Timeline of the Online Culture War 2020

The year the world stopped

2011-2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

1/3/20: Soleimani killed. Maybe not a huge culture war event, but tons of people thought there was going to be a war with Iran and it shows just how many things happened in 2020.

1/21/20: Age of Entitlement published. This book presented the thesis that the civil rights act had upended the old constitution and created a new one. This pushed criticism of the civil rights act further into the mainstream right.

1/13/20: Story breaks claiming Sanders had told Warren in 2018 that a woman couldn’t win presidency. Sanders denied this allegation. Months later when Warren dropped out she spoke about sexism, not seeing the irony.

1/25/20: Battle Beagle first appears in a hazmat suit. This day marks the oldest entry in the Wayback Machine where popular right-wing account Battle Beagle appears in a hazmat suit. During this period many rightwing anons were worried about the impacts of the Coronavirus, and put themselves in hazmat suits, while many in the mainstream were downplaying it.

2/3/20: Iowa Caucus. Iowa held their disastrous caucus where results would be unavailable the day of. A woman who found out Buttigieg was gay wanted to change her vote when she learned this. It was a good reminded that many voters don’t pay particularly close attention to politics.

2/13/20: NYC mayor’s Office tells people to come to Chinatown. In the early days of COVID, many politicians were working to reduce xenophobia and telling people to go to Chinatowns and Chinese New Years parades. These posts would be thrown back in their faces when COVID cases spiked.

2/23/20: Ahmaud Arbery killed. Arbery was killed going on a jog in Georgia. It was originally ruled justifiable homicide and did not make the national news… yet.

2/29/20: Biden wins SC primary. On leap day, Biden wins his first primary (heavily black South Carolina) putting him back in the race. The first COVID death is the US is confirmed.

3/12/20: Disneyland shuts down due to COVID outbreak. In March 2020 the world shutdown due to COVID. There are too many shutdowns to go through all of them but Disneyland shutting down was one of the most notable. If you want to relive what the vibe at the time was like, this clip from Big Brother Canada a few days later will put you back in the time period.

3/13/20: Breonna Taylor killed. During a raid on her apartment, Taylor’s boyfriend fired on the cops and they returned fire, fatally shooting Taylor. This created a new martyr for BLM perhaps their most notable female martyr of all time. In the aftermath there was debate about the extent that the officers announced their presence, and how valid the search warrant was.

3/14/20: Asian family stabbed at Sam’s club. Jose Gomez III entered a Sam’s Club in Midland Texas and attacked an Asian family believing that they were responsible for spreading the virus. This incident helped launch the “stop Asian Hate” movement against COVID motivated hate crimes. Many on the right pointed out that this crime and many other were committed by non-whites.

3/15/20: Biden announced he would choose a woman for VP. Later Biden announced that he would appoint a black woman to the supreme court.

3/16/20: Trump refers to COVID as “the Chinese virus.” The name of the virus would become a culture war issue with the left saying the Trump calling it the Chinese virus was to blame for anti-Asian hate crimes.

4/1/20: OnlyFans traffic rises 75%. As people lost jobs, OnlyFans traffic soared in early April. This became a flash point in the 2020s culture war. Some men saw OnlyFans as an easy cheat code for women to get money while women pointed out it was men paying their salaries. One prominent figure who started an OnlyFans around this time was Anisa Jomha, girlfriend of YouTuber iDubbz.

4/14/20: How’s my form challenge first released on TikTok. The “how’s my form challenge” was a TikTok trend where someone would ask a question relating to a stereotype and say “now that all the X are here how’s my form?” doing something relating to that group. Many of these were harmless but some were quite vulgar and there were many attempted cancellations.

4/19/20: Anti lockdown protests. Many people protested against COVID lockdowns, Trump Tweeted to “liberate” various states.

5/5/20: Ahmaud Arbery shooting video released. Thinking it would exonerate his client, a local attorney provided video of the shooting. This quickly went viral and BLM activists said that it showed a murder. White liberals all across America “jogged for Ahmaud.” After a video of Arbery walking around a construction site went viral many on the mainstream right including Matt Walsh said he was just a wholesome innocent guy going for a jog, and that walking around construction sites was just what guys do. Many further to the right disagreed.

