Tag / Abuse

by Edward Champion

Anil Dash’s Unhinged Death Wish, Libel, and Harassment Campaign Against Me (With Receipts)

BlueSky is no different from Twitter in terms of harassment and abuse. But instead of MAGA trolls wishing death and self-harm on people, the BlueSky types who gleefully harass and wish death on people are ostensible “liberals” like self-described “tech entrepreneur” Anil Dash.

[NOTE: For the TLDR crowd, I have served up a 60 second video summary of this dispute on YouTube.]

On Monday, January 29, 2024, starting at 2:30 PM Eastern Standard Time, an unhinged BlueSky user put up 91 posts about me in a nine hour period. These posts were libelous, untrue, defamatory, and designed to harass and discredit me. They whipped up the collective fury of hundreds of other BlueSky users. (BlueSky has refused to respond to my inquiries or resolve this in any way. The social media company, run by Jay Graber, did not take any steps to mitigate this. It was nothing but radio silence under Graber’s watch.) I am specifically not naming this individual because I have reason to believe that she may be unwell.

But I am going to name somebody else — a person with 17.7K followers in BlueSky and more than half a million followers on The Website Formerly Known as Twitter, a figure who claims on his webpage that he’s “trying to make the technology world more thoughtful, creative, and humane” but who demonstrated nothing in the way of humane qualities in the last twenty-four hours — who was involved in this imbroglio and who seized the moment to amplify this extremely bizarre character assassination campaign against me.

If you’re wondering what I could have done to elicit such an attack on me, here is the “offensive” jokey BlueSky post, with the other party’s name removed:

The post from the original user read as follows:

Social media etiquette reminder: there are precisely zero circumstances under which “jokingly” doing the exact infuriating behavior someone is complaining about is not just as infuriating as the actual underlying behavior.

The point I was trying to make (which I apparently failed at) — and I want to be clear that I did not know who this user was or her disabled status at the time I replied; I am not in the habit of mocking disabled people and her post simply popped into my algorithm — was that satire and parody are rooted in a form of mimicking language and behavior. I did not intend to disparage or belittle the individual. It is clear from the preposterous imagery of having an assistant “gather[ing] tomatoes, pitchforks, and an angry mob” that all this was jocular in tone. But this individual had every intention of smearing me. She has claimed that she has merely quoted my words, but she did a lot more than that, calling me “fuckhead,” making a series of unfounded allegations, and using the dog whistle language of “respecting boundaries” while urging people to block me. Fine, I thought. It’s a free country. I thought nothing of her blocking me, leaving the matter alone. Until a number of people started bombarding me with hateful replies and calls for my death on every social media platform. It didn’t take me very long to find the source.

She carried on with her fusillade all day, even after I had issued a public apology on my Mastodon account for any misunderstanding and even after I had deleted my BlueSky account sometime around 4:00 PM. I am still legitimately unclear what I did to this individual to warrant such a strong vituperative reaction and I reiterate my contrition.

This individual’s crazed fixation on me was bolstered and amplified by Techdirt‘s Mike Masnick and Ken White (the man behind Popehat). And their considerable online sway (Masnick has 50K followers on Twitter and Popehat had 317k followers before they both left that Musk-steered apocalyptic social media ranch) helped to legitimize the character assassination campaign against me. Masnick and White, however, kept their criticisms to legally permissible ones (although White, whom I have never met or interacted with before Monday and who is not a psychiatrist or a psychotherapist, speculated on my mental health).

But the tech figure who stepped over the line (and went well beyond the individual who created this firestorm) and entered into the realm of incessant harassment and death wishes upon me was none other than Fastly’s Anil Dash, who took the opportunity to impute — sans receipts, names, or evidence — that I had “maligned good friends of [his] including one just a few days after he passed.” Dash is perfectly at liberty to call me a “complete scumbag,” but I draw the line at unfounded defamation. (When asked specifically by email about the identities of these “good friends,” Mr. Dash did not produce any names or links to what I had written. I wrote, “Not that I expect you to perceive me as a human being, but, for the record, I’m always happy to clear matters up.” And sure enough he didn’t do either of these two things. I can only conclude that Dash was lying through his teeth about the “good friends” of his that I had “maligned,” given how he lied later about other details in our exchange. I have had no desire to be part of the tech world for more than twenty years and I have stayed away from it. So I cannot imagine what “good friends” he is talking about.)

Now the Fastly Code of Conduct specifies that the company that Dash works for “does not tolerate harassment” and notes that “we operate honestly, ethically, and transparently.” And the BlueSky Community Guidelines likewise states to treat others with respect and specifically prohibits “encouraging self-harm and suicide.”

