A. Witches, this is a thread based on extensive criticism we’ve had this afternoon that we’re a “vigilante group” hell-bent on “taking down people for one mistake” becos of Pete Evans.
It’s been put to us that ppl are “scared to say anything” in case “the witches attack them”.
B. While in our opinion many of these comments vastly over-estimate our power, we’ll briefly address the main issues raised.
Firstly, here’s a list of people we witches believe we’ve had removed from positions of influence (or helped achieve this) in the past year or so:
C.
Alan Jones
Sam Newman
Pauline Hanson
Pete Evans
What do these people have in common? Well, they’re all constant, unrelenting and contemptible offenders. They all lie and/or engage in overt racism, sexism, climate-denial, #COVID19-denial or other forms of hate repeatedly.
D. We choose who we choose to civilly target carefully. We don’t target via our organised campaigns anyone who’s:
- made a single mistake;
- apologised for their mistakes; and/or
- has changed and tried to do better.
Yet every person on that list has offended over & over again.
E. None of them ever apologised and, in fact, all are still repeatedly offending on platforms other than those we’ve caused them to be removed from. None has ever shown any remorse or permanently changed behaviour.
In our opinion, all of them are dangerous individuals.
F. They’re dangerous because they encourage and incite violence via overt racism and misogyny, and put the health of others at high risk via denying the effects of COVID and/or the climate crisis (among some else).
Not only is campaigning against them reasonable: it’s essential.
G. In addition, our campaigns’d never work if we targeted a person unfairly. This is because it’s not us as a behind-the-scenes Admin group who do the work: it’s many thousands of witches who are outraged by these people.
It’s our tens of thousands of witches who cause change.
H. & unless all those witches were motivated to contact companies to express that outrage, nothing would change.
Further, companies which divest from using or paying those people would never respond to witchy requests unless they themselves felt the behaviour hurt their brand.
I. For those reasons, we completely reject any charge that we have ever damaged anyone unfairly or that we even have the power to do so.
The power (if there is power) comes only from justified fury. Such fury is impossible to manufacture unless it’s deserved.
In addition ...
J. ... all those on that list had and still have far more influence than MFW does. They have enormous reach, money, influential friends & power.
We have none of that but only an engaged collective of people who can’t be stopped when they furiously demand crucial change.
K. Our main campaign target now is Rupert Murdoch, who’s close to the most evil man on earth. Yes, there are other targets in our campaign lists, but he’s the main one.
We might post on a person for a single instance of disgraceful wrongdoing, but we never campaign against them.
We’ve spent today fielding dozens of messages from angry Aussies.
The gifting of ANOTHER 10 million $$ to #NewsCorpse is the last straw for many.
While old hands know what we witches do, there are new ppl all the time who want to get on board.
2. So: who are we?
We’re a group of about 75% women & 25% men, & call ourselves the witches. Our name comes from a text message Peter Dutton sent the wrong person 5 years ago.
Our first big campaign was to get Alan Jones sacked, by asking his advertisers to boycott his show.
3. After Jones was sacked, we were instrumental in getting both Sam Newman & Pauline Hanson sacked from Channel 9, both for outrageous racism.
Our next target was #NewsCorpse. Like you, we’re furious about the lies, denial of science, & disgraceful corruption enabled by him.
A. Okay, here’s a tweet thread about asking people to “be kind” & “forget the last four years of abuse from MAGAs”.
This seems to have occurred in response to @JoeBiden saying he wanted to govern for “all America”, which many have taken to mean he said MAGAs should be forgiven.
B. I don’t believe Biden meant that. In any case he has little choice but to say that, as his literal job is to try to find common ground with everyone he governs.
That’s not true for everyone.
So extrapolating that everyone needs to do that is not only wrong, but it’s abusive.
C. Ppl who’ve spent 4 years being specifically told they shouldn’t be alive, or should be locked up or tortured, have no obligation to forgive/forget.
Because it’s a denial of absolutely justified anger & pain. It makes ppl feel that what happened to them doesn’t matter.
Good morning to all who can see our account again today after we were suspended yesterday for saying *one* word non-abusively about Trump that we’ve seen dozens of men’s accounts say including directly to Trump & none were suspended.
Here’s the thing: Twitter doesn’t suspend accounts on their own. Ever, AFAIK.
All they do is *respond* to ppl reporting accounts, & make decisions on whether those ppl are right or not.
So whether someone’s suspended/banned is 100% due to how many reports Twitter gets.
3/8.
This makes Twitter extremely misogynistic & racist, & supportive of trolls & the RW.
Becos people report women far more, & Black ppl, & activists. There are RW ppl who spend all their time reporting such accounts, & hoping some of it sticks.
1/5. There are a lot of people not in VIC passing a shedload of commentary ATM about how people in VIC do (or, more to the point) should feel & behave.
They mostly forget that VICs, more than any other Aussies, are in “fight or flight” mode RN, & most are under immense stress.
2/5. If you’re not in VIC, perhaps think back to how you felt in Mar/Apr this year.
If you’re honest, it was a helluva time but you’ve forgotten what most of it felt like.
Well, VICs are still in the middle of that, but worse.
Way worse.
We HAVE to beat this wave.
3/5. VICs genuinely feel we’re fighting for our lives.
We all know #NewsCorpse media act in bad faith, but forget that for us VICs, the lies & bias is intensely personal.
This is NOT a theoretical exercise.
If Murdoch has his way, our parents are at risk, & even ourselves.