by Travis Mateer
For this post I’m using my real name because someone out there really wants to convey to me that writing under a pseudonym is an act of cowardice. This message couldn’t be posted as a comment or sent to me via email. Nope, this anonymous critic (irony alert!) has now sent two letters to the non-profit where I work to let me know how cowardly I am for hiding behind William Skink.
When I told one of my co-workers about this letter she admitted to Googling me and finding this piece I submitted to Last Best News after leaving my job at the shelter. I couldn’t ask for a more perfect example that illustrates why I choose to maintain a thin firewall between the name on my pay stub and the name on my blog post.
The stigma of being a “conspiracy theorist” keeps getting more ominous. I heard an interview recently on NPR about an Atlantic piece titled The Making Of An American Nazi. This is the part that stuck with me:
INSKEEP: Did he go straight to white supremacy?
O’BRIEN: No, he went first into what I like to call trutherville (ph) – this kind of horror-scape (ph) of conspiracy theorists and raving lunatics online, the most notable figure among them being Alex Jones and…
INSKEEP: This is the conspiracy theorist who has been praised by President Trump, and the president has appeared on his program.
O’BRIEN: Right. And I think what a lot of people don’t realize about Alex Jones is that he actually is a gateway into white nationalism because a lot of these white nationalists arrive at their hateful views through conspiracy theories. And his ideology is starting to take shape over time as he dwells in these echo chambers online. And he was trying to create his own echo chamber and attract disciples to it so that he could then have his own following.
Do I believe in conspiracy theories? Some of them, yes, so check. Am I white? Definitely, so check. Do I try to understand the election of Trump as something more nuanced than every vote being from a hateful racist Nazi thug ready to goose-step with Putin to destroy America? Yes, I do try to understand things beyond the 2 minutes of hate our Orwellian propagandists attempt to instigate through corporate media, so check, check and check.
The mistake the sender of this hate mail is making is the assumption William Skink is just a mask I use to hide behind. William Skink is much more than that.
So stay tuned…