Doxxing is Deadly
Doxxers know they can inflict physical harm on their political opponents without risking arrest because their mentally unwell followers will do it for them. As we just saw at Nick Fuentes' house.
Last night we learned that a shooter turned up at the home of far-right streamer Nick Fuentes armed with a gun and ready to shoot. According to reports, 24-year-old John Lyons was responsible for killing three family members in the small village of Mahomet before making his way to Fuentes’ Chicago home - an address he knew thanks to a recent successful doxxing of the notoriously provocative social media personality. Lyons was shot and killed by police officers after being chased on foot, breaking into the property, and allegedly killing two dogs.
I’m not going to defend a Holocaust denier in this post. It should go without saying that I find Fuentes’ comments and behaviour utterly reprehensible. That being said, this entire saga is utterly sad and demonstrates how dangerous the most committed activists of all political flavours have become. When Fuentes’ address was made public this autumn, the far-right streamer was inundated with left-wing activists lingering around his home with the intent of harassing and intimidating him. One particularly odd woman chose to scope out his property for some time in her car, only to pluck up the courage to knock on his door to “confront” him while streaming the incident live to social media, presumably aware that any interaction with Fuentes would win her some social media points. Upon opening his door, Fuentes pepper sprayed and kicked her down his stoop. The woman went on to press charges against Fuentes, and on Thursday, he appeared in court and argued that he believed his life was in danger.
After this week’s incident, it’s clear that his fears were justified.
I hope this serves as a wake-up call - not just for political activists who enjoy this kind of real-life drama, but for Fuentes, who is no stranger to doxxing (or laughing at the doxxing of) his own political opponents.
No matter how hurtful someone might be or how distasteful their online comments are, there is simply no good done in responding in kind. If you’re trying to change minds, understand that dehumanising those with whom you disagree or even find utterly reprehensible doesn’t move the needle even slightly. You aren’t winning an argument, but you are ensuring that the argument lasts a little longer each time you do it. Bullying, intimidating, or escalating the conflict only serves to deepen the divide and put lives in danger. If left-wingers want Fuentes to change his ways, they are failing. After having already doubled down on his most troubling views in recent years, Fuentes is more likely to do it all over again. He already has no off-ramp; he is perhaps the most notorious Holocaust-denier and white supremacist (or whatever he would describe himself as) in the country. There’s no going back for him. He’s now also got a bone to pick with left-wing radicals. A vendetta that just got much more personal.
I know this dynamic well.
When I first arrived at my university, I was a fairly notorious activist active in far-right politics. At this time, I was largely considered a “reformer” in the same vein as Marine Le Pen in France, the daughter of hard-line nationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen, who transformed her far-right party into an inclusive right-wing populist movement. I had advocated for allowing non-white members to join the radical party of which I was a member in my youth. I also supported civil partnerships for gay couples, while most in the party did not. My experience in college and university, however, was a catalyst for my radicalisation, pushing me briefly into the hands of the most extreme wings of the movement after far-left activists committed themselves to making my life a misery. I was hounded on campus daily, physically assaulted in the street, and even targeted by a vicious leafleting campaign designed to ensure every single student believed I was an imminent threat to their safety.
Imagine arriving to class one day only to find posters plastered all over the building with your photograph comparing you to far-right serial killer Anders Breivik. That’s what happened to me and let me tell you: it did not make me change my mind. It did not make me want to make friends with those left-wingers who disagreed with me. In fact, it even harmed my previously strong relationships with left-wing friends in my city. If their intention was to push me even further away, they succeeded. At least briefly, anyway.
It was during this time that extreme left-wing activists also attempted to find my home address and would regularly issue me death threats online. I recall one very specific threat that detailed how they would locate my home and slash my dog’s throats (I was a dog handler at the time).
In more recent years, after having left extremist politics in my early 20s, my wife and I found ourselves the victims of doxxing attempts by extreme right-wingers who found “fame” online by publicly shaming, harassing, and bullying unsuspecting victims on hours-long video streams with the intent of manufacturing drama and attracting eyeballs to their YouTube accounts. For those not in the know, this industry is known as “Internet Blood Sports,” and those who engage in it have one purpose: to harass victims with more followers than them so brutally, so frequently, and so shamelessly that they fight back in defence and create more content for the aggressor to parody or relay to their viewers. It’s effectively professional bullying, and it’s incentivised by social media platforms like YouTube, Rumble, and X that not only permit it but pay out ad dollars for it. Nick Fuentes’ content could arguably be placed into this category.
And while these people attempted to find our home and publish our address, some of their most unhinged followers would send us credible death threats. Sometimes they were emails, and sometimes they were videos. Here’s one:
Thankfully, this man does not know where we live. At least, yet.
Another man, as unhinged as the one above, would send us hundreds of emails per day for at least a year until he was eventually locked up. Incredibly, he wasn’t locked up for sending us daily death threats and photoshopped images of my wife being brutally raped and murdered, but for punching a woman in the street in his home country.
There are dangerous people out there, and those who engage in doxxing campaigns online know it. These activists know the damage they can do. They know that they can inflict extreme emotional and physical damage on their political opponents without stepping a foot out their door, getting their hands dirty, or risking arrest.
All they need to do is find the address and publish it; their mentally unwell followers will do the rest. As we have seen with the recent attempt on Nick Fuentes’ life.