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.
Rhuu: apologies!! Forgive me.
http://i.imgur.com/l65i419.jpg
@JS I’ve had a look, I’m afraid I still don’t get it. I’m not seeing a huge difference between this and any other meme in the genre of ‘pasting logos over heads’. There seems to be a feeling that it’s promoting violence against reporters, but I don’t think that type of meme is meant to be taken literally. I think I would interpret it differently if the face of a specific reporter was used instead of the logo. Obviously it isn’t meant to be friendly, but it doesn’t look like a threat to me, any more than the memes in that genre that come out after every E3. I don’t look at one of those and think that people are advocating for Nintendo to literally beat up the employees or owners of the other console companies, etc. they’re offering commentary on what they think happened.
I don’t know. All the articles I’m finding seem to focus on the fact that the poster is a bigot (obviously) and aren’t helping me very much with what was so threatening about the existence of the meme itself that CNN felt they had to respond that way.
There’s probably still something I’m not getting here. That’s alright. I don’t think I’ll be criticizing any companies in the near future, anyway (at least not off anon – maybe this strikes me differently because I already have to be careful what I say – a very large American company has threatened my family in the past for speaking out about their crimes). Thank you for trying to help me understand.
Edit @scented f*cking hard chairs – well that’s not very nice. I remember why I don’t ask questions around here any more. I’ll take my learning disabled butt elsewhere, don’t worry.
Friendly reminder since no one has brought it up yet. Republican voters are generally wealthier than Democratic voters.
I’ve yet to see any convincing evidence that economic anxiety and/or Democratic elitism have anything to do with why Trump’s voters voted for him. In my experience, poor Republicans are motivated by hatred of reproductive freedom, racism, homophobia and Islamophobia. It is only the wealthier conservatives that have “economic anxiety” because they don’t want to pay taxes.
This narrative that Democrats are detached from “real” Americans and their priorities is a diversionary tactic the Republicans engage in to distract from their own classism. If Mrex isn’t a troll, than she’s a useful idiot. That’s not much better.
For the past several months, Trump has been egging on his slobbering fanboys to physically assault reporters. A couple of weeks ago, one of his lackeys physically assaulted a reporter. This week, he posted a meme of himself physically assaulting an entire network of reporters. Do you get it now?
Oh, so you do agree that memes can be insulting! Good to know.
Don’t even fucking try this. Just don’t.
@Axe and @Rhu
I was a little upset that people would think my comment would be directed at his genitals because I would not make a comment like that. Then I read your comments after I left my comment in response regarding his height. Now I feel like shit and even though it was not about his genitals it was about his height and you’re absolutely right, it is still body shaming. It’s wrong and I am sorry. I just find him so disgusting and I said something that was offensive. Deeply sorry
My take on it:
CNN: “We know you did this thing, and we would like you to apologise, not do it again, and ask your cohort to not imitate it. We won’t tell anyone who you are if you do these things, but reserve the right to reconsider if you don’t.”
Shiptoaster: “I’d rather nobody find out that I was the one who did that thing, so I agree.”
Damn, that might as well be Room 101!
Preux Fox,
It’s the context that’s disturbing. Trump has been doing everything he can to undermine the freedom of press. One of the several things he has done is rile up his base and imply that the media are lying traitors who should be violently dealt with. Trump retweeting the meme approvingly is part of that.
CNN and every other media outlet that doesn’t solely publish pro-Trump propaganda has* every reason to be concerned that someone will be inspired enough by Trump’s rhetoric to actually commit acts of violence against members of the press.
* Or should it be have? I’m not much of a grammarian and couldn’t decide.
Part of the problem, I think, is that some historians (like Howard Zinn) incorrectly labeled populists as a left-wing movement because they were anti-establishment and opposed World War I. Many were racist and far right and didn’t do much to improve education, wages, or working conditions.
BTW, Zinn also underestimates the degree to which parts of the Republican Party were anti-slavery or left-wing in the 1850’s and 1860’s.
Re: economic anxiety:. Part of why Trump won Michigan was a decline in the D vote in Dem working class areas that voted Dem down ballot (including for minorities). Trump picked up a small portion of this vote, but a lot of it voted Stein or Johnson. Now, economic anxiety played a part (a lot of these communities have really been through the wringer) and they didn’t necessarily vote Trump but they did play a part in him winning the state.
@Grumpy
Yup. 🙂
For a long time manufacturing jobs were the easiest way for the working class to gain benefits such as health insurance and retirement/pension. Increasingly we’re just doing without.
imagine if weev was swiftly arrested for publicly threatening blackmail
Yeah, that was my take too. I’ve got to say that internet shitposters can not exactly proclaim themselves to be crusaders for free speech if they’ll only do their “activism” under the cloak of internet anonymity. Real social justice movements are full of people who risked ostracization, jail, even death for their cause. Can’t imagine internet trolls doing anything like that.
Re: Populism:. As it was conceived in the 1890s version (People’s party, to an extent in the William Jennings Bryan campaigns) the aim was vaguely left wing with some nationalization, reform to the money system, reform with how big companies were dealt with. However, even then it was confused at best on racial issues (the People’s party itself tried to avoid the issue and Jennings Bryan was a racist).
Anyone who thought a libertarian president like Gary Johnson would do anything for working class people honestly deserves any shit that will happen to them during the Trump administration.
