Strange days indeed. Most peculiar, memelords.
Shia LaBeouf is a pretty good actor (check him out in Fury, he’s great) and a dumb hashtag-hippie. You may have heard about his “He Will Not Divide Us” project, in which he has set up a live webcam (hewillnotdivide.us) outside the Museum of the Moving Image in NYC. The idea is that he and others will stand there and keep repeating “He will not divide us” for four years straight in order to… um… I don’t know. I don’t know what they think they’re accomplishing. It’s just another amusingly futile protest. But it’s also brought some even bigger losers out of the woodwork.
Here’s a supercut of some of the more memorable moments so far:
Okay, I want to focus on the clip of Shia bellowing in that kid’s face. At first glance, I figured he was the bad guy. He was picking on someone smaller than him. But then I listened to what that kid was saying:
“1488!”
“We must ensure the existence of white people–”
“Praise Kek!”
This is white–power slang and 4chan gibberish. He’s spouting neo-Nazi slogans because he think’s it’s funny. He’s trolling Shia LaBeouf, except in real life instead of from behind a keyboard. Same with the guys talking about the Holocaust, “Hitler did nothing wrong,” etc. Regardless of whether they actually believe that shit or they’re just trying to get a rise out of him, it makes me see this in a different light.
Call me an old fuddy-duddy, but I don’t see the humor in going up to Jewish people and trolling them with Nazi lulz. If that’s your goal, I think you can handle some loud noises in your ear.
Because unlike that black-bloc coward who blindsided Richard Spencer, Shia didn’t deck that kid. He got in his face, yes, but he didn’t escalate it. I’m sure he wanted to, but he didn’t. So I give him credit for that.
The whole thing still seems like a bad idea, though. Get some sleep, Shia. Trump will or will not divide us whether you exhaust yourself like this or not.
(Hat tip: William Hicks)