Dash would proceed to violate both of these codes.

In a post alluding to my suicide attempt in 2014, Mr. Dash also proceeded to wish me dead.

He would be more explicit about this in an email I received from Mr. Dash on January 30, 2024 at 10:21 PM:

I had emailed Mr. Dash on Monday night at 8:20 PM EST, politely requesting that he stop and writing in part:

Anil, I blocked you on all social media. I don’t want to have anything to do with you. I think I’ve made one snarky comment tops in relation to you in twenty years.

And indeed, in examining my records, there was one email exchange between Mr. Dash and me on November 18, 2008, which I admittedly replied to in an uncharitable manner at the time. In a 10:20 email to Mr. Dash on Tuesday morning, I wrote, “You reached out to me decades ago by email (November 18, 2008, to be precise) and I responded in a churlish and uncharitable way that I wouldn’t do now. (Since that is the only tangible evidence of what a “bad boy” I’ve been to you, I hereby apologize for a dispatch from sixteen years ago, when you and I were totally different people.) Aside from one Mastodon post lightly ribbing you, I haven’t said anything about you until you started smearing me.”

Dash’s initial response to my Monday night email was:

In other words, Dash categorized all of his BlueSky posts about me as “satire posts” [sic]. When, in fact, the post he had made about me on January 29, 2024 at 5:41 PM — again, without receipts and without names — led a number of people to believe in his unsupported and unfounded claims. And when people believe in a false claim, this cannot be categorized as satire. It skirts into the more baleful terrain of libel and defamation. It is also deeply inappropriate to call for violence or self-harm against someone, which Dash has now done twice against me — even demanding that I “quote” him.

In my reply to Dash’s Tuesday morning email, I pointed this out:

So, just to be clear, if I wrote a “satirical” story (not that I would) in which deranged maniacs chopped up your son Malcolm into tiny little bits shortly after raping your wife Alaina, you’d be fine with this, eh, Anil?

and I further went onto say

There’s a difference between the ridiculous suggestion of me having an assistant who will rustle up tomatoes, pitchforks, and an angry mob (who would believe that?) and you making an unfounded claim where you invoke friends. The first image is predicated in ridiculous imagery and obvious satire. The second (yours) is not satire at all. The reactions from your post were BELIEVED. You caused people to believe in your false statements. Your false statements were understood by your audience to be referring to me and to be true. That’s what’s going to count in a court of law. That’s libel and defamation, sir. Please familiarize yourself.

In a post on January 29, 2024, at 9:12 PM, Dash claimed that he would never make light of my suicide attempt or express a desire for me to kill myself. But as I have abundantly demonstrated, this is exactly what he did. Presumably, this post was a postmodern riff on the so-called “”satire defense” often employed by trolls. The fact that Dash thinks so lightly and dismissively of the impact of his own public expressed wishes for me to kill myself further reveals his intentional malice and his eagerness to inflict emotional distress on me.

The correspondence between Dash and me was conveniently and dishonestly twisted into a series of lies in which Dash falsely insinuated that I desired to “[chop] up [his] child and sexually [assault] his wife” when I had specifically stated that I was opposed to such violence and any depiction of this on the Internet:

In short, Anil Dash deliberately and dishonestly distorted the dispute between us. He continued to wish me self-harm and suicide. And there will be no repercussions for his abusive and harassing behavior because he is tightly connected within the tech world.

To reiterate, BlueSky did not shut down this harassment, despite my efforts to report these abusive posts on multiple burner accounts. This was “trial by social media” and Mr. Dash refused to provide receipts.

This also demonstrates that BlueSky is little more than a Twitter clone, with all of its attendant abuse. And the abusers on BlueSky aren’t MAGA trolls, but people like Anil Dash, who have influence in creating narratives and false impressions. But they traffic in the same casual hate, libel, and discrediting of individuals that is found on what is now known as X. The only difference is that the cyberbullies are the ones who falsely boast about how “humane” and “ethical” they are when they are anything but this.

1/31/24 UPDATE: In 2013, Dash posted an article on Medium, in which he outlined the principles behind online harassment that he practiced this week to a tee: “Once a web community has decided to dislike a person, topic, or idea, the conversation will shift from criticizing the idea to become a competition about who can be most scathing in their condemnation.” Dash willfully escalated the situation in this manner and then proceed to send along repeated messages to me, hoping that I would commit self-harm. As someone who lives with the disability of depression, this, incidentally, is precisely the kind of nasty disability harassment that Dash purports to stand against. And there’s more hypocrisy from Dash in this December 28, 2021 tweet. Keep in mind that I received death wishes and harassment from Dash in a deeply invasive way. Dash is not a poster boy for a “decent” person.

