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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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Eh. Death threats is definitely something far-right and neo-nazi groups have a history of doing, and you can sort of see why. Even if in reality the threats are empty, they can be quite troubling to the victim without the perpetrator having to do much or put themselves at much risk.

Almost certainly we'll never know who wrote it, yet it will be repeatedly used as if it was established that "right wing extremists" did

No it won't. 99.9% of people have no idea this happened and never will. It hasn't just dropped out of the news cycle, it never entered it. It only seems to have appeared in a few online pieces (like the MailOnline which churns out quickly put together stories basically constantly), and while there is a short BBC article if you want to find it you have to navigate to the UK page, then go to local news, look up London, and even then it appears very far down alongside such top news as 'foam pool appears near HS2 works'.

Death threats is definitely something far-right and neo-nazi groups have a history of doing

Online? Sure. Personally nailing printed out threats to someone's door? I don't remember many such cases - and given that each of them gets a lot of publicity - if there would be a lot of it, I think I'd notice.

Oh I did mean in real life; there was a C4 Dispatches documentary about Combat 18 from a while ago and they frequently sent threats (usually phone messages but close enough, and in some cases it was written) quite similar to this.

Phone messages is online before there was online. Anybody can leave a phone message from their basement, it's very low effort. When I was very young and very stupid, we did some phone pranks. It's literally the easiest thing ever. Sending anonymous letters is more effort, but not by much (that's how they did it before everybody had telephones, I imagine). Printing this out and travelling to somebody's home to nail it at their door is significantly more effort.

Yeah but it's a bit different to online because it's harder to get hold of a random person's phone number (these were ordinary people, one was a holocaust survivor who gave a talk at a local school). And some were in person also.

Yeah but it's a bit different to online because it's harder to get hold of a random person's phone number

No, it really isn't.

It hasn't just dropped out of the news cycle, it never entered it.

Oh, not on the main circuit news. But in all those NGO reports, that the governments spend my tax dollars on producing. Virtually nobody scrutinizes their source data, but when they produce their results - like "256% growth of death threats from far-right against people of color!" - this will be on the main circuit news, and on the table of every politician (and every main circuit journalist would ask the politician about why they haven't fixed it yet). And unless you're willing to spend insane amount of time digging in - while, unlike the NGOs, not being paid by the tax money - you will have no ways to prove it's not the case. Even if you dig it up, what would you say? "I found one report that maybe aren't right wing extremists"? Who'd listen to you?