It’s been three days since Shia LaBeouf launched “HE WILL NOT DIVIDE US,” an all-caps beacon of hope in the form of a webcam placed in Astoria, Queens, where Trump dissenters, performance art fans, and other marginalized types are invited to come voice that mantra to a 24/7 streaming audience. LaBeouf, along with his usual collaborators Nastja Säde Rönkkö and Luke Turner, has promised that the camera will be live for the duration of Trump’s presidency, and so far it’s been a rousing success, in that the stream is not yet of rats fucking in an empty parking lot. But of course, once you put anything on the internet these days, it’s only a matter of time before it’s infested by some sort of vermin. And so, LaBeouf has already had to contend with various “alt-right” interlopers who have been rallied by 4chan’s “/pol/” thread to drop by and spout their white supremacist bullshit. For the lulz!
Since today’s white nationalist movement is prefaced on being a silly dick, that campaign has mostly involved putting “Make America Great Again” signs in front of the camera, chanting “Pepe,” and other things these people would struggle to articulate the actual reasoning for, were anyone listening. But on Sunday, things came to a head when one of the trolls actually got into it with LaBeouf himself. Wearing a German Luftwaffe cap and the self-satisfied look of a man who has yet to be punched, this brave Göring of GIFs ran right up to the camera to begin rattling off the white supremacist’s “14 Words” and chirping, “Praise Kek!” only to have LaBeouf shout him down with his own sloganeering. The two engaged in a little shoving, nuzzling dance like two sparring antelopes, before LaBeouf finally chased him around and out of the lot.