Yeah, sometimes this shit is just too nuts to believe but yeah, Neo-Nazis coming to the rescue of HanAssholeSolo the creator of the Donald Trump bodyslams CNN video have decided that by reporting that they’ve identified the person in question — who is not a 15 year old boy — who has apologized for his actions and that they won’t be releasing his ID — wild alt-Rightwingers are literally threating the family and children of reporters.
“Just like CNN tracked down this child and used media exposure as a bludgeon against him for posting (truthful and funny) things that they don’t like, we are going to begin tracking down their families as a bludgeon against them for publishing (seditiously fraudulent) things that we don’t like,” Auernheimer wrote. “CNN, this is your one singular chance to walk back this behavior of public blackmail. You have one week to fix this.”
As published on 4chan, Aurnheimer’s demands of CNN include “the public firing of the KFile team, a denouncement of their alleged threats, a $50,000 college scholarship for HanAssholeSolo, and a public assurance that ‘he and his family will never be harmed by your organization.'”
“We are going to track down your parents. We are going to track down your siblings. We are going to track down your spouses. We are going to track down your children. Because hey, that’s what you guys get to do, right? We’re going to see how you like it when our reporters are hunting down your children,” Auernheimer wrote in his demands.
Yeah, these guys may use hat word “Blackmail” but they really don’t seem to know what it means.
Just for the record, we now have other people producing video like this: (And it’s pretty disgusting as it places Andrew Kaczinski’s face on a person who is almost immediately shot in the back).
Yeah, as shown we’re dealing with some pretty low life scum here.
CNN did not publish this reddit user’s identity, although they frankly have every right to do so if they wanted. The fact is that they choose not to and then added this bit right here which wasn’t even written by Kaczinski himself.
But the story also included a caveat, saying "CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change."
The news website Gizmodo reported that Kaczynski did not personally write that line, which principally provoked the backlash.
Gizmodo said the passage was written by a CNN executive as a "defensive measure" to explain their decision not to publish the Reddit user's name.
So because they gave an explanation of why they didn’t reveal his ID, and they reserve the right to do so if the person a) becomes a public personality b) takes back his apology to CNN or c) again begins posting sexist, racist and potential violent threatening memes again they might reveal his name.
Well, frankly I’ve got no problem with that because there is not right to anonymity on the internet, and losing your anonymity when you’re posting racist, anti-semitic, neo-Nazi, homophobic, misogynist memes and rants is probably the least you deserve.
It’s because of nonsense like this, arguing for the “right” to be an abusive online dickhead, that we’ve reached this stage.
And it’s not like this hasn’t resulted in actual threats against Investigative reporter Andrew Kaczinski and his family, because it has.
CNN employees and their families are receiving death threats and other harassing messages on social media and through phone calls, as President Trump's feud with the network continues to escalate this week, according to a report Thursday.
The Daily Beast reported that the parents and wife of Andrew Kaczynski, a CNN investigative reporter behind a story describing how the network tracked down the Reddit user who created the Trump wrestling GIF, has received around 50 harassing phone calls. Trump tweeted out that GIF over the July 4th weekend.
More intimidating messages have been sent to other members of the investigatory unit of which Kaczynski is a part, the K-File. The report notes the messages likely originate from Trump supporters.
"The only thing I worry about is somebody getting hurt," a CNN insider told the Daily Beast. "These far-right trolls are really threatening people and coming after people. Somebody's gonna do something stupid at some point."
I’m sorry but I didn’t see the “Right to be HanAssholeSolo” in my copy of the First Amendment, but I do see Freedom of the Press.
There is also the claim that Kaczinki had previously “reported fake news” that drove one young man to suicide.
Actually the “#Fake News” in question originated on Reddit when one user wrongfully identified Suspect #2 in the Boston Bombing over a police scanner as being a missing 22 year old Brown University student Sunil Tripathi.
The story begins with speculation on Twitter and Reddit that a missing Brown student, Sunil Tripathi, was one of the bombers. One person who went to high school with him thought she recognized him in the surveillance photographs. People compared photos they could find of him to the surveillance photos released by the FBI. It was a leading theory on the subreddit devoted to investigating the bombing that Tripathi was one of the terrorists responsible for the crime.
A mistake that lasted for about 3 hours before the actual suspects, the Tsarnaev brothers, were properly identified. All Kaczinski did during those few hours, as did several other journalists, was retweet the report that had originated on Reddit as an honest mistake.
In the blink of an eye, the Tripathi family watched as the image of their missing son appeared side-by-side with blurry images of a man only known as “Suspect 2” after the bombing. Amateur internet sleuths declared the two men were one and the same, even prompting some journalists (including Digg's Ross Newman, Politico's Dylan Byers, Newsweek's Brian Ries, NBC's Luke Russert, and Buzzfeed's Andrew Kaczynski) to spread word of Tripathi's possible guilt.
This all occurred on April 19th. Tripathi’s body was found in a Providence River on April 23rd four days later and had apparently been there for some time as dental records had to be used to identify him.
While the documentary focuses in large part on the collision between the Tripathis and cyber vigilantes and journalists who believed Sunil played a role in the bombing, Broffman says at the end of the day, the story that got lost in the chaos was Sunil’s own -- how depression can lead to a nightmare for a family that would have done anything to save their son. Sunil's body was found in the Providence River on April 23, 2013, and an autopsy revealed that he had committed suicide.
Exactly how long the body remained in the water has never been released but there are some general rules of thumb one can look at based on water temperature.
A 2002 study in the journal Legal Medicine examined nine bodies that had drifted hundreds of kilometers in cold waters off the coast of Portugal and Spain. Bodies recovered in the first week were in good condition, but the beginning signs of decomposition were present on a body recovered after eight days. The two bodies recovered after 20 days were highly decomposed and could only be identified through DNA analysis or dental records. As for warmer water, A 2008 study on two human bodies recovered following aircraft accidents found one body off of Sicily to be partially skeletonized after 34 days and a second body off of Namibia to be completely skeletonized after three months.*
The average temperature in Providence in April runs between 39-56oF, so water temperature would run somewhat less than that. A body in that river might lat last 20 days before it was as decomposed as it might be in more frigid waters, but it’s fairly likely that it might last more than 4 days which shows it not entirely clear that Sunil’s unfortunately suicide was because of the three hours he mistakenly identified as one of the Boston Bombers between 2am and 5am on April 19th.
Even if the timeline works out they way these people claim, the likelihood that Sunil saw Kaczinski’s retweet — or any of the other reporters who also jumped on this erroneous report — is even lower.
Either way, none of this is a valid justification for ending death threats to the children of reporters.