Share your right-wing hate mail/death threat stories!

[Plaid Adder]

I was saddened to see the front page story about Ava's email correspondents, though I wish I could say I was surprised. I have gotten some fairly choice hate mail myself, though not in that quantity and intensity. I always wondered why anyone bothered. Like I make a difference? Half of it was so generalized you couldn't tell what they were responding to. I think some of these people must have hate form letters they just mail out to everyone.

I ran into an acquaintance a couple weeks ago who had been interviewed in the media about something relating to the Muslim world. He said he had been getting all kinds of hate mail from people attack him, his credentials, his morals, his patriotism, etc. etc. etc. He sounded so shocked when he was describing it that I finally told him, look, you have to understand, it's not about you personally. You got yourself noticed by some right-wing blog or website and they pointed the attack dogs in your direction. They probably haven't read the interview, they know nothing about you or what you stand for, they spew the same shit at everyone regardless of the context and they'll have moved on to a new target in 2 weeks.

Anyway, I invite all of you who have hate mail stories to post them here so that Ava will know she's not alone, and perhaps get some tips on dealing with the menace. Here's my advice based on my limited experience:

1. DO NOT ENGAGE. Never respond to hate mail. You will not make a new convert, you will only let them know that they got to you, and encourage them to torment you further. Plus, your time on earth is precious and arguing with someone who'd send you an email like that is a complete waste of it.

2. DO NOT post anything that makes it easier for people to find your phone number or street address. It also helps to set up one email account for general contact info and another for personal business, so that you can shut down the general info one if it's vandalized or if it's collecting too much abuse.

3. Death threats are serious and should be reported to the proper authorities.

4. However, you should also realize that most of the crap they spew is just bluster designed to scare you. These are people who are basically using the internet to make themselves seem bigger and scarier than they actually are. Who knows. Some of the assholes emailing Ava about all the sick things they want to do to her and her family may be younger than she is. The number of people who feel comfortable sending a threatening and/or obscene email from the safety of an anonymized edress is much, much, much larger than the number of people who would be willing to expose themselves to legal action by stalking or hurting you.

5. There are only three things you can do with hate mail: 1) Delete it; 2) Forward it to the appropriate law enforcement authorities; 3) Post it in the DU lounge and invite people to mock it.

Anyone else have stories they want to share or advice they want to give Ava and our other DUers who are on the public radar screen and therefore in the line of fire?

The Plaid Adder

[Midlodemocrat]

1. Not hate mail, but I was called 'comrade' in a LTTE.

I had written a LTTE about Ann Coulter and her hate speech and someone responded. I thought it was pretty funny actually.

[Plaid Adder]

5. I love it when they play the 'Communist' card.

It's like dude, update the database. The Soviet Union fell how long ago?

Yeesh, I say,

The Plaid Adder

[NewJeffCT]

15. I was flipping the radio the other day...

and, somebody was on there ranting about the Chi-Comms (at least I think that is how it is spelled)

Old habits die hard.

[usregimechange]

2. I was once told to...

"go get a job" at a Bush protest. At the time I had two part time jobs and was a part time grad student. Not a death threat but just goes to show you how emotional rather than rational such comments typically are.

[DS1]

4. Experienced that, too

Mostly on Saturdays :silly:

[DS1]

3. I cannot say I've ever had someone threaten to jack off on my parents

That is an odd, odd threat.

[Plaid Adder]

6. Perhaps the writer thought

that if he transfered his evil fantasies to her parents he could avoid being prosecuted for sending out child porn.

That's about all you can make of that. Weird people out there on the net.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

[DS1]

8. Or there's some weird thing about his childhood that makes him

want to mark other parents as his own, like a dog.

Really, it sounds like a threat Eric Cartman would make.

[WildEyedLiberal]

7. I only had 50 posts on DU when I got my first hate email

I was a total newbie and linked in my profile to my Livejournal, which then featured my email address.

I had only made about 50 posts on DU when I got a hateful, scathing, threatening, poorly-spelled email from a freeper. The freeper's email was a Lycos account so I forwarded the email to them, and a couple days later Lycos support contacted me back and told me the account had been deleted.

It took all my restraint not to reply, but the end result was worth it. }(

[ronnykmarshall]

9. Back in 2003

during the California Recall. Some asshole got my e-mail address (back when we had that option on our profiles) and told me to "suck Arnolds cock". I replied that "I want a meal, not a snack".

[niceypoo]

17. *LOL*

I hear that STEROIDS have SERIOUSLY reduced Arnold's package over the years.......

[Kerrytravelers]

10. Before the 2004 election, we got hate email from my in-laws.

They are a lovely couple whose preference in clothing can be summed up in two words: brown shirts.

