The conference has a CoC that is pretty good on paper, but it's also very new and largely untested. It also explicitly protects political beliefs. Now that's a feature, not a bug, but it's also a vulnerability, because using your rules and norms against you is an alt-right go-to.
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It makes it so fucking easy for the MAGA trolls to play "not touching you". And they telegraphed it! A dude literally stood up in a 'Trolling the Trolls' session dedicated to Heather Heyer and talked about marching in CVille. Trolling the Trolling the Trolls session. Of course.
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The
#hopeconf process fell down here. Once this happened, staff present should have flagged it to CoC and had the dude booted or shadowed by security. But they didn't, and things devolved. From this point onwards, HOPE should be considered under attack by agent provocateurs.1 reply 12 retweets 118 likesShow this thread -
The trolls continued to escalate their agitation (including blocking the aisles and saying anyone who complained was "fat shaming" them) until, predictably, someone responded physically. This is straight out of the Westboro Baptist Church playbook. Now they can call the cops.
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By provoking an attendee into clearly breaking the CoC, MAGAs exploit the event security. Security does what they're trained to do, which is kick out people who start physical altercations, and protect the people on the receiving end of them. "Even if they're wearing a swastika."
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Word spreads that there are fascists present, a person who confronted them got kicked out, and the fascists are still there. HOPE is slow to respond, people are rightly upset, and the perception is that HOPE is a safe space for Nazis. Activists on Twitter vow to never attend.
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HOPE did not have the CoC, security, comms, or crisis management infrastructure and training in place to deal with this. And, honestly, most conferences don't model for these kinds of threats. They model for 'drunk dude groping the presenter' and 'racist greybeard drops n-bombs'.
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And so now the story of
#hopeconf isn't how many presenters and staff loudly disavowed racism. It's not the impromptu panels or caucuses that took place. It's not the hour-long unscheduled Q&A about how to do better and be a stronger community. It's that there were Nazis.1 reply 9 retweets 86 likesShow this thread -
I want to be clear that I'm not minimizing the pain, fear, anger, or disgust that we felt about these dudes. Those feelings are real and valid. The issue is that the alt-right has been effectively and systematically drowning activists in our real and valid feelings since GG.
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This was an extremely effective op from alt-right agitators, one of whom has been identified as disrupting groups since Occupy. Professionals, basically. Walking into a volunteer-heavy conference w/ social norms that they have spent years successfully demonstrating exploits for.
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It wouldn't have been at all effective if organizers and security were all on the same page with zero tolerance for nazis and abusive asshats in general.
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