Current Events > Doxxing White Supremacists Is Making Them Terrified

(+) Yeah! (+)

Vice site had NWS stuff so I am not linking it.

When one of the polo-clad, tiki-torch wielding white supremacists at Charlottesville lost his job at a hot dog restaurant two nights ago, you could almost hear left wing Twitter breathe a sigh of relief. Perhaps the social fabric of our country hadn't completely dissolved and there were still ramifications for appearing at a Neo-Nazi rally, even if the president was blaming "many sides" for the violence at Charlottesville.

Of course, social media mobs have a spotty record when it comes to identifying assailants, and the Charlottesville rally was no exception. Kyle Quinn, an engineer at the University of Arkansas, woke up to thousands of expletive-filled messages from strangers after he'd been misidentified as one of the Charlottesville marchers on Twitter.

But there wasn't much sympathy for those who'd been correctly identified as part of the racist horde. Some of those identified, like Peter Tefte, were publicly disowned by friends and family. Even Jon Ronson, author of a sympathetic book about those who'd been on the receiving end of public shaming, weighed in to say the shaming of white supremacists was justified. "[The Charlottesville white supremacists] were undisguised in a massively contentious rally surrounded by the media," Ronson wrote on Twitter in the midst of mob calls for justice. "There's a big difference between being a white power activist [or] white supremacist and being, say, Justine Sacco," he wrote, referring to the PR executive who was fired from her job after joking on Twitter about how white people can't get AIDS.

Online, white nationalists may use pseudonyms, VPNs, and other techniques to try to mask their identity out of fear of doxxing, or having their personal, sensitive information leaked online. But at Charlottesville, those who attended had no reasonable expectation of privacy, according to the organizers themselves.

"The difference between Charlottesville and other public events is that the organizers were saying 'Do not come to this event without the expectation of being doxxed,'" says Keegan Hankes, an analyst at Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project. "They had some inkling [that they could be outed] given the furor in the weeks leading up to the event, where you saw things ramp up between some of the anti-fascist groups and some of the alt-righters online."

Groups like the League of the South urged members to prepare for violent confrontations with anti-fascists and protestors from Black Lives Matter. In a Facebook post which has since been deleted, the pro-Confederate organization also said the rally would "affirm the right of southerners and white people to organize for their own interests just like any other group is able to do, free of persecution".
Typically, Hankes says, white nationalists tend to be "incredibly conscientious" about concealing their identities. "They scrub images of any identifying details before they post them, they try not to post any personal information," he says. And for good reason. "There's a huge cost to being identified as a member of one of these groups because it makes you, in effect, unemployable by a lot of people."

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In the days since the Charlottesville rally and as white nationalists have been identified in photos on social media, white supremacists have fretted —often self-pityingly—about the risks posed by social media mobs bent on exposing their identities. In one forum thread on the Daily Stormer, which recently went dark after being cut off by both Google and GoDaddy, a user lamented that the peril of doxxing made attending a rally too scary for him. "The thought of getting outed as 'white supremacists' to our employers and possibly losing our jobs is a horrifying prospect," the user Ignatz wrote. If forced to choose between a rally, which could bring him unwanted exposure, or supporting his white family, he says he would choose the latter.

It isn't any safer for those doing the doxxing or identifying. Logan Smith, the Twitter user behind Yes You're Racist, had been helping reveal the identities of white supremacists at the Charlottesville Rally. Smith told the News and Observer that his reporting had led to death threats. "They have been threatening my family, too. The overall response of course has been 99 percent positive, but there's always that extremely small but extremely loud and extremely angry minority that bites back." Logan's account also tweeted photos that were misidentified.

Sometimes alt-righters doxx each other, which isn't a surprise to Hankes. "The alt right is a group of malignant contrarians so they're constantly bickering with each other," says Hankes. "Charlottesville was an outlier in many respects because of how coordinated they were, and how they kept infighting to a minimum."

When high-profile neo-Nazis are doxxed, it can have ramifications for the entire movement, especially if the information that's revealed about a member proves to be inconsistent with their publicly professed ideology. Mike Pienovich, the leader of the alt-right website "The Right Stuff" and the propagator of a podcast called "The Daily Shoah," was doxxed in an anonymous Medium post which also revealed that the virulent anti-semite had a Jewish wife. (The two have since separated.) He later urged his thousands of listeners to bring weapons to the Charlottesville rally.

Those in the movement who would dare to self-doxx are in the minority, though they exist. "Of course you're going to have some of those guys who are out there publishing under their own names like Richard Spencer, and there's constant arguments among the right wingers about whether everyone should [go public]," says Hankes. In the forums, one user struck a defiant tone after being doxxed, vowing "never to cuck out" despite public threats against them. "But, by and large, people are scared because of the exact same reasons you'd expect," says Hankes. "It's hard to get a job, hard to make a living, hard to have a normal social life when all your friends and family know you believe in ethnic cleansing."

He thinks that the articles about the rise of the alt-right obscures the fact that few would actually wish to be identified with the movement. "When you see those articles that say, 'We can come out of the shadows now and we don't have to hide our identities,' that's pure bluster. That's them trying to embolden their supporters or bring more people into the fold who would otherwise be casual observers or just stay away, because they're afraid of the consequences of being involved," he says.

"The truth is, they're terrified."

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good
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Isn't that one of the reasons KKK members wear hoods?
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CableZL posted...

Isn't that one of the reasons KKK members wear hoods?

No, actually.

The original formation of the KKK (and the second time it was reformed after the original breakup) did not have that dumbass uniform.

The uniform was actually made up for the movie Birth of a Nation. It didn't exist prior. The movie was so popular it inspired a third reforming of the KKK under which they copied the uniform from the movie.
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ChromaticAngel posted...

CableZL posted...

Isn't that one of the reasons KKK members wear hoods?

No, actually.

The original formation of the KKK (and the second time it was reformed after the original breakup) did not have that dumbass uniform.

The uniform was actually made up for the movie Birth of a Nation. It didn't exist prior. The movie was so popular it inspired a third reforming of the KKK under which they copied the uniform from the movie.

Huh.

Today I learned.
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If an activity has to be done anonymously, maybe it's a bad idea?

OpheliaAdenade posted...

good

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They'll just start wearing masks like the antifas.
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ChromaticAngel posted...

CableZL posted...

Isn't that one of the reasons KKK members wear hoods?

No, actually.

The original formation of the KKK (and the second time it was reformed after the original breakup) did not have that dumbass uniform.

The uniform was actually made up for the movie Birth of a Nation. It didn't exist prior. The movie was so popular it inspired a third reforming of the KKK under which they copied the uniform from the movie.

I thought that's where they got the whole cross burning thing. I didn't think it had anything to do with the hoods
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If you want to express racist views anonymously online, that's your business. However, if you take it to a public place, you kind of deserve it if some folks recognize you and spread the word.
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I'm a little bit conflicted since doxxing could easily backfire and affect innocent people.

If it affects a neo-Nazi though, I have no sympathy, especially if they show their face in public at a rally or something.

Were_Wyrm posted...

They'll just start wearing masks like the antifas.

The police would never fire tear gas on Nazis though

Rule one is no friendly fire
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-Gavirulax- posted...

Were_Wyrm posted...

They'll just start wearing masks like the antifas.

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Good, but if they are going to do that they need to fact check to avoid situations like the one linked.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/us/charlottesville-doxxing.html?referer=https://www.google.com/

Esrac posted...

If you want to express racist views anonymously online, that's your business. However, if you take it to a public place, you kind of deserve it if some folks recognize you and spread the word.

And that's what's gone catastrophically wrong with the last couple years or so. Gabe's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory has leaked out into reality somehow.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Esrac posted...

If you want to express racist views anonymously online, that's your business. However, if you take it to a public place, you kind of deserve it if some folks recognize you and spread the word.

And that's what's gone catastrophically wrong with the last couple years or so. Gabe's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory has leaked out into reality somehow.

Gabe's what?

