Deplatformed is a weekly column that looks into the nether reaches of the internet—outside the big few that everyone already covers—to tell you the political discourse online. It runs on Thursdays in the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter. If you want to get this column a day before we publish it, subscribe to web_crawlr, where you’ll get the daily scoop of internet culture delivered straight to your inbox.
1) ‘You are not drafting my daughter’
The new Oliver Anthony is a military-hating old man on TikTok.
Anthony, as you might recall, was the out-of-nowhere YouTube star who exploded into the public consciousness with his conservative rallying cry against the government.
Now, an elderly gentleman racked up over 6 million views with an anti-government, anti-military tirade demanding his daughter not be drafted.
“You are not drafting my daughter,” John Robinson, a.k.a @nationalmechanicgroup, proclaims with all the confident posturing of someone copy/pasting into their Facebook status a block of text that declares Meta Inc. and all its subsidiaries no longer retain the commercial rights to the statues, photos, and links shared on their profile.
Although the man seems old enough to have a daughter who would no longer be eligible for the Selective Service (which ends at 25), and women are not eligible to be drafted as it stands, the message excoriating the military has found a home across right-wing sites on the internet.
“This dude lays it out!” exclaimed a Gab user.
Others said he was no match for America’s war lust.
“His challenge will be accepted. They will literally kill him to get to his daughter.”
In 2021, the U.S. considered making women eligible for the draft, but the effort petered out. Over on the Selective Service’s page, a stock photo of happy women not being drafted makes it clear.
Robinson, though, wasn’t done. In a later video, he claims that the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade to turn women into “breeding cattle” to supply more troops for future wars.
Anyways. More old people should be on TikTok.
2) The 65-year-old Israel “Suppoorter”
Also on far-right sites like Gab and Patriots.win a new meme is percolating, highlighting what people think is the blanket support for Israel that captivates the left-of-center internet, and those who suddenly added Ukrainian flags to their Twitter bios without much thought when Russia invaded.
It’s the 65-year-old Israeli “suppoorter” meme.
Staring down the keyboard, the meme bandies about some spin on commentary online, mocking those that the isolationist right believes foment online support for the hegemonic government stance about the need for foreign wars.
All without willing to fight themselves.
“Unable to maintain erection unless he thinks about young men dying in the Middle East,” the meme goes. Crass, but for a segment of the population that wants to keep America’s military at home, it can seem absurd the number of people who immediately jumped to the most militaristic support of Israel and Ukraine, without concern for the death toll on both sides this war will cause.
3) Iron Dome isn’t real
On Rumble, the new claim is that Israel’s vaunted Iron Dome—which has been protecting citizens from Hamas rocket attacks—isn’t real.
User OP Freedom recently shared to his 60,000 followers a nearly debunking system. The story is based on a 2013 BBC report that raises some questions about Iron Dome’s success rate and makes a number of claims about the lack of damage Hamas rockets have done in Israel.
But OP Freedom takes it one step further. In his mind, “the Hamas rockets themselves don’t exist,” but Iron Dome is there to make “the Israeli people feel they’re under constant attack, but the government saves them.”
“The whole reason of Iron Dome is to stop non-existent missiles from hitting Israel and create the rage and public opinion [as an] excuse for the invasion of Gaza.”
The video concludes Iron Dome is just fireworks going off in the sky. An expensive show, but a show nonetheless.
Why does it all matter?
All told, the three narratives agree the American-Israel alliance is gaslighting the population into war. While America is sending troops, money, and weapons to Israel out in the open, they also need an entire façade to justify it, from fears of draft to online support to false flag attacks, to turn the U.S. population even more supplicant than it already is.
