The Black Feminists Who Saw the Alt-Right Threat Coming

[dustyscamp]

Before Gamergate, before the 2016 election, they launched a campaign against Twitter trolls masquerading as women of color. If only more people had paid attention.

By RACHELLE HAMPTON
APRIL 23, 20195:45 AM

Shafiqah Hudson remembers the moment she realized something was off. She saw a tweet from an account she had never seen before: “#EndFathersDay because I’m tired of all these white women stealing our good black mens.” Something about the grammar—not to mention the idea that black women wanted to abolish Father’s Day because of interracial dating—just felt too cartoonish to be real. That day, Hudson, who tweets as @sassycrass, had a job interview. It was June of 2014, the Friday before Father’s Day. As she typed out her follow-up thank-you note and went through what she calls “the unemployment shuffle,” toggling between social media and email and playing with her cat, she spotted some reactions from people she followed to other suspiciously inflammatory tweets posted by a handful of new Twitter accounts claiming to be black feminists. “#EndFathersDay,” read one. “We’ll bring it back when men stop raping and killing us.”

Hudson began to dig, following “this trail of terrible tweets.” She asked if anyone on her timeline had any idea what was up. No one she knew could verify that the women behind these accounts actually existed. No one had met them in person or encountered them on earlier blogging platforms like LiveJournal or Tumblr or BlackPlanet. Many of the accounts didn’t follow the feminists they were parroting or even the tastemakers of Black Twitter, like Desus and Mero. But more than anything, Hudson said, the clearest red flag was the accounts’ inability to hide their contempt for the very people they were attempting to imitate. They tweeted about collecting welfare checks and smoking weed, with an occasional screed against white people. And most of these accounts spoke a version of African American Vernacular English that no real black person had ever used. “#EndFathersDay,” said one, “until men start seeing they children as more then just ‘fuck trophies.’ ” To casual observers online, #EndFathersDay appeared to be the work of militant feminists, most of whom were seemingly women of color. To Hudson, the ruse was never anything but transparent. “No one who knew or liked a black feminist,” she told me, “was fooled.” But the hashtag was already trending worldwide.

More:
https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/black-feminists-alt-right-twitter-gamergate.html

[RandySF]

1. I'd been watching it since the late 80's.

[sandensea]

4. And me, since the '92 election

I lived in Mi'ssippi at the time, and I can't overstate the feeling of sheer vindictiveness that swept GOPee voters after Clinton's victory that year - which for most of them was utterly unexpected.

As a southerner, Clinton was of course very familiar to most MS voters - but therein lay the problem: the white right-wingers saw him as a "n***er lover" in the mold of Jimmy Carter or Bill Moyers.

A 'southerner' in name only.

The Clinton victory - and the Lumpball/Faux News phenomenon - was practically a call to arms for Deep South Republicans. I knew a fairly important one at the time that threatened to kill him (Clinton) "if he went too far."

And that guy (since passed away) was one of the nicer ones!

Of course, this fanaticism is hardly limited to the South. One third of the country, I believe, is now fully radicalized.

[lunasun]

2. Kick

[applegrove]

3. Misogynist are all over Alberta too on the intertubes. Any female that runs for

office or is a successful reporter is harrassed.

[Kind of Blue]

5. K&R!

Thanks.

[NYMinute]

6. How shocking

and frightening.

Good for the black feminists to have spotted it early.