The dirtbag "left" has been around and increasingly influential for years now, and I only started worrying about/writing about them in March.

Unless you're a target, they're easy to overlook.

It's a strategy/quality they inherited from their Gamergate predecessors. https://twitter.com/ClaessensLaw/status/1299419033159299072

That's what was so insidious and dangerous about Gamergate, honestly.

Twitter algorithms create a situation where huge, abusive brigade movements can amass while remaining all but invisible to most outside parties.

When Gamergaters and others mobilized those tactics nominally on behalf of Bernie, most leftists didn't see the brigades.

We saw centrist liberal women complaining about "Bernie bros" and calling us "Bernie bros" and blocking us when we even mildly criticized them.

Those dirtbag brigaders took advantage of Bernie leftists' skepticism about the dirtbags' existence.

We were skeptical in part because we kept seeing our diverse movement characterised as white "Bernie bros" by media & political opposition, which simply did not reflect reality.

BUT.

That skepticism was also rooted in Twitter's algorithm, which makes it very difficult to see or understand the devastating impact, breadth, and size of a Gamergate-stule brigade.

And.

The targets were women.

Sexism teaches us that women are lying, whining Karens.

When these dirtbag brigades started coming for me, the virulence and scale were both just breathtaking.

They very much wanted to destroy me, and there were hundreds, sometimes thousands, of men dedicated to the work of just annihilating me, day in and day out.

Because... because I'd posted a rant abour how their favorite podcasters were sexist sometimes and that their behavior was hurting Bernie's chances.

It was literally pro-Bernie.

So it wasn't about supporting Bernie, not even a little.

It was about destroying a woman.

And the other thing I noticed was, many of my dude comrades didn't seem to notice, and those that did seemed to notice only that I was complaining, and seemed to think I was exaggerating or making it up.

Which, a lot of it was sexism.

But a lot of it was also, Gamergate brigades are designed to play to sexism *and* algorithms in ways that tempt people into believing that a target is just whining, or making it up.

You know.

Being hysterical.

So, the sexist targeting and the algorithm together work to make this brigade culture nearly invisible unless you're a target or a participant.

The podcast dudes who leverage it play to that invisibility, plus plausible deniability, to disguise their complicity and participation in violent brigade culture and keep up the plausible deniability that undergirds their harmless jokester entertainer personas.

I'd heard about Chapo Trap House long before I ever tweeted anything about them.

I sort of knew that they did grifty, Bernie-themed political comedy.

But it wasn't until they sent their brigades after me that I got a sense of who they were & the ugliness they represented.

Anyway, that's why they stayed off most folks' radar for so long.

The whole "Bernie bro" thing was confusing and an often-deliberate mischaracterization of them as a meaningful part of Bernie's base, which led a lot of leftists (myself included) to discount the horror stories.

Part of non-dirtbag leftists' willingness to overlook the dirtbags was a fair reaction to deceptive media narratives.

Part of it was Twitter's algorithm making it hard to see.

Part of it was not wanting to affirm disingenuous centrists, or hurt Bernie.

Part of it was sexism.

There's a lot of blame to go around, and this is a postmortem that is going to take a long time to do justice to.

In the meantime, we need to deal with the fact that we let racist, misogynist, ableist reactionaries into the house of the left, let them claim ownership.

We need to address the fact that they have invited and continue to invite Nazis to our dinner table, and the fact that they brutally, violently, and overwhelmingly bridge any woman, femme, and especially WOC that dares use her voice to object.

So, there are a lot of reasons we didn't see it then.

Some are fair.

Some are going to require us to do some self-work.

The most urgent question is, what should we be doing now that the view is clear?

And the answer is, demanding that men use their privilege and platforms to amplify the women who have taken huge hits in calling for the misogynist reactionaries who pull this shit to be held accountable.

It is beyond time for that to happen.

It is shameful that it hasn't.