By David Futrelle
See correction at end of post.
The neo-Nazi internet tip sheet The Daily Stormer is warning CNN employees that itstroll army will “track down” their parents, siblings, spouses and children in an act of revenge against the network for its reporting on the racist and anti-Semitic Reddit memester who made a gif depicting Donald Trump body-slamming a man with a CNN logo for a head that achieved internet infamy after Trump himself retweeted it a few days ago.
What’s pissing off the Stormers, and the all-too-familiar assortment of internet deplorables (and bots) behind the #CNNBlackmail hashtag, is that CNN, which hasn’t publicly named the memester, says that as a news organization it retains the right to publicly identify him in the future.
Yep, that’s right: a bunch of dudes who have no problem doxxing or threatening to dox people they don’t like is mad at CNN for not actually doxxing someone. And neo-Nazi hacker Andrew Auernheimer, aka weev, seems to be the angriest of the bunch, his fury initially driven in part by false reports that the memester was 15 years old. (He is in fact an adult.) And so in a post on the Daily Stormer he rallied the troops for what he sees as a righteous campaign to force CNN “to taste their own medicine.” Although it isn’t the “same medicine” at all.
After presenting CNN with a list of ridiculous demands that no real news organization would ever meet — including firing all the journalists vaguely connected to the CNN story and setting up a $50,000 college scholarship for the racist memester — weev declares
If you do not do this, we are going to be tracking you down just like you tracked him down.
You are fake news, and we are the real media. As journalists, we have the right to track people down and seek comment on your criminal associations. We now have jackboots on the ground in every major metro area in the world.
We are going to track down your parents.
We are going to track down your siblings.
We are going to track down your spouses.
We are going to track down your children. Because hey, that’s what you guys get to do, right? We’re going to see how you like it when our reporters are hunting down your children.We are going to seek comment from them all, because you are fake news terrorists engaged in a seditious plot to undermine our President and the 63 million people who voted for him. HanAssholeSolo was a private citizen, but none of you are. We are going to see you brought to account for this, because that’s what real media does: expose criminals.
The difference being that when real real reporters “seek comment” from someone, they literally seek comment from them. When Stormers and their alt-right pals “seek comment” from people it usually means the targets of their “questioning” get sent a lot of death threats and oven memes, an impression Daily Stormer publisher Andrew Anglin doesn’t exactly dispel with his own post filled with an assortment of violent anti-CNN memes, including one featuring the heads of assorted CNN journalists pasted onto photos of Jews in a concentration camp and another one of CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski, the author of the offending story, warning him to “sleep with one eye open.”
Weev goes on to inform
Any CNN employee that does not want to be tracked down alongside their families will have one additional week to quit CNN and denounce their act of blackmail against a private citizen. After that, it is game on.
Do you understand what is coming? This is going to be ironic punishment. You are going to have the exact thing done to you that you’ve been doing to us for ages. You have an easy chance to stop this, so don’t say that we don’t play fair, and don’t pretend you didn’t have it coming.
We didn’t make these rules – you did – and now we’re going to force you to play by them. Hope you enjoy what is coming, you filthy rat kike bastards.
Kill yourselves, kike news fakers. You deserve every single bit of what you are about to get.
Lovely.
CORRECTION: This story originally attributed a Daily Stormer post to the site’s publisher Andrew Anglin; it was actually written for the Daily Stormer by neo-Nazi hacker Andrew Auernheimer, aka weev. Anglin posted his own threatening post later.
GOSJM,
Tell me about it. And everything the hyenas bitched about Clinton “may do”, and using that reason to not vote for her, TRUMP IS DOING!,
Wtf.
Who said it was? For the last fuckspleening time, nobody has revealed the shitlord’s identity and nobody gives a single swivelling damn about the shitlord’s identity. This entire “Argument” is a red herring designed to distract from your naked-ass God-Emperor retweeting Nazis again.
http://i.imgur.com/QBwfVor.png
Hey, can you do me a favour? Swallow a cactus and wash it down with a gallon of expired Ex-Lax. Ta.
@Steven Dutch
It encourages violent reactions among supporters of Trump. It showed us, yet again, that our current president truly hates many journalists, and supports a person who makes racist memes. It is not “obvious satire” when the US President posts it after ranting about how bad the press is. For a certain segment of the US population, it’s a call to action to take out the evil “fake press”.
And to repeat yet again: CNN DID NOT REVEAL his identity. Telling him, “you continue threats, we reserve the right to publish your name” is really not the same level as “We will find you, and your family, and your friends, and seek comments” knowing exactly how the alt-right likes to ‘seek comments’ by continuously harrassing everyone involved with the current alt-right “cause of the day”.
