Some Thoughts on the Asmongold Controversy and Gaza

So, the other day, I saw a lot of people talking about Asmongold and his “stance” on Gaza. He made some incredibly hateful comments on the genocide happening over there, then got suspended by Twitch, then released an incredibly lacking apology tweet, released a YouTube video talking about it, and later said some other weird things on a Subreddit…

And well, today, I wanted to explain what happened to raise awareness, talk about what exactly was said and link to some resources in relation to it, and then also share my thoughts on the matter and give some insights on how I personally feel about it.

Also, I’ll talk about the “apology” that Asmongold put forward. In his video, Asmongold said that he wants to be held accountable for his conduct which is commendable, so this post does that.

Please don’t harass anyone. Period. No matter what folks say, they’re still humans. No matter how big of a platform Asmongold has and how much success he may have and no matter what he says, he also is a human. So don’t harass him or his community or whoever.

Content Warnings for racism, islamophobia, hateful stereotypes and white supremacist rhetoric.

1. What happened?
2. “Inferior Culture”
3. “Caught in the Crossfire”
4. Apologies?
5. Twitch’s Suspension of Asmongold
6. Conclusion

What happened?

On a stream, Asmongold went on a weird rant about people in Palestine, Muslims and their “inferior culture”. I couldn’t find the full stream for all of the context since he’s suspended but here’s the clip that went viral which doesn’t really need much “context”. There’s no world where the stuff uttered here is okay all of a sudden just because you add some context unless the context is “What I’m about to say is a very stupid and harmful joke that I don’t mean at all” or something along those lines.

Someone seems to have said that they “know plenty of Muslims that are okay with gays” to which Asmongold replies with “Well, I’m not talking about Muslims, I’m talking about the people in Palestine. The truth is that’s what they do over there. So, no, I’m not going to support a group of people that would do the genociding if they had the power to do it. I’m sorry to say. I’m not. I don’t have any sympathy for them. I’m sure to some degree there are people that are caught in the crossfire – this is sad – but at the end of the day, this is an immoral evil culture. I truly believe that. And I don’t have sympathy for people that are a part of it.”

The clip then has an edit and goes on with him saying “No, I’m not going to cry a fucking river when people who have genocide that’s baked into their laws are getting genocided. I don’t give a fuck. They’re terrible people. It’s not even a question. It’s crazy that people don’t see it that way. They’d be doing the same thing.”

To a question of “how much did they kill?”, Asmon responds: “As many as they can. They’re not able to kill as many people as Israel because they don’t have as many bombs and as many weapons. But if they did, they’d be doing the same thing. That’s it. Just takes enough. These people are not your allies, they’re not the same as us, they come from an inferior culture that is horrible – it kills people for their identity and it’s directly antithetical to everything Western values stand for and it is an inferior culture in all ways. It is that simple.”

The image on the right was just from a year ago with Zack calling it “weird as fuck” that so many people come out with statements on the Israel/Palestine conflict as if they need to comment on it, and how e should “please stop this weird culture around expecting people with no relevant background or education to talk about world events/politics”.

Obviously, Zack doesn’t have the relevant background, judging by the statements, so this is pretty darn weird.

Feels ironic that he’s doing the thing. idk

“Inferior Culture”

So, right away, Asmongold clearly stated that he is not talking about Muslims in this case but rather the Palestinian people who are getting bombarded daily and have been a victim of Genocide for the past 75+ years. He is not talking about Muslims. Clearly. It’s what he said. Right there. I linked to the clip, too.

He doesn’t have any sympathy for them. He “truly believes” that they are an evil immoral culture. He thinks that they kill as many as they can. This last point sounds a ton like Islamophobic rhetoric that is often used to discredit, insult and dehumanize Muslims, calling them bloodthirsty barbarians and the like. I’ve encountered it a lot personally, as a Muslim who passes for a white guy. It’s vile.

That said, I’m not sure whether that was Asmongold’s intent here. It’s just the same wording that islamophobes use and he’s using it in the context of people in the middle-east… Maybe he just doesn’t know. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.