We just ignored it. Months later, they called to talk to us and were surprised that we weren't interested in having much of a conversation. I haven't said more than "hi" and "bye" since the summer of 2004. Mr. kt speaks a bit more to them, but even he is tired of it.

[BOSSHOG]

11. I got into a email pissing contest

a couple of years back with an old Navy Shipmate of mine. He was a hard drinking, cussing, hard partying buckeroo 15 years ago. Now he's on wife number four and has found Jesus and according to him, he's saved. I kicked his ass hard about what a fucking hypocrite he was and I used a lot of profanity. We went on for about a month until he said to hell with it, I wasn't worth communicating with anymore. Not hate mail, but I did so enjoy it.

[Xenotime]

26. Maybe he changed...

what's so wrong about that?

[BOSSHOG]

27. He sure did

He opened up his heart and all of a sudden he's free of sin and is blessed and chosen and has a free pass to Heaven. And he's turned his back on all that is evil in this world; that is everything he does not now "believe" in. And per his emails, he's being thoroughly indoctrinated and ordered to hate those who should be hated, homosexuals, liberals, secular humanists and the dujour human faction that is currently on the "christian" hierarchy hit list. Absolutely nothing in the world wrong with that.

[Rocknrule]

12. Too many stories to share them all

but I do remember being told to appreciate Bush because "he's protecting your ass from terraists." I responded, "Yea, look what a great job he did protecting us on 9/11!"

[RethugAssKicker]

13. No hate mail... I've had live hate talk and death threats

here in Cobb County Georgia. When they can't beat me in an intelligent conversation, thats when things usually heat up.

Been told many times, that I look like one of dem terra risks !

[BeachBuckeye]

14. Having done a Liberal talk show for over three years now....

I think I've seen and heard it all. I've been picketed outside a hall where I was speaking to a group of Democrats. They've protested in front of the radio station I used to be on. I've received some of the mose vile, hateful mail that you can imagine. "I'm going to kill you, rip out your guts and leave them on the doorstep of the local Democratic Club headquarters" "I'm going to kill your wife and kids" "I'm waiting outside the studio for you" (and they were).

I've turned over some of the hate mail to authorities but they have always just laughed and said more or less: "we don't have time to bother with this kind of stuff". I'll bet if I lived in a RED neighborhood they may have reacted differently.

Our studio is now in a safe, secure location so I don't really worry about it much anymore.

Guy

[Momgonepostal]

33. Yikes! The time they were waiting for you...

...what did they do/say when you came out of the building?

You know, I can relate to hating someone I hear on the radio, and I can understand calling a call-in show and telling the host he's dead wrong, but STALKING is just a whole 'nother thing. What is wrong with those people?

[DemoTex]

16. I had a nasty US mail response to my LTTE in the Asheville Citizen-Times.

It was in response to a LTTE I wrote on the day we hit 1000 US service deaths in Iraq. The letter was addressed to me by name, name of mountain, and Brevard, NC. It was the exact address that a google search of my name and Brevard, NC would turn up. That was possible because of the newspaper's requirement to list name and hometown on any published LTTE.
The enveloped contained one photocopied sheet, in the form of a "certificate", naming me The Asshole of the Week and listing the usual right-wing screed. It was sent anonymously by the Sons of World War II Veterans. There was a post-it note attached to the "certificate" with more hate scrawled on it.
I called the editorial page editor at the Asheville Citizen-Times. She was great. She said that almost every anti-Bu$h LTTE writer was getting a "certificate" from the same "group". The ACT was confident that this was the work of a lone chicken-hawk. They even had a name for the group: The Sonny-boys. She sent me a copy of an editorial piece she had done several weeks earlier excoriating the Sonny-boys (she even used that name in her piece!). One of her main points was that writers of LTTEs to the Citizen-Times signed their letters, but he had repeatedly hidden behind anonymity and daddy's war to intimidate legitimate dissenters.

[Binka]

18. I Had This Written To Me In A Thread Here On DU

>>Binka-the-Bitch, we've had these little run-ins before.
>How's
>>your son? He dead yet? Karmas a real BITCH isn't it, BITCH?
>>
>>May your life be EXACTLY like Sheehans--you get MY
>>point??????
>>
>>I'll be going now--you people are too stupid to listen
>to--AND
>>you're cowards.

It is in this format because I saved it in my PM file. The mods deleted it but not before a 200+ thread erupted and many great DUers kicked the freepers ass. Massive freeper smack down. This is the second time this twice banned asshole sent me one of these. The first came a month after Ben was blown to shit. Fucktard.

[Plaid Adder]

20. See...that's just fucked up.

I just cannot imagine what it must be like to be someone who would send someone an email like that. I don't get it.

I'm sorry about Ben,

The Plaid Adder

[TlalocW]

19. I wrote a letter to the editor

In which I corrected former OKlahoma Senator Don Nickels on his history. In 1999 or so, he tried to make Bill Clinton out as the presiding president when Ruby Ridge happened. I insultingly let him know that Bush Senior was sitting in the Oval Office at the time, and if he's going to try and smear the then-current president, he should take five minutes to do his homework so he doesn't come off looking like more of the partisan hack that he already was.

A week later, I got a care package from some white-supremacy group in Coweta, a small town to the northeast of Tulsa (where I live). Inside I found their quarterly newsletter with messages written to me in the margins (You're a Hillary-Lover; You probably want to take our guns away, etc) and a flyer letting me know that the white woman was the world's most endangered species.

I laughed because I had done my high school senior research paper on white supremacy groups, and I recognized theirs as the one that's filled with fat, lazy bubbas who go out to the woods and drink beer and shoot rifles while fantasizing about other groups starting a race war which they'll then jump on the coattails of after all the major fighting is over. I did get an unlisted number after that though, which I had been planning to do anyway because I hate unsolicited phone calls.

More recently back in 1994, I "replied all" to an email that my niece sent out that talked about famous people and stupid quotes. I'm the debunker in the family so I do this almost automatically. Anyway, a lot of Dan Quayle quotes were mis-attributed to Al Gore, and I corrected those as well as some others that I knew were never said, and as a joke, I said, "If you want to find stupid things said by a famous person, Google 'George W quotes.'"

Well, a lot of her classmates were on her original email, and one of them decided to start pestering me over email since he didn't like my political views. I tended to piss him off pretty easily, and he started physically threatening me and kept demanding I tell him where I lived, etc. He was pretty pissed that he couldn't find me (unlisted, remember), and I kept offering to meet him at the McDonalds in the town where he lived (since I had family there that I visit) so I could buy him a Happy Meal before he "stomped a mudhole in my chest." He never took me up on it, and my niece finally confronted him at school and told him, "My uncle is 3 times bigger than you are. You probably want to stop being an idiot with your threats." I never heard from him much after that.

TlalocW

[catmandu57]

21. Right after the 02 midterms

when we had a big freeper infestation here, I foolishly posted personal info here and essentially told them to bring it on, just like that ole redneck boy w*.
Anyway a few days later there was an envelope in my mailbox addressed to me with just DU in the senders space, so, curious i opened it up and some freeptard had sent me the vilest of trash.
I just threw it away, now on occasion I have posted my name after that, and it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to track down my personal info, but I've never posted my exact location again.

Another time I googled my user name and found I had been parodied by some bright bulb, I thought damn I must scare them over at the unnamed place for someone to put this together.
I've always considered myself to be a very minor part of DU, there are posters here who could chew me up without breaking a sweat, PA being one of them.
At first I was offended, but then just flattered that someone would go to such trouble.

[ThomCat]

23. All the minor parts of DU

make DU pretty big. :)

[catmandu57]

28. Well thank you

from one cat to another.

[rustydog]

22. The only threat was a response to a LTTE in my then hometown

It was a telephone call where the caller told me he was the editor of the paper and they were tired of my lies and that I was blacklisted from airing my traitorous opinion.

I called the coward on his lie on the phone and advised him that since he was slick enough to get my phone number, he must have my address. i invited him to come to my house and make me stop voicing my opinion.

The newspaper still prints my LTTE.

[ThomCat]

29. I hope you called the paper to verify

that he was an editor. I imagine his boss would be very interested in knowing about that call.

[davidthegnome]

24. I'd advise caution

I get emails every day threatening my life, my family, telling me what a liberal pansy I am. They love using words like "mancunt", "mangina", "Pussywhipped". It brings to mind the names I was called when I protested in Washington a couple years ago. I always delete those emails and block the senders, but I still get them all the time. Thing is, ever since a buddy of mine got his ass kicked a few months ago, I've been starting to take these creeps more seriously.

I've been studying martial arts for ten years, but I couldn't do anything against a man with a gun. Makes me nervous, I don't care if they come after me, but I live with my parents. Perhaps it's time to get myself a pistol. I hate guns, but it's the only way to protect myself against one. Been having a mental debate with myself on this issue for a while now.

See, Jason (that's my friend) is a former conservative who turned democrat after the 2000 election (he voted for Gore). He put up a blog that he recently took down - selling banners, bumper stickers, t-shirts, all very anti-bush/anti-war. Thing is, he and I live in a very conservative community, and someone up here found out about his blog. So, these three scumbags got drunk one night, and paid him a visit. Small place, he knew them all by name, men he had gone to school with - and thought they were just visitting until two of them grabbed him while the other started throwing punches. They told him: "Get the fuck out our Country, traitor" or something along those lines.

