A swarm of internet nasties descended on Laila Alawa, an American Muslim writer, publisher and activist, after she was targeted last week as public enemy #1 by an assortment of right-wing sites — starting with The Daily Caller then spreading to assorted even more fringey sites from JihadWatch to PamelaGeller.com.
Alawa’s most horrendous crime, in the minds of her attackers? She once tweeted that the 9/11 attacks permanently changed the world.
No, really. Here’s the tweet that triggered the onslaught of Internet harassment that’s made Alawa’s life a living hell:
You may notice that she did not say that 9/11 changed the world “for the better.” She said “for good,” a phrase that everyone with even a rudimentary grasp of English should know means “permanently.”
But somehow every right-wing Muslim-hater who saw the Daily Caller post that launched this wave of hate decided that she was praising the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001 in that tweet. Adding to their indignation: the fact that Alawa had participated in the making of a recently issued Department of Homeland Security report on violent extremism.
Professional Islamaphobe Pamela Geller gave her post on the subject this absurd headline:
Freedom Daily meanwhile, declared:
A site called The Political Insider offered a similarly twisted misreading of Alawa’s tweet; the site also managed to transform her work last year with the Department of Homeland Security into a direct appointment by Obama after the Orlando massacre.
Within a few days, there was so much nonsense about Alawa floating around the internet that the urban legend-busting site Snopes.com felt obliged to weigh in with a lengthy rebuttal of the most outrageous false claims, leading the author of the Daily Caller piece to attack the author of the Snopes.com piece as a “failed liberal blogger.”
As assorted right-wing websites and blogs fanned the flames, a virtual army of the internet’s worst people descended on Alawa, flooding her Twitter and Facebook mentions with an assortment of angry and threatening messages.
“On Tuesday, June 14, 2016, I woke up to a hell that even I could not have predicted,” Alawa wrote yesterday in a post on The Tempest, an online publication she founded and runs. “Hundreds of people were tweeting at me, the vitriol, hatred and fury in their messages each worse than the last one.”
Here are some of the messages she collected, one of which I’ve lightly censored:
This fellow gave Alawa a promotion to the top job at Homeland Security:
This fellow showed that he actually does know the difference between “for good” and “for the better” — unless the person using the phrase “for good” is Muslim.
And this lovely lady tossed in a plug for Donald Trump after wishing Alawa a gruesome death:
Meanwhile, this familiar face did his part to spread the Daily Caller’s blatant misinformation:
And all of this because a “reporter” at The Daily Caller searched through at least two years of her tweets in order to find a “smoking gun” tweet that turned out to be neither smoking nor a gun.
In her post on The Tempest, Alawa put the tweet that offended the world in context:
“Just like every American, 9/11 was a tragedy that hit close to home,” she wrote.
I was 10 when it happened, living in upstate New York, and the event and ensuing aftermath left me – and the nation – reeling. So much so that it changed my career path for good – I now fight to ensure that every woman, no matter who or where or how she is, has a media outlet to find a space in. So in 2014, upon the anniversary of the attacks, I sent out a tweet, like I do every year, about the events that had transpired.
She explained the difference between “for good” and “for the better,” knowing full well that it wouldn’t make any difference to
the thousands and thousands of people taking it upon themselves to comb through my private history, any public articles I had written, any photos I had online.
She recounted the abuse she’d gotten over the past week:
I received rape threats, death threats, and images that made me almost throw up. People, furious and filled with a hatred against someone they didn’t even know, had decided I was the perfect target for the entire week.
I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. Each morning, I’d wake up, and suddenly remember what was happening online, and want to go back to sleep. All I could do was numbly block and report, block and report. … I kept laughing when I told the story in public, because if I stopped, I knew I’d start crying. I’d step away from my phone for 5 minutes, and come back to a hundred notifications.
People told her it would get better.
It didn’t get better. It still hasn’t gotten better. I’m now enemy #1 of racist, conservative, Trump-loving America, the favorite obsession of white supremacists and “patriots,” clickbait for every possible conservative platform and bigots like Pamela Geller, Allen West, and Milo Yannoupolis.
The bitter irony at the heart of all this hate? These abusive, vicious, barbaric right-wing bigots have somehow managed to convince themselves and their followers that they’re the ones defending Western civilization from barbarism.