The media did a notoriously bad job reporting on economic issues. Clinton’s economic policies were pretty good and well thought out, even if they weren’t as radical as some of us would like. Single payer and universal healthcare access are not the same thing and single payer doesn’t even mean nobody is left behind in some way.
There’s a cultural assumption that libertarianism is a non-ideological panacea for all economic and social ills but that socialism or social democracy is an unrealistic utopian ideology invented by loser graduate students. The media tends to reflect that bias, even if they’re good on cultural issues.
@steven dutch
All I have to say is…… Republican Governor of Montana Greg Gianforte. We are living in strange times
@Gr8Dane: Not sure what you’re meaning here, exactly:
But if you’re talking about his genitals, please don’t. Equating genital size with ‘manliness’ throws a bunch of people under the bus. Also, they don’t equate.
If I’ve read this wrong, and you were talking about his height? Maybe? I’m sorry for the comment.
@Steven Dutch: The video did threaten violence. I did when it was posted by a redditor originally, by trolls and for trolls. It was one of a zillion memes ramping them up in their war against main stream news.
Once it was reposted by the PRESIDENT, it became a call for violence with a huge reach.
Trump can be thanked for this troll’s identity suddenly becoming news. Who is the President reading? Who is he re-tweeting? Does he know this person is a terrible person, who has tons of hate speech against different groups of people in their comment history?
Why did he not check? Does he not care?
So it isn’t getting better informed about this person. It is getting better informed as to who it is that the PRESIDENT (again, I must stress that this has been confirmed as an official Presidential statements that the White House stands by) is retweeting.
But they ultimately haven’t been doxxed.
Okay, Steven.
What was it satirizing?
Please, do tell us what message this modern day Jonathan Swift was trying to send.
I know, I know, I know!
It was satirizing the fact that Trump thinks he can wrestle CNN to the ground without help from alt-right shiptoasters, several government agencies, and a successful court case!
(sarcasm not marked)
Rhuu,
It is US House of Representatives Gianforte, not governor.
But yes, that’s what Trump and his asshole effect wrought.
Dutch,
I know you do not find it concerning that the Asshole POTUS scours the internet to find memes, and then posts them as Official White House Positions, but I find your dismissal of what these assholes do and the harm they cause to be glib.
Please stop it.
..Are these guys trying to become some sort of independent secret police for Trump now? Doxxing and condoning violence against those who the WH doesn’t like (ie CNN, any journalist that doesn’t praise Trump).
Trump’s hardly been in office and it feels like he’s been in there too long.
@GOSJM
“in fact, they seem to be convinced that the “elitists” who are “shipping their jobs overseas” are Democrats.”
Fair or not, this is it. I’m not surprised that Trump has taken aim at NAFTA and Democratic environmental policy. Because they far too often seem to be defended with an implied “fuck you and your job”.
Trump has (on the surface) always promoted American factories and American workers. He has promoted single-payer healthcare. In some ways he did what Clinton did to the Republicans in the 90s. And the Democrats seem too busy congratulating themselves on being “not Republicans” to do anything.
American politics has become more about proving loyality than it has been about crafting effective policy and helping people. RINO has been a silencing tactic on the right for a while. Can’t wait until the Democrats come up with one of their own.
@JS If David linked to the original CNN article, then I stand corrected. I thought he hadn’t.
Also, “ignore me” means that my behavior is hella compulsive. All arguments have to be out. Arguing with me just keeps the engagement going. I probably should just ask to be banned.
@SFHC
Well as long as you’re having fun. =)
Good luck feeding me until I burst. Has that ever actually worked?
@PeeVee: I was so confused! I think you’re responding to Gr8Dane, not me. 🙂
But yeah, the world definitely heard tapes of someone running for American political office assaulting a member of the press, so saying that this is ‘satirical’ seems pretty um… Not-genuine.
@GOSJM
Hell, I have yet to hear anyone explain to me how Hillary was any worse than any other Federal-level politician. As far as I could tell, the only real difference was that she was more effective than the average pol. And yet somehow, she’s some kind of monster or something.
Good thing she wasn’t black, too, or the Earth would have collapsed into a black hole from all of the Rethug heads imploding simultaneously….
Gee, we had another troll that also liked to troll for a while, claim that it was a compulsion, and then ask to be banned. Odd.
