Trolls Stalk Journalist Who Exposed Trump Meme Maker’s Anti-Semitic History
Jared Yates Sexton, an academic and journalist, was among the first to uncover the anti-Semitic and racist posting history of the person who created the Trump-wrestling-CNN meme. He tweeted out screenshots from HanAssholeSolo’s posts on the website Reddit, including a poster that identified dozens of CNN employees as Jewish.
Then, the death threats started.
“Despite my Southern Baptist upbringing, they assumed I was Jewish because I’d uncovered anti-Semitism,” Sexton wrote in Politico Magazine.
People on Twitter sent him memes with Holocaust imagery, and a neo-Nazi site dubbed his agenda “Jewish.”
On Reddit and other forum sites, ‘alt-right’ commenters talked openly of plotting to kill Sexton and other journalists. They spoke of the “journocaust” and public hangings of reporters.
“If I could slit his flabby neck and dump him in a ditch somewhere without getting caught, I absolutely would in a heartbeat,” one comment read. “The only thing stopping me is that it would be inconvenient, and the fact that the law enforcement apparatus is still semi-functional.”
Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO