There's a big discussion,
big debate about whether it makes
sense for left activists to unmask
right wing extremists when
they engage in violent behavior in
some of these rallies and protests?
Now, the topic is really about
doxxing, and
so, let's go through the details.
And I'm really, really curious what
you all think, in fact,
we even have a poll on this.
So, the topic was explored by
the Washington Post they profiled
a specific incident involving
an independent journalist
by the name of Laura Jedeed.
And so she was at the MAGA march in
DC in November, when she was
approached by a Trump supporter who
was pretty aggressive,
stepped on her toes, and
was incredibly confrontational.
In fact, we have a video showing
you what that looked like,
let's take a quick look.
>> Hey, yoh this is
Portland anti press right here.
>> This one right here?
>> Right here.
[CROSSTALK] >> Please
stop stepping on my foot.
[INAUDIBLE] >> How are you doin
what's up, how you doing?
All the way from Portland little
mag >> Do not touch.
>> Mag, I'm not touching you.
>> Yes you're [CROSSTALK].
>> Don't video me.
>> I'm allowed to video.
>> Okay,
well I'm allowed to >> Yes you're
but if you touch me [CROSSTALK].
>> You need to stop okay?
>> What's up?
I can't wait to see in lobby again.
What's up?
>> Is that a threat?
>> Are we coming?
>> What's going to happen to me be
in the lobby?
>> Nothing. >> Can you elaborate?
>> What's up?
You want to keep recording,
you ain't going to do nothing.
Keep recording,
you ain't doing nothing,
you ain't going to do nothing.
Keep recording,
what are you going to do?
>> Now what followed is what has
led to a debate that I think is
worth having.
So the man in the flag mask was
quickly identified as Washington
state resident Edward Jeremy Dawson
by a local antifa group.
Twitter users mining public records
later released his address and
phone number.
The video was amplified by
Christian Exoo, a prominent anti
fascist activist who tweeted it out
to his 50,000 plus followers.
Now, Christian also
included contact information for
Dawson's employer.
And I looked for that tweet and
found it, and yeah,
they're very specific details about
who the employer is, how activists
should call and let the employer
know about Dawson's behavior.
So, Dawson ends up getting fired,
Dawson's wife Michelle also
uploaded a tearful self shot video
to Twitter announcing his firing.
And later later that month she was
asked to hand in her vest and
badge at a Walmart in Battle Ground
Washington, where she worked as
an online order fulfiller.
She thinks that she was fired over
her politics but
acknowledges that she had missed
a substantial amount of work
because of her back problems.
So, the question is,
does this activism doxxing bad
actors dangerous or
right wing extremists work?
Does it make sense,
do we support it?
And I think this is a perfect topic
for TYT Supreme Court.
Uygur, you go first.
>> Okay, we're missing a couple of
justice today but
[LAUGH] all right.
This is a complicated one.
So first, I want to just give
a quick background on what happened
with that person recording.
She then went back to her hotel
room, but
they were staying the same hotel,
that's why I had that reference to
seeing her in the lobby, right?
And she said she locked her door
dead bolted it but
couldn't sleep all night, because
she knows they're in the hotel,
and that according to him,
they're looking for her.
Imagine how frightening that is.
So keep that in mind as this guy
cries about, my God, I'm worried
about my safety, but you weren't
worried about her safety, right?
Now, and at the end by the way,
when they asked them, do you think
you did something wrong?
He said the only thing I did wrong
was keeping I the mask on.
Meaning so
that he could be identified and
not because of Coronavirus or
anything along those lines.
So he say if I wasn't identified,
I could have bullied and
intimidated her and
gotten away with it.
So I have no sympathy, zero for
the doxxes none, none none.
Okay, having said that,
what is doxxing?
So, is revealing someone's name
doxxing?
No, that is not doxxing.
So now sometimes people in
the mainstream media cry about it,
people in the establishment cry
about it, sometimes right wingers
cry about it.
My God, you know the guys who cry
about it the most,
corrupt politicians.
You let people know who I was
taking a million bucks from, and
I'll legalize bribe, you doxx them.
No that's not doxxing, we said yeah
that's the Charles Cot, that guy,
as an example right?
Or Robert Mason gave you the money,
that's the guy you work for.
That's not doxxing that's called
information and that's called basic
reporting, so I don't mind their
names being out at all.
But giving out the address,
the phone number is different,
and so is the employer thing.
I think the important thing is
really hard, and
I'm not super clear about what
the right thing there is,
and I'm curious what you think.
But to me as despicable as that guy
was, do, I vote no, do not give
out the address and phone number.
I think it's a bad policy idea
everywhere, next thing, everybody's
going to want to know those houses.
