And to clarify what I mean here: left-wing harassment campaigns generally stem from an honestly stated principle, rightly or wrongly applied, sometimes slathered in irony.

Reactionary campaigns are less about principle than power, however. https://twitter.com/Quinnae_Moon/status/1353190049802719232

A lot of MAGA and 4chan-style trolls have something in common: the deeply-held belief that everyone is as cruel and self-seeking as they are. In this worldview, leftist and liberal principles are mere hypocrisy, used by elites to judge and punish ordinary people.

Thus, antagonising someone like Lauren Wolfe is about weaponising those principles against what they perceive to be a liberal institution, to point out the hypocrisy of the high and mighty and prove they're really as awful as everyone else.

And that's the "hack." The institution in question gets trapped in a kind of tunnel-vision, desperate to prove that its principles are absolute. Meanwhile, the harassers don't give a damn about a press that reports without fear or favour, they just want blood.

And, to be blunt, in the case of the NYT, when you add institutional sexism and racism into the mix, the overreaction is even harsher. The Times continues to employ men credibly accused of sexual harassment and male journos who've written offensive/biased tweets, after all.

Thus, for the harassers in this campaign, they're not out to enforce rigid adherence to a principle, but out to use that principle as a loophole to assert their own *power.* A loophole that allows them to avoid saying what they mean, making their hate appear more respectable.

This is what I mean about the sincerity gap. Even the more repugnant left-wing harassment campaigns are carried out in the name of some broad principle (opposing classism, say). This is different, despite superficial similarities.