5/25/20: Death of George Floyd. Everyone knows what happened so it isn’t worth repeating here.

5/25/20: Central Park birdwatching incident. An altercation over a dog being off leash led to a white woman calling the police on a black bird watcher after he allegedly said "Look, if you're going to do what you want, I'm going to do what I want, but you're not going to like it," The woman was branded as Central Park Karen and lost her job.

5/28/20: Minneapolis police station burned down. The majority of Americans said that this was justified.

5/28/20: Target Wheelchair lady. A white woman in a wheelchair worked to defend a Minneapolis target from being looted by blocking the path of looters, before she was sprayed with a fire extinguisher. There are claims that she had a knife but it is hard to tell exactly. She becomes a meme. The pro BLM people thought she was a busy body, while the anti-BLM people used her as an example of a vulnerable person being attacked. Years later, it is difficult to tell exactly what happened. The moment was later parodied in the TV show Atlanta. Target later reopened the looted store “with black shoppers in mind.”

5/28/20: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Trump says the violence is disrespecting the memory of Floyd, and uses the controversial phrase “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

5/29/20: Protests at CNN headquarters turn violent. As protests continued to break out across the country, the CNN building in Atlanta was damaged.

5/29/20: Trump rushed to bunker under white house. As protests raged outside of the White House, Trump was rushed to a bunker underneath.

5/30/20: Outside agitators blamed for protests. Towards the beginning of the protests, many on the left weren’t sure whether they could outright support the violence, so they blamed outside agitators for the destruction.

5/30/20: Protestor dragged to death by FedEx truck. Early Saturday morning in St Louis, a FedEx driver of a truck being robbed stepped on the gas after he saw a gun, dragging a 29 year old protestor and fatally injuring him.

5/30/20: Machete wielding man badly beaten in Dallas. Late on Saturday, a man wielding a machete went to a protest in Dallas and was badly beaten by BLM protestors. An account claiming to be him later claimed that he was trying to protect local businesses. The right saw this as proof the protests were violent and the left saw him getting beaten as a response to menacing the protestors.

5/31/20: Semi truck drives into crowd. A truck drove into a large crowd on a freeway in Minneapolis stopping before anyone was seriously injured or killed. Charges against the driver were eventually dropped.

6/1/20: Trump holds Bible outside of St. Johns church. He was accused of teargassing peaceful protestors to get this photo opportunity.

6/1/20: Harris encourages people to donate to protest bail fund. This tweet about encouraging people to donate to the MN Freedom fund was later used by Trump to attack Harris.

6/2/20: Bank of America pledges 1 billion dollars to support economic opportunity and fight racial inequality. CEO Brian Moynihan said “The events of the past week have created a sense of true urgency that has arisen across our nation, particularly in view of the racial injustices we have seen in the communities where we work and live. We all need to do more.” I am unable to find an update on how much was donated, and to where. The Washington Post listed this as the largest pledge made by any major US corporation.

6/2/20: David Dorn killed. Retired police captain David Dorn was fatally shot defending his friend’s pawn shop during riots. Since he was black he provided a politically correct way the right could speak out against the riots.

6/4/20: Lego pulls advertising. On this day, Lego pulled some advertising for sets relating to the police, and the white house.

6/4/20: Uber Eats announced it would not charge delivery fees to black owned businesses for the rest of the year. This announcement, later caused Uber to face claims of discrimination, and was forced to settle a claim with the Arizona attorney generals office.

6/5/20: LA Galaxy parts ways with player due to wife’s posts. In social media posts in her native Serbian, the wife of LA Galaxy player Aleksandar Katai made posts saying that the protestors were disgusting cattle and should be killed. This led to the team parting ways with Katai.

