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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.

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