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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsA black man went undercover online as a white supremacist. This is what he learned.
By Peter Holley August 24 at 11:25 AM
As soon as Theo Wilson started making YouTube videos about culture and race, trolls using racial slurs started flocking to his page.
After engaging in endless sparring matches in the comments section, Wilson began to notice something curious: His trolls seemed to speak a language unto themselves, one replete with the same twisted facts and false history. It was as if they had all passed through some dimensional doorway, arriving from an alternative universe where history, politics and commonly accepted facts had been turned inside out.
There was the idea that slavery was a form of charity that benefited enslaved Africans; that freed blacks owned more slaves than whites before the Civil War; that people of color make up the majority of those receiving aid from America's safety-net programs; and that investor and philanthropist George Soros is funding protest movements like Black Lives Matter.
Curious about where his trolls were getting their revisionist history lessons, Wilson, 36, an award-winning poet and actor from Denver decided to go undercover in their world. In 2015, he started by creating a ghost profile named Lucious25, a digital white supremacist who appeared to be an indigenous member of the alt-right's online echo chamber, he said.
His avatar was John Carter, the Confederate hero of Edgar Rice Burroughs's science fiction series about death-defying adventures on Mars.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/08/24/a-black-man-went-undercover-as-a-digital-white-supremacist-this-is-what-he-learned/?undefined=&utm_term=.1dd7c91ec9f8&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1
gordianot
(15,253 posts)Being well outside dealing with Klan it is common to hear their delusions. Being close to St. Louis the most common lines I hear are as follows: 1. There is a race war going on. 2. Darren Wilson was a Klan member. 3. Local law enforcement are all Klan members.
These people are strange, scary and 100% Trump supporters no matter what he says.
bluepen
(620 posts)"White Like Me"
https://www.hulu.com/watch/10356
malaise
(269,277 posts)It was published in the early 60s.
Initech
(100,136 posts)The Alt Right are fucking crazy, so it's interesting to see where they are getting their information from.
underpants
(183,007 posts)Great read. Look forward to watching his TedTalk.