6/5/20: Open letter from health experts saying don’t shut down protests due to COVID. As protests for BLM were heating up 1000 public health experts published an open letter stating, “However, as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States. We can show that support by facilitating safest protesting practices without detracting from demonstrators’ ability to gather and demand change. This should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings, particularly protests against stay-home orders.” This blatant hypocrisy caused many on the center and right to lose faith in the experts.

6/7/20: Edward Colston statue thrown into the sea. On this day a statue of slave trader and philanthropist Edward Colston was thrown into the sea in Bristol. The “racial reckoning” had gone global. The people who did this were eventually acquitted.

6/8/20: CHAZ founded. On this day, the Capital Hill autonomous zone, also referred to as the Capital Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP) was started in the Capital Hill neighborhood in Seattle. Multiple teenagers were fatally shot, and the zone was disbanded on July 1st.

6/8/20: Democrats kneel. On this day, top Democrats put on Kente stolls and knelt for 8 minutes and 46 seconds to honor George Floyd. To many, this image perfectly symbolized the moment.

6/9/20: George Floyd’s Funeral in Houston: George Floyd’s funeral in Houston is held, complete with Gold Casket and horse drawn carriage. Concurrent with this memorial service, Texas governor Abbott commented on the death of George Floyd saying, “This is the most horrific tragedy I’ve ever personally observed,” and met with his family.

6/9/20: Cops TV show canceled. Police documentary show Cops was canceled. It was later revived.

6/10/20: Man suffers brain damage after confederate monument falls on his head. After a confederate monument in Portsmouth, Virginia was toppled, a man suffered brain damage.

6/11/20: Lady Antebellum name change. Due to the association with slavery, the band Lady Antebellum decided to drop “Antebellum” and become “Lady A.”

6/11/20: Rayshard Brooks fatally shot in Atlanta. Brooks was found sleeping in a Wendy’s drive-through before the police were called. A physical altercation ensued and Brooks took the officer’s taser before he was fatally shot. In the aftermath many Atlanta police officers called in sick to protest the city leadership, so called “blue flu,” with arrests dropping 71% during the sickout. The Wendy’s that this occurred at was burned down by Brooks’s white girlfriend (not to be confused with his wife).

6/15/20: Plainclothes officers NYC disbanded. On this day the NYPD announced they were disbanding the plainclothes anti-crime units.

6/15/20: Media reports of SDGE worker fired: A San Diego Gas and Electric company employee told the media that a stranger had taken a picture of him with his arm hanging out of the window that had circulated the internet. People claimed this was the racist “OK sign” and the employee was let go. He maintains he was just cracking his knuckles.

6/17/20: Aunt Jemima Syrup announces name change. Due to the association with racial stereotypes, Quaker announced they would be ending the Aunt Jemima logo. It was rebranded as Pearl Milling company the next year.

6/19/20: AP announces it will capitalize “Black.” The Associated Press announced “AP’s style is now to capitalize Black in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense, conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa. The lowercase black is a color, not a person.” They also stated that were still deciding about what to do about “white.”

6/19/20: Grant statue torn down in SF. At a time when many confederate statues were torn down, Union generals were not safe either. Many people saw this as BLM jumping the shark, while others doubled down.

6/20/20: Trump rally in Tulsa. Trump holds a rally in Tulsa after a break due to COVID. The date was originally 6/19 but changed due to Juneteenth which Trump claimed he made “very famous.” Many k-pop fans on TikTok got fake tickets to tank the rally. Later a Republican congressional candidate claimed that Korean band BTS stood for ‘big time socialists” and they were foreign agents undermining America. Trump looked sad after the rally.

6/22/20: Chick-fil-A CEO shines a black man’s shoes. At this time even many conservatives were capitulating to BLM.

6/22/20: Scott Alexander threatens to delete SSC. Scott Alexander threatened to delete his blog since the NYT was threatening to reveal his name.

6/23/20: FBI declares Bubba Wallace noose not a hate crime. After accusations of a noose being put in black NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace’s garage, the FBI investigated, and NASCAR announced it was just a garage rope pull.

