Alt-Right Internet Trolls Are Already Emboldened By Trump's Victory
Paul J. Richards / AFP / Getty Images Despite relatively small numbers, by most estimates, the alt-right, a group of almost entirely anonymous posters without a leadership structure, emerged as a potent online force over the past year. As the presidential campaign wore on and minorities, journalists, and Clinton supporters were subjected to an unending campaign of insults, harassment, false information, and horrifying images — it was hard to know how much worse it could get. Well, if the first few hours of Donald Trump as president-elect are any indication, the answer is: A lot. The coalition of trolls and white supremacists that turned many of the internet's social spaces into toxic cisterns of abuse is showing signs it was emboldened by last night's historic results. Already, evidence is everywhere that they are now in the process of making the internet an even nastier and crueler place. Just have a look around:
Etc, etc, ad nauseam. In its exuberant escalation of offense-giving, the alt-right seems to feel that its outrageous behavior has been rewarded with a mandate thanks to Trump's victory. The alt-right, which values offensive speech — about race, immigration, religion and gender — as a virtuous assault against polite neoliberal consensus, found an avatar in the president-elect, who ran a successful campaign against the movement's boogeyman, political correctness. Even though the alt-right may not have done all that much to help Trump become the most powerful man in the free world in terms of number of voters it turned out, his victory will — has already — validated its worldview and poured fresh fuel onto its fire. Given the renewed energy, it's hard to imagine how the situation will do anything but further devolve. Twitter, where the vast majority of nastiness takes place, has shown itself to be as incompetent at managing abuse as it is competent at spreading hate. In a Twitter thread last night, former employees bemoaned creating "Trump's campaign vehicle"; "a machine that turns polarization into $"; and "a gigantic shouting machine. the best there ever was." And the incubators of this nastiness, places like 4chan and 8chan and smaller forums like therightstuff.biz (which is hosting a live call-in broadcast called the "Daily Shoah" tonight to celebrate "liberal tears") will simply always exist in some form or another. And it can probably get worse. Reports leading up to the election found that a relatively small, hyperactive group of alt-right accounts were responsible for most of the abuse attributed to the group. But the most mainstream website to nurture the alt-right, Breitbart.com, gave Donald Trump his campaign's chief executive. And that campaign convinced nearly 60,000,000 Americans to vote for Trump. The trolls have been fed, and fed well. Now they're coming back for more. via BuzzFeed - Tech https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/alt-right-internet-trolls-are-already-emboldened-by-trumps-v?utm_term=4ldqpia |
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