Dozy or Deza? Part 1

When I first started my twitter account my only goal was to use it to spread the word about my art and possibly make a few dollars selling some pieces. Twitter has never really been my thing, I don't have a Facebook at all and I kind of hate social media in general, but it seemed to be the place to pump your shit. Then I started actually reading twitter, a grave mistake, and the things I read disturbed me. The entire place seemed to be completely filled with racist trolls who did nothing but harass and bully good people that only wanted to connect with others. They specifically enjoyed attacking the most fragile users, as bullies do, and it irked me. So much so that I felt that I needed to do something. 

I'm from the old internet. I'm from the days of IRC, Shareware, and forums. We would argue for weeks, months, and, yes, years about the dumbest and most trivial shit. Pages and pages of text. Walls of it. Twitter, compared to that, is light work. 140 character freestyle writer deathmatch, Yes, please.

The key is to lure the trolls away from their targets. This was usually pretty easy. I'd pop into a thread and say whatever it took to get them to come after me, a kind of "pick on someone your own size" maneuver, and they would. I'd then tie them up for hours, days, even weeks, with nonsensical battles about everything from Aardvark's to Zyzzyva. The result was that their targets were free to browse twitter again without harassment and I'd get to make fun of an idiot until I got bored. Win win. I even wrote a blog post about reducing two polliwogs to blubbering, stuttering puddles of incoherence by doing my best impression of David Attenborough.

It's not like I was saving the world but I was helping people in a real way. I also made some really good friends. 

Things got increasingly political as watching the rise of Trumpism became increasingly more disturbing. The very trolls that I'd been defending my new friends from were about to win the goddamned election and things were dire. I started following everyone that was saying anything so that I could have as much information as possible for the fight that I knew was, and know is, coming. Everyone. I made no judgments on the person based on others and only formed my opinions of them after they showed me who they were. I honestly don't give a shit who gives me info as long as it's accurate and accuracy is something you verify yourself. 

For that reason, I was following; Louise Mensch, who I kind of thought might be full of shit; Claude Taylor, who didn't block me for a long time; and (I think?) @AltSpicerLies, who I don't think I ever interacted with. Things were totally fine. Why wouldn't they be? I commented here and there on Louise's timeline, maybe on Claude's as well, without an issue. No one ever called me a Russian or a bot or any variation of the two and, to be honest, I wasn't really listening to them anyway. Friends had shown me some things about them that were, let's say, "questionable" but honestly I'm more worried about getting shot by the police than I am about who is or is not a Russian asset on twitter. Also, I find the faux military jargon and the hero worship kind of distasteful.

Until one fateful day in July she tweeted this.

This rubbed me absolutely the wrong way. A civilian calling a twenty year US Navy vet a REMF? I don't think so. And I told her so. 

Pretty biting, eh? Didn't even curse at her. Didn't continue it beyond the thread. Didn't think much of it afterwards. However, this is the tweet that earned me a spot on ChiefCovfefe's blocklist. This is the tweet that has caused me to be labeled as a Russian asset by Louise Mensch and her cronies. I dared defy their queen and they had been dispatched to destroy me in retaliation. Or at least that's how it felt.What came next is a pattern of harassment that many, many left wing twitter accounts have fallen victim to at the hands of the so called "Team Patriot". Real "Targeted harassment" of not just me but anyone following me, anyone following them, and anyone they follow. Real, coordinated efforts to silence me not because I'm yelling "Fuck you." at a white supremacist but because in my time off from that I write down true things. I didn't even get it that bad, truth be told, but the stories that I've heard and the tweets that I've seen while telling people about my own experiences are just... well, crazy. I can't find a better word for it. I tried to stay out of it, dismissing it simply as internet drama and high school bullshit, but others did not have that luxury. 

Things like this started being posted about me.

From accounts I'd NEVER heard of or interacted with in any way. I've never engaged in targeted harassment. I call people out, sure, but I'm not targeting anyone and certainly not harassing them. Nor have I ever instructed others to do so. Unless you count "Tell this racist cunt he's a racist cunt!". If you want to accuse me of targeting racists for harassment I'll accept that. Anyone else? Nah. Never cared that much about anyone specific on twitter. Maybe David Duke.

Because of how little I cared about Mensch and her gang I ignored it at first, because it was so stupid, but the damage was done. Now every time I argued with anyone acssociated with "Team Patriot" I was #DEZA. While arguing with someone that a Chris Nethery "article" about Naveed Jamali was pure conjecture (it was) this happened.

And continued to happen. #TeamPatriot's harassment wasn't only restricted to me. Anyone that I followed, anyone that followed me, anyone that interacted with me in a positive way - They were all targets. As I said at the very beginning, the only thing that got me this involved in twitter was standing up for people that were being harassed - so here we are.

I asked that people send me any and all instances of harassment that they have been a victim of at the hands of this group. The results have been pretty overwhelming. Sorting through them has been draining. The first time someone showed me Mensch I was immediately put off by her writing style and never read her blog again. My shit ain't perfect but hopefully it's easier to follow than that. Someone told me once, as an insult, that this blog reads like a diary. Told me that as an insult. I'll take it.

