When you hear about a cryptic death threat directed against you, the first thing that hits is a feeling of morbid curiosity. “Is it serious?” you ask. An existential dread sits in, you look over your shoulder but it never feels fully resolved.
This happened to me and a number of other journalists after
blogger Eoin Lenihan, the far-right troll also known as “Progdad" listed us in an article he published with the far-right Australian commentary site Quillette. Lenihan’s
article is an attempt to discredit journalists by trying to link us to antifascist activists based on the accounts we follow on Twitter.
While we would not view being connected to antifascist organisations as discrediting, in general, for the right, those groups represent a threat to them, so they try to paint “antifa” as violent extremists.
Lenihan thought this would be some kind of a groundbreaking study, presumably based on deep research, an idea that
was quickly dispelled of having any empirical value since he merely grouped journalists who followed at least 16 “verified antifa” accounts.
Quillette’s founding editor, Claire Lehman, follows far more than 16 far-right accounts, including white nationalists like Richard Spencer and Steve Sailer; should we automatically assume affiliation?
In a tweet,
Quillette contributor Andy Ngo attempted to identify us, and others, as covert “
antifa ideologues” posing as experts for willing journalists, all of whom, apparently, have joined together in a plot to create a media-antifa industrial complex. Ngo is known for saying that antifascists activists are a violent menace who are being aided by the right, and on his podcast and social accounts is dead set on identifying the antifa-bias in the media.
....
A few days later, while at work, Alexander received the DM on Twitter from a journalist friend who was not mentioned in the video or Lenihan article:
“Wow,” it read, “I just saw that crazy death threat against you and the other journalists and activists Quillette has been targeting. Are you doing OK?” Indeed, his name showed up on a hitlist called “Sunset the Media” amid images of Nazi violence. The video, posted to YouTube by a fan of the neo-Nazi terror organisation Atomwaffen Division, featured the images of several journalists, suggesting we should be murdered. The video ended with a quote from Atomwaffen's neo-Nazi guru, James Mason, regarding lone wolf attacks: “I do not urge anyone to do anything like that, but when it gets done, I won’t disown them.”
