I just learned about a troll guide leaked from The Daily Stormer (neo-Nazi website) about 8 years ago. It teaches trolls how to write to be able to gain influence in mainstream culture without getting banned. It’s worth a skim. See bottom of the page of the HuffPost article in the DocumentCloud reader to read the full document.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/daily-stormer-nazi-style-guide_n_5a2ece19e4b0ce3b344492f2
It’s all focused on antisemitism, but I realized I’ve seen all those strategies before because they work on any target (LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, etc.), so why wouldn’t trolls use them?
Russian troll farms and alt-right influencers use these strategies on Reddit, we see it all the time. Sometimes it’s just your 84 year old uncle parroting the same troll tactics he got from Facebook not realizing where it came from. Where it came from knew what it was doing and was very intentional and explicit about harming others and using ploys to do so in this guide.
I took the main instructions from the guide and applied them to versions of what I see online.
And this is why the trolls all sound the same, it’s the same old game.
- “Why are there 57 genders now?”
Tactic: Mock identity to make complexity feel absurd.
Use humor to mask hate. Blur the line between joke and attack.
If you’re laughing, you’re not questioning. The guide says to use memes to ridicule. I see that in memes making fun of gender diversity and trying to make cruelty seem like common sense.
- “Why do drag queens need to be around children?”
Tactic: Manufacture moral panic.
I see them frame queer people as predators. They want to spark fear and shut down thought.
The guide says: Use kids as bait. Trolls exploit parental instincts to make LGBTQ+ visibility look threatening.
- “If immigrants love their country so much, why don’t they stay there?”
Tactic: Dehumanize the target (refugees) by questioning their motives.
Erase and ignore context from stories. Blame the victims. Scapegoat the weak.
This makes fleeing violence or poverty seem suspicious. It hides the systems and history that caused migration in the first place.
- “I’m not racist, I’m just stating facts.”
Tactic: make bigotry seem “logical”.
Avoid slurs, but push racial stereotypes.
Sound smart, not hateful. The author acknowledges that no one responds well to rageful vitriol. So, instead of using hateful slurs they’ll talk about “IQ gaps” or “cultural incompatibility.”
- “Why can’t we have a Straight Pride?”
Tactic: Invert oppression to claim victimhood.
The Nazi guide instructs to always portray your side as the real oppressed group.
It’s meant to discredit LGBTQ+ pride by making it sound exclusionary.
- “These refugees all look like military-aged men.”
Tactic: Stoke fear of invasion.
Cherry-pick images to frame migrants as threatening.
What I see: Avoiding showing women, children, or elderly. Using images that reinforce “replacement theory”.
- “You can’t say anything anymore without getting canceled.”
Tactic: Frame consequences as censorship.
Nazis said to frame all pushback as persecution.
It protects trolls from accountability and makes them sound like rebels instead of what they are (bigots).
- “Everyone’s a Nazi now, huh?”
Tactic: Water down the word.
The Daily Stormer told its writers to make “Nazi” sound meaningless.
It confuses people. If calling out fascism sounds like hysteria then fascists get a free pass.
Look at what Elon is doing now. Think it’s a coincidence with his NAZI salute?
- “OMG calm down, it’s just a meme.”
Tactic: Weaponize irony to escape accountability.
The guide tells writers to blur the line between sincerity and satire so outsiders can’t tell if the hate is real.
When called out, trolls say “it’s just a joke.” But when left alone those “jokes” radicalize others.
- “Trump just says that to troll the libs.”
Tactic: Frame cruelty as performance art. The guide says to use lulz and trolling to make hate entertaining and “dehumanize within the confines of humor,” and to always appear like you’re winning.
It turns racism, violence, authoritarianism and so on into a game. Emotional domination = entertainment.
- “Liberal hypocrisy is the real problem.”
Tactic: Erode trust by highlighting contradictions without offering solutions.
List contradictions in liberal narratives (e.g. feminism + Islam, gender as social construct + born this way) to create disillusionment.
They don’t care about the hypocrisy. They really just want you to throw up your hands and give up on truth out of utter disgust, that is the main goal.
Originally Posted By u/brainser At 2025-05-15 11:34:51 PM | Source
