The Post-Kirkian Hellscape Just Bit Me in the Ass — What Now?

I thought I had one more year before the Stalag

The last couple days, in the aftermath of the Utah shooting of the now-famous campus-crusading podcaster — you know the one I mean — I received violent threats here on Substack. They’ve shaken me. Both in fear and despair.

The cut-rate Chthonic Deities— that’s what I call the trolls now— drew a red circle around my name, to the effect that I should be aggressively doxxed, “fired,” raped and killed, (naturally), and imprisoned at the very least.

—All for the crime of “showing disrespect” to their heroes, in my writing. That’s the phrase they use: Disrespect.

Illustration from 16th Century witch-hunting manual. Remarkably modern, eh?

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So, what set them off in my humble case? What’s the timing?

(I’m not quoting the exact threats here, because I don’t want to titillate or frighten anyone further).

On the first occasion, September 11th, their attack was in reaction to my adorable doll collection. Yes, my voodoo puppet story was posted weeks ago. The trolls didn’t go nuts on me, until AFTER the Kirk-Utah event. Just 24 hours later.

Then yesterday, I joked on Substack’s Notes that I felt like lowering MY flag for our dearly-departed Robert Redford. My remark went slightly viral — for me, that means a few hundred people “liked” it.

Overnight, this prompted a few misogynist death threats, saying I needed to be exterminated, to make an example out of me. Because, again, I was “disrespectful” to their insta-martyr.

My partner, Jon, tells me these threats are coming out of an over-excited bot-farm, pressed into action. Not a “real” person. Okay. I know! It doesn’t help that much, because somewhere, somehow, a real human being is orchestrating this.¹

I don’t know how to describe the Borg, the “them.” The threats appear as the voices of angry men on a rampage. They use an insinuating, imminent jargon, as if they could reach out and touch me anytime they want.

Neat.

Everyone who subscribes to my newsletter here, all few thousand of you, share a political sensibility, an aesthetic. We make jokes together about how insane the world is. Many of us enjoy our newsletter world because we want a break from the SM disinformation loop. We are weary of the hot useless take.

Have I been threatened before on Twitter, FB, etc? Of course. Who hasn’t? I mean, I’ve been threatened in old-fashioned ways that pre-date the internet. Different times.

However.

I’m not the usual target for the contemporary Terrordrome rhetoric. I’m not a TV celebrity, nor a gamer (ha!), I’m not reaching a vast audience. I don’t want to. I’m not elected to anything, and I’m not sporting a security detail. I don’t sit by the door with a rifle like we did in the Nixon years.

How does a bot-farm or group of incels have the time to find me on Substack? It’s bewildering.

Have these post-Kirkian insurrectionists decided there needs to be a wholesale war on the intellectuals of Stack and BlueSky? Does anyone who writes long-form book reviews need to be rounded up and shot? Are all literates to be “fucked in the throat,” as one so kindly warned me?

All this is to say, I couldn’t think of what jolly subject to write about today. I’m at a loss how to repel my rumination, and or how to participate as if the water rolled off my duck-back.

The vicious got me down, which was the point. Point for them, eh?

You may have questions!— And I have questions of you.

Did I block the latest perps?

Yes.

Do I report them to Substack?

Yes and no.

The last time I reported assholes, it was very much like when I used to report incendiary trolls on other social media: Nobody does anything, and you get a form letter telling you, “That’s the breaks.” Sometimes they even blame you.

Did I remove my “viral” Note:

Yes, angrily.

I might put it up again later, as the bots/trolls move onto a new algorithm..

Once a single troll ID’s a target like myself, (using key words) there’s a cascade of attention that attracts thousands of armchair warriors and looky-loo’s who want weigh in— and THAT gets dangerous. For me.

I mean, some of it is comic. Since the latest viral nonsense of the past 24 hours, I received dozens of notes from “people” dissing Robert Redford or arguing which was his best role, or how I should be nicer to the dead and “listen to what America is saying!”

Wow, I have so much to learn.

The final insult is condescension.

The masters of condescension are the poorly-written yet pious speeches from all the internet publishers “educating” me, about the importance of freedom of speech. They can’t do anything about their online culture distortions because they are valiant defenders of the Constitution.

How droll.

I reply with the following, even though I suspect no one is reading on their end. —Just for my own exercise:

“May I refer you to:

• Susannah Bright, Co-Plaintiff, ACLU v. Gonzales (C.O.P.A. case), Supreme Court of the United States, 2003-2006

  --Judgement in favor of Plaintiff

• Expert witness, Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium v. Commissioner of Customs and Revenue and Minister of National Revenue - S.C.B.C. Action No. L020443, Queens Court, Canada, 2003-2004

  --Judgement in favor of Plaintiff

• Plaintiff, Bright v. Los Angeles Unified Sch. Dist. , 18 Cal.3d 450, State Supreme Court of California, 1974-1976

  --Judgement in favor of Plaintiff

“Your company has no idea, or practice, about what it takes to fight legally and physically for first amendment protections. You haven’t won, you haven’t lost, you haven’t risked a thing. You’ve never been to jail for five minutes to defend your right to speak out.

“That is the opposite of my life.

“Please introduce me to one of your colleagues who is commensurate with my experience. You would do well to give a damn the chilling effect corrupt political operators are having on your artists, who keep your business afloat.”

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If authors and journalists don’t yearn to write on Substack anymore, who don’t have their own army to play internet war games— WHO or WHAT is going to be left?

I know I’m spoiled. I resent that I can’t live a couple more years before being thrown in a Stalag.

If I’d grown up in a different era, or a different culture, I wouldn’t have such expectations of enlightenment. I was born in an American post-fascist artists’ renaissance — what bourgeois shock to see how brief it was.

So, what about you all? —Putting rhetoric aside, what do you do, when you’re threatened in anonymous yet visceral ways?

Or, in the case of what’s happening in education now, what are you doing to survive? If you are a teacher or librarian, you absolutely know who’s calling for your head— it’s the chancellors and administrators pegging your names on notices to see you fired, or worse.

Their cowardice is epic.

There sure are going to be a lot of unemployed and hungry Furies pretty soon.

Again, I ask you: how do you deal with succumbing to “internal emigration” — especially when you are older?

I will await your companionship and comradely squeeze. This has been an awful week.

George Harriman, “Krazy Kat,” 1913.

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1. And sure enough, here they are:

The Man Doxxing Americans for Not Mourning Charlie Kirk was Accused of Pistol-whipping a Woman