Here is more folderol from Dash in 2019: “If we’re going to build a new web, and a new internet, that respects our privacy and security, that doesn’t amplify abuse and harassment and misinformation, we’re going to need to imagine models of experiences and communities that could provide a better alternative.” As I have abundantly demonstrated, Dash amplified abuse, harassment, and misinformation against me. He still has not produced the “receipts” that he allegedly has against me.

In this Time article from 2016, Dash is quoted in a manner, showing that he is fully aware of the impact of abuse and harassment on depressives, which he deliberately amplified against me: ““I’m just some dude on the Internet, and somebody will tell me probably once or twice a day to kill myself. I think if I look back to my late teens, early twenties when I was struggling with depression—if I had endured somebody telling me once or twice a day to kill myself, as happens now—it would have worked.”

2/2/24 UPDATE: This article has been slightly altered to include one additional example of Mr. Dash’s campaign to harass me and inflict emotional distress on me.

by Edward Champion

My Father is Dead

Three weeks ago, I learned that my abusive father had passed away. This is a reckoning.

My father is dead.

I learned the news three weeks ago. He had been dead for a year and a half. Nobody had thought to inform me about this until a legal matter forced certain third parties to inform me.

My father was a monster. He choked me. He bit me. He pressed the embers of his unfiltered cigarettes into my pale sensitive skin. He saw a scrawny underfed kid, a bright and budding soul that he had sired, and he knew that I was white trash. He memorialized it with his abuse. I wore long-sleeved shirts to school to cover up these burns and bites. I got into fistfights with kids who bulled me. Kids unaware of what was happening to me at home. The girls, at least, were sweet and sympathetic to my shyness and they detected my sensitivity. Women have always understood me better than men. Most of my friends now are women.

I returned home from these scuffles with black eyes and gashed knees and scrapes and bruises. It’s amazing in hindsight how both of my parents looked the other way. Why did my mother stay with him? Well, I’ll deal with her when she dies, as we all eventually do. She had her reasons and she’s a piece of work too. People who have never taken the time to get to know me have sometimes declared me a piece of work. I can’t say that I blame them.

We are all some inexact sum of our parents, but we are different. It took me twenty-five years to learn that.

I have never wanted anyone to feel sorry for me, but I have insisted on respect. You would too if you had lived what I went through. I despise being a victim and I am often fierce towards malefactors to ensure that I am not a victim. I would rather burn a bridge with the fiercest fire rather than endure any further maltreatment. I’ve had enough abuse and hurt to last four lifetimes. I wouldn’t wish any of the pain I carry on anyone. But what makes my vengeful impulses any different from my father burning me with cigarettes? These terrible lessons I practiced in most of my adulthood were planted by the people who were supposed to take care of me. Who were supposed to love me. I sought father figures in my adulthood. And when these men wouldn’t do, I turned to dead male writers to learn how to become a man. An imperfect resort, but books have always saved me during every downward spiral.

I wasn’t much of a man for a very long time. Not until after forty, when I lost everything and I was left for dead by those who were closest to me and I rebuilt my life. I’m still not sure where my stubborn tenacity comes from. I suppose it emerged because it was the only way I knew how to survive. Or maybe it was a better version of the unearned stubbornness and the shameful entitlement that my indolent do-nothing sad sack of a father always had. Knowing I could never count on anyone other than myself. Or so I thought at the time. I have since learned otherwise. I have learned that more people love me or wanted to love me than I was willing to perceive or admit. And for the ones who I scared away, I am so sorry. You didn’t deserve that. I am still trying to understand why anyone would love me, but I am getting better at accepting that people do love me. I built a new family from my friends. I remain grateful every day that I have this. I remain especially grateful to those who stuck it out with me for the long haul and who continued to see what even I couldn’t see. Blindness and obliviousness to my positive qualities has been the way I have always survived. Because I truly didn’t want to become like him.

Before I learned that my father was dead, I had not seen or spoken with my father in more than two decades. When I told my closest friends that my father had died, I was stunned when they reached out to me and they let me ramble about my conflicted feelings. Boisterous friends spoke in soft voices that I had never heard before. I told them, “No, he hurt me. He abused me. He warped me. He taught me the wrong lessons. He was a monster. He was an asshole. But he was still my father.” And they sweetly offered me drink and pot, which I politely declined. Because I had to consider all this with sober eyes. And on the night that I learned that my father died, I went to the karaoke bar and sang all the songs that he had once sang to me in his better moments. I hadn’t heard many of these songs in more than two decades. Corny songs from the 1970s. I somehow still knew all the words by heart. And I cried as I sang.

