Short thread on how online harassment led by people like Carl Zha works (from my personal experience). Here's the original tweet from him, which I asked people to report:
Here's my original thread on the Chinese government's persecution of Uyghur and other Muslim women, which sparked massive harassment of me and various fake accounts impersonating me:
Many thanks to everyone who reported the accounts impersonating me, which Twitter suspended. Twitter also suspended the Chollima report, which was pushing Carl Zha's hate-filled smears against me. The Chollima report was a platform created by CGTN columnist Tom Fowdy.
I had blocked Carl Zha a long time ago but he still has access to my tweets and used a screenshot of my long thread on Han-Uyghur marriage to misrepresent me. His thousands of followers then used his original tweet to attack me using vile, personalized threats. I blocked many.
Carl Zha accused me of being against interracial love, which is absurd given that I'm mixed race, but see how he misrepresents and smears another mixed reporter, Ryan Ho Kilpatrick:
Also see this story by @isocockerell on pro-Beijing influencers and how they deny the persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. People like Carl Zha (a US citizen!) also constantly smear pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong. codastory.com/authoritarian-…
Carl Zha and other prominent influencers like him don't use violent threats on Twitter, so their accounts are not suspended. But they set a nasty, consistently misogynistic tone for their followers, who then barrage people like me with abuse that DOES violate Twitter rules.
This is why I ask people to please UNFOLLOW the likes of Carl Zha. When you follow him, you are legitimizing him, feeding algorithms promoting him, enabling disinformation, and fueling online harassment of people like me who are critical of the Chinese Communist Party.
I personally suspect that Carl Zha (again, an American citizen!) may be financed by the Chinese government, though I have no proof. Just look at the public support he gets on Twitter from Chinese state news agencies CGTN and now, China Daily:
Another troubling development is that outfits like Grayzone news have begun spouting all kinds of pro-CCP propaganda now, denying the mass persecution of Uyghurs, and they're influencing a lot of Marxists who don't know the first thing about China. Those people also harass me.
And a Xinhua News correspondent based in Brussels recently wrote two long threads criticizing my research on women in China. The tone is polite, but it's quite a coincidence that I'm undergoing this many intersecting forms of criticism and attack at the same time.
Since Carl Zha smeared me, people have been writing abusive customer reviews of my book on Amazon, saying things like "her views are similar to Nazis" and "the author doesn't believe in race mixing." Is it any wonder that most women prefer not to call out harassers publicly?
Grateful for the support of @CFWIJ:
