadly, the attack claimed another victim in 2022 when Shanti De Corte chose to end her life through doctor assisted suicide after being traumatized by the attack.

3/23/16: Tai AI released. Microsoft released an AI chatbot that interacted with Twitter users. Soon after, Tay became “based” after interacting with the alt-right and Microsoft apologized and Tay was shut down. This incident foreshadowed many controversies around race and AI that occurred in the 2020s.

3/23/16: NC bathroom bill passed. North Carolina passed HB2 requiring transgender people to use the bathroom of their born sex. This caused tons of corporations to boycott NC, costing an estimated 630 million in losses to the economy. This represented one of the first major campaigns by corporate America on behalf of LGBT issues.

3/29/16: Breitbart publishes “An Establishment Conservatives’s Guide to the Alt-Right.” This article, by Milo Yiannopoulous and Allum Bokhari, described the various factions of the alt-right at the time. A good overview of where the movement was in early 2016.

3/30/16: SFSU dreadlocks fight. At SFSU, a black woman accosted a Jewish guy for wearing dreadlocks claiming it was cultural appropriation. This was the worst breakdown in the black Jewish relationship since BLM activists stormed Bernie Sanders’ rally the previous Summer.

4/12/16: Alternative Hypothesis website created. The Alternative Hypothesis was a website mostly written by Ryan Faulk and Sean Last providing evidence that racial differences in intelligence were mostly genetic. Probably every young person who was interested in race realism at the time has spent a long time reading this website. (myself included of course)

4/18/16: Clinton goes on The Breakfast Club. Clinton went on a popular black culture radio show called The Breakfast Club, and made a meme out of herself by claiming she always had hot sauce in her bag, referencing a recent Beyonce song. When told people were going to say she was pandering to blacks, she asked if it was working. To many this interview was the epitome of why Clinton was cringeworthy and unrelatable.

4/20/16: Milo Stewart releases infamous video. An extremely poorly passing trans person made a video where they said that all white people were racist and that all men were sexist etc. This became the fodder for anti SJW YouTubers for a bit.

4/25/16: Trigglypuff becomes a meme after the Triggering Event at UMass. At an event called The Triggering: Has Political Correctness Gone Too Far? Steven Crowder, Milo Yiannopoulos and Christina Hoff Sommers spoke to college students about controversial issues of the day. One young woman expressed her displeasure and shook her flabby arms while repeatedly shouting “Keep your hate speech out of our campus”. She became to be known as a meme called “trigglypuff” and became a representative of typical campus craziness.

4/28/16: Cole Bartiromo gets beat up at Orange County Trump rally. At a particularly violent protest against Trump’s visit to the OC, Cole Bartiromo was beaten bloody. He ended up having quite the back story.

5/1/16: Did you just assume my gender? The idea that you wouldn’t be able to tell someone’s gender by looking at them became increasingly mocked in 2016. The first reference to “did you just assume my gender” as a meme was posted on Imgur.

5/5/16: Trump tweets “I love Hispanics.” On Cinco de Mayo Trump shared his love for Hispanics. Will all of the controversial comments Trump had made about Mexicans by this point, he showed that he still had some love in his heart.

5/11/16: Chris Ray Gun releases “Ain’t no rest for the triggered.” Chris Ray Gun was a prototypical anti-sjw YouTuber who was heavily opposed to sjws and their tactics but not necessarily leftism itself. On this day he released “"Ain't No Rest for the Triggered" - Social Justice: The Musical” mocking sjws and their tactics and referencing some of the key events that had happened by that point.

5/17/16: Evalion banned from YouTube. Evalion was a Canadian e-girl who was sympathetic to Nazism and not afraid to share her views. She went viral in May of 2016 until YouTube pulled the plug. If you want to watch her old videos most can be seen here.

5/20/16: “We didn’t start the movement.” The talented Walt Bismarck unveiled his parody of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” chronicling the rise of the alt-right at the 2016 American Renaissance conference. This was a cross over between the older white nationalist movement and the younger heavily online meme based movement. If you want a retrospective of Walt Bismarcks time in the alt-right it can be read here.

5/28/16: Harambe shot. Harambe was a gorilla who was fatally shot at the Cincinnati zoo after a 3 year old child fell in his enclosure. To me, there is something perverse about taking a primate, locking it in an a small enclosure to the point where around half are on anti-depressants, and swiftly ending its life when one of ours could face potential harm but obviously I would feel it was justified if it was my kid. Anyways Harambe became a pretty big meme in the months afterwards, mostly among the relatively apolitical. I hesitated to include this but I think that a somewhat Straussian view of the Harambe meme is that it was mocking the Black Lives Matter movement, mourning a dark colored male of African descent who was killed in a legally justified shooting.