@Scented F*cking Hardchairs
Insulting, yes. Threatening? Was I supposed to think that you are threatening to drive a car through my house? My interpretation is that you were making fun of me for having trouble finding the meme, not that you were threatening to do property damage. I certainly don’t hope CNN came after someone just for saying something they thought was rude.
I’m not sure what you think I was ‘trying’. You seem to be frustrated with me for not being able to navigate the internet; so I acknowledged that I am stupid, which seems to be what you’re frustrated by, and that I’ll go ask somewhere else more appropriate.
And no, I still don’t really see the connection, but I think you are frustrated with me so that’s alright. Again, I will go ask somewhere else.
@Gr8Dane: You know what, I hadn’t even thought about the height thing, so I’ve definitely learned something here too. It’s just… so hard to express anger in a way that doesn’t shame someone in some way. Our culture and language just aren’t very good at it.
I keep finding myself making assumptions or using turns of phrase and then either being called out on it, or catching myself and thinking “Oh noooo, why did I say that? Not again!”
It’s been explained several times in this thread why it can be interpreted as threatening and not just “rude.”
Let’s not talk about what states who won without mentioning voter supression in those states. Cos that shit is always left outta the convo
@SFHC
Lay off Preux, will ya? Seriously jerk move, and that’s me saying it. Nothing wrong with what they asked, their concerns, or any past actions, afaict. Save the bile for @mrex, ain’t like she’s ever going away…
@Gr8Dane
Eh, fuck ups happen. I said “fuck that”, not “fuck you”. It’s all cool!
🙂
Preux Fox,
For months, months, Trump has called CNN fake news, and has stated openly he would like to see them go down as a news org.
Then, he Tweets this meme, taken from a known racist, anti-semitic, xenophobic web site of him “taking down CNN.”
And he does so, knowing that his Tweets are considered official White House positions.
Also knowing his fucking sychophants would gobble up every word, and would turn their ire onto CNN, because he has ‘conditioned’ them to believe that CNN, and the press in general, are evil, fake news orgs “out to get him.”
@GOSJM
Wrong. The DLC wasn’t forced to do jack shit, they picked that third way bullshit all on their own. They could’ve fucking well fought back instead, if they actually had the core values you attribute to them. They don’t, though.
Say what? Which incarnation of the Democrats is this? Cos it isn’t one that’s existed in my lifetime.
Because they took any pretense of economic progressiveness and buried it at a fucking crossroads with a stake through its heart, and have never given more than lukewarm support at best to social progress (look how many forced-birther democrats there are, just as a for instance).
1)The ‘white working class’ didn’t elect Trump, as has been discussed many, many, many many times here since the election.
2)The Democrats need to stop trying to appeal to the quislings of the ‘white working class’, and start fighting for the working class and the poor. And the non-white, female, and queer, while they’re at it. Because that’s how a leftist (ostensibly) party gets votes, not by being a little less conservative than the fascists. They need to be fighting gerrymandering, voter ID laws, restricting voting rights of current and former convicts, etc. not kissing up to people who are never going to support a progressive platform regardless.
“— in fact, they seem to be convinced that the “elitists” who are “shipping their jobs overseas” are Democrats. The dilemma is how to get those votes back without appealing to racial and religious antipathies.”
The Democrats can’t ‘get those votes back’ because they never fucking had them.
William Jennings Bryan was arguably left-wing, but his policies would’ve increased the price of food in cities. He was also a fundamentalist (albeit less extreme than some) and was pretty confused on social issues in general.
@wierdwoodtreehugger
Yes, I know, that’s why I am confused that the other commenter seems to think I didn’t think memes can be insulting. I didn’t think that was what we were talking about, I thought we were talking about it being threatening.
Thank you to everyone who has tried to explain. I don’t think I am in a good place to understand right now so I think I will come back later when I am feeling better, and maybe when one of my partners is awake and can help me understand what you all are explaining. I am sorry if my questions or other things I said were not appropriate, it’s that my understanding of what happened is scaring me, and I thought I must be wrong since so many of you thought it was okay and you usually know what’s going on better than I do. But I think maybe I interrupted a more important conversation or I was rude somehow. I’m sorry.
History nerd:. True, though a better example of a left-wing populist was James B. Weaver (who was slightly less fundamentalist, but still awkward on social issues).
And in Michigan it had less to do with Johnson than with the idea that “ex-serviceman” made a more respected version for a protest vote than Stein. And I could give you chapter and verse, but there is a long history between the Clinton’s and the rank and file non+Detroit Dem voters in Michigan (which was also reflected in the primary with Sanders). Generally, even the people I know that voted (and it was a lot) for her almost always did so with the enthusiasm one would do with keeping a dental appointment (and bear inind they still did it).
I just… let’s consider how the alt-righties would have gone ridiculous if Obama or Clinton had tweeted a similar thing, and CNN reacted in exactly the same way to trace down, and not expose, the original shiptoaster.
There would have been multiple calls for impeachment, praise for CNN being brave enough to stand up to the bullying left-wing, doxxing of the offender even though CNN didn’t. No threats of doxxing CNN’s journos and familes.
There might be some ultra left-wing that threatened such, but they’d be a lot quieter about it.
Do you people who don’t like CNN’s reaction see the alt-right double standard yet?