They messed him up pretty bad, broke ribs, broke his nose, gave him a shiner for each eye. I don't know the whole extent of the damage, but he was in the hospital for a week. Sad thing is - he never reported the incident. He told his Doctor he'd gotten into a drunken brawl. I never understood until he told me who they were - all "upstanding", "respectable" citizens of our town. He told me he'd get them back for it himself. I worry about him constantly. He's gotten locks and bars for his windows, a new security system for his house, and is constantly working out now. Still, people are crazy up here.

I swear, if I didn't live with my family - I'd track down all three of those pricks and do worse to them. Peaceful protesting only goes so far when these pieces of shit are willing to break into our homes and attack us, willing to threaten even our families.

[Robbie Michaels]

31. That Is Crossing The Line

I wish he had reported that incident. No one deserves that.

[Robbie Michaels]

25. In Case Anyone Remembers

I was the one who wrote the Andy Stephenson tribute Op/Ed for Kynd Culture's web site (Radio News America) that stirred up a ton of hate messages for weeks on their blog. Our good friend (snicker) AnonymousArmy made his presence known and exposed himself as a jackass. To the chagrin of some DU members, I DID encourage him so he could keep spewing lies. I figured you never know what information he might volunteer that others could use against him one day. :eyes:

I hope I don't get in trouble for posting this, but I noticed a few days ago he's posting under that same screen name over at DailyKos. I have his IP address, so I looked it up and discovered he posts from the Brampton, Ontario area, most likely from a home or standalone computer.

Another whackdaddy "Socasack" posted his own drivel on the blog at Radio News America late last summer and at one point he said he'd meet me in a public place where I was supposed to meet a group of progressive friends. Of course, the idiot never showed up. I obtained his IP address and discovered the exact address he was posting from.

I told him, "I know where you work," gave him the exact address of the company he worked for, the name and phone number of the head of his IT department, and told him I'm reporting him. He pretty much stopped his barrage after that. This assclown works for a software company in Scottsdale, AZ.

These people want to intimidate you into silence. The internet allows them anonymity to a certain point. All I can tell you is to keep your own anonymity as well. That's why I published my Op/Eds under a pen name. For you tools, I mean trolls out there, it's common in the writing/publishing business to use a pen name to conceal your identity.

In plain English, that means Robbie Michaels is not my real name. :evilgrin:

If any of you somehow obtain the IP address of your harasser, use http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm">this site to look up their information. You can find out where they're doing it from, especially if they're not using a proxy, like the two aforementioned assclowns.

There's nothing wrong with being proactive if you know they're doing the same thing to others.

[converted_democrat]

30. I haven't had any death threats, but I have had property destroyed..

My house and car was egged, and my car was keyed.. The anti-war signs I had in my front yard was on one occasion stolen, and on the other occasion was torn up in a hundred pieces and littered all over the lawn.. It's happened 3 times.. Two times were because of anti war signs, and the third was over an LTTE that I had written.. I live in a very red area, and I guess my "activism" didn't go over real well..

edited for clarity..

[Mountainman]

32. There use to be another Democratic board back in 2001 that allowed

freepers to post their bullshit along with the other posts. I was really good at pissing off the freepers who posted to that board and I use to go to freeperville to read what they posted about our board and copied and pasted it there.

One of the freepers that was close to Rim Job at the time posted my name and address in freeperville. The only problem was he got the city wrong.

[MrBenchley]

34. Try advocating gun control sometime...

They're pretty common....one trigger-happy fuckwit on HERE made a point of threatening to send me a "Christmas card" as a half-assed, "I know where you live" threat.

There used to be some pathetic weenie calling himself AZJoe who used to send death threats to Bob Boudelang.....to give you an idea of what a loser this pathetic weenie was, he sent Bob one at 11:58 on New Year's Eve....

[demobabe]

35. Hate mail, frequently; death threats, occasionally... other fun stuff, too

Hate mail is a daily occurrance for us, but we've had worse. Freeps have gone after both my husband and myself:

- They've posted our personal information, home address, etc. on the Free Republic
- They've attacked our servers
- Sent death threats and threatened to "pull a black op" on us
- Contacted clients I do business attempting to destroy my livelihood
- Registered domain using both my name and my husband's names and aliased them to rushlimbaugh.com
- Talk Radio Network (Michael Savage) sued me to the tune of $500,000 (but eventually withdrew the suit)

I've sent several Cease and Desist letters to Rim Job at Freeperville... those guys on that side are so hateful - always proceed with caution. Don't even acknowledge hateful mail.

[JNelson6563]

36. Couple of nasty PM's from DUers

during the primaries. Do those count? ;-)

[slackmaster]

37. A gun control extremist on this board sent me a threatening email once

But the bigoted, hot-headed fool told me his real name and IP address in the process.

(Edited for niceness.)