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The University of Wisconsin students have an overlapping set of concerns about CV Vitolo-Haddad platforming fascists offline, on campus, but since I got tagged in the quoted thread, I'm going to explain how they platformed fascists online. Thread. https://twitter.com/maiselgoboating/status/1303841017582555136
Considering the potential audience, this thread is for educating people who are starting from a fairly blank slate. Starting with definitions, because fascist and Nazi have different definitions varying by context (as do other political words like "democrat" or "socialist").
I'm using "fascist" in the broad sense as a far right set of beliefs encompassing ultranationalism, belief in innate hierarchy, toxic masculinity and power worship. I like Umberto Eco's 14 points on fascism as well: http://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html
Nazi is more specific. Twitter Nazis want you to believe that it's so specific, they don't even exist 
. So they're not Nazis, they're "national socialists". They're not Nazis, they're "natsocs". They're not Nazis, they're "patriotic Americans". Ad nauseam. Nazis always lie.
. So they're not Nazis, they're "national socialists". They're not Nazis, they're "natsocs". They're not Nazis, they're "patriotic Americans". Ad nauseam. Nazis always lie.
But in reality, a good rule of thumb is that a Nazi is a subset of fascist that has antisemitism, racism, Hitler admiration, Holocaust denial and love for Nazi iconography at or near the center of their worldview. That's the definition I use in most contexts.
Nazis love Twitter. Sure, they can go to their own places like Parler and Gab and Stormfront and Terrorgram, but after a while preaching to the choir and infighting gets boring for them. Twitter is where they troll targets and where they try to find new blood.
Some of their hobbies on Twitter are attacking random people who just happen to post a baby picture of their interracial family, especially white women with Black men. Jewish women in the media are also a favorite target. And they'll try to egg transgender people into suicide.
In the spirit of the old ARA saying "we go where they go," there are antifascists, mostly anonymous like me, on troll patrol against those vicious little shits. We try to get them suspended while carefully searching for crumbs of information to doxx them.
Sometimes we find out and establish that someone named "KYKEKYLLER1488" turns out to be Kyle from Accounting, and a Nazi finally gets some real life consequences for their carefree anonymous online hobbies. It's a great feeling 
Aside from that, our activities go unrewarded.
Aside from that, our activities go unrewarded.
We generally stay anonymous because the Nazis are, in turn, trying to doxx us. They pretend being suspended doesn't hurt them, but they whine about it so much, it's incontrovertible that it does. We often stay anonymous to each other, because what you don't know, you can't tell.
The people who do this kind of antifascist work are all over the map in age, identity, etc. and in terms of ideology range from spicy Democrats to ultraleftists (although the spicy Democrats typically get radicalized to the left over the longterm course of doing the work).
We like to go after Nazis from the top down, because the biggest loudest ones with the largest followers often initiate the trolling campaigns. Sometimes we specialize by region and by ideology. As an example, @IdentifyDixie focuses on Neoconfederate Nazis (yes, that's a thing).
I focus a lot on Nazbol/Third Position Nazis, who are the ones most likely to try to recruit to Nazism from the left. I'm always looking for ways to make Eric Striker/Joseph Jordan's life a little harder, because fuck that guy 
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/05/01/prolific-alt-right-propagandists-identity-confirmed
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/05/01/prolific-alt-right-propagandists-identity-confirmed
So now that the basics are established, I'm finally getting to CV Vitolo-Haddad. At the beginning of 2019 I knew of them as an antifascist academic researcher, and had little contact with them but a mostly positive impression based on their work countering the Proud Boys.
I did notice they were a loud self-promoter, but then doing that kind of work publicly under your own name attracts a certain kind of extroverted risk-seeking personality. TBH, throwing yourself into close proximity with violent white supremacists is a little Tiger-King-ish.
CV Vitolo-Haddad began to take that behavior to a strange extreme. They sought out Nazis online and asked to debate them. Eric Striker/Joseph Jordan agreed, and they went on his show "The People's Square". They also had informal debate sessions with other Nazis on Twitter...
... and since I was trying to suspend or doxx some of those particular Nazis, I was combing through those conversations and getting increasingly concerned about CV's behavior and arguments.
They were getting friendly with these people. Really really friendly. Trading "friendship memes" like this one with Matt Parrott, former leader in the Traditionalist Worker Party (on Twiter under Nazi-ironic digital blackface as " @arnelsmom"). https://archive.vn/GjRTs
CV would vent to them about how "white antifa" were oppressing their research, and in the process of trying to "debate" them, giving them a lot of insights into leftist language and infighting and actually feeding them arguments they could use against antifascists.
Militant organized antifascists or "antifa" are mostly but definitely not all white. The dynamic is typically that the more you depart from being a white cis straight man, the more it benefits you to STAY anonymous, because the more the Nazis will want to find you and kill you.
CV Vitolo-Haddad completely ignored that and even sometimes commiserated with Nazis about facing more racism from "antifa" than from Nazi friends. Their examples of "facing racism" were mainly people saying "hey you're wrong about deplatforming, deplatforming is good actually."
Any attempts at respectful disagreement with CV were met with swift and aggressive counter-accusations of racism, misogyny and transphobia. There are three ways to see through this kind of identity-weaponization though:
1) simple critical thinking that anyone can do 2) sharing one of the identities that is being spoken for and knowing that the speaking-for claim is bullshit 3) practical experience in the way manipulators using the language of social justice to gain social capital.
I was also going to talk about the other, THIRD way that CV Vitolo-Haddad platformed fascists - through their support of Light Upon Light - but I don't have time this morning. But I'm gonna start wrapping up by linking to another thread I did about CV: https://twitter.com/Antifagator/status/1303022047526817792
I'd also like to point out that Eric Striker/Joseph Jordan showed up halfway through that thread to white knight for CV Vitolo-Haddad. Ignore his deranged Nazi ranting about Sicilians and trans identities: the important part is that he showed up for his team
These Nazis looked at CV Vitolo-Haddad as their token to prove that they weren't all evil and violent, and as their ticket into "debating" leftists and winning the most antisemitic and racist ones over to the Nazbol side. They're not as embarrassed at the racefaking revelation...
... because Nazis always lie. Many of them also love to racefake ironically or unironically, for trolling purposes, so their reaction to CV is mainly, "good on you for making it work, so sad you got found out." 
Anyway, that's it for the thread this morning. Hope it helped.
Anyway, that's it for the thread this morning. Hope it helped.