At night my father would drink. And I would be beaten again at night. My father at night. The kids during the day. There was a shed in the backyard of one of the homes we lived in and I recall nearly passing out from the redolent waft from all the empty beer bottles horded there. I binge drank as an adult to deal with my demons. And I was often mean and unpleasant. Like my father. Though not like my father. I didn’t physically abuse anyone. I was more interested in hurting myself. There was something strangely magnetic about creating scorched earth. These days, I don’t drink nearly as much as I used to. A few beers on the weekend and frequently none at all. But I do have to be careful.

His brain wasn’t all there. He had been in a terrible car accident because he refused to wear his seatbelt. And it impaired him. Fremont’s answer to Phineas Gage. The abuse escalated not long after this. But even before this, my father hurt me. When I was an infant, he tried out a homemade baby formula that sent me to the hospital and nearly killed me.

He was tall and lean. Like me. Although I’m still saddled with the belly on my mother’s side that I can never entirely melt down with brisk exercise. He was near-sighted and wore glasses. Like me. While my expressive face largely came from my mother’s side, the highly focused and contemplative look I have is definitely his. I inherited his reedy voice, which helped me in various creative capacities as an adult, and helped to cancel out some of the regrettably forceful qualities of my voice that I inherited from my mother’s side. But I suppose it all works out in the end.

The memory of his nimble hands. Like mine. But worse. He played the guitar. I learned to play the guitar because he had played the guitar. I became a better guitarist than he had ever been. And I have written countless dozens of songs on that guitar. But those same hands tried to suffocate me. Those same hands grabbed a pillow and smothered my tiny face. Those same hands delighted in the horrific sounds I made when he choked me. I still remember all the terrible times in which I couldn’t breathe and I suspect this is one of the reasons why I never entirely took to neckties as an adult. (Bright floral shirts? Happy red shoes? All the way.)

So how I can still mourn him? Stupidly. Maybe I mourned what I didn’t have.

When I learned that my father had died, I began making calls. I wanted to know when and why and how. And the details were sad. Dementia. 71 years old. He was not the only family member to suffer from dementia. Is this my future two decades from now? Jesus Christ, I live by my wits. Physical decline. No real reason to live. He had accomplished nothing. His domicile was little more than furniture pocked with cigarette burns. I guess he always needed some object to burn, even if it meant objectifying his own blood. An aspiring writer. But I actually got published in magazines and newspapers. He never got to tell his stories. But against all odds, I did. When it was clear that none of my work was ever going to be published in book form, I wrote scripts, created a rep house of dozens of actors, and produced my own audio drama and won awards. My seven part epic tale, “Paths Not Taken,” which spans nearly thirty years, is the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. And I still get emails from people about it. I hope I can do better.

I telephoned my father’s brother, who I had not seen or spoken with since I was a child, and asked him questions and told him that my father abused me.

He refused to believe this.

He blamed me for cutting off ties. He blamed me for never reaching out to my father or my father’s side until he was dead. Somehow it was all my fault. When my father’s brother gave me a sad story about how my father couldn’t find work, what I didn’t tell him was how I had applied to 1,500 jobs during a rough time and somehow didn’t give up until I landed a decent paying job. Not only was my father determined to be a victim, but his family was determined to paint him this way.

I asked my father’s brother if he had ever thought of me.

“To tell you the truth, he didn’t think about you at all.”

And that’s when I knew I couldn’t speak with my father’s brother again.

Here’s what my father couldn’t do and I did. I learned how to be humble and gentle and empathetic and positive. I learned to love in ways that were beyond him. I learned how to take care of others, to put aside my own problems to be there for other people when they needed me, and to do any number of secret good deeds which nobody knows about.

I want to be clear that I’m no hero. But I did something that a lot of people couldn’t do in my situation. I became a better man than my father. And I’m only just getting started.

by Edward Champion

Rosezetta Russell, Unhinged and Abusive Tyrant at the New York Department of Health

In which my hard work at a regular gig is kiboshed by a wildly abusive and unhinged supervisor who lives to scream at people.