But then he goes on to claim that they’re “not the same as us” and that they’re from “an inferior culture in all ways”… which is just rough. Perhaps, we could again argue about good faith and maybe he doesn’t know the nazi rhetoric all that well or he didn’t mean to say that they’re less human than us or that they’re inferior. In this case, he claims that their “culture” is inferior but that’s just a broad term to use and quite frankly, I have no idea what he means by it.

Culture is understood as “the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively as well as the ideas, customs and social behaviour of a particular people or society”. It’s these people’s “way of life” but the term also encompasses norms, values, beliefs, knowledge, arts, laws, institutions, habits of individuals, and capabilities. Things like food, legends, oral history, proverbs, jokes, and dance are also part of the “culture” of a people. The same goes for music, theatre, costume, literature, architecture, traditional wear, and the like. Obviously, religion also influences culture.

To call Palestinian culture “inferior” is incredibly bizarre and quite frankly disturbing. If we suddenly judge some culture as inferior and ours as superior based on our perceptions of the world, then where does that leave us? If he just means specific laws, specific people, specific institutions, or specific groups of people, then that’s a different thing… but he’d have to clarify it. Calling all of the culture inferior, especially when its residents are mostly Muslim, has this very Islamophobic and racist connotation to it.

Now, I do think that behind those words needs to be intent and I’m not sure how much of that Asmongold has. Clearly, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about and how rich Palestinian culture is. Clearly, he doesn’t understand how vile and evil it is for Israel to destroy some of the oldest buildings in the world and some of the biggest collections of artefacts by specifically targeting those pieces of culture with their bombs and rockets.

Israel is actively trying to stamp out and erase Palestinian culture. Asmongold doesn’t know about this, is what I think. If he does know about that, then his claim that their culture is inferior is obviously more vile… but I can’t look into this head, obviously. Again, the benefit of the doubt… but it gets harder to give it to him, all these things considered.

“Caught in the Crossfire”

So, his claims that they’re an evil and immoral inferior culture that would do genocide if they could are incredibly vile because they justify and defend what Israel is doing. He doesn’t disapprove of it because “they are not like us”. Israel’s politicians also called Palestinians “animals that look like humans”, “barbarians”, and “children of darkness”. It’s an attempt at dehumanization. But perhaps Asmongold doesn’t know that. What he does know and doesn’t seem to deny is that Israel is committing genocide. At least his wording of “[Palestinians would do it as well if they could]” insinuates that Israel is doing it but he doesn’t seem to say anything against it.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s pro-genocide or whatever. Just because you said one thing, that doesn’t mean that you are against or for something else. Saying “I love pancakes” doesn’t mean that I hate waffles. I love those, too. But I was talking about pancakes.

Just because he wasn’t talking about Israel’s atrocities and war crimes committed, that doesn’t mean that he’s for it or anything. That segment of the stream only talked about Palestinians, after all, and how they’re evil.

But the rhetoric that they’re against everything that Western values stand for makes it appear, to put it mildly, that he is in support of this almost holy war against the Palestinian people. It makes it appear as if Asmongold does like that Israel is doing it. It feels as if genocide is good if “we” do it – with “we” being people who are not “them”. Again, “they’re not like us”.

I get why people are upset. I’d be upset. In fact, I am upset. Asmongold has a huge platform and is very openly spewing hate speech. With that in mind, though, I don’t want to say that he’s in support of the genocide even if he says that he has no sympathy for them. It sounds contradictory, I know. It’s just he doesn’t say “enough” basically for it to come across as if there is true racism behind what he’s saying.

As such, I wouldn’t say that he’s a racist or islamophobe or whatever… but he does say racist and Islamophobic things. Even if he specifies that it’s not about the religion.

With that in mind, Asmongold does belittle what Israel is doing. He claims that “there are people caught in the crossfire” when in reality, Israel’s soldiers are intentionally attacking, crippling and murdering children, women, clearly-marked journalists, the elderly, healthcare staff, food trucks, refugees fleeing, the sick and disabled, as well as many other non-combatants.

