1. The #EpikFail show that Michael Trollan is the person that runs Andy Ngo's website. I'm going to dump a lot of info on Michael here for other researchers and journalists. It won't be a nice, clean, flowing thread but it will be fun.
8. Peter has tried to portray his relationship with Andy Ngo as tangential, but Andy's site was registered less than a year ago and Peter is the clearest link between Andy and Michael.
9. Aethists for Trump. Pretty juicy freeze peach lingo here. Will Michael appreciate my freeze peach? Fucking doubt it.
14. Please see this fantastic thread from Z3dster where Trollan shows up. It was impossible to know that he ran Andy Ngo's website then, because Z3dster would have caught it.
18. Michael Trollan got into activism in 2013 with the Atheist movement. Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens are cited as heavy influences.
19. In 2016 he moved from being an activist for atheism to freeze peach, like a lot of atheists did. That appears to be the mid-point between atheism and "anti-antifa".
When he finds a cause it's clear he dives in head first.
20. He founded Secular Action in 2013 and it's been left to rot since 2017.
21. Melissa Chen and Thomas Sheedy chillin and grillin with Andy Ngo.
It's like a little fascist network node. All furthering each other's bullshit with money and influence.
One of the interviewers seems like a barely closeted identitarian. Michael pushes back on some things. He does geniunely not bigoted toward immutable characteristics in people
I'm trying to be fair, which is more than what Ngo would do.
23. Andy Ngo is a fascist propagandist who spends a lot of time demonizing African-Americans, Muslims, and Trans people in addition to anyone left of center.
Either Michael is doing a lot of rationalizing or he has moved much further right since that video interview.
24. It's clear by the racist anti-Asian spree killing that the worm had turned.
26. @michaeltrollan locked his Twitter account in the last week, but I'm going to post highlights of the hundreds of his tweets that are archived. I'm sure more enlightening patterns will emerge.
27. I've been informed that Michael Trollan is no longer a Director with @seculardotorg and that his tenure ended in late 2019. A web page that wasn't up to date is the reason he was still showing as being with the org.
28. Yes, Michael Trollan said he got into the IDW early on, influenced by Weinstein, Rubin, and others.
As I go through his archived tweets I anticipate seeing a lot of IDW bullshit.
29. Michael Trollan appears to be a free speech absolutist. What about speech that incites hate against those immutable characteristics he thinks people shouldn't be judged on? Andy Ngo's words get people death threats, yet Michael runs his site.
30. I'm again unsure how Michael Trollan squares this with Ngo's constant lies, omissions of context to change the story, and how Ngo seems wholly unbothered by his disingenuous behavior getting people death threats. Michael enables this.
33. So far I've seen dozens of examples of him defending the bigotry of others. There are too many examples and many you can't get a feel for without seeing 3+ screenshots, so I haven't posted them. If I find a good concise one I will. Massaging the connotation describes it.
34. This is a good example of the mealy-mouthed word parsing to defend racism.
35. Michael says only "woke" men are upset with Lawrence Fox. What did Lawrence do? He said that the film 1917 was racist and "forced diversity" for inserting a turbaned Sikh into the WW1 trenches.
Lawrence was just "saying what everyone was thinking" according to Michael.
36. It's not racism against whites or forced diversity to have a Sikh soldier in 1917. It's history.
37. Michael and Peter don't care that Joe says bigoted things or that he platforms bigots and propagandists like their guy Andy Ngo. Their problem is CNN for reporting the story?
42. Going through these archives, which happen to be in chronological order, patterns have emerged. With his account locked it's impossible to tell if these patterns are indicative of all his tweets or just the more extreme end.
43. Some time in 2019 his posts became more focused on race, but they aren't overtly racist. None individually are terrible compared to the types of people I research.
They're a mix of counterpointing someone claiming racism, white male victimization, anti-wokeness, etc.
44. So far I've seen several dozen posts that follow the themes below. Any discussion of race by someone who isn't a white guy, tended to illicit these types of responses from Michael.
1. The reason why this article is important is because it's the whole basis for @BarrettWilson6 existing and it's bullshit. Now let's look at what happened after his pseudonymous debut in Quillette.
2. Barrett Wilson's very reason for being was letting people know how bad judgemental social issues people can be on social media. It was a problem for him and others like him, so fuck that nonsense, right? Wrong. 🤣
3. Barrett's article went viral and even became one of the biggest articles ever on Quillette, so 14 days after the article he created a Twitter account. Not really intellectually consistent but, as you'll see, that's more the rule rather than the exception.
1. In July 2018 Quillette posted an article by a pseudonymous author named Barrett Wilson that went viral. It smells like a full diaper and aged about as well. Let's examine it.
2. I'm not linking to the nearly 1,100 word article, because fuck Quillette and their clicks. I've archived it so it can't be changed without being noticed.
3. In just the first paragraph, there's a lot to unpack.
Barrett claims to be doing food delivery because he was canceled professionally. His "I upset the wrong person" and claims of being publicly shamed into being a pariah in his industry don't fit together. Which was it?
1. Today we find out who is behind the fashy weightlifting bro @HerculeanStren1. The thread will be in three parts. First, what the account is. Second, who founded it. Third, is the last piece of how I confirmed it: Nazi wife.
I might have to break, because it's a lot.
2. Let's start with the account, since it was the first part created back in April 2020.
- Notice the clickbait images and headlines. Looks pretty low class trash. They're only there to drive traffic to the site.
3. What they really want is for people to visit their site to sell them products.
The articles are just the bait on the e-commerce hook. They're not meant to be good, but they do want an endless stream of them. How do I know this?
1. Many people don't know, but there's a whole ecosystem of fascist/racist gym bros catering to the far right, so they can make money off their fellow bigots.
2. They sell them self-help nonsense, workout routines, personal life coaching, books, and of couse LOTS of supplements. Their stated goal is to turn these incels and racist keyboard warriors into Chads or Alphas.
3. Mostly they seem to shitpost, radicalize, and lighten to pockets of young men who think their life will be great if they're just get some lifting gains.
Like most people who get gym memberships, their spending doesn't equate to their results or joy.
1. Meet 41 year old Matthew Ryan McInnis, who lives in Cicero, IN and uses the pen name "Ryan Landry". He was a contributor at Radix, Social Matter, Daily Caller. He's an Underwriter, Registered Agent for a HOA, and now appears to run @NewAtlantisSun.
2. Earlier today I went over some of Matt's highlights as Ryan Landry.
1. This afternoon I'd like to familiarize you with the persona "Ryan Landry" before I introduce you to the man behind it this weekend.
Unless you were monitoring hate before the August 2017 UniteTheRight rally, you've probably never heard of him, but he was important.
2. The reason why you've probably never heard of him is because in the aftermath there was a huge backlash against the alt-right. A wave of doxxes crashed upon their heads and Ryan retired to spend more time with his family.
3. He deactivated his "28 Sherman" blog. He deactivated his Instagram account, his @/28ShermanSOBL1 Twitter account, and other social media. He left his Social Matter articles, his freelance Daily Caller work, and his weekly series on Richard Spencer’s RadixJournal.