For the past several months, I have been privileged to work at vaccination centers in various parts of New York City — predominantly at the Aqueduct Racetrack. I was the guy who logged in patients before they got vaccinated. In the early stages of the vaccination process, when the Racetrack was very busy, the table that I would be assigned to would regularly do 5% of the daily numbers (this when there were 25 tables) and a day in which we did 200+ vaccinations was not uncommon. I am a supremely hard worker, but I regularly cracked jokes, kept up a level of Ted Lasso-style positivism and bonhomie, and even danced at times to entertain the patients (as well as my co-workers and the National Guard) and put them at ease. I treated every patient like a special human being, remarking favorably on what they were wearing and relating to them with my charm, my wit, and my social skills. I got many of them to laugh and to feel less nervous and, in some cases, to feel genuinely excited about the prospect of being vaccinated. Largely because I knew that the decision to get vaccinated was an emotionally fraught one. So I tried to do everything in my power to make patients feel as comfortable as possible. In short, I turned them around. I uplifted them. I did so because I very much believed in the noble goal of vaccinating as many New Yorkers as possible.  New York has been very good to me. And I wanted to give back. Because I believe in science. And I remain passionately and resolutely aligned with the mandate and spirit of New York State.  I would often encourage patients to bring in their friends.  And, for this, I was a lively and entertaining draw among the other nurses, the doctors, and Yamil Spreight-Miller — the excellent former head of that site who looked out for patients and staff alike.  Yamil was a top-notch supervisor who ran the Aqueduct like a champ and who took an interest in everyone and who genuinely cared about the work.  I cannot offer enough plaudits about Yamil.

To offer Miss Russell some benefit of the doubt, it’s certainly true that I am an eccentric and exuberant man. Someone who offers quirky energy and heartfelt empathy to help make any job or unpleasant task endurable. As supervisor, Miss Russell is certainly within her rights to deny me work if I don’t fit her exacting standards — never once vocalized to me or anyone — of what it is to be a flow coordinator. But I cannot be anybody other than me. And my track record has abundantly demonstrated that my approach has not been a disastrous one; if anything, quite the reverse.

I was recently called back to serve as scribe.  And today I learned that Yamil had been replaced by Rosezetta Russell, who regrettably seemed to speak in one harsh language rather than three beautiful tongues.  While I love all the people who work at the Racetrack (and they, in turn, were happy to see me back) and I have greatly enjoyed the job and cheering patients up with jokes, vivacity, and positivism, the new supervisor Rosezetta Russell is an abusive, disrespectful, needlessly abrasive, and incredibly rude person who screams at everyone and berates all. 

This afternoon, I was even screamed at (over a microphone) by Miss Russell for no reason at all — as I was attending to a patient (Miss Russell’s behavior was wildly unprofessional and the poor patient — who I believe had PTSD — was already nervous enough about getting his booster shot; Miss Russell’s unhinged verbal assault on me (and, by extension, the patient) made it very difficult for me to do my job) — this when my lunch break was delayed and my blood sugar was low. But I still kept my cool and stayed calm and professional.

Nobody at the site likes Miss Russell.  I cannot understate this.  I had no idea how unhinged she was, but the anecdotes and stories about her are legion. And when she went after me (the “new” guy who had actually been working at the site for a long time), many of my co-workers — including some of the National Guard — checked in to make sure that I was okay.  And they filled me in on Miss Russell’s long history of screaming at and berating workers at the site.  It is my understanding that one nurse left today because of Miss Russell’s obscene antics. It is also my understanding that scribes and vaccinators alike are leaving the site in droves. It is not because they don’t want to work. It is because Miss Russell is a pusillanimous and castigating bully who does not value anyone. While a certain amount of unusual behavior comes with the territory for a job like this (the shifts are long; the breaks are few), the idea that anyone working a twelve hour shift would be subjected to toxic and uncontrolled madness is beyond the pale.

I make it a point of pride to work very hard, stay positive and in good humor, and to treat everyone around me with dignity. (In my early days at the Aqueduct, I would often initiate mock competitive races with other tables to see who could get the most numbers. This resulted in many of my fellow colleagues excelling at their job.) Miss Russell, by contrast, lives to scream at people and to treat them like dirt.  She is a vicious narcissistic tyrant without a shred of empathy. I suspect that she has kept her $79,000/year job for fifteen years at the Department of Health because she is regularly moved around and her supervisors probably figure that any havoc she unleashes at one site will be resolved by her inevitable reassignment. Since many of our patients today were getting booster shots, and I was working at one of only two tables who were handling this, I gently made the suggestion to Miss Russell that we should open up a third table to accommodate a patient influx.  It was a pragmatic idea designed not only to alleviate a scenario in which we could be faced with dozens of patients walking in at one time, but a remedy that would also allow the labor to spread among numerous tables. Miss Russell took my benign suggestion as casus belli.  For this, I was screamed at and berated by Miss Russell.  And I have just learned from the agency that my shifts for this week have been canceled and that I am no longer welcome at the Aqueduct Racetrack.

I understand that the Aqueduct is having difficulty filling up shifts these days.  And that is because of Miss Russell’s toxic behavior, which is driving many good people away.  The people who work the Aqueduct genuinely care about patients and their job.  They work passionately and ardently to sustain a smooth workflow and a friendly camaraderie with patients.

Now something that I very much enjoyed doing in the name of public service has been taken away from me because Miss Russell — a joyless and needlessly irascible bully — apparently despised me — a positive and easygoing man who, for all of his unusual manner, tends to get along with people — because she simply doesn’t possess basic social skills and she resents anyone who can make other people laugh or feel at ease under circumstances that are often difficult for people. Or perhaps because she operates from some unbalanced impulse to demean everyone who surrounds her. Misery, as the old saying goes, loves company.

I am not someone who stays silent when I am abused and disrespected — especially when there is no logical justification. Miss Russsell took one look at me and decided that our relationship would be founded on instant hatred. She has done this with many others. I have sent an email to the Department of Health, asking them if this the kind of vilifying figure who they want to have spearheading a vital vaccination hub.  I can tell you this much. If I screamed at people in the way that Miss Russell regularly bellows at staffers at the Aqueduct, then nobody would want to work with me. And rightly so.  I would never think to treat any co-worker with such wanton disrespect. But the good people who work the Aqueduct stay silent because they believe in the greater mission of vaccination.

I am putting this essay out into the universe to warn people about Rosezetta Russell’s alarmingly toxic and unhinged behavior, to hope (likely in vain) that her bullying will be mollified or corrected by anyone in Albany (do they even exist?) who comprehends that this is no way to run an operation. No professional should act this way. And nobody in charge of an essential vaccination center should be screaming at the hard-working people who work long hours to keep it running.

by Edward Champion

The Alt-Journalist Sociopath

A new species of “journalist” has emerged in recent months, one that is incredibly baleful to news and public discourse.

Now that the “fake news” braying from the frayed Trump cabal has faded into the obscurity of a horrifying age feeling improbably older than its actual position on the Gregorian calendar, the time has come to reckon with the alt-journalist sociopath, who may represent one of the greatest threats to empathy and thoughtful reflection in 2021. I speak, of course, of the Tim Pools, the Glenn Greenwalds, the Andy Ngôs, and, most recently, the Michael Traceys of the universe. These scenery-chewing and humorless offshoots of the so-called “intellectual dark web” live for ruining people even as they pretend to espouse some greater “truth-telling” ideal. They have picked up the slack left by Trump’s ban from all social media, catering to the ravenous hordes who wish to believe that the earth is flat and that the illusory Democratic conspiracy against them is very real.

If you are fortunate enough to have never encountered the alt-journalist sociopath, then let me fill you in on his common qualities. For the alt-journalist sociopath is almost invariably a “he” and really makes you aware of this fact by callously disregarding how other people use pronouns. (Ngô has gone to the trouble of deadnaming one of his victims. The YouTube commentator Vaush has limned Pool’s transphobic positions in an epic 85 minute video. Greenwald stumps for transphobic authors. Tulsi Gabbard tag-teamed with Tracey to ridicule the nonbinary.)

The alt-journalist sociopath is usually a white male, ousted from traditional platforms because of seasoned incompetence, outright hubris, or routine dereliction of basic journalistic practice. Facts, or even a cogent argument, do not matter to the alt-journalist sociopath. What does matter is the “truth,” which is often nebulous and subject to constant revision, but almost always tendered as something outside the purview of mainstream media and thus somehow nobler. This gives the alt-journalist sociopath a certain cachet shared by trendy serial killers or domestic terrorists who appeal to the fawning interest of incel shut-ins. This alt-right leaning crowd tends to represent the vast majority of the alt-journalist sociopath’s audience.

By so placing himself as an outlier upholder of dodgy “principles,” the alt-journalist sociopath anoints himself as a kind of deity, usually amassing several hundred thousand followers on his Twitter account. Yes, social media is the wild kingdom for this bilious animal. And because there are no zookeepers to administer to the alt-journalist sociopath’s unhinged rage and false sense of entitlement, the uncaged alt-journalist sociopath paws at his outsize megaphone rather than rattling the bars of his holding cell. These environmental conditions allow the alt-journalist sociopath to stir his legions of febrile acolytes into vengeful id-driven troglodytes.

