My reporting on the Stars of David meme quickly went viral. At this moment it’s been shared more than 14,000 times by the likes of CNN’s own Jake Tapper and MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who’s had his own run-ins with the president as of late. In the past, when a post or story of mine has garnered that much attention, I’ve always dealt with the inevitable criticism and harassment that follows. Sure enough, it wasn’t far behind.
Before the hour was up, I was receiving messages from the usual customers: anonymous accounts with Pepe avatars and bios declaring themselves “ethnonationalists” and “white identitarians.” Despite my Southern Baptist upbringing, they assumed I was Jewish because I’d uncovered anti-Semitism, and so the threats and memes predictably featured pictures of Adolf Hitler, scenes from the Holocaust and other anti-Semitic garbage. I was peppered with the usual slurs and insults before a user calling his or herself “Pepe’s Imam” told me: “There’s a civil war coming, leftist. Memes are the least of your problems.”
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I learned last year the best strategy is to be open about this kind of stuff and expose it however possible. On my Twitter feed I prepared screenshots of the offending rhetoric while critics accused me of lying. The left is the violent group, they told me while linking to stories about clashes with antifascist groups. In the same thread, as they claimed I’d made the whole thing up, the anti-Semitic materials and threats were piling up.
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While Neo-Nazis and 9/11 Truthers sent more memes and threats, people kept talking about the original GIF that’d started the whole mess. Wrestling is fake, they said. A choreographed fight that’s nothing more than some harmless fun.
I kept thinking about HanAssholeSolo’s posting record. His rampant use of racial slurs. His talk of wanting all Muslims eliminated. The CNN meme with the Stars of David. That wrestling GIF that, upon first glance, might appear to be tongue-in-cheek, but, with closer inspection, hides something much, much darker.
HanAssholeSolo has apologized, and vowed never to post that kind of hateful rhetoric again. But as I discovered, there are thousands more like him—and they’re not sorry.
