Trolls Stalk Journalist Who Exposed Trump Meme Maker’s Anti-Semitic History
Jared Yates Sexton, a journalist attacked by the ‘alt-right’ on social media. Image by Facebook
By Ari Feldman July 6, 2017
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 feldman@forward.com or on Twitter @aefeldman.
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