Anyway.

The first people to respond to me had tons and tons of screenshots of obvious targeted abuse and incited targeted abuse. Louise, and her followers, actively tell people to attack people that they don't like and, more importantly, people who's message she wants silenced. Malcolm Nance and Seth Abramson have been very high profile targets of her and her "Team Patriot". 

She, as usual, cites anonymous United States intel community and NSA sources as the ones that gave her this info. The reasons for this are obvious - You can't fact check her. Do any of you actually believe that NSA, CIA, or SOF personnel are actually passing information to a British propagandist that blabs about it on twitter to everyone? Are we already forgetting how serious the NSA takes this sort of thing? 

She even blatantly lies about the way that things happen. It's alleged, seemingly by everyone involved but members of Team Patriot, that she and her gang trolled a man until he committed suicide then, after he was dead, tried to flip the script and claim that people who had absolutely no contact with him were the real killers, she actually called one of them a killer, and said that she never trolled him.

Team Patriot's take? Bro, it was just an honest disagreement. They never trolled each other!

He was their friend, bro. They don't have to justify their actions to you.

Here's what an "honest disagreement" looks like through Louise Mensch's eyes. To be fair, she probably really does see this as an "honest disagreement" because I don't think she has any idea what honesty actually is. This is how Team Patriot treats their friends.

Totally just an honest disagreement between BFFs. It's not like being attacked by such a large group of people would have any effect on a depressed person, huh? Not that she actually cares. She clearly has no regard for human life beyond her own. Here she is making an actual death threat. An actual death threat, over twitter, claiming to have some spec ops snipers on her team.

Another victim of Louise's had her photo stolen and used because Louise thought that she was Alt-Right troll, and all around gross human being, Cassandra Fairbanks. I can't think of many people worse to be mistaken for. 

It's a shame that she didn't use her NSA contacts to confirm this information because she turned out to be completely wrong. When confronted by the woman, who goes by the twitter handle "@BulliedByMensch", she completely ignored her and did not delete the tweet with her picture in it. Twitter's response to the harassment? "Oh yeah, she totally violates our rules... But don't expect us to do anything about it." 

As of right now the tweet that apparently violates twitter's rules is still up on Louise's TL. 

Not really sure how that works. I guess when you have a check mark you can pretty much do whatever you want and that, right there, is why this is so insanely despicable. Like it or not, she has real power on social media. It's the reason she tried to start her own twitter with someone that just got busted for... Well, read for yourself.

Twitter actually locked Louise's account last month for doxxing someone and then they let her back on. How do you get away with this much harassment? Over multiple accounts. Of HUNDREDS of users.

Let's also not forget when Louise, then a columnist for The Sun, bullied a seventeen year old girl about whether or not she invented a hashtag. Her argument was that a seventeen year old isn't a child. No wonder Milo loves her, eh?

Another Mensch Davidian tactic is to assume guilt by association. I mentioned earlier that anyone that followed me, that I followed, or that I had interacted with in a positive way was a target for her and her group after I angered them. This is an example of that.

I'm not sure why she invites "Katya" to DM her. She doesn't delete things after they're debunked and she doesn't respond to people that DM her with corrections. That would make her an actual journalist.

Now, it's hard for me to decipher her mad ramblings, she reads like a fever dream, but what I think she's saying is that @livelife0101 is @VeritasTango (she isn’t), that she harassed the family of a vet (she didn’t), that "Katya" is Russian (she isn’t), that she’s reporting Jester to the police for posting a picture of a house (he did), and that associating with any of the named accounts is a crime. Because why would you be nice to someone on twitter unless you were 100% endorsing them and everything they've ever done, right? 

It's also worth noting that Jester posted a picture of a house. Not an address, not a personal photo of someone, and not someone's name and state. A picture of a house. No one even knew who or what the picture was referring to until Louise jumped in to let them in on it. And, dude, if you're going to go online and pretend to be something you're not, like a military intel officer when you're really a military reenactor, then people are going to want to find out your info. 

This is how everyone you know online becomes a target. So if you follow, just follow, someone that angers "Team Patriot" in any way that will immediately put you at the same level of targeting as that person. Which means they feel totally fine about putting out your name, your children's names, your address, and any other info that they can find about you, and inciting others to harass you, simply because of your associations even if you had absolutely nothing to do with the incident that angered them.

They're even trying to push now that by telling people that you're blocked by Chief Covfefe you're somehow engaging in targeted harassment. Telling people that you are on a blocklist made with the intent of silencing the actual "Resistance" you are harassing them. Telling people about their harassment is the real harassment.




Meanwhile, they continue to relentlessly harass others with impunity.

The responses to my request for examples of this behavior by Louise Mensch have been absolutely pouring in. So many honest and honorable resistance accounts have been caught up in this network of serial harassment that I'm going to have to break this post up into two parts or run the risk of writing a novella. This is supposed to be a blog. 

So. Tune in tomorrow for the second installment of "Dozy or Deza?". 

See you then.

- Soos