Best Places for Coffee in Tbilisi

Wondering where to get a proper cup of coffee in the Caucasian capital? Wonder no more.

Years ago, getting a decent coffee in Tbilisi was a task only for Tom Cruise’s mission impossible team. Ordering a “cappuccino” when I first came to Georgia would get you a cup of instant coffee with hot milk instead of water. The scene started to change as Lavazza and Illy (basically the Italian Folgers in your cup) entered the market, first with a wave of small little corner shops and finally, general market acceptance in restaurants everywhere, so that no matter where you go now you can at least get something decent. Starbucks awareness began to grow when in the haute neighborhood of Vake opened up a “Starbucks” (eventually people realized it wasn’t an actual Starbucks and they stopped going).

But what about for the coffee snobs—and basically any Berlin-worshipping hipster nob—who requires something at least 5 dollars a cup and served at an exact temperature in a glass test tube? I’m happy to say that Tbilisi has fully embraced the coffee revolution, from corner shops serving aeropress (or whatever the next big thing is) to even a homegrown coffee chain that looks astonishingly like that of the degenerate mermaid grinds.

If you’re visiting or living in Tbilisi and looking for your next caffeine fix, you’d do well to try these places. They're in no particular order, as coffee is highly subjective. And do note that most of the more hipster drinks tend to be lighter than what you're used to in Europe or the States.

1. Prospero’s Books and Caliban’s Coffee

www.prosperosbookshop.com

34 Rustaveli Ave.

32-34 Makhashvili St.

1 Vaja Pshavela

Prospero’s deserves the honorable place at the top of the list for being the first real indy coffee shop to enter the Tbilisi market. It was the primary place of gathering for expats through those dark ages of the coffee bean when instant coffee ruled the land supreme. In 1999, they started roasting their own beans and had one of Tbilisi’s only espresso machines for probably about 10 years. It started as a place to sit and read your latest literary purchase from the bookstore that it shares a beautiful little courtyard with. Incidentally, I’ve never heard of the coffee house being called “Caliban’s” except on their official marketing material, as most locals tend to refer to both the bookstore and cafe as "Prospero's".

The interior is spacious, having both places for laptop soldiers and those who want to sit back, relax, and chat with friends. The patio is unbeatable in terms of coffee shops in Tbilisi, so it makes for an especially great spot in the spring or summer. They've also managed to open a similar place in the National Archives on Pekini and a smaller location next to Betsy's Hotel up the hill from the original.

Double B Coffee & Tea

2. Double B Coffee & Tea

www.facebook.com/doubleb.georgia

9 Galaktion Tabidze St.

This Moscow-based coffee company helped kick off the latest wave of coffee culture in Tbilisi. A truly “third wave” roaster excelling in their single-sourced choices, they’ll happily brew up an aeropress for you. Double B has an excellent and cozy interior that’s somewhat reminiscent of vintage American styles. It’s a big enough place to bring your book or laptop, but small enough to remain intimate and cozy.

Double B on Tabidze

3. Pin Pon

www.facebook.com/pinponcafebar

13 Lado Asatiani St.

22 Chavchavadze Ave.

2 Beri Gabriel Salosi I Turn

Another Moscow implant, Pin Pon has been staking a pretty stolid claim on the Tbilisi coffee front. With three locations across town—and each preserving their small-time, independent charm—it’s hard to say they haven’t met success in the city. They’ve got these strange cups here that feel like they're made from wood pulp or something, I don’t know. They’re weirdly light but, like ceramics, they don’t interfere with the taste of the joe. The last I was at their Sololaki location, their aeropress was out on loan and I had to have a V60. I’m still not sold on V60s myself. The americanos and espressos are solid though.

Their Sololaki location has a perfect balance of size and intimacy to be comfortable both with reading, working, and chatting. The Vake location is basically just a coffee window with a small cluster of eclectic furniture in an Italian yard (a great place in the summer if you don’t mind the window grandmas staring down at you), and finally, the Isani location is only open during music festivals at ElectroWerk. I’m hoping they’ll change strategies and be open all the time, as I’d love a good coffee shop in my hood.

Pin Pon's Vake courtyard location

4. Skola

skolacoffeewine.business.site

17 Rustaveli

Another leader in the Russian caffeine invasion. If the Russians can’t win Georgians over by occupying parts of their country, then at least they can do it through Western coffee culture! Whatever the reason, it’s a style of invasion that I can actually support.