By the way,
the right wing is more violent than
the left wing by a lot.
So you start a pattern and
precedent of given out people's
addresses and phone numbers,
I can't see anyway that doesn't
turn into a disaster.
So I vote that no, you should not
do that type of doxxing and
which I think is actually doxxing.
>> So I think that what we're
seeing with the doxxing is the type
of vigilantism that happens when
our institutions are failing us,
and our institutions
are failing us.
I mean, there's no doubt about it.
First of all, I mean,
from beginning to end, you see
failure in our institutions.
Number one, the Dawson's while I
certainly don't feel too much
sympathy for them,
given what they've engaged in.
I mean, they both didn't finish
high school, right,
like our public education system
certainly failed them.
They're both working pretty
terrible, we're working pretty low
paying jobs.
I know that he was steel worker,
but without
even a high school degree,
how much could he be possibly be
making as a steel worker?
She was working for Walmart,
you know how much Walmart pays it's
employees.
So, there's the lack of action in
Congress when it comes to ensuring
that people have normal,
stable lives and
are able to provide for themselves.
I know that his wife Michelle,
for instance,
had no interest in politics felt
like politics was not a place for
her, she didn't follow it.
She felt like politicians
had no interest in doing anything
to better her life.
She became radicalized in the right
wing thanks to Donald Trump because
Trump in a very hollow and
obviously deceptive way pretended
to care about their issues, right?
So that's to radicalize them to
the extreme right.
The fact that Congress as
an institution has failed us when
it comes to regulating social
networking platforms,
which literally have algorithms
that uplift content that
radicalizes people in the worst
possible way, spreads fake news in
the worst possible way.
Congress has done
nothing about that.
Congress has done nothing about
the fact that data brokers
literally profit off of selling our
personal information publicly.
Our personal information,
everyone's personal
information is out there.
Every single person in this country
can easily get dox because our
private data is constantly
being sold by various platforms,
by online merchants.
I mean, it's just again,
failure from beginning to end.
So look, do I feel bad for them?
That's a different question.
Like it's hard to feel bad for
them given that they willingly
engaged in that kind of activity in
that behavior and
obviously he was interested in just
intimidating this reporter, right?
>> So look, he's unrepented.
>> Right >> And
she also said, our 18 year old
daughter doesn't agree with this,
she was super annoyed by it.
She's like,
she's into George Floyd blah, blah,
blah, right?
>> Yeah.
>> So you get a sense of who these
folks are, but at the same time,
I agree with you,
there are real people.
I want to come back to
that next time. >> Yeah.
>> But I want to let you- >> But
there's the other thing, right?
They became hardened,
even more hardened in their
extremism after they were doxxed.
So they appear to be unchanged as
a result of the doxx,
seem like they feel no remorse.
However, there was an interesting
point made in the article about
others who are kind of straddling,
right?
They might want to go to these
events, but then they see what
happens to right wing extremists in
losing their jobs and all that.
And that discourages them to doxx
them, and I think that's
an interesting to turn.
But at the end of the day,
the failure is really about
the institutions.
We have to think about how easy it
is to doxxy, anyone?
And do you want to be doxxed for
your political beliefs, and I say,
no, I think that it's bad practice.
And really the iron needs to be
directed toward members of Congress
and their insane failure to
really address issues,
by the way and police, right?
Vigilantism is happening because
police, they appear to be in
bed with the right wing extremists.
I'm not trying to be overly
judgmental about the activist,
right?
They're doing what
they think is right, and
the reason why they're doing it
is because the institutions have
failed them, they failed all of us.
So I don't know, it's a long way of
saying no, don't do the doxxing.
>> So, look, we got a poll on this.
I think it's really interesting
a lot of people coming
in already in the members comments
it's makes tyt.com/polls,
we're curious about your answer.
But Anna, I want to establish
a couple of things before I go back
to a really interesting
point you made.
One, giving somebody is name is not
doxxing.
>> Right, correct.
>> Right? Okay, giving out
addresses and phone numbers
definitely is doxxing and is wrong.
We're agreed on that?
>> Mh-mm. >> Right, so
that only leaves to me,
do you tell their employer or not?
Okay, so
now in terms of these folks,
it's still work is a good job, and
a lot of folks have to work at
Walmart but if you just asked them,
they're not loving it.
But she loses the job he has to get
a lower paying job, he still
apparently some sort of steel
worker but he gets a lot less.
They're pretty devastated in terms
of the financial fallout from this,
but the thing that about how she
was not at all political and
got into politics because of Trump
resonated with me in this.
