I've no idea what this "gamergate" is, and what it has to do with the kkk.
I know this is long but it's worth the read if you want to educate yourself on the subject.
It's a bit complicated but I witnessed it from the beginning. Before there was even a GG hashtag, an ex-boyfriend of an indie dev released a blog post about how his gf cheated on him with several guys and emotionally abused him in his relationship. He had chat logs and everything. Most people didn't care about the sex scandal part, just the fact allegedly there was a relationship between a journalist who had covered that indie developer. But imo this isn't what started GG. It was the reaction to the story from journalists and indie devs. There was a lot of censorship across gaming sites. A youtube video talking about the story was taken down with a DMCA. A reddit thread had over 20k comments deleted on the subject in it. Journalists and devs were insulting people who were questioning the story on twitter.
A few examples of journalists or devs insulting at the beginning of this:
http://41.media.tumblr.com/d3af9973bcd8500d639820631b5002ba/tumblr_nb7vhzKJ4y1tkhroeo1_1280.png
http://41.media.tumblr.com/67ef882c52d4d04e49f699c9612eb55a/tumblr_nb4mgc3s9n1tkhroeo1_1280.png
http://40.media.tumblr.com/8851b01e1348a6ccad2f00c9b640ff96/tumblr_nb65gioCZj1tkhroeo1_1280.jpg
http://40.media.tumblr.com/6f9fb624582e4d5a09ceb2174da96c18/tumblr_nb4rxxXlrK1tkhroeo1_1280.png
http://40.media.tumblr.com/82908ee658a1314183fe1a41179b0764/tumblr_nb4oyrLkg21tkhroeo1_1280.png
http://41.media.tumblr.com/a9e7ae2fb1e6d1a117b9e3c691b99860/tumblr_nb4pxxqFev1tkhroeo1_540.png
http://40.media.tumblr.com/c8a76a69831e91972d4e14352389052f/tumblr_nb42c3UCgz1tkhroeo1_1280.jpg
There is far more vitriol from anonymous people and a lot still missing from other journalists and devs. Due to the censorship and insults, journalists looked guilty so people started doing more investigating and found far worse examples like Patricia Hernandez writing several articles about Anna Anthropy when she was roommates with her. She also use to date a dev named Christina Love and still wrote articles about that dev. Nathan Grayson being close friends with Robin Arnott came out and he had also written several articles about him. It came out that several journalists were paying Zoe Quinn and other devs money every month. Journalists funding developers' personal lives and covering them. Huge conflict of interest there. There are more examples of unethical journalism but want to keep this short.
It also came out that Zoe Quinn earlier that year had misrepresented a feminist charity/contest for a woman to design her own video game with their developers. The charity was called The Fine Young Capitalists. No journalists would report on this even before GG. Think about that for a minute. Websites that can't stop talking about how bad women have it in the industry and how we need more women developing games refused to report about a charity/contest designed to promote women designing games.
So this story goes on and for about a week and Stephen Totilo (EiC of Kotaku) says he spoke with the journalist (Grayson) about the relationship and how Grayson claims the relationship began after the article was written. But it was too late, people were upset at having been insulted and bullied for a week and there were other stories much worse about unethical journalists. Several days later, instead of apologizing and trying to do better and adopt ethical policies journalists came together and wrote 10 articles (Gamers are Dead articles) in a single day attacking gamers, the consumers they are suppose to serve. This was obviously coordinated between journalists and this is around the time the GamerGate hashtag was created and this event really set off the whole thing. Now journalists were using articles to attack and demonize them. This is why people became even more upset at this story of corruption, because it wasn't just swept under the rug. Journalists and indie devs actually attacked their critics and libeled them as misogynists and a hate group. Had the story proceeded normally and journalists not insulted and attacked their critics, it would have been over in a couple weeks.
A couple weeks after those articles are released it comes out that there was GameJournosPro group. 150 journalists across different gaming websites who all colluded and coordinated on news coverage and this story in particular. You could see Ben Kuchera and Kyle Orland pressuring Greg Tito of the Escapist to censor all talk of GamerGate. You could see how this group was used a year earlier to try to blacklist a journalist Allistair Pinsof which is illegal. Again no apology or remorse. They just deleted the group after it was discovered. Likely to make sure nothing else was leaked.
Also if anyone still thinks this is some sort of hate group. Due to GamerGate spreading awareness of TYFC charity and donating to it, they were able to raise $70k so they could run their contest. And last I heard they selected their winner and are developing the game. GG has also raised over $40k to various other charities like anti-bullying, suicide prevention, food for the hungry, animals, etc. Of course you won't hear about this at all from the media.
On the subject of harassment and the alleged harassers in GG. The threats made to Anita Sarkeesian at the end of August and Brianna Wu do not mention GG at all. Someone made a dummy account on twitter and then sent threats to them. Those accounts were reported and suspended, but AS and BW insist on the threats being made by GamerGate even though there is no way to know for sure. It's also worth mentioning many people in GamerGate or sympathetic to it were doxxed or threatened. A list of about 20 people who were doxxed for talking about GG was circulating around 2 months into the story. I didn't recognize all the names but of those I did, seven were women. People were receiving emails or DMs telling them they knew who they were and where they lived, posting their names and addresses. And if they didn't stop tweeting about GG they would release their personal info. In one case I remember them threatening to also release someone's family info so their family would be harassed. In another a woman was threatened with being raped with a metal object. Keep in mind these people had the courage to screenshot these emails or DMs and post them. Who knows about many were successfully intimidated.
IMO third party trolls were sending threats to people on both sides of the argument, but mostly to people on the GamerGate hashtag. I saw a couple accounts where people would pretend to be on one side of the issue for a day, then a couple days later you would see them on the other side. Typically they would be attacking and trying to make the side they were on look bad. If the story had been reported on properly by journalists I don't think the trolls would have gotten so much attention. But it was convenient to use them to represent everyone on the hashtag because journalists didn't want to have to face responsibility for their actions and the controversy they caused.
It's also worth mentioning that Kotaku is owned by Gawker media and Polygon is owned my Vox media. When gamers started emailing advertisers for Kotaku and Polygon to point out their unethical and corrupt behavior, their parent media companies got involved and used their other media outlets to continue to accuse GG of being misogynists and a hate group. Somehow this lie spread to MSM and that's why that's all you hear. ZQ, BW and AS have also made a ton of money off this controversy and blaming GG.
The whole thing is absurd. Tens (likely hundreds) of thousands of people ,men, women, black, white, straight, gay, etc, did not come together to harass a couple of women or all women in the gaming industry. The idea is ludicrous. I just can't fathom how people believe something so insane. There are actually people who say that the only reason people in GG talk about ethics is so they can use it as a smokescreen to harass women. Does anyone believe that? Even if there were a few people who were apart of GG and harassing people, there are tens of thousands perhaps hundreds of thousands of people apart of this thing on Twitter. There have been about 7 million tweets on the subject. Using a few bad apples to judge everyone is misleading and disingenuous. It would be like me going to prison and using the murderers and criminals there who are conservative or liberal or apart of what ever group to represent that entire group. It's wrong. You're suppose to ignore trolls not give them the attention they desperately want and thrive on.
There is more but I can't remember everything and I wanted to keep this as brief as possible while touching on everything. A lot of aspects and different stuff to this story. It's been going on for 8 months after all. If anyone has any questions or wants clarifications about the story, I can probably answer them.