Nice work benches up top at Skola

Skola has a hyper-modern minimalist interior that would look perfect in an IKEA catalog. Their coffee is great and they serve a lot of fancy food dishes too (try their breakfasts). You can also tell that one of their strategies is to have brilliant customer service, as they’ve got some of the friendliest and most amicable staff in town (a real feat in Tbilisi). The downstairs is best suited for chatting with friends, but those in need of a Rustaveli workspace and an aeropress should take their lappy upstairs where the long benches are perfect for a shared space.

Checking out the photos at Minimalist

5. Minimalist

minimalist.fotografia.ge

21 Revaz Tabukashvili St.

Speaking of minimalism, you can’t get more minimal than this coffee shop-slash-photography gallery. There’s only a very small area to sit, as this concept is more to get you strolling with your coffee and enjoying and discussing the various works of local and guest photographers. See Tbilisi through the eyes of others with a visit at Minimalist.

Outside Minimalist

6. Luca Polare

www.lucapolare.com

125a Davit Aghmashenebeli

2 Kakabadzeebi St.

Mrgvali Baghi Square

34 Kote Aphkhazi St.

7a Pekini Ave

Galleria Mall

I think I managed to cover all of the Luca Polare branches in that list. More Italian style, this local chain named for a polar bear pours out the more traditional brews of espressos and americanos along with the tastiest ice cream in Tbilisi. Oddly enough, they contract their roasting to a family in Germany who ships it back here. Whatever they do, it’s the right mix for your more traditional styles, with a highly trained baristas ready to pour. The Aghmashenebeli and Rustaveli locations have more than enough room to hang out and get some work done. The other locations are small and more about getting a to-go cup to enjoy the surroundings.

Luca Polare's Aghmashenebeli location, a popular spot in the summertime

7. Moulin Electrique

www.facebook.com/pages/Moulin-Electrique

28 Kote Aphkhazi St.

Fabrika

Back in the day when your only choice was Prospero’s, these wonderful proprietors on Leselidze (now Kote Aphkhazi St.) made an investment in an espresso machine, thereby kicking off the Lavazza movement. Moulin Electrique has such a great old-fashioned feel to it, and the hidden little courtyard tucked away in the old town makes for a perfect escape from the tourist crowds and touts. They opened their second location at Fabrika as well, making it one of the better places to visit (don’t expect the best in customer service there though). They have a fantastic kitchen as well, so don’t be afraid to grab a meal here either.

8. ViceVersa

www.viceversa.ge

11 Bakhtrioni St.

29 Abakshidze St.

Really plush and cozy spot for your high-end coffee fans with an emphasis on the Italian styles of serving. Great customer service and with a small interior. It does feature a nice little outdoor streetside patio for those enjoying the summertime in Saburtalo and wanting to get off Pekini for a spell.

ViceVersa in Saburtalo, just behind the double Carrefour mayhem

9. Coffee LAB

www.coffeelab.ge

27 Kazbegi Ave

The American answer to Double B and I imagine this place met many cheers after opening its location near the Peace Corps office. If only it were there back in my volunteering days. That said, it’s almost always packed with people eager to get their hands on modern mugs, V60s, and aeropresses. They also serve pretty amazing brownies. The interior has a lot of space to get work done (but the tables are often all full) and as the coffee shop is literally in a garden, the outdoor seating area is beautiful to boot. There’s a playground in the garden as well, so for those with kids you can let them roam about while catering to your legal addiction.

The second floor of the Coffee LAB

The Saint Facetious coffee plantation beans are the best

10. Entrée

entree.ge

Marjanishvili Square

24 Pekini Ave.

47 Kote Aphkhazi St.

For those preferring a bit of French café elegance, Entrée fills that gap nicely. With a selection of amazing pastries and baguettes, Entrée tends to be the best place to get a light breakfast in town. The coffee isn’t to die for—just your regular Lavazza-type stuff—but it’s always a good option of seat-camping and reading. Like Luca Polare, they also serve some great ice cream and cakes.

I’ve only listed my favorite (and biggest) locations, but there are plenty more scattered on corners throughout town. The ones I’ve listed all have roomy interiors, enough so that you don’t feel guilty for hogging a seat while surfing the net or reading.