6/1/16: Triggered feminist video posted. Alex Jones posted a video of Trump supporters debating protestors outside of a rally. Despite the fact that the woman pictured below was relatively calm, she had a very expressive face so she went viral as a “triggered feminist.”

6/3/16: Brock Turner letter published. Stanford swimmer Brock Turner was found guilty of sexual assault, and on this day the victim impact statement written by his victim was published and went viral. The case was famous because Turner’s father’s letter had asked that his life not be ruined for a mere “20 minutes of action,” and after mattress girl and UVA feminists finally had their case. Turner ultimately only received a 6 month sentence which he served three months of and is still a punching bag of feminists to this day. His sentence eventually led the judge to getting recalled. The left got mad that the recall meant judges were less willing to give out lenient sentences to perpetrators who weren’t blonde haired blue eyed athletes.

6/2/16: Trump rally in San Jose. Trump held a rally in San Jose and many of his supporters were assaulted. There are many stories one could focus on but I think the picture below pretty much sums it up.

6/3/16: Were building a wall he’s a Mexican. After their was controversy over Trump questioning whether an American born judge who was a member of La Raza could be fair in Trump’s cases due to Trump’s policies Trump defended himself by saying “We’re building a wall, he’s a Mexican.” One of many times wasn’t afraid to pull punches during his 2016 campaign.

6/12/16: Pulse nightclub shooting. Omar Mateen entered the Pulse nightclub in Orlando Florida and killed 49 people before being killed by law enforcement. This event got Trump to double down on his support for banning Muslims from the country and got him to make some statements sympathetic to gays.

6/23/16: Brexit. The UK narrowly voted to leave the EU. This was considered a victory for racism and populism at the time, though the end result was Britain getting more non-European immigration.

7/7/16: Dallas officers shot. Racial tensions in the country were running high after the deaths at the hands of the police of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile which had occurred on the two days before. Micah Xavier Johnson fatally shot 5 police officers in Dallas as revenge for these killings before he was blown up by a robot. At the funeral for the officers, Obama lectured about racism.

7/10/16: Seth Rich Killed. Early in the morning, DNC staffer Seth Rich was fatally shot walking along the streets of DC. His murder remains unsolved to this day. It became a huge conspiracy theory among Trump supporters online that Rich was killed for leaking DNC information to Wikileaks. This was unsurprisingly never proven.

7/11/16: Female Ghostbusters comes out. This remake of Ghostbusters with all women was widely criticized by anti-sjw types for remaking something that didn’t need to be made. Leslie Jones who starred in the movie was heavily targeted by Twitter trolls including Milo Yiannpoulous.

7/14/16: Nice truck attack. The night of Bastille day, Tunisian immigrant Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel drove his truck down the promenade in Nice killing 86 before he was fatally shot by police. This was another episode in the long list of Islamic terrorist attacks that occurred in the mid 2010s.

7/21/16: Alex Jones crashes TYT at the RNC. At the RNC, Alex Jones decided to crash The Young Turks coverage. Jimmy Dore spat on Alex and Anna Kasparian screamed “get off the stage you fat fuck!”

7/30/16: Trump asks if a Muslim woman was allowed to speak. After the father of a Muslim US soldier who was killed in Iraq spoke at the DNC, Trump again found himself in hot water by asking if his wife was “allowed to speak.”

8/11/16: Hugh Mungus Incident. Rudy Pantoja (pictured below) was speaking in favor of a new police station called The Bunker in Seattle. When asked his name by BLM activist Zarna Joshi, he responded “Hugh Mungus”. She perceived this as sexual harassment and freaked out which became a viral video.

8/17/16: CNN apologizes for misrepresenting BLM protestor on air. After violence broke out after a police killing in Milwaukee, CNN aired the victim’s sister saying "Don’t bring the violence here and the ignorance here," What they declined to air was her saying "Y’all burning down shit we need in our community. Take that shit to the suburbs. Burn that shit down! We need our shit! We need our weaves. I don’t wear it. But we need it." CNN’s selective editing reversed the meaning of her statement from one of violence to one of peace. This was spread around as an example of how dishonest the media can be, though CNN did apologize.

8/22/16: The left can’t meme. A user on /pol/ posted that the reason that the left can’t meme is because the right makes memes that are actually true. Based on the memes chronicled in this series, it does seem to be the case that the right makes more successful memes than the left.

