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I'm not sure how much I should say here as I generally try to keep my internet persona's separate for OPSEC reasons and this is coming dangerously close to crossing the streams but...
...I would feel remiss if I didn't bring it up. When GWACS when out of business KE arms bought up the tooling along with several former GWACS employees with the intent of restarting production of polymer lowers. Meanwhile the rumor is that the GWACS name and IP was bought by some progressive culture warrior with the intent of undermining the opposition and that the cease and desist letter was effectively culture-war motivated. This had the effect of drawing in additional "combatants" from outside the immediate 2A legal and Southwest competitive shooting communities (parallels to jihad in the ME are left as an exercise to the reader). The ensuing drama (both internet and legal) in turn lead to Ian catching a lot of flak from Karl and the John Brown Gun Club for "Associating With"/"Failing to Denounce 'Nazis' and 'Far Right Agitators'" like Mike Jones, the Volokh Conspiracy, and Administrative Results (who TBF between the Obi-Wan-Nairobi aesthetic and making his handle a play on "Executive Outcomes" kind of invites those associations) but even so.
Edit to add: TLDR a bunch of people on the internet lashed-out out at Ian and in response a bunch of people showed up to defend him which in turn lead Karl and a bunch of others to lash out in response leading to the dynamic described in the OP, "Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight." This in turn lead to a number of arguments within ARFCOM's mod-mail that ended with an agreement on all sides to lock the thread and walk away.
This explains a lot. Also there is good info here: https://old.reddit.com/r/liberalgunowners/comments/sltls3/forgotten_weaponsheadstamp_controversy_summary/
Edit Edit to add. This is not intended as a call but I seem to recall @ymeskhout having ties of some sort to JBGC and I wonder if he's got any insight on this front.
I was, but haven't had any involvement at all since I resigned in late 2018. I'm not familiar with the names in this thread, nor do I really understand the "controversy", except that everyone loves Gun Jesus.
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I second that emotion. I definitely recall JBGC affiliation from reddit comments and maybe B&R podcast. I like hearing Yassine's takes, even when I have some quibbles.
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