Amnesty also has a report on Israel’s failure to allow adequate humanitarian aid to reach Gaza right here that I recommend reading. Here’s an article by 972mag on the AI-assisted mass assassination tool that Israel is using to carry out its war and to kill non-military targets with utmost precision.

Israel is blocking off food supplies, often destroying them, too, or using them to specifically spray hellfire onto the groups of people that come for their food rations at the border. There is footage of it. Here’s an Aljazeera article on the Flour massacre from February 29th, 2024 where 118 Palestinians were killed and 760 injured after Israeli forces opened fire while the Palestinians were seeking food from aid trucks. This occurred directly after the World Food Programme reported that more than half a million Palestinians were at risk of famine in Gaza.

This was an aimed attack at non-combatants. These people were not caught in the crossfire. They were starved and dependent on the food rations that were supposed to come there via the aid trucks. The humanitarian aid was used as bait by Israel so that Israeli soldiers can shoot at these starved women, men, and children. It’s atrocious.

This is not what “caught in the crossfire” means.

Oh, and here’s another video on the Flour Massacre that I recommend watching and one about the Gaza Healthcare Letters.

When Asmongold says that people are “caught in the crossfire”, he’s either…

• stupid and truly believes that this war is literally just the IDF and Hamas shooting bullets at each other and some child walks into the literal crossfire…
• or he just thinks that the many, many, many civilian casualties are a shame but they all happen to kill Hamas leaders, even though evidence that Hamas was there only pops up in the rubble after Israel has bombed the place and not beforehand, like that one “list of Hamas leaders” which was actually just a work schedule from the hospital that they bombed…
• or he knows about this all and is being disingenuous.

The difference between option 1) and 2) is that in 1) he’s just stupid and doesn’t know how bad it is and in 2) he buys into Israeli lies, even when they have to correct themselves multiple times on their story whenever they get called out on misinformation, straight-up lies, and faked evidence.

I’m sure there are other options here but these are the ones I see. I can’t imagine him actually believing that the 40,000 Palestinians killed, 16,456 of which were children (the number is from August, here is one source here but there are plenty of others if you don’t like that one), are just “caught in the crossfire”. He either thinks that those are combatants, too, or he’s talking out of his arse.

Btw, Israel repeatedly has claimed that all Palestinians are part of Hamas which is untrue. They repeatedly called them inferior. They repeatedly attacked their culture and cultural goods and destroyed cultural landmarks, excavated graves, spewed faeces onto houses, and made every single effort so far (except for nuclear ones) possible to destroy their culture and people. With that in mind, Asmon seems to be a sheep.

Apologies?

On October 15th, Zack posted an apology on Twitter after being suspended for two weeks from Twitch. His apology states:

“Looking back on it, I was way too much of an asshole about the Palestine thing. My bad. Of course, no one deserves to have their life destroyed even if they do things or have views I find regressive. You guys deserve more than me saying stupid shit like that. I’ll do better.”

Saying “Oops, my bad, won’t do it again”, eh?

This isn’t an apology. It’s an insult. He still calls their views and way of life regressive but frames it as an opinion. He belittles what he actually said, claiming that he was just “too much of an asshole” as if he was too harsh with the truth rather than him spewing hate speech about a whole group of people. Again, he may not be a racist… but he’s said racist things, essentially, and that’s bad and when you’re caught, you admit them.

And then, in a video called “My Plans Moving Forward“, Zackary goes on to claim that he said vile stuff and really only addresses the point of saying that he “doesn’t care about the people affected”. He admits that there is a genocide happening but fails to say that it’s bad, just like on his stream.

He then makes remarks about his religious upbringing which influenced his views a lot on religious extremism and claims that he made no effort at all to differentiate between the two… but if you remember the beginning of the post, I transcribed what he said. He said that he wasn’t talking about Muslims. He’s talking about the Palestinian people.

It’s fucking weird.

All of a sudden, he claims that he was talking about Muslims – extreme/radical ones at that – but he didn’t do that. He specifically said that he was talking about the Palestinian people. Not Hamas. Not Muslims. The people. The victims of genocide. This is disingenuous.

