I've had a whole lot of hardcore nazis in my mentions lately, and I figure now is as good a time as any to give a quick rundown of the method I use to identify them. It's a surprisingly simple process once you get into the habit.
Take for instance, this seemingly innocent post:
Take for instance, this seemingly innocent post:
At a casual glance, that looks like a perfectly reasonable person, right? Even one who is in fundamental agreement with the post to which this is a reply? However, I was able to determine that this is actually a nazi through a simple 1-step process.
Step 1- Look at follows.
Step 1- Look at follows.
While you DO get the occasional nazi who has the presence of mind to set up a clean account for standard channer ops, the vast majority never bother.
All you really have to do is pop open the profile of anyone you don't know who shows up in your mentions, click "following," and
All you really have to do is pop open the profile of anyone you don't know who shows up in your mentions, click "following," and
tada. It's practically their life story. This is a particularly nice example if anyone wants to play at home since it seems like this was originally a general use twitter account not one registered post-radicalization. Seems to have gotten interested in Jordan Peterson about the
same time as some RPG campaign, worked up through a few relatively mainstream far-right journalists from there, heading in towards the more pure fringe FAR-right personalities. getting away from traditional media sources, and then we see a point of really going hardcore, stalking
a few anti-fascist types, looking into buying twitter followers, following a lot of raw news feeds and looking into people who get a far-right spotlight as either "heroes" or "villains" as they enter the spotlight.
And of course, having worked out that this person is a nazi, we
And of course, having worked out that this person is a nazi, we
could look back, knowing now what to be wary of, and see all the far right talking points being snuck into that original message, calling journalists "activists" and throwing in some "deceitful people on all sides!" BS, or better, we could not do that, block another nazi, and get
on with our lives.
To be clear, I don't usually do this whole "let me read over your follows and build a narrative" thing either. I just do a quick scan for the big red "Blocked" notifications you can see in my screenshots. Which are, of course, the reason I say this is really
To be clear, I don't usually do this whole "let me read over your follows and build a narrative" thing either. I just do a quick scan for the big red "Blocked" notifications you can see in my screenshots. Which are, of course, the reason I say this is really
simple and easy if you make it a habit. I've had 5 and a half years of dealing with dangerous creeps to build up a thorough enough list of major far-right figures, mass-harassment shot-callers, and creepy stalkers that at this point it takes me all of 5-10 seconds per nazi check.
