You're already hearing this a lot, I imagine, but those of us who have warned for years that what's said and done online is consequential, that people like this were not 'just trolling,' have known something like this was inevitable if nothing was done.

And I will add: this did not in any way start with GamerGate, as some are claiming. GG was an inflection point, a moment when the far-right online invaded a mainstream hobby for recruitment. But it should be blatantly obvious that today's events didn't *begin* there.

The alt-right predates GG, despite what you may commonly hear. And, as for the long arc of American history, there are deeply alarming analogues. It's all part of a long history of white supremacism in this country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_insurrection_of_1898

Had GG not happened, the alt-right would've seeped into a different culture war battleground with likely similar results. Today is a culmination of *US history.* Everything from the forced end of Reconstruction to Jim Crow to David Duke's election campaigns.

GamerGate was merely an alarm klaxon wailing in the night that few people heeded, pointing the a deeper failure in the system. But it didn't *start* anything. It was part of an *ongoing* process of far right corrosion, undermining democratic, pluralist values.

That GG treated the mere existence of women, POC, and queer people as a threat was the warning. It was the shape of anti-democratic forces to come. But we mustn't treat it like the Big Bang of our current universe of shit. It was a pit stop, interchangeable with many others.

But do not ignore American history. The precedents are all there. From the Trail of Tears to the burning of Black Wall Street to the Wilmington Coup to the Oklahoma City bombing... *those* are the precedents you need to look to first.

I say this as a scholar of online harassment, who's written on and studied GG and related online movements, who's argued from every rostrum she could find about the significance of these online forces. And I'm still telling you: don't whitewash US history with it.