H/T to Orion Anderson for sending me Alawa’s post.
@Lars
Okay okay, an ageist and a conservative traditionalist that considers women to be baby factories. That’s nice, by that I mean not nice at all.
You keep sticking to those guns, Lars…perhaps it’s because they’re the only thing you have?
It’s sad, really, that you think that these are the sharpest barbs you can throw at me. I have a vague “attitude”? My voice is “annoying”?
It’d be cute if it weren’t so sad. It’s actually rather hilarious how pathetically weak your troll game is.
http://67.media.tumblr.com/4ced5375f19b91e5619550a8a1b30666/tumblr_o1eyox6IIU1u5mdgro7_400.gif
Aw, cupcake. You tried so hard, didn’t you? My babe’s voice, annoying? That’s not even an insult, that’s just you showing how crap your tastes are.
Now go, shoo, because people here will get mean before David decides to ban you, if he does. People are like kittens playing with their food around here.
I figured Lars was a sock. He’s Glenn. The troll that was defending street harassment. Glenn would constantly bring up GoT to me too.
Incidentally, HBO Now went down and I’ve only seen the first 15 minutes of the episode so far. I haz a sad.
And yeah, I’m childless on purpose so that’s not the most cutting insult to me.
@Handsome Jack,
I suppose it’s fine for your girl to curse at and insult me, but if I respond, then I must be a misogynist. Is that what you’re trying to say, “cupcake”?
I don’t understand why trolls are so bad at trolling this place.
Is it because there isn’t any rule against calling trolls out for their trollery? Do trolls today just not have the fortitude of ye olde trolles and so they give up much quicker once they realize they’ve been mullered?
Like, I’ve seen trolls on other websites that kept their shtick up for years. Why can’t anti-feminists go for even a day?
Honestly the obsession with children baffles me. After all children are a huge investment and wouldn’t it make sense to have the financial and emotional backing needed to even get started on that path? Then again I don’t know this heckling enough compared to other posters.
Look at Lars, pretending to be all wounded because I said a few swear words and wasn’t deferential and pleasant to him and called him a troll. Awww, poor baby!
One, I’m not “Jack’s girl”. I’m not his property, nor am I a child. Learn some grammar if you’re going to be correcting other people’s. The proper phrasing is “Jack’s girlfriend” or “the woman who is dating Jack”.
Two, what the fuck is wrong with your reading comprehension? No where did Jack even insinuate you were a “misogynist” for calling my voice annoying. We were both having a laugh at what a sorry fucking troll game you’ve got if that’s your best ammunition.
You also did this where you assumed that I was saying your username wasn’t clever, when I was just insinuating that YOU YOURSELF weren’t.
@WWTH: I wouldn’t doubt he’s a sock, but all the trolls we’ve had recently all look the same to me. They’re so boring.
♫~Where have all the good trolls gone, and where are all the gods?~♫
@Oogly: Because that’s all us feeeemales are good for, don’t’cha know? We’re only good for babies, and if we’re not having babies, then we’re defying our nature that GOD INTENDED for us, and then we’re all heathens and losers and no man wants to fuck us! [/sarcasm]
I think you need to reread some posts there, kiddo. I don’t even think you’re a misogynist–but nice calling yourself out there, buddy–I just think you’re making an ass of yourself. It’s hilarious.
But, I will say, my babe isn’t “my girl”, she’s her own woman. I call a majority of the people I like “babe”, although in case she is, in fact, my girlfriend, and she can curse out any annoying troll on this forum as much as she wants. It’s her schtick. I love it.
EDIT: Case in point above. I didn’t even start addressing you to back up her, she can do that on her own, I’m just not a big fan of people insulting people I love.
For those who can – if you tweet her a message of support, she seems to be seeing it 🙂
I’m @steampunked there, and she saw mine.
You can help!
I don’t even have much of a response to someone complaining that they’re not a troll while attacking people they think are women about being over 30 and childless. And on this blog.
Man. Hey, if it helps, I’m 41! And female! Terrible things, terrible things.