11. Coffeesta

www.coffeesta.com

52 Rustaveli Ave.

41 Kote Aphkhazi St.

This list would be incomplete without Coffeesta. Coffeesta is the native Georgian answer to Starbucks, and serves almost as the righteous Georgian shield against that independent coffee-killing machine. They seemed to have modeled a lot off of the good things Starbucks has, like frappucinos, a good-enough americano, local cultural elements, and the color green. For those who can’t get by without Starbucks, then pop in to one of Coffeesta’s many locations around town. Typically a great place to get your work done, especially at their Rustaveli location where they occupy something of a massive bunker underneath the old Soviet house of cinema. They also maintain a cozy corner on the top floor of the Galleria Mall at Freedom Square. Their location on Kote Aphkhazi Street is premium, but lacks a bathroom, so it’s only good for short engagements.

The Coffeesta next to Rustaveli metro is probably one of the best places to laptop camp in TBS

12. Marjanishvili 8 Coffee & Dining

marjanishvili8.ge

8 Marjanishvili

A newer entry into this scene, Marjanishvili 8 feels reminiscent of a Viennese cafe, with its decorative, 19th century ceiling and faux marble counters, though the chairs do make a strange match. I visited the shop on recommendation from the comments and wasn't disappointed. The aeropress was a thicker-than-usual-Georgian-light-aeropress brew and the atmosphere was quiet and comfortable. Despite having table service, it's still definitely a great place for laptop diving and small meetings, with an interesting food menu on the side (I'll definitely be back for brunch to check out the appropriately hipster-fied Georgian food like the avocado chvishtari).

Am I missing anywhere? What’s your favorite place to grab a cup of coffee in Tbilisi?

Looking for something to read while having a cup? Check out my book of short stories (many taking place in Georgia) called Hunger, available here on Amazon. You can even read it on a free app from Kindle. I've also got an audiotour of Rustaveli here on VoiceMap.

#coffee #restaurants #Tbilisi

Sololaki: Tbilisi's First Suburb

Sololaki is one of the more interesting districts in Tbilisi, and perhaps my favorite one (probably because of the sheer number of bars that host interesting and original live music here). The area is bordered by Freedom Square, Leonidze, and Asatiani, on the sides, and on the bottom by Dadiani Street. The top slowly dissolves away into nothing as you go up hill and eventually you find yourself in fields, a cemetary, and a bizarre children's theme park (Mtatsminda). Fun note about that cemetary and field: once there was a metal festival there until a priest shut it down for being too close to the Orthodox burial ground.

11 Kikodze, building from 1914 by the Brother's Milov

Sololaki was the first district to grow past the original city walls, which would have been at Dadiani Street. Freedom Square itself is a relatively new invention, as before this was a river/canal with a bridge over it, and the river came from up Leonidze Street and then it followed Pushkin around the city walls to the river—you know, kind of like a moat… Past that bridge there was a small square called Firewood Square, where many of the residents would come up outside of the city gates and buy their firewood.

One of my favorite apartment buildings in Sololaki

The area was known in the old days for its beautiful greenery and gardens, and to water the gardens they needed to dig some canals, earning its name in Arabic, Sululakh, or “canal district”. The canals have long been buried over with the main one finally filled in in the 19th century when the Russians rebuilt much of the city after the Qajar destruction. After the Qajars destroyed everything, Sololaki became the preferred neighborhood for the rich folks of the city, and it was here that they tried to build the “Caucasian Paris”, complete with apartment blocks topped by mansard roofs and full of art nouveau flourishes (during this time, Aghmashenebeli Street in Chugureti underwent a similar renaissance, btw I've got self-guided audio walking tours of both streets here).

Example Sololaki's typical art nouveau flair

Freedom Square

Where the St. George pillar is on Freedom Square, there was the opera house where Alexander Dumas used to hang out a lot, and where the city hall is now was once the firehouse. It’s an ironic thing too as the opera house met its end by a vicious fire, and too bad there wasn’t a fire crew around, oh wait… All that was left of the opera house were two big lion statues, which are now found in front of the city hall. The city hall was upgraded from its status as fire house and they added the clock tower at that time.

Tbilisi's Freedom Square with the city grain silo on the hill in the background

After being known as Firewood Square and when it actually become a city square during the Russian rule, it was called Erevan Square, after the well-earned nickname of Ivan Paskevich, the general who had pommeled the Persians for much of modern-day Armenia and resided in Tbilisi. Later it became known as Freedom Square under the First Republic, then Beria Square, then Lenin Square where they placed a big statue of the Eternal Comrade, and finally Freedom Square, where they took down the statue and put up a column with Zurab Tsereteli's St. George Statue on a pillar, probably his only work that was gladly accepted by the giftee.

Freedom Square itself was later the site of a pretty historic heist. It was in this busy square that the bank heist that Stalin had masterminded took place. Led by his right hand man, Kamo, Stalin’s men lobbed some grenades at and commandeered a money-laden stage couch that was transferring newly printed and arrived money from the post office to the State Bank, resulting in 40 casualties and leaving 50 people injured. The Bolsheviks would later erect a statue to Kamo and post it in the adjacent Pushkin Square, but Stalin was a jealous mofo and had it removed as he tried to keep historians focused on only himself as the hero of the Revolution. "Masterminded" is also a generous word when the heist basically just involved lobbing bricks of dynamite and spraying down a crowd of people with automatic weapons. I suppose the real finesse involved smuggling the money out of Georgia and into Europe, where it was used to finance the machinations of the Bolsheviks once they were able to launder it (no easy task, considering all the major banks knew the serials of the banknotes... mastermind indeed!).

You can learn more about Freedom Square (and Rustaveli) on my audiotour on VoiceMap. Check it out here.

Dadiani Street

We’ll go down Dadiani Street. It’s fairly innocuous nowadays, but it used to be the center of expat life back in the 2000s and early 2010s. There was a tiny basement bar there called Salve, named after all the “salve” (“welcome” in Latin) signs that are known to adorn the district. The bar was known for its friendly status among alternatives and was devoid of the “kai bitchi” type that had once haunted the city’s streets, looking for easy lays and meaty shawarmas and who wouldn’t think twice about stabbing you over a girl. And so Salve was, in those days, pretty much the only place a Bohemian-type could go and hang out, and then people would move nearby and have house parties and the nights were never ending. The city was almost dead in those days: there was a general malaise and depression just after the war, and life seemed to have ground to a halt.

Not on Dadiani, but somewhere in Sololaki

Now both the malaise and the bar are gone, but the famous restaurant that people went to before getting drunk at Salve, Racha, is under renovations, so that will be nice when it opens up again. At the end of that street is a very beautiful Georgian style house on the corner, and then there’s the big German Schule, which many tourist guides like to call the “Caucasian Harry Potter House” for no clear reason except for its Gothic architecture.

Tabidze Street

Next up is Tabidze Street. Nearly 10 years ago the city planners had an excellent idea. They would close Tabidze to car traffic and make it pedestrian only, turning it into a cobblestone road envisioning higher-end bars, cafes, and clubs lining the street. It was a brilliant idea and it worked, making a most beautiful avenue of entertainment right off of Freedom Square. But then Georgians’ undying love for the automobile got the best of them and they inexplicably reopened the street to traffic, turning it from a once quiet, lazy afternoon walk to an aerobic feat of dodging cars. It’s basically an oblong parking lot now, gutting much of the business of the more popular bars like the once venerable live music venue Divan. There are a few hangers-on here, but for the most part the city had once put this street on a development pedestal and hacked it down with their great iron, car-shaped bludgeon.

The superior carless end of Tabidze, opposite from Freedom Square

Machabeli Street

This street is getting a relative amount of fame of late, as it seems bar after bar are opening their doors to the broken asphalt and concrete lined lane. I guess it’s filling in the space that Tabidze once held, but a lot of these bars cater to a more varied clientele and not just the city’s uber-rich. The metal bar, Creator, can be found here, as well as a few more relaxed hangouts. Before Creator and everything else though was a dive called Arsad, which means "nowhere" in Georgian, and it was hell trying to explain where exactly I was going or where someone should meet me if they hadn't known of the bar before.

"Where are you going tonight?" "Nowhere." "Well, let's go out."

"I am, I'm going to Nowhere."

"Dude, if you don't want to hang out, just tell me."

The premium attraction on Machabeli Street though is the Writer’s Union building, a grand example of “modernist” architecture, modern for the early 20th century, that is. Tbilisi modernism was a direct heir to art nouveau, so the former union halls have a lot of flowery flair. The Writer’s Union was originally built as the house of David Sarajishvili, a business mogul and head of the famous cognac (gruzinac, or brandy from Georgia, not from France) company that still reigns supreme on the shelves of local alco-stores today. When he passed, the building had already gained local fame as a monument of sorts, and when his wife decided to sell it in 1918, it caused an uproar. She must have smelled something on the wind though, as a few years later the Bolsheviks seized it and nationalized it, turning it into what it’s known as today: the Writer’s Union.

The Writer's Union house, on the corner of Machabeli and Asatiani

A few notable Soviet writers lived there for a time, namely Maxim Gorky, while Vladimir Mayakovsky was known to stay there as well, perhaps while on visits to his hometown of Baghdati in the Georgian countryside. From the spacious courtyard (which now houses a fancy pants restaurant) you can see the sky, and perhaps make out a cloud worthy of the restaurant.

Leonidze Street

There are a couple of famous landmarks on Leonidze Street as well. Coming up from Freedom Square on the right, you’ll see a big bank building. The Tbilisi Mutual Credit Society was built in 1913 and the building now serves as the ground for the National Bank of Georgia. Not an overly interesting bank itself, except in the knowledge that it was the first banking building in Tbilisi. It was later nationalized and made into the Central Bank of Georgia, a purpose it still serves today.

Detail of the National Bank and its money titans holding up Georgia's economy

#Tbilisi #history

On shitposting, the Crusades, the Great Meme War, and extremism

Years ago, I was growing frustrated with Facebook. I wanted to leave it, as it was the source of most of the negativity and hostility in my life, and people in general there turn into massive pricks when in real life they would otherwise be civil. In short, it brings the worst out in people: neither are you able to make you or your motives understood, and people are all too willing to project their own problems and issues on the words and actions you weren’t able to make clear enough.

Yet, my mom’s on there, friends from other places are on there, and it makes it absurdly easy to keep in contact with all those different people I’ve met and enjoyed over the years from various walks of life. I’ve got a collection from extreme Republicans and Democrats, to Communists, to Fascists, from Libertarians to Social Democrats, and more than that, a bunch of regular people, who more often than not would only be found in their own echo chambers on the web. Rather my having to delve into their message boards, Facebook allows it all to come to me (unfortunately for many, it also serves as a massive, self-curated echo chamber as well).

So I needed to find a way to make the Facebooks more manageable, more fun, and less vitriolic (the exact word to describe it in the Trump era). I turned to shitposting.

Shitposting

Shitposting isn’t as bad as it sounds, nor is it as bad as often the media like to make it. Allow me then to explain shitposting.

Shitposting has existed ever since PC Paint and the internet connected two sarcastic basement dwellers together who could then edit each other’s pictures with funny and ironic tag-lines and send them back and forth. It started back in the AOL days in the 90s, but then chat and forum groups like 4chan and later 8chan and so on emerged and really went with it, eventually leading one to an alternate reality of manga Hitler gassing liberal Commies in their doom. Or whatever.

Yes, Manga Hitler is a thing. No, I can't explain it.

Shitposting has various dimensions. At once it can be friendly and historical based—I’m in a lot of groups like SPQRposting and the once great Pattonposting (previous to the World War Meme with Kaiserposting that led it to getting Zucced, that is, the banning of a group due to intentional, hostile, and often false overreporting, a ‘nuclear option’ done among meme groups). But here I’ll break down SPQRposting to show you what happens on these groups.

SPQRposting draws on a lot of different people. As a snarky history buff, I’m drawn to it. There are also gamers who enjoy Total War type games. Mostly with these two groups, there are an endless stream of memes made about salting Carthage, stabbing Caesar, and the trouble Varius got in after losing Caesar’s legions. The two most recurring memes are probably “Ceasar did nothing wrong” and “Varius where are my legions?” It’s a way to expel your negativity on a fairly fictional world where only the most absurdly sensitive can find reason to be offended.

However, because the Roman Empire was huge and long, it also includes the Byzantine Empire, which tends to draw both a lot of Orthodox memers—who hate the West because Gayropa is invading the more traditional Eastern Europe and it isn’t hard enough against the Muslim invaders—Deus Vulters—who look to the Holy Roman Empire for their inspiration and lament the loss of Western traditionalism and call for a revival of the Crusades. It also draws in Turks and Arabs who meme about Ottoman revanchism, and there goes on a great deal of friendly, “racism lite” between all the groups. And to be clear, we’re not talking Americans, this is a truly international shitposting group. And this is just one of many convergences across Facebook.

Shitposting focuses on irony and offensiveness. Oftentimes it makes fun of pop-culture, or things that the pop-culture seems to misunderstand. In a world where the darker shades of comedy has been outlawed or can get you fired, it didn’t cease to exist, it went underground. And it continues to go deeper and deeper underground (and the more underground it goes, the more extreme it gets).

There is a crossover between groups and in-group policing isn’t always successful. Many people in the worse groups troll or lurk the larger groups like SPQRposting and spread their content, which often includes straight up, unironic racial slurs (calling Turks cockroaches) or Crusader knights getting triggered by Arabica coffee because “Arab”. These often include clear appeals to violence, if not in action at the least in imagery, and the comments often back it up. Now, I don’t doubt many of these folk think they’re just being funny, but there is a cadre that are caught up in their own version of alternate-history.

A common Deus Vult meme thread

Because the surface memegroups like SPQRposting are so international and mixed, the memes tend to be toned down, but there are groups composed of just neo-Nazis, just Deus Vulters, and so on, and other people that are focused on the full, vile, revanchist racism that echoes around and without any checks and balances, gets worse and worse. These are groups that have gone underground, only use FB to infiltrate more public groups, and exist in the murkier parts of the “dark web” themselves like on Stormfront and 8chan, where jokes about gassing Jews and hanging blacks are pretty regular fodder and PewDiePie has become an unwitting meme-hero of sorts, a place where the WoW battlecry of Leroy never gets old, as long as it’s against the oppressors of the white man.

The Crusades

The Crusades is a good example. During the Gulf Wars, jihadist groups highlighted that the Westerners had returned “on Crusade”, trying to rile up a holy war on their side by showcasing a holy war on our side. In pop culture, Muslims were the victims in the Crusades, and there was a clear parallel between invading Westerners and Arabs defending themselves, but now the messaging has swung around in the alterwebs.

The reality, of course, is a lot more complicated. There had almost always been Christians and Jews living in the Holy Land since the inception of those religions. Islam emerged as a primeval force in the Middle East in the 600s, spreading on ground already tread on by Christian and Jews. Pagans were there too, and pagans were the primary source of conversions into Islam, and the earlier Islamic groups focused on pagans, considering both Jews and Christians as “brothers of the book”. However, as the Caliphate rose in political power, the Western Roman Empire was all but gone, and the Eastern Roman Empire proved incapable of keeping its own borders and often found themselves in armed conflict with Islamic groups; collision became frequent. Especially when considering the Levant and the Holy Land were territories of the Christian Roman Empire.

Crusader memes often carry a "joking" appeal to violence

This idea about the Crusades being an invasion of Christians wasn’t quite true then (and your conclusion here should be on the importance of a multifaceted history that doesn't make things "good guy" versus "bad guy" in such simple terms). The Christian Eastern Roman Empire at first was put up in a string of conflicts against the Muslims, that ended with the Muslims controlling much of the Mediterranean coast, from the Levant all the way to Spain. The expansion was an existential threat to the Christians of Europe (the successor kingdoms of the Roman Empire), and the Crusades were called. The earliest Crusades were against Muslims in Spain, capturing Spain for a “Christian Europe”. They were also called against pagans across northern and eastern Europe as Christianity spread through the Norsemen, the Rus, and so on. This didn’t happen all at once, but was about a 600-year process starting from about the 800s.

Meanwhile, Muslims continued their expansion in the East. The Eastern Romans called to their Western allies, who then set up their own kingdoms along the coastline and allied with other indigenous Christian kingdoms in the area (Kilikia and Georgia, for example), in their battle against the Saracens, Seljuks, and other Islamic states. Constantinople was repeatedly sacked by the Westerners as well. It, of course, came down to a power struggle between individual kings’ egos and so on, but it’s much easier to paint history with the broad strokes I’m doing so here (Crusader kingdoms were often at war with each other, as were Muslim kingdoms, and they infrequently allied across religious lines even—this point is to stress the reality that they were more about egos and control of resources than culture or religion necessarily).

Eventually the Muslims came out on top in the Levant. They decimated the Eastern Roman Empire and finally, under the Ottomans, they took the capital of the Christian empire itself. In Europe though, they were on the retreat, losing Spain in the process of the Reconquista to finish with a unified Spanish kingdom in the 1400s. The Ottomans weren’t done, as they continued their own conquests into Europe, taking Greece, the Balkans, and eventually, 200 years later, would be at the gates of Vienna, where they would finally be stopped (two other great things came from this epic battle: croissants and coffee shops).

All that to say the Crusades were a lot more complicated than pop-culture preached about in the 90s and without understanding and teaching nuance, all sorts of inaccuracies can develop, ripe with propaganda purposes. For the people who grew up in the 90s, either they bought the anti-Western narrative on the Crusades, or they learned more about the Crusades and would swing to the opposite, logical extreme. Instead of seeing the Crusades as a quest for power and control of resources, they ended up seeing it the same way jihadists saw it, but in the exact opposite. The Crusades were a response to an invasion of Europe by Arabs/Turks/Muslims/enter-other-here. With this now being on the subculture radar, and kept in mind with pseudo-historical games like Deus Vult and Assassin’s Creed, when the refugee crisis hit in the early 10s and rising attacks on white males from feminists and socialists, it was ripe for another Crusader call for the defense of Europe (and by extension the US, Australia, and New Zealand). And who was better stationed for the defense than memers?

The Great Meme War

In some circles, the election of Trump was called the Great Meme War. Led by Sargon of Akkad (not the historical one, obviously), legions of trolls (or more accurately, a thousand or so very energetic keyboard warriors) hit the electronic waves in their support of Trump and to claim their own cybernation of Kekistan. The point here isn’t that many were even serious about all this, but they trolled for the sake of trolling. Meme memus gratis, my friends. The folks of the darkweb coalesced to send out wave upon wave of misguiding memes about Trump, Hillary, and whatever could be funny in a slightly to very chauvinistic sense. These waves of memes pushed the meme world’s limits, and desensitized a lot of the more innocent groups of shitposters to the more foul forms of irony that would eventually become almost the norm, even far outside of Kekistan.

An ironic meme about the irony of Sargon and Kekistan, so many levels of irony

These meme warriors of Kekistan were already natural allies of White Nationalists. The symbols often crossed over—the Battleflag of Kekistan was even an adaptation of the Battleflag of Nazi Germany, and though most Kekistanners would say that they are just being ironic, one would question just how much can you joke about killing immigrants, Arabs, Jews, whoever before you actually start intending your “jokes”, especially when done in the light of defending white culture, or defending (someone) from the onslaught of feminism and liberalism.

So the Great Meme War, combined with Christian revanchism, random shitposting, and the refugee crisis are three important factors that have been leading to the rebirth of nationalist movements worldwide.

But the Russians

Feck it, we’ve got to bring them into this, as they were no less big contributors to the Great Meme War as your neighbor’s basement dwelling grandson. They had their little factory, promoting white nationalism not for any purpose, but just to sew dissent in American and European ranks. Many of the memes of the War were generated in Russian troll factories, as well as many of the people who shared the worst of the memes. A lot of Kekistan had been coopted by Russian trolls to push the nationalist messages. The Russian government itself has been quite clear in their strategy of supporting European and American ethno-nationalist movements, even having global ethno-nationalist meetings in St. Petersburg (I know, the irony of global ethno-nationalism is not lost on me).

A lot of people wonder why Russia would care. It's because Russia itself believes they are under attack. I think that’s an essay for another time though. They think that by spreading disinformation, and somehow getting the West on the defense, they can fulfill their own immediate foreign policy goals, mainly of carving out spheres of influence on their borders, stopping NATO expansion, and ensuring European reliance on Russian energy supplies. Much due to NATO expansion, the Russians have developed a siege mentality that have only helped them strengthen their claims. In addition, in order to defend a new Russia and Putin’s place at its head, they’ve doubled down on religious influence, inspiring a rebirth of Orthodox Christianity and pumping money into propaganda to that extent.

Lurking in Orthodox groups, you can see that its full of Westerners who feel for Russia, who have been won over about the siege against the poor, troubled nation. The tactic has proven a success, especially as the Orthodox Church has split in two in Ukraine due to the struggle over the ongoing war there. Rather than being a result due to the ethnic tensions caused by the occupation of the Donbass and Crimea, Russia has been able to frame it as a CIA attack on Orthodox Christianity itself!

St. Vladimir the Great

Do you see a trend here for them though? Whether you think you’re defending Orthodox Christianity and Eastern values or the collapse of Western values, it doesn’t matter. You still serve Russia’s purpose, to sew dissent among the ranks of Westerners, thereby weakening the EU and the US and, to a much more logical purpose: weakening NATO.

Siege Mentality

Along with siege mentality, the other primary driver to extremism is loneliness. People look to groups for belonging. As many whites have felt increasingly pushed out of pop-culture (I’m not justifying that they necessarily are, but many feel that way, which is important on understanding extremism), they’ve gone underground and found others who are willing to open their arms to them. And when you say, “Boohoo, poor white people being shat on” you only strengthen their resolve. They begin on shitposting groups or Ben Shapiro YouTube videos, get pulled into the comments, and soon dive into the wacky realm of Alex Jones, Stormfront, the KKK, and so on. There are a lot of disillusioned people so they end up in a lot of worlds. Some overlap, some are quite separate. Take for example neo-Nazis and the KKK, for a long time these to clusters were quite at odds with each other and today have some level of crossover appeal. But it’s also important here to note that not all racists are the same or are on the same side, and many who we call “racist” are only so because they think they’re threatened, or they feel isolated and unwelcome. In developing a greater inclusive culture, we have to wonder how to prevent that.

A siege bands people together and creates loyalty

Here though, I want to discuss siege mentality. If isolation is what leads people to extremism, siege mentality helps on one hand, and keeps you there on the other. It’s an important driver for extremist groups to push upon the siege mentality buttons. If they can get you to believe that you are under attack by some Other, then they’ve done something to win you over into their direction. And it doesn’t necessarily matter if you yourself join, as by aiding them in their cause—whether it’s in spreading ‘illegals are rapists’ memes or joining a group to shout ‘build that wall’, that is, seemingly innocuous things for many on the right—you can inspire other, more unstable people to seek them out and soon bear their own torch while chanting “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville. It’s a slippery slope.

But then note this as well.

The reaction from the left is doubly important. When Richard Spencer was punched on live media, and leftists starting punch-a-Nazi memes, it allowed for these people to say, “See, we ARE under attack! To arms!” Violence justifies violence, and so on. When a Muslim, for his own myriad reasons (that are equally false though also have much to do with loneliness, a sense of belonging, and a siege mentality), gets in a truck and runs over people on the boardwalk of some French town, then WNs can use this as a rallying cry as well, and they can get your cooperation in doing it, so that soon you too are thinking rather than “for what individual reasons did this guy act?”, “There is a clear us vs them happening! It’s an international race war!” It’s part of the silliness of extracting terrorism and mentally ill attackers—they are often being driven by the same motivations, but in a different cultural context.

What does this have to do with New Zealand?

The attacker in New Zealand’s manifesto is full of meme references, shitposting diversion tactics, and so on. Here was a man fully versed in memeology, undoubtedly involved in a world of shitposting and Kekistan memes. He was clearly pulled into the world of extremism on such a gateway drug. And he was clearly a white nationalist extremist, as we can’t just look at one or two of the names, but all the symbols he uses and understand how these things influence not just him, but a whole cadre of other people who would be like him.

He writes names of those of various nationalities who have fought Muslims in one way or another (never mind they’ve also been at peace with Muslims or fought each other, depending on the point of life they’re in). Take David the Builder, the Georgian king he wrote. David the Builder defeated the Muslim Seljuk armies and paved the way for a greater Georgian kingdom. However, a closer reading of his history shows that he also invited Muslims in to live in Georgia peacefully and even eat at the same table with him—nationalists are not always accurate in their recollection of history, but they often pick and choose historical tidbits for convenience, and also to build legitimacy to their claims for those who aren’t so familiar with history.

Names of nationalist "heroes" against Muslims

Highlighting these people on his weapons though, shows how he gives them a kind of hero stature. He’s dedicating his action to their memory, he’s attempting to propel himself so that one day his name will be on someone else’s instrument of a massacre. And it develops upon the siege mentality—Muslims are attacking us, the white race.

And secondarily, don’t get lost about the white race symbols he also has. He wore the Black Sun, the same symbol that Himmler had engraved on his floor in his castle at Wewelsburg. He had the North Cross as well, the main symbol used on Stormfront and used for nearly a century by the KKK. Finally, he had the Kolowrot, a Slavic sun symbol that’s been implemented by Polish and Russian nationalists, and as well has served as an augmented nationalist form of a symbol of the people’s of the South Caucasus.

Not only then was he active in shitposting groups, but also in white nationalist groups.

What to do about all this?

I’d like to highlight again, that though there is a crossover, one does not equal the other. They form a Venn diagram. It is a terrible rabbit hole to go down thinking that ALL shitposters are white nationalists. They aren’t. But we should be aware of that crossover.

The answer for investigators, law-enforcement and the like isn’t to shut down these “forums of free expression”, but rather to use them (for one, they’ll just exist in another harder to find place). Monitor them. Understand the crossover. Understand at which point does one go from being a mere troll or lurker to full on joining a lost cause and trying to martyr oneself for one idiotic cause or another. These are mentally unstable individuals, to be sure, but they’re not random. They’re rational actors.

And it’s most important to note:

They are not alone.

#rantsandraves