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.
PeeVee, I attributed the Daily Stormer post to the wrong neo-Nazi Andrew. I’ve added a correction to the piece.
Anglin was responsible for the second DS post containing the threatening memes.
Such journalistic ethics!
@ bina
http://i.imgur.com/l0wsZDv.jpg
What I find amusing is that thing where they attempt to feign sophistication (or is it just being a grown up) by posing with pipes and whisky bottles. Of course Nazism has always been a refuge for the insecure and inadequate, so I probably shouldn’t find their desperate over compensation surprising.
For these peopl,
Fake news = annoying to Nazis.
Truth and reality have nothing to do with it
@Bina
Occasionally a tiny bit of sarcasm creeps into what I say.
This may have been one of those times.
I just hope I’m not asked to resign my post as ambassador because of this faux pas.
Some kind of lawsuit would seem to be the thing to do – I’m sure CNN will have some lawyers handy.
So I had to do some research on White supremacists on the internet last year. Learned way more about these fucknuggets than I ever could want to know.
Something interesting I learned is that Anglin used to be a violent, rage-filled liberal. Yep. From the top of his dreadlocked head to the tips of his organic hemp socks. You can read about it a little here.
Meanwhile, I really want someone to offer a $10,000 reward to anybody who can deliver an actual, unaltered photo of Anglin with dreadlocks, so I can put it next to his quote about how “fun” and “addicting” it is for White supremacists to pretend to be Black on Twitter and post that shit EVERYwhere.
“We will research and question the shit out of you!”
I imagine at some point Trump’s handlers advised him to stop directly retweeting “certain people” because connections like that give the “fake media unfair rhetorical leverage”.
So when Trump saw one of “those people” tweeting a real badass anti-CNN meme from Reddit, he himself tweeted it cleverly without attribution. That meme alone made him look immature and petty enough to gain some national attention.
The CNN dug out the meme author, who again turned out to be one of “those people”. Not very big news as such, actually, but…
Now Those People are loudly making threats and noise, defending Trump’s right to not be openly associated with their Reddit accounts. Also, defending their own right to not be openly associated with their own Reddit accounts.
@Still Fiqah,
That link was a most interesting read! Thanks for sharing.
@Arctic Ape,
I had to read that a few times, but yep… sounds about right.
I think 😀
Was the “he’s actually an adult” fact found on his facebook page? I clicked the link but the article only mentions the fact, not how it was found out, and a chat I go to have a few members who, while not ill-intentioned themselves, are likely to believe “Both extremes are just as bad look how the left just doxxed a CHILD!!! so sad! SO SAD!!!” and I’d like to have something solid to answer them.
In their analysis of the poster’s virulent habits, the ADL says that indications in his other posts suggest he’s a 40-year old veteran and parent, though they don’t go into further detail.
(Also, hi there. Long time lurker, first time poster…)
https://www.google.com/amp/www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pol-trump-reddit-20170705-story,amp.html
It’s not going to get more clear than this as they didn’t release his Identity. Thus it *cant”* come from his Facebook page. So they didn’t dox him and you can tell the false equivalency…folks (I wanted to use a different f word but I’m being nice) that thus by definition they didn’t.
So whats suppose to be the blackmail element in this affair ?
@ still fiqah
yeah, interesting about Anglin…. Looks like his younger self had a bad case of “… look at mee!… everybody, look at meeeeee!!!…. In his current drivel, as well as in the drivel of many of his like-minded contemporaries, I see a lot of that.
I apologize for using the term mentally challenged in my comment. I did not mean to imply that people of low IQ are any more likely to be part of the deplorable crowd than any other. What I meant is that people who lack basic critical reasoning skills will be easily influenced by someone who presents an easy and unsophisticated solution to a perceived problem – in this case, harrass, or worse, people’s families.
And, not just journalists, mind you, but anyone employed by CNN or any other outlet declared to be “fake news”.
The president has already usurped the principle of free speech by claiming that he would ( or, would not, but could) dictate to the Enquirer whether will print certain articles.
And, yeah, I find it terrifying that kind of blackmail is even allowed. Are there no laws against threats of personal injury to an entire group of people? To the press? There must be. Why are they not being evoked? Who will be the next tablets is this is allowed to stand? Reporters who write positive stories about gays or Jews?
RE: CNN Blackmail
Here’s what CNN said that started the whole thing;
“CNN is not publishing “HanA**holeSolo’s” name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again. In addition, he said his statement could serve as an example to others not to do the same.
CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.”
CNN.
So, CNN pieces together this guy’s identity from personal info they gleaned off of his account and comparing it to facebook pages. They get in contact, hansassholesolo expresses fear for his personal safety and that of his family. So far so good.
Then CNN agrees not to release his name, and releases a PUBLIC STATEMENT that they won’t release his name as long as he is a good boy and behaves. WTF?
How the fuck is this ethical? CNN is (reasonably) upset that people will take *asshole’s videos literally and attack journalists. But then they release a statement threatening to release a man’s name (and expose him to violence) if he doesn’t behave a certain way, and then bitch and sit in wonderment that their statement is taken as “threatening to dox”?
Irony.
As to the neonazis that responded to this by threatening the families of CNN employees, there are no words. When the fuck are we going to start taking incitements to violence on the internet seriously?
David, why?
Please fuck off, Mrex, nobody likes you and nobody buys that you’re on the Resistance’s side.
Allow me to remind certain folks…
HanA**holeSolo is not a 15 year old. CNN says “He’s an adult”. While some people would then claim “CNN doxxed him more!”, others would realize “not doxxing a child” and shut up about that part.
Our President (I use the term loosely) has done much worse to people who say bad things about him. Lawsuits, news interviews, tweets… Why so much hate for CNN, when the Tweeter-In-Chief has personally done much worse…
This seems to me a reasonable response for CNN, given they didn’t actually name him, and showed him that it was easy to determine who he was with just a little effort. If he continued to post threat videos featuring CNN, what other recourse would they have?
Yep, in mrex’s world CNN would have no recourse but to accept the threats. No, naming someone (either as part of a criminal or civil action) is entirely justified and allowable when someone take aggressive action towards you.
@SFHC
Oh yes because CNN isn’t getting a bunch of criticism from THE LEFT for this.
I’m not fucking off and you don’t speak for everybody. I gave the background info. People are free to agree or disagree. When a journalist does something so beyond the pale that he gets shit from both sides, it should be noncontroversial to bring up here.
@Handle
My criticism is that they *didn’t* name him, but threatened to do so.
mrex, your interpretation of this incomplete background material is seriously flawed. CNN hasn’t doxxed him.
You are leaving out the explanation CNN gave for saying it that way the first time.
You don’t seem to want to accept criticism either.
Let me restate this; releasing his name is fine. Sueing him is fine. Listening to his fears about his family’s safety, and then *threatening* him with that is not fine.
But I’m done here. Have a good day peoples.
Edit: JS, yes the statement where didn’t *intend* to threaten him. Just like asshole’video didn’t *intend* to threaten CNN.
Because intention is everything.
It’s actually pretty difficult in the US to get in trouble for inciting violence. He implied the threat of violence, but did not come and say it.
@mrex
Giving someone a benefit under condition is not the same as a threat.