8/25/16: Clinton gives speech about Alt-Right. Clinton gave a speech warning about the dangers of the alt-right and its association with Trump. As she is speaking you can hear someone shout “pepe!”

8/26/16: Colin Kaepernick sits during national anthem. To protest police brutality, 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick decided to remain seated during the national anthem. This would evolve into the iconic kneeling protest and become a flashpoint in the culture war.

8/27/16: Annaliese Nielson meltdown released. Annaliese Nielson had a meltdown at an Uber driver for having a hula doll on his dashboard. This event happened in March, but ended up going viral in late August. It was a classic social justice meltdown.

8/31/16: Ben Shapiro gives a list of people in the Alt-Right. When asked to give a list of people who were alt-right or alt-right adjacent, Shapiro produced this list on twitter.

9/1/16: Proud boys founded. Sometime in September of 2016, (exact date unknown) Gavin McInnes (founder of Vice news) founded the Proud Boys, which he called a Western chauvinist organization. This group would get involved in many street brawls and would be considered a gang by the left, and a defender against Antifa thugs by the right.

9/5/16: Flight 93 election article. Michael Anton’s flight 93 election described 2016 as the last chance for conservatives to take control of the country. This showed the extent that some on the right viewed the current political conflict as existential.

9/21/16: Shooting of Keith Lamont Scott. In Charlotte, black man Keith Lamont Scott was fatally shot by a black police officer, leading to race riots. This may have been the first time there were race riots over an incident where only blacks were involved.

9/21/16: Operation Google. /pol/ users come up with a new dictionary to replace slurs to get past Google AI.

9/27/16: Jordan Peterson C-16 lecture released. Canadian psychology professor Jordan Peterson released a lecture about bill C-16 which included gender identity as a protected class, and why he felt that it was dangerous. This began his path to becoming an internet celebrity among many on the right.

10/1/16: When we win tweet. Sam Hyde tweeted the infamous tweet below. Similar to the Flight 93 election article, this tweet was representative of how desperate some people on the right found the current political situation to be.

10/7/16: Access Hollywood tape released. At the height of the run up to the 2016 election a tape was released of Trump claiming that he would “grab em by the pussy” referring to women. This caused an immediate frenzy, and calls for Trump to step down even among Republicans.

10/7/16: The Redpill film By Cassie Jaye released. Former feminist Cassie Jaye released a movie describing why she was becoming more sympathetic to the men’s rights movement. This led to protests against theaters that were airing the film.

11/8/16: Election Day. Trump shocked the world and won the election, defeating Hillary Clinton to become the 45th president.

11/14/16: Tucker Carlson show begins. Tucker Carlson Tonight would go on to push the boundaries of what was acceptable on the right over the next few years, frequently making controversial arguments about race and immigration.

11/19/16: Crowd at Richard Spencer speech gives Nazi Salute. At a conference for the National Policy Institute Spencer shouted, “Heil our people, heil victory” to which many people in the audience made Roman salutes. This incident went viral and led many to believe that the alt-right was nothing more than polished up Nazism.

11/24/16: Riley Dennis says that your dating preferences are transphobic. Riley Dennis, a poorly passing trans person made a video claiming that you are transphobic if you don’t want to date a trans person. This video became fodder for anti-sjws for a bit.

11/30/16: Beige Power. CBC released a music video promoting racial mixing claiming that everyone will be mixed by 3000. This was an example of how extreme some of the content put out by the mainstream media in the mid 2010s was.

12/4/16: Comet Ping Pong incident. After Pizzagate conspiracy theories circulated throughout late 2016, a man came to the Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant armed with an AR-15 thinking there were kids being held in the basement. Eventually he surrendered, and no one was injured.

12/5/16: Million Dollar Extreme Presents: World Peace canceled. At this point comedian Sam Hyde was becoming popular with the alt-right. This was a main reason why his show on adult swim was canceled.

12/6/16: Richard Spencer speaks at Texas A & M. Richard Spencer gave a speech at Texas A & M. Towards the end he got in an argument with a professor and called him fat.

12/15/16: Jew Goldstein gives Kurt Eichenwald a seizure for his posts. Eichenwald was known to be epileptic and constantly trolled by people on the right trying to trigger his seizures. A user called “Jew Goldstein” posted something with the text “You deserve a seizure for your posts” with a graphic trying to trigger his epilepsy, to which Eichenwald’s account posted the following: