Debate Sparks Bored Ape Yacht Club’s Alleged ‘Racist’ Imagery

SNEAK PEEK

  • Racism charges against the Bored Ape Yacht Club have resurfaced on Twitter. The charges are based on a recent YouTube video dubbed “Bored Ape Nazi Club,” which has gone viral.
  • This isn’t the first time that Bored Ape Yacht Club has been accused of wrongdoing.
  • NFT pictures contained racist caricatures of Black and Asian people, drawing parallels between Yuga Labs and the BAYC’s symbolism and vocabulary and those of the Nazis.

The argument over whether Yuga Labs’ flagship Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) nonfungible token (NFT) collection incorporates racist imagery and white supremacist esotericism has been reignited by a video posted by investigative YouTuber Philip Rusnack, often known as Philion.

Rusnack set out his case in an hour-long video posted to YouTube on Monday, arguing that BAYC is “one giant alt-right inside joke” that uses language, symbols, and memes from the anonymous image board website 4Chan.

He said that the NFT graphics featured racist caricatures of Black and Asian people and drew parallels between Yuga Labs and the BAYC’s symbolism and vocabulary and those of the Nazis.

For example, a popular example cited by proponents of the claims compares the BAYC insignia to the Nazi Totenkopf symbol used by the SS Panzer Division during WWII.

By the end of the video, there is a substantial addendum that was not present in Ripps’ January comments. To clarify, the video ends with a request that viewers utilize the hashtag #BURNBAYC on Twitter. People would use the hashtag as part of a viral campaign, according to the plan.

Rusnack makes a call to action at the end of the video, asking his viewers to pressure BAYC NFT owners to “burn” their tokens by sending them to an unusable and unrecoverable wallet address:

This isn’t the first time that Bored Ape Yacht Club has been accused of wrongdoing.

Ryder Ripps took to Twitter in January of this year with what he claims is considerable evidence that the Bored Ape Yacht Club is full of racist dog whistles, white supremacist signifiers, and arcane racism.

The charges of racial symbolism within the collection became a major subject on social media this year.

Yuga Labs reacted to some of the allegations by tweeting in January that the Apes are a generally used term in the crypto community to refer to themselves. Probably a play on the crypto slang term “ape in,” which refers to someone who invests heavily in currencies or projects without conducting any research first.