BRATTLEBORO — Shortly after the release of the new Ghostbusters movie, actress Leslie Jones was met with a tidal wave of hate speech on Twitter.
The reboot, which features an all-female leading cast, has been criticized by anti-feminist groups for ruining the nostalgia of the 1984 original. Jones, a tall black woman, was targeted with racial slurs long thought eradicated - terms that shouldn't even be reprinted.
The volume of tweets sent in her direction was attributed to Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos's accusation that she was merely “playing the victim,” encouraging his numerous politically-incorrect-and-proud followers to ramp up their attacks.
This was not Yiannopoulos's first campaign of hate speech; he has a history of flagrant rhetoric against what he sees as “sociopathic” political correctness.
He's a big name within the GamerGate movement, which began in 2014 under the premise of rooting out biased coverage in video-game journalism but which quickly morphed into a mob of internet trolls united in their hatred against so-called “social-justice-warriors” or “SJWs” - essentially anyone with a liberal perspective.
* * *
My first exposure to this strange culture clash came when I discovered a YouTube video by feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian, who dissected the roles typically given to female characters in video games.
Unsurprisingly, she demonstrated that there's little diversity in the roles they play, that the hero of the story is rarely a woman, and often her role within the game is merely to advance the plot for the typical male protagonist.
Sarkeesian argued that women were often objectified by the way they are depicted in video games, and that changes needed to be made in order to give female characters greater agency.
Yiannopoulos viewed this perspective as a product of the “authoritarian left,” and GamerGaters accused Sarkeesian and like-minded supporters of advocating censorship.
Stereotypically viewed as a reclusive and insular group, the gaming community has in reality diversified a great deal in recent years. Yet a remaining core conservative constituency harbors great resentment toward having social theories applied to what was once, one could say, their refuge from the real world. In the minds of GamerGaters, having this sense of security threatened justifies their vitriolic attacks.
* * *
In a sense, GamerGate is a microcosm of what we're seeing now on the national stage. The GamerGate movement overlaps with the larger political movement against political correctness and multiculturalism known as the alt-right, which has been united by their support for Donald Trump.
In much the same way that Twitter users, with Yiannopoulos's encouragement, felt justified in attacking Leslie Jones in the most vulgar terms possible, Trump supporters see in his rhetoric a green light to act out on their prejudices.
It's no secret that Trump flirts with white supremacy groups, and they've been emboldened by his campaign. Trump has a big Twitter presence, and earlier this year Fortune ran an article showing that Trump has a history of retweeting posts from accounts using the #WhiteGenocide hashtag, a movement that believes there's a conscious effort underway to eliminate white people.
Consequently, Trump has brought these unsavory characters - previously confined to the dark corners of the internet - to light by actively promoting their content.
Much of the alt-right's most heinous harassment occurs online, where it's easy to hide behind an anonymous avatar. But plenty of people are still willing to take their hatred to the streets, often directing their attacks toward people of color.
Cell-phone recordings of such interactions have gone viral on the web.
There's video of a Trump supporter telling a black protester to “go back to Africa”; in a separate interaction, one shouts “go to Auschwitz.” In another video, a man riding the subway shouts Trump's name and tells a black woman she should be “out in the fields.”
* * *
These incidents, of course, aren't representative of all Trump supporters. But they also aren't isolated. And they serve to illustrate that putting Trump and his rhetoric at the forefront of the national stage has had real-world consequences that have already been damaging.
Yiannopoulos was banned from Twitter after encouraging hate speech towards actress Leslie Jones. But Trump's candidacy persists, and his daily tirades continue to legitimize the hateful words and actions of the alt-right.
Come November, there's a chance Trump could secure the highest office in our country. His presidency would, in effect, institutionalize the rising hostility we've seen, which would be in flagrant contempt of our hard-fought history.