The only reason I even sniffed out the sockitude with this one is because I mentioned GoT one time in a thread Glenn was in and he started bringing it up all the time. Then he stopped commenting and now Lars appears talking about my status as a GoT fan. Every troll has a tell but yeah, I only remembered this one because it involved me.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SuspiciouslySpecificDenial
@Lars
Another thing off my bingo, wording relationships like it’s about possessions and insulting the waify is less of being a dick rather than insulting the property.
I would be more sympathetic you for that one though since babe is usually more a term used between couples, if you didn’t just do the paragraph above.
@PI
And I thought I was starting to have it hard when my relatives are starting to ask more and more about my relationship status.
That does make sense, especially if you consider he’s here doing the exact same shit he was doing last time: defending harassment.
@Paradoxy
Well, he doesn’t want his freeze peaches taken away by those mean SJWs who expect places like Twitter to actually enforce their policies.
@Paradoxical and @HandsomeJack
Girl, girlfriend, whatever. Much ado about nothing.
Okay.
Turnabout is fair play.
Who needs brain bleach?
http://justcuteanimals.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/cute-animal-pictures-tiny-bay-rabbit.jpg
http://justcuteanimals.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/kangaroo-pictures-cute-animal-friends-pics.jpg
http://justcuteanimals.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/baby-turtle-cute-animal-pictures-pics.jpg
http://justcuteanimals.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/baby-goats-farm-animals-pictures-pics.jpg
All I did is call Lars a troll and insinuate that he’s got issues with reading comprehension, and he’s acting like that’s totally grounds for making a sorry attempt at infantilizing me and bringing up his unasked for opinion of my voice and my “attitude”.
Someone’s ego is a wee bit fragile, methinks.
Though, it does make sense, considering his internal monologue of “A Muslim-American woman was misunderstood by a bunch of racists, and it’s her fault for not wording what she said properly instead of the fault of the racists for not seeking clarification and instead going out of their way to harass her over a tweet she made two years ago”.
I mean, obviously I’m just asking for his sad little attempts at “insulting” me by pointing out that he’s a troll. [/sarcasm]
Lars:
Quit while you’re not super behind. (For a very generous definition of super)
You’re being an ass. There’s way more I could say, but you’re clearly too dim (or unkind) to actually understand much about being a decent person, so I won’t waste my breath.
On topic:
People acting like this (both Lars and the people mentioned in the post) bothers me so much. I wish there was a way to stop all this.
Oh, look; it seems Anita Sarkeesian, Chanty “Big Red” Binx, “Carl the Cuck” and “Aids Skrillex”, “Trigglypuff”, the parents of the victims of all these mass shootings, etc. have got themselves a new compatriot. At this stage, what I reckon all these people ought to do is come together and form a support group for each other that tries to raise awareness of the issue of online harassment and lobbies for some form of protection therefrom.
Lars is a bore. And he’s kind of a creepy stalker.
@abars01: There’s a group that Zoe Quinn is a part of called Crash Override Network that deals with just that, and many of those people have come forward and spoken out about their experiences.
Of course, when Anita does it, she’s called a “Professional Victim” because she gets invited to talks and things because of the things these assholes do to her.
@dslucia
Rhetorical challenge accepted! 2 reasons I can glean:
1)even outside of our troll seeking missiles, the general commentariat is just better at dealing with trolls than before. When I was still lurking, there was plenty of putting up with em. Now we seem to have perfected a gameplan: ignore, mock, rebut, insult, ban. With multiple people doing any number the 5 at once, the trolls get quickly overwhelmed, give up the jig, and drop all pretense
2)organized antifeminism has gotten less popular since its peak, but those that remain are more hardline. Feminsits are evil, and feminsits are females, so femblog commenters are female (or cuckgina enablers, so close enough). They see us as less than their mayunly, rational selves and also a powerful threat. When you have that outlook, it must be hard not to go into conniption tantrums at the slightest provocation
@Lars
http://static.tumblr.com/1fbc548841fcd6d5734f10ce49652d02/otlwdmj/nO6o3n9lb/tumblr_static_jdrxk3zluwow4wcss4cw8ccw.gif
@abars01
It’s called Crash Override dude and they all do literally exactly that. If you want to help them out feel free to do so, I just like to spread the word whenever it seems appropriate.