I Pissed Off The Alt-Right

A chronicling of the Vitriol of White Supremacists.

PART ONE

The day I began to collect this series of tweets was the Jewish day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. I knew this, although I am not Jewish. My mother is of Danish and Irish decent; she is from Raytown, Missouri and was raised Catholic. My father is of some-kind-of-unknown-anglo decent (his family came to North America several generations ago) and, from the panhandle of Oklahoma, he was raised a Methodist. I was loosely raised in the Catholic church, as my maternal grandma was very adamant about it and my parents mostly indifferent. I am not Jewish and have literally never been mistaken for being Jewish — in fact, I was told by a friend and fellow intern one summer in law school that I was “the least Jewish-looking person [she had ever seen]”. I’m not sure that’s true, but the point is that I’ve never identified as being Jewish, nor have I ever believed I was, religiously, ethnically, racially or otherwise, Jewish.

So, then, one might be interested as to why I have ever received a tweet of this nature:

or this:

or all of this:

Back in 2011 my uncle had gotten one of those DNA tests that showed we were likely of Jewish decent (later, a test said my very western European maternal side were actually of mostly Arab decent — the veracity/accuracy of these tests are suspect, to say the least). Apparently, I had tweeted this extremely off-handed and, frankly, just dumb tweet in response to this information:

That off-handed remark provided the much-needed ammunition that a large group of hate-filled racists so desperately sought in order to discredit me. I would never have remembered tweeting that, but these people must have searched the entirety of my tweets in order to find it, because they unearthed the old tweet and now clutch full-heartedly to their belief in my Jewish descent. What caused them to seek out this information? I tweeted this fateful tweet:

For the record, I stand by what I said. I elucidated my point a bit more on twitter, and while I was clearly very angry and lacked the composure to refrain from using expletives, my points remain the same.

The point of this piece is not to delve into that issue, as I have explained myself on this point so many times before and today I would rather focus on what it was that was sparked by my decision to tweet about my lack of pride for my race, as it was unlike anything I’d experienced online.

Up until this point, I had received the occasional right-wing personal attack for saying something lefty. I had become acquainted with the existence of the Alt-Right, the group that, upon recognizing their existence, I had described as:

But this was different. I recount these events for several reasons, but primarily because I think it is important that people realize who the people are who have come out from the shadows this election. Also, for women who are visible online, rape threats simply become a part of our digital life. It is entirely unacceptable and entirely ubiquitous.

My tweet about my lack of pride in my whiteness spawned several different types of responses from these white supremacists, and I could never recount every single one of them. They broadly came in a few categories, the biggest of which being “kill yourself”.

Some of the suggestions that I kill myself came with instructions, including some more graphic ones:

There were actually several that encouraged me to move to countries where “there are no white people”. Also random directives for me to “breed out”, or otherwise sterilize myself.

Another category was simply expressing that white people no longer want me — that they are either ashamed of me or no longer accepted me.

Then there were the defensive ones, which were also some of the most overtly racist of the tweets I received as they usually took the form of claiming all technological and societal advancement to be the work of “whites”.

On September 2nd, I was sent this screenshot by a friend. Apparently a screen-shotted version of my tweet was still making its rounds among the Alt-Right community.

This sort of rhetoric is frankly rather disconcerting. Describing me as “deadly” does feel a bit like a call to action, although I am not particularly fearful of these folks (I think it is mostly talk). This was not my first exchange with this faction of the internet; a few months prior to this exchange I had been relentlessly harassed by a self-professed “Nazi” account who threatened, repeatedly, to violently rape me.

PART TWO

It started out rather innocuously, I received a snarky @-reply to which, for better or for worse, I replied in kind.

While it may have started rather innocuously it escalated extremely quickly.

The rape threats began pretty quickly after initial contact.

His friends naturally made an appearance.

After being reported several times, his initial account was suspended. This did not hamper his enthusiasm for harassing me, as he created what would be one of several alt-accounts from which to continue harassing me. The individual liked to refer to me as “Maddy” (although I spell it “Maddie”) and have his account handle and/or display name at least allude if not overtly refer to rape in some capacity.

He was also fond of using this image of a lego man holding a woman at knifepoint, presumably raping her.

Part of his method operandi was @-replying my friends on my timeline in addition to me.

Naturally, he also engaged in just flat-out insults.

But he seemed to always find a way to return to the issue of rape, and my desert of it.

I chronicle these experiences partially because I have seen individuals from what I would consider “my corner” of twitter write in earnest that harassment is not a true problem on twitter. I certainly think that crying “harassment” in cases in which the individual has not been harassed does occur and certainly has occurred in cases in which liberal pundits have used claims of harassment in an attempt to discredit leftists — but of course, that does not mean that all instances of harassment are similarly postured.

I also decided to write this because I remember the fear I felt seeing the term “Alt-Right” glide along the marquee the night I returned home to hear that Hillary Clinton had referenced the group in a speech. It scared me because suddenly, it felt as though these internet shadows truly existed in a way I had, until that moment, chosen to believe they did not exist.

Being white will not shield you from their vitriol, although being Jewish or otherwise non-white in any capacity will only strengthen their resolve against you. Being a woman enables them to threaten you in ways that you may not otherwise be threatened. Most of all, though, dissenting from their white supremacists’ views will enliven their conviction in those views. I do not know who these folks are, but I have no doubt they’re capable of rallying together in these views.

And that is something we can hopefully all rally against.