Despite having the wide reach of a cult leader, the alt-journalist sociopath’s raison is to portray himself as a frail outlier even as he possesses no compassion or remorse for anyone beyond himself. In 2017, Michael Tracey ludicrously attempted to frame a modest brush from then 79-year-old Rep. Maxine Waters as a “shove” in a pathetic attempt to depict himself as victim.

Two years later, Andy Ngô went further than Tracey and secured fame and admiration from mainstream outlets after experiencing alleged violence during the Portland Black Lives Matter protests. The greatest problem with Ngô, aside from the relentless fabrication of his reporting (of which more anon), is that the details didn’t quite add up. Ngô claimed that he had been diagnosed with a brain hemorrhage after being hit with a milkshake mixed with quick-drying cement, but the cement angle was later debunked. Ngô told BuzzFeed reporter Joseph Bernstein, “I don’t feel obliged to share my personal medical records publicly to satisfy internet trolls.” (Bernstein reports that he reviewed a copy of hospital discharge paperwork confirming that he had suffered from a “subarachnoid hemorrhage.”) While no journalist, even dubious ones like Ngô, should experience any form of violence, it’s rather remarkable how Ngô mustered such sympathy for being “attacked” by antifa protesters. He secured a $195,000 GoFundMe nest egg from his ultraconservative enablers.

Being a victim is the alt-journalist sociopath’s bread and butter. It’s the winning lottery ticket that secures him some questionable legitimacy in the media food chain. Yet the alt-journalist sociopath is so self-absorbed that he will never consider the misfortunes, much less the victimhood, of anyone beyond himself. If anything, he goes out of his way to denigrate or disparage anyone whom he perceives as a threat. After Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bravely revealed that she was a victim of sexual assault on Instagram Live, Tracey claimed this to be “a masterclass in emotional manipulation.”

Similarly, Glenn Greenwald inspired a campaign that resulted in New York Times contributor Lauren Wolfe being fired from her job. Why? Because she had the audacity to express that she had “chills” after seeing Biden’s plane land before his inauguration. Wolfe’s tweet was a relatively innocuous statement. Reporters are, after all, human just like the rest of us. But Greenwald’s 1.6 million followers took the catnip and responded with the fierce force of unhinged vigilantes, claiming Wolfe to be a demonic transgressor against journalistic objectivity. Greenwald neither took his original tweet down nor called for the Times to reverse its decision. Because the alt-journalist sociopath is usually a narcissist, Greenwald instead made it about himself, whinging that he bore no responsibility for the results of his reckless tweets and disingenuously cleaving to the great “speak truth to power” lie that all alt-journalist sociopaths champion.

The remarkably indefatigable Twitter account, @TimPoolClips, has tackled Pool and Ngô at length, exquisitely filleting these charlatans down to their oleaginous essence. These two have been highly selective and ideologically convenient about how they frame the “news” they purport to report on. As documented by Jacobin‘s Arun Gupta, in an article for the Wall Street Journal, Ngô omitted key evidence of a driver striking a protester, claiming his falsely edited clip to be the work of “angry, agitated ingrates and criminals.” As Gupta has outlined, Ngô’s journalistic liberties have resulted in other conservative outlets becoming emboldened to commit similarly egregious omissions. In a September 2, 2020 YouTube video, Vaush detailed the “Tim Pool Grift” as follows: Tim Pool has weaved a narrative in which has painted himself as “a liberal who is merely criticizing the Democrat Party” throughout his YouTube existence. But Vaush pointed out that the clickbait titles of Pool’s videos, often factually inaccurate, were more indicative of a Republican.

In any other world, these agitprop quacks would be laughed off the public stage for their risible anti-intellectualism and tendentious cartoonishness. But it is a regrettable truth that these sociopaths are largely impervious to castigation — in large part because they are regularly in the habit of doxxing and shaming their critics or anyone perceived to be “against” their mission. As The New York Times has increasingly shifted to glossy profiles of insurrectionists (the “Nazis! They’re just like us!” school of journalism) and Marjorie Taylor Greene faces no repercussions for expressing the desire to execute prominent Democrats, it’s not much of a surprise to see the alt-journalist sociopath thriving quite well. And since the nadir of what now constitutes “journalism” continues to slip lower than any other time in American history (even the notorious James Callender faced consequences!), the question we must ask is this: What will it take for the public to uproot these toxic demagogues from their perches?