Also my only concern is what was listed above is that some people could be incorrectly identified and you create SEVERE HARM and danger in someone's life who has nothing to do with the rally. People should be very careful with this kind of stuff

Is this doxxing? They're in public, some of them posted videos and photos of themselves online. There's nothing to suggest these people are at all concerned with privacy here. They just didn't think this through, and now are saddled with regrets.
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Questionmarktarius posted...

If an activity has to be done anonymously, maybe it's a bad idea?

In a sense yes. That said many good things have been forced to be done under hiding in the past.

Not that what these guys are doing is good. Fuck these guys(though the willingness of people to dox still scares me. I could easily see someone having been coerced into this by a friend or family member and just kinda being there or even one of the white counterprotestors being mistaken for one of the Neo nazi's and "exposed.")

Doxxing someone because you don't like their stance, or them as a person is not a good precedent. Makes me very uneasy how willing some people are to destroy someone they never met. Often it's over matter far more trivial than this.
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Lonestar2000 posted...

lost his job at a hot dog restaurant

Sounds about right.
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Lonestar2000 posted...

"It's hard to get a job, hard to make a living, hard to have a normal social life when all your friends and family know you believe in ethnic cleansing."

I find this quote amusing
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Howl posted...

Lonestar2000 posted...

lost his job at a hot dog restaurant

Sounds about right.

Lol dead

Good lol
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AvlButtslam posted...

Lonestar2000 posted...

"It's hard to get a job, hard to make a living, hard to have a normal social life when all your friends and family know you believe in ethnic cleansing."

I find this quote amusing

Lol right. Why would/should anyone hire your racist ass????
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I don't like doxxing in this situation because internet pictures aren't always reliable due to photoshop and it's easy enough to mistake one person for another in a shitty picture off of the internet.

You're guilty until proven innocent in this case and once you actually prove your innocence the damage has already been done.

I'm all for outing Nazis, but not at the cost of innocent people getting persecuted for it.
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i have absolutely no sympathy for neo nazis, and if youre going to do controversial shit in public with your face exposed then you should know what to expect

that being said, i dont think doxxing is ever a good thing to do, regardless of who you're doxxing.

what happens if you say it's ok to dox a certain person, even if they're a literal nazi, is that you set a precedent that doxxing is a tool that can be used, as long as it's for the right people. that leads the issue of "who is the right person?" and we are right back to square 1.

if reports want to put photos of this march online and let it circulate around, and maybe a parent or employer will see the pics and identify a person, i think that's perfectly fine, but if you have twitter accounts trying to witch hunt people in the photos i feel that should be treated the same way as other predatory online behavior like SWATing
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CruelBuffalo posted...

Howl posted...

Lonestar2000 posted...

lost his job at a hot dog restaurant

Sounds about right.

Lol dead

Hey PewiePie used to run a hot-dog cart and now he is a millionaire and called a Nazi


What does that tell you?
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UnfairRepresent posted...

CruelBuffalo posted...

Howl posted...

Lonestar2000 posted...

lost his job at a hot dog restaurant

Sounds about right.

Lol dead

Hey PewiePie used to run a hot-dog cart and now he is a millionaire and called a Nazi


What does that tell you?

That Pewdiepie is really good at toeing the line with "ironic racism" and making himself look like a victim of the media when other people call him out on his bullshit, much like a lot of other shitbags.

bump
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Lonestar2000 posted...

Of course, social media mobs have a spotty record when it comes to identifying assailants, and the Charlottesville rally was no exception. Kyle Quinn, an engineer at the University of Arkansas, woke up to thousands of expletive-filled messages from strangers after he'd been misidentified as one of the Charlottesville marchers on Twitter.

That's fucked up
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LethalAffinity posted...

Lonestar2000 posted...

Of course, social media mobs have a spotty record when it comes to identifying assailants, and the Charlottesville rally was no exception. Kyle Quinn, an engineer at the University of Arkansas, woke up to thousands of expletive-filled messages from strangers after he'd been misidentified as one of the Charlottesville marchers on Twitter.

That's fucked up

Exactly why we need to do away with outrage culture.
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