These are not like highly
paid political actors in DC that
are politicians or lobbyists or
consultants, etc,
they're real people.
The thing that is most unspoken in
the American media is people didn't
just like Trump because he acts in
monstrous ways.
They also like them, or some
exclusively like them for this,
because he said he was going to
drain the swamp and he talked like
a real person because he didn't
talk like a political robot.
So even though he's a con man,
it gave off
the appearance of being real.
And he gave off the even though
he's the most corrupt guy both
personally and systemically,
he gave off the appearance
of being anti corruption.
And a lot of real people got
energized by that, and they were,
well at least that guy is not fake.
They thought, wrongly, right?
>> Right. >> And at least he's not
like all the other crooks,
who we know for a fact of robbing
us blind and the media tells us
they're all wonderful,
honorable politicians and so we
know the media is a bunch of lies.
>> While, that's another
institution that failed us >> And
the media failed us more than any
of them, because over 90% of
the country says that politicians
serve their donors and
not their voters, 93%, okay?
It's the exact opposite in the
media, over 90% of the media says,
no, they do not serve their donors.
They are honorable people having
a legitimate intellectual debate
that is so outrageously false.
That of course,
a lot of people were like,
I guess you're fake news.
The minute anybody said fake news,
they were like,
I instantly believe it.
Because those liars have been
telling me that these corrupt
politicians have my best
interests in mind,
can get out of here, right?
So now, you take those people and
they go down a rabbit hole and
they go down this rabbit hole,
right?
And then that rabbit hole leads
them in to dark places where you
get in a woman's face,
by the way, she's Veteran right?
And Kate went into the military
by the way
out of patriotism after 911 got
jaded by the war in Afghanistan.
She served two tours in and
then became progressive.
So you get in her face ,you
physically step on her,
you threaten her and
you're in this dark, dark place.
So one I got to fight against you,
but two what's more important is
what caused that cancer in
the first.
>> Yes, exactly.
So like the debate is about what
Band Aid we need to use when
in reality the real conversation
needs to be about the root
of the problem.
That's where I'm trying to focus
really, again, I don't want people
to think I'm trying to protect the
right wing extremists I'm not, but
there is a very real problem in the
country with right wing extremists.
They didn't just come out
of nowhere.
Why is it that especially during
the Trump years, I mean,
as early as 2009 when we did that
story about the Department of
Homeland Security realizing that
there's a problem with right
wing extremism, and then Obama got
bullied into getting rid of that
portion of the DHS, right?
It was already a problem in 2009
and it's exploded since then.
The real question is why and
why aren't we tackling the root
causes of it?
>> Yeah, and
then finally on the employers,
I still haven't made up my mind.
But, I always think what
if the shoe was on the other foot,
because that's the principal way to
do it, right?
And so what if they got left wing
protester who had committed active
violence against the right wing
protester, and threatened that
right wing protesters safety, okay?
Would I be okay with the right
wing, telling their employer
that they had done that?
And I think the answer is yes.
And then that's up to the employer
to decide what they want to do with
that information.
And so, I get it, I'm in a position
of privilege here because
>> because you are the boss.
>> Yeah. Right now,
you say, I'm complaining to
Jake about Jake, okay,
you're not going to get very far.
[LAUGH] >> By the way,
unless you're right in which case
I'll say hey, sorry, etc, right?
>> Yeah.
>> Especially with cops,
right, because they're in charge of
other people, and
they have tremendous power and they
have guns, they have badges, they
have authority that we gave them.
If a cop is a white nationalist and
he's out there going in and
abusing African Americans,
we got to know.
If there's a nurse or a doctor who
doesn't believe in vaccines and is
lying about taking a vaccine etc,
or threatening people when they're
supposed to be taking care
of people we got to know.
So there's a lot of reasons why
an employer knowing is important,
it doesn't mean that everyone has
to be fired.
It's easy for
me to say, I don't do this, that's
not the tactic I use at all, right?
But for the folks who do,
you should care, because these
are real people, as important as
these guys happen to be, and
a lot of them happen to be, and I
know what you're trying to prevent.
But- >> They might have young kids.
>> So many people are in the same
class, right?
The overwhelming majority of us
are poor and middle class, okay?
And they want us to fight one
another, and so I know that some of
those fights are unavoidable and
I engage in a lot of those fights,
right?
But at the same time we should be
mindful towards the long term,
which is not getting someone who
works at Walmart fired but
getting the politicians fired.
>> Mh-mm.
>> And getting the people in power
fired because the little guys
aren't causing the problem,
even if they're acting this badly,
it's the big guys that are causing
the problem.
When you got an issue and
there's systemic injustice,
don't look down, look up.