6/24/20: Althea Bernstein claims she was set on fire. Biracial young woman Althea Bernstein claims she was set on fire and called racial slurs be four men she described as “classic Wisconsin frat bros.” It was widely suspected by the right that this was a hoax and the Berstein was burned while lighting something on fire during a protest. The case was eventually closed due to lack of evidence.

6/25/20: Dixie chicks change name. On this day the Dixie Chicks dropped “Dixie” from their name due to the association with the confederacy.

6/28/20: Mark and Patricia McCloskey point guns at BLM protestors. As BLM protestors walked through their private neighborhood, these two Saint Louis attorneys were filmed pointing guns at them. They became folk heroes of the right and spoke at the RNC. They were prosecuted by the county of Saint Louis but eventually pardoned.

6/29/20: American Renaissance, David Duke, NPI, Spencer Molyneux banned by YouTube. Due to the ongoing racial reckoning YouTube banned many controversial channels. The same day Reddit banned the r/The_Donald subreddit.

6/29/20: Golden Girls episode pulled from Hulu. On this day it was reported that Hulu pulled an episode where two characters in Golden Girls wear mud masks due to the association with blackface.

6/29/20: Report that many Real Estate agents were dropping the term “master bedroom.” CBS reported that many real estate agents were dropping the term due to the perceived association with slavery.

6/30/20: Allsup and Striker Debate Destiny and Vaush. At the height of the BLM riots the far left and far right got together to debate on whether there is racism in the criminal justice system. Neither side did a good job.

6/30/20: Irreversible Damage published. This book, which made the claim that many young girls were becoming trans due to social contagion shaped the discussion about transgender children.

7/2/20: Claira Janover fired. Harvard graduate Claira Janover was fired for saying she would stab people who said “all lives matter” to make a point that she would then point to her paper cut and say all cuts matter. She eventually posted a video of herself crying about losing her job.

7/4/20: Summer Taylor killed. Dawit Kelete entered a closed off portion of I-5 going the wrong way on an exit ramp drove at highway speeds striking and killing Summer Taylor.

7/11/20: Blake Neff resigns as writer for Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson writer Blake Neff was revealed as having written things things like “Honestly given how tired black people always claim to be, maybe the real crisis is their lack of sleep” as well as ““Black doods staying inside playing Call of Duty is probably one of the biggest factors keeping crime down.” Unsurprisingly this created controversy, and Neff resigned. Many on the online right felt that Tucker Carlson’s show no longer reflected their views as much after Neff departed. Note: a previous version of this article attributed an additional quote to Neff. He reached out to me and informed me that this was quote was something he responded to, not written by himself.

7/12/20: Redskins name change. Word leaks that the next day the Redskins football team would be announcing they would retire their name and logo permanently.

7/17/20: Smithsonian apologizes for “white culture” pamphlet. The National Museum of African American History and culture put out an apology for putting out a pamphlet claiming that rationality and individualism were “white culture.”

7/17/20: Reports of people dragged of the street in Portland. After a Summer of intense protests in Portland, there were reports of people being dragged off the street in unmarked cars. The left said that this was fascism while the right saw it as getting violent rioters under control.

7/25/20: Daniel Perry fatally shoots Garrett Foster. Perry drove into a crowd of protestors and fatally shot Foster who was legally carrying a weapon. Perry was convicted of murder but was eventually pardoned.

8/23/20: Richard Spencer endorses Biden. Breaking with his alt-right past, Spencer says that he supports Biden because liberals are clearly more competent.

8/23/20: Jacob Blake shot. After grabbing a knife during an arrest for domestic violence, Jacob Blake was shot and seriously injured in Kenosha Wisconsin. This led to protests and riots in Kenosha over the next couple of days.

8/24/20: Leafy banned from Youtube permanently. Controversial gaming and commentary YouTuber who was accused of flirting with the alt-right was banned permanently on this day for harassment.