2/2/2021 7:30 PM UPDATE:

Mere hours after I published this essay, Glenn Greenwald further cemented himself as an alt-journalist sociopath, aligning himself with Michael Tracy’s misogyny by belittling AOC’s story. He also offered the false and hyperbolic claim, “All she wants to do is attack Republicans and fortify the Democratic Party.” This, of course, is a Pool/Ngô style airbrushing of actual history. Ocasio-Cortez tweeted just six days ago, “I am happy to work with Republicans on this issue where there’s common ground, but you almost had me murdered 3 weeks ago so you can sit this one out. Happy to work w/ almost any other GOP that aren’t trying to get me killed.”

by Edward Champion

The Shameful Lies and Unacceptable Irresponsibility of Bill de Blasio

Bill de Blaso’s failure to curb or acknowledge the NYPD’s brutality and abuse secures his place in history as the most incompetent and irresponsible mayor that New York City has ever known.

Bill de Blasio’s hideous curfew experiment has proven to be a spectacular and dangerous failure — an affront to human rights and basic dignity that is uniquely destructive to the City of New York and that has proven dispiriting for its people. The curfew, which started as an 11 PM cutoff on June 1st before shifting to 8PM during the last three nights, was intended to quell looters who had vandalized and pillaged stores in Midtown, SoHo, the Bronx, and other neighborhoods. Police presence in the streets was doubled. But it has become evident in the last week that the New York Police Department isn’t terribly concerned with curbing vandalism, much less serving and protecting the people in a fair and peaceful manner. This corrupt paramilitary police force, which has demonstrated an almost total incapacity to look inward, is more feverishly committed to abusing peaceful protesters and other innocents who merely happen to be in the neighborhood with wanton violence and indiscriminate abuse of power. It is an obvious truth that both Mayor de Blasio and even Governor Andrew Cuomo, who showed strong leadership in the early days of the pandemic, refuse to acknowledge.

As the Gothamist reported, there have been hundreds of people waiting longer than 24 hours to be arraigned in New York jail cells, with Justice James Burke ruling in favor of the police to keep holding them. In a followup report at The Gothamist, it was further revealed that many of the two thousand arrested during the last week were not even protesters. Here, the detainees — some recovering from profligate douses of pepper spray and other injuries — have been crowded in a cell without masks, soap, water, or medical care. Police, who frequently refused to wear masks, have believed they are immune from the coronavirus. But they also seem to feel that they are immune from being held accountable for their criminal conduct. (On May 31st, New York Attorney General Letitia James invited people on Twitter to share the many abuses for a sweeping investigation>)

These are not merely a series of mistakes. De Blasio’s willful malingering makes Mayor Dinkins’ handling of the Crown Heights affair look like a pardonable misstep. It is now abundantly clear that Bill de Blasio is the most irresponsible Mayor that the City of New York has ever known. His insistence that “the police showed a lot of restraint,” even as he has failed to view or acknowledge the considerable videos of police abuse, represents unquestionable negligence of his duties. His considerable deficiency, taken with Police Commissioner Dermot Shea’s complete failure to curb and discipline his officers for their out-of-control attacks, represent a bungling of command that is not merely incompetent, but that stands firmly against the NYPD’s professed credo to work “in partnership with the community to enforce the law, preserve peace, protect the people, reduce fear, and maintain order.” The NYPD has attacked delivery workers, journalists, doctors, and numerous others who stood peacefully in the streets.

What’s especially insulting is the way that de Blasio (and Cuomo) have been attempting to gaslight the public narrative by claiming that clear factual video of police brutality taken from reliable sources is somehow “opinion” or a “partisan attack.” This is not a matter of being Republican or Democrat. This is about whether a major American city should be terrorized by the authoritarian whims of a clearly abusive police force. With the curfew and his failure to hold the police accountable for their deadly behavior, de Blasio created the conditions in which the NYPD were free to indiscriminately attack anyone. It turns out that the police have been the real looters all along, disregarding the law and order that they profess to stand for in order to attack anybody they see. This is not merely a dereliction of the Mayor’s duties. It’s irresponsibility that should never be accepted from any public official in the City of New York.

The time has come for the Mayor and the Police Commissioner to resign. They have enacted policy that is harming the strength and spirit of New York and that is preventing this city from healing. These two men cannot be trusted to keep the city safe. They cannot be trusted to guide us out of a nightmare. They both must be replaced by real leaders who pay close attention, do not deny the facts, and have a limitless capacity to listen.