The right has been working to restrict the speech of mainstream journalists and anyone they consider too far left of center. The right generally does that by harassing people into silence (personal attacks that have nothing to do with the issue) or extremely belligerent rhetoric (comparing people to terrorists or Pol Pot, calling people liars when you simply disagree or think you can prove they’re wrong, etc.).
@Grumpy
From the woman herself yesterday in response to the GOP Twitter account asking, incredulously, where her healthcare plan was:
https://mobile.twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/882692842791063553
And this in response:
https://mobile.twitter.com/DouxDux/status/882693404710273024
Heart eyes, muthafucka!
@Rhuu
I’m pretty sure Gr8Dane meant his height. He’s pretty short (between 5’2 and 5’7, people say different things, I don’t care ). That said, making such a statement is still body shaming, still throws people under the bus, and still equates stuff that ain’t related. I’m rather little, so, personally, still fuck that
@JS
How am I trolling? Spell it out.
I’m not too surprised that this place has had problems with compulsive arguing before. Honestly, “feed them until they burst” sounds like a recipe for it.
Those working class high paying manufacturing jobs are not coming back and that has nothing to do with NAFTA. Trump supporters just feel as though they’re entitled to a good job like that without having to go to college (and many simply refuse to go because they feel entitled and dislike educated people and difficult work).
They’re not victims.
Gaebolga: I thought Hillary was the best available candidate: experienced on many levels, very rational*, tough but generally more liberal than she appears (people talk about “triangulation” as if it’s a bad thing, but she went through the Gingrich onslaught and learned that you can’t go too far left and still get elected. Part of it is that you need an incredible amount of money to be a serious candidate, so you can’t wantonly offend the people with money — they COULD give it to your opponent instead. (Insert sermon on the devastating effect of money on US politics, which skews the government quite a bit to the right.)
People forget that her approval rating was in the low 60s — which is about as high as anyone can get in current circumstances. Then the email “scandal” took center stage …
History Nerd: One of the great deficits in US journalism is that it seems like people go into it because they can write but are bad at math, so they are clueless about and bored with economics. They prefer writing about the “horse race” and they love scandals, which is why we heard so much about the email nothingburger and nothing about why Hillary’s policies generally made sense and Trump’s non-policies were so much pie in the sky. I mean, you need to be able to explain something like when Obama said families would save $2500, he meant in comparison to projected price increases under the status quo, not in comparison to present costs. Most journalists can handle anything even as simple as that. It’s sort like expecting teachers to teach subjects they don’t understand because “they know how to teach.”
They are victims of an expectation that was encouraged back then but turns out to be false.
*OMG, did a male person just call a female person “very rational”? Senility must really be setting in.
@Rhuu
There was no mention of genitals. I do not know what size his genitals are nor do I care to find out. What I was referring to was his physical size overall. I think even David and other commenters have mentioned his diminutive physical stature. I am just saying maybe he finds grown adult women intimidating, and being the piece of shit that he is he needs to feel that he is the one who is doing the intimidating, and the only people small enough for him to abuse are kids. I don’t know if that’s any clearer, hope so. Did not mean to offend.
@Peevee Oh yeah ok. He was the republican nomination for governor and he ran for it in 2016 but lost. I think that is why I had it in my head that he was governor. Hard to keep all the assholes straight.
I do find CNN’s actions a bit…threatening? Maybe I’m misunderstanding something. I haven’t actually seen the meme itself. But if I posted a meme making fun of a company and they responded by tracking down my information, contacting me to show that they had it, and (am I really understanding this correctly?) promising not to publically reveal my identity as long as I apologize to them, that would be a nightmare.
Not that I think the appropriate response is to threaten to doxx all their families, but of course neonazis are going to respond in the worst way possible. I’m mostly confused that some commenters seem to be okay with an industry giant like CNN threatening someone for having a bad opinion of them. There must be something important here that I’ve missed. Can anyone clue me in?
BTW, those “high-paying manufacturing jobs” were always an exception, found only in industries with very effective unions. I worked several manufacturing jobs when I was young, and they didn’t pay all that much above minimum wage (which was admittedly more generous in those days).
CW: very questionable humor and innuendo
I find a long board with a row of 1″ poles, rounded over, sanded, and well finished with non-toxic materials… about 12″ on center… works well to keep assholes straight.
@PreuxFox: Read the CNN article, view the meme, then come back. It’s not a “friendly satirical meme” except to people like the alt-right. Not just “making fun of”.
@HistoryNerd
Some are. But I refuse to call them all “entitled” until we have a functioning social safety net and free college. People have reasons to skip college and go to work. It’s hard enough to finish high school when you’re poor.
But I really don’t wnt to go over this. Again.