Now, I did watch the video. Twice in fact. And I do think it’s pretty raw, especially when you get to the second half of the video where he talks about how his views have become more and more radicalized and how he lost control and how he wants to better himself. I feel for him.

He lives in a “dumpster” as he has acknowledged multiple times and it seems genuine that he wants to make steps to improve his life and be better moving forward, cleaning his room, making sure to be less “anti” and more “with” people… but he also went on to immediately complain about “DEI” and women and people of colour in video games on Reddit.

He stated that he will never walk away from his stance on that which feels really weird when he’s admitted that he’s become a hateful person and that he doesn’t want to spread hate anymore.

Again, I watched the thing twice. The first time, it just popped up in my recommendations and I watched it and I felt bad for him. I really did. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt but I was unaware of what he actually said. Then I did research and saw the clips of allt he vile shit he was spewing. And then I watched it again and realised that he wasn’t apologizing really. He was doing damage control and hoping that people don’t catch on to him not saying anything about the “inferior culture” bit and the whole thing about him specifically stating that he doesn’t mean Muslims but the Palestinian people.

On this note, religious extremism is bad. All extremism is bad. In my eyes, as someone who is Muslim, I don’t think that extremist or radical Muslims are Muslims. I also don’t think radical or extremist Christians are Christians. The same goes for other people who are so extreme, vile and corrupt that they go against a group they represent or claim to be a part of. I don’t think this is something that needs to be said. It’s been said so many times.

But Asmongold wasn’t saying this. He was saying that the victims of the genocide that he admitted to occurring are not like us and are of an inferior culture. He said that they would do the same. He said that genocide is in their laws. I have no clue where he got that from.

Twitch’s Suspension of Asmongold

Something I also wanted to touch on was the fact that Twitch suspended his zackrawrr account for two weeks. His Asmongold account on Twitch is still up but he doesn’t stream on that one, so it’s whatever.

Banning him was the right choice, for sure, but I don’t see how two weeks is justified. Like, where is the standard for it?

What I mean is that people get banned for at least 30 days for not dressing appropriately enough. Female-presenting streamers and VTubers get banned for 30+ days if they show hips or if their attire is in some inexplicable way “too sexual”, even when they’re fully covered up.

Meanwhile, failing to say that genocide is good and even justifying genocide in the name of some supposed “Western values” on top of overgeneralizing a group of people as “not like us” (which could mean anything, to be fair) and “of an inferior, vile and immoral culture” while also stating misinformation… and doing all of this incredibly big audience…

This nets you two weeks in Twitch jail. A slap on the wrist.

It’s a double standard. If we want to protect children or keep Twitch safe for work, then we shouldn’t allow racist conspiracies and borderline white supremacist statements.

Banning Asmongold was the right choice as it sets a boundary that nobody shall cross, no matter how big of a streamer and moneymaker they are, but giving only a two-week suspension to him shows that dictating what women can and cannot wear is apparently more important than stopping hate speech.

If showing hips on a VTuber model nets you a 30-day suspension, hateful conduct should be at least that and then some.

I’m not advocating for some cancellation or permanent suspension. Zack can only really do better when given the chance to do so, after all, and I do think that it’s important to give him yet another second chance. Perhaps he’ll at least do better in the whole “generalizing a group of people as vile and inferior while they are being currently eradicated by a hateful government that is very open about their intent of eradicating their culture, society and race” department. My expectations are very low.

Conclusion

Don’t harass Asmongold. He’s only human. He said in his video apology that he wants to be held accountable and this post does this. I hope he realises what he’s said and done. I hope he reads this. I hope he gets his shit together and that he truly does do better.

I used to watch his transmog streams a while back but eventually stopped because his community is very toxic, his views are terrible, and I just didn’t like the change I was seeing. Asmongold probably changed his views and stances on some things which is commendable but only time will tell if he changes it back and goes back to making stupid claims and stealing content and the like.

I just hope this post helps shed some light on what this situation was about and what I’m dissatisfied with.

This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.

If you see this article anywhere other than Indiecator.org then this article has been scraped. Please let me know about this via E-Mail.