8/25/20: Kyle Rittenhouse shooting. 17 year old Kyle Rittenhouse notoriously CROSSED STATE LINES going from Illinois into Wisconsin, and worked to protect local business from looters. Eventually he got into an altercation with Joseph Rosenbaum, and Rittenhouse fatally shot Rosenbaum after he chased him and tried to grab his gun. Thinking Rittenhouse was the aggressor, he was chased after by other protestors and Rittenhouse fatally shot and seriously injured another. This event quickly became a cultural flashpoint with the left calling it an attack on the right to protest and the right calling it self defense.

8/29/20: Killing of Aaron Danielson. Right wing Patriot Prayer member Aaron Danielson was killed by self proclaimed Antifa Michael Reinoehl pictured below. Days later, Reinoehl was killed in a stand off with law enforcement.

9/9/20: Cuties Movie comes out on Netflix. This movie was about young immigrant girls in France joining a suggestive dancing group. Many on the right claimed the movie was normalizing pedophilia.

9/11/20: Names of “police brutality victims” eligible for NFL helmets released. This season the NFL let players wear the names of black people who were allegedly victimized by racism or violence in various ways. The list included, Rayshard Brooks, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, the Central Park 5 Emmett Till, death row inmate Julius Jones, Althea Bernstein, and many more.

9/18/20: RBG dies. Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on this day. This raised the political temperature since Trump would try to appoint a new justice before the election, and created an iconic reaction clip.

9/20/20: Jake Gardner commits suicide. Gardner fatally shot rioter James Scurlock, in Omaha during the early days of the riots. The right believed this was self defense. Gardner was charged and fatally shot himself on this day.

9/22/20: Trump puts forth EO combatting divisive concepts in federal government. Trump puts forward executive order barring federal agencies from teaching divisive concepts about race and sex. This would lead to national discussions about “critical race theory.”

9/23/20: Uncle Ben’s brand changed. Mars decided to change the brand to “Ben’s Original” and remove the image of the black man from the packaging.

9/29/20: Trump tells the Proud Boys to “Stand Back and Stand by.” During the first debate Trump is asked to condemn the Proud Boys. He tells them to “stand back and stand by” which was taken by many people as support rather than condemnation.

10/14/20: Hunter Biden laptop controversy. On this day, the NY Post published a story about a laptop that Hunter Biden had abandoned at a computer repair shop. This story was censored by many social media platform and days many intelligence agents claimed it was likely misinformation. It was later determined that the laptop likely belonged to Hunter Biden.

10/16/20: Samuel Paty murdered. On this day French teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded by an Islamic terrorist for allegedly showing caricatures of the prophet Muhammad to his students. This brought Islamic terrorism into the spotlight for a few weeks before the election.

11/3/20: 2020 Election. Trump and Biden face off in the 2020 election. The election is not called by any media outlets until days later, but Trump declared himself the winner on election night.

11/3/20: Rhode Island name change. Rhode Island narrowly votes to change the name, changing it from “State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations” to “State of Rhode Island.” This was originally done by executive order in June, but needed to be officially changed by the voters.

11/7/20: AP declares Biden the winner of the 2020 election. Liberals spontaneously celebrate in the streets across America.

11/7/20: Four Season Total Landscaping press conference. Rudy Giuliani and Trump hold a press conference at the Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia about election fraud. It was widely speculated that this was supposed to be held at the Philadelphia Four Seasons. This clown show would set the tone for the Trump campaigns unsuccessful campaign to reverse the result of the election.

11/15/20: Wojak Race war kicks off. This meme kicked off a wojak race war for the next month or so on Twitter.

12/1/20: Elliot Page comes out as trans. Canadian actress Ellen Page announced that they are trans and now go by Elliot. This was one of the first major female celebrities to transition.

12/26/20: New York Times publishes an article about a girl whose admission was rescinded for saying the n-word years ago. Jimmy Galligan (pictured below on top), came across a video of Mimi Groves (pictured on bottom) saying the n-word as a freshman so he held onto it and decided to release it when the time was right, and eventually used it to get Groves’s college admissions revoked in 2020. On this day, the New York Times broke the story, and reported about the actions of Galligan sympathetically.