Colleges Targeted with Racist Zoom Bombings As White Supremacy Spikes

Colleges Targeted with Racist Zoom Bombings As White Supremacy Spikes

When Zoë Washington logged on to a video call for her finance class at American University, everything seemed normal.

But a few minutes into the lecture, someone with their camera off joined the call and started yelling racial slurs.

"I don't even remember how long it lasted because I was just kind of frozen in shock, but they just unmuted themselves and just started spewing the N-word over and over and over again," Washington said. "And everybody in the class, we were all frozen."

The professor frantically kicked the perpetrator off the call, apologized and continued teaching to about 30 people, including two other Black students.

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A number of colleges and universities have recently been targeted by racist Zoom bombings, according to the Anti-Defamation League, which has tracked instances of hate for decades. White supremacists have crashed online classes and events, and targeted students of color.

White supremacist propaganda distribution spiked in 2020, the ADL reported last month. Reports of incidents on college campuses dropped as many campuses were closed during the pandemic. But some victims of racist attacks suggest hate may have just moved online as classes did.

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Ironhold said:

A few years ago, some people from 4-Chan and a few other groups decided to test something out.

They typed the phrase "It's OK To Be White" in a common type font, printed it out with everyday black printer ink on everyday white printer paper, and started posting it around various locations, particularly college campuses. Nothing else was on the pages.

People absolutely lost their minds over this, presuming it to be some sort of "white supremacist" effort to organize and rally new recruits.

There was wailing, weeping, and gnashing of teeth all across the United States as people wondered what sort of devious and evil people were responsible for such an offensive thing being plastered all over.

To the folks at 4-Chan (et al), this was proof that too many people were far too ready to presume the worst, and it led to people being humiliated when this was slowly revealed as a massive social experiment.

Sadly, the backlash over this was so massive that it inspired at least one actual white supremacist group to adopt it as an actual slogan.

Incidents like this are why people are saying that folks need to slow down a minute and actually assess situations before going off half-cocked. So much of what people today think is "white supremacy" is either pranks gone sideways, people tilting at windmills, or false flag jobs.

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The "it's just a prank" excuse, yet they always seem to choose the white supremacy prank. It's like those college groups that claim they're just supporting free speech when they invite white nationalists or some other bigoted organization to campus. I might agree with them being all about free speech if they didn't exclusively run to the same racist backbench. Give me something other than far-right wing extremist groups. They simply don't. When you continuously push white nationalism and white supremacy, then claim it's a joke, the pattern of behavior suggests that is more than a joke.

But the people you claim are testing something out is a board with regular postings of neo-Nazism, antisemitism, racism, white supremacism, Islamophobia, etc. Are you suggesting that people regularly posting this are simply not what their behavior clearly shows. If you spend all your time posting racist things as a joke, it would appear more than likely that you are racist.

Ironhold said:

Let's suppose, for a minute, that these Zoom calls are being made by internet trolls.

My 20+ years of experience online says that most trolls do it because they get a sick pleasure from affecting others. The worse people react to their trolling, the more power and enjoyment they feel. In other words, going atomic just gives them what they want.

What offends the greatest number of people right now? There you go.

For most trolls, it's no longer fun if the people they target don't react how they want them to react. And they'll quit smiling entirely once the powers-that-be get involved. In a situation like this, that means don't give them the time of day beyond logging who did what when and handing it over to the proper authorities.

It's all about knowing who and what you're dealing with so that you can prepare an appropriate response.

Going "scorched earth" when the situation doesn't warrant it will only make things worse.

Also, who are some of the "bigoted" people you refer to? The term is thrown around so commonly these days that I literally once got called a "bigot" for daring to point out flaws in the effects work and editing of "Captain Marvel". ("In this scene, this scene, and this scene, if you look closely you can see where they didn't get the green-screen work just right...". Things like that.)

The problem with this is that human psychology often causes people to - whether consciously or subconsciously - mold themselves to whatever label they're given. It's not hard to find haters who weren't at first but found themselves lumped in by third parties and got tired of being treated poorly.

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As someone with 20+ years of online experience, racism and trolling are not mutually exclusive. People that go online and frequently post racist things are exhibiting racist behavior. It does not matter if they claim it is simply meant to get a rise out of people, it is still racist. But even using this "getting a rise out of people" argument, if you purposefully do something, you meant to do it, that was your intent. Purposely saying racist things is racism. Likewise, if you frequent forums that white supremacists and neo-Nazis frequent, and then start mimicking their behavior in other online forums, you are one of them. And we know they are racists because they are posting racist things online.

But the "getting a rise out of people" argument does not hold water because they don't do this to other groups. If we saw trolling that spanned other groups besides black people, you might have an argument. However, last we checked these forms of bigotry are usually directed at one target and they coincide with assaults and real-life attacks. White supremacists and white nationalists have become more active lately, it's not simply trolling. That's why the FBI has taken note of their increased activity, so your claim is just not true.

An aside though, for the love of humanity, can you please give the Brie Larson/Captain Marvel thing a rest? She is not looking out for you and she has absolutely nothing to do with this topic, yet you somehow try to shoehorn that into every topic. But regarding bigotry, you are playing the game where you claim outright bigoted behavior is not bigotry, and bigoted behavior where a person frequently attacks a specific group incessantly is not bigoted either. You can't have it both ways. The reality is this is nothing more than a tactic to ignore all forms of bigotry, it's a form of gaslighting, where you claim someone is crazy for seeing the bigoted behavior of someone's repeated actions.

For example, if you happen to always say sexist or misogynistic things when a woman is present, you are likely trolling... and you are also sexist. If you constantly complain about women, yet do not seem to ever muster such courage when it comes to men, then you likely are sexist too. Needless to say, the two behaviors arent equal, it's a matter of degree.

As a person that never uses racial slurs, it's just a weak argument for someone to use a slur and say they didn't mean it. At some level, you hold those views and it sits in your mind and heart, that's why those slurs came out of your mouth or fingertips. It's not random, you learned it and then applied it in real life, it is part of who you are.

BigDaddy4 said:

I wasn't talking about other incidents; I'm talking about the OP incident. Without the camera on, no one can tell who it was behind these incidents. Perhaps it could be other blacks? Remember Jussie Smollett? I recall an article about a black guy writing white supremist graffiti just to perpetuate the narrative.

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And in most cases, it is not a hoax. Sometimes people lie, but that is a small percentage. There are people like Susan Smith in the world, but most cases are real.

BigDaddy4 said:

You mean like Jussie Smollett or this guy?
Racist graffiti in Michigan dorm written by Black student: report

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Like this guy: College student who hosted racist online 'swatting' group is sentenced to 33 months

One day in late 2018, John William Kirby Kelley didn’t feel like going to class. So he turned to the friends he had made online, suggesting they call in a fake threat to his school, Old Dominion University.

The people who gathered in the online chat room, which Kelley hosted, regularly engaged in “swatting,” or calling police with invented crises that would require a special weapons and tactics, or SWAT, team, prosecutors said. The friends also routinely derided Black and Jewish people and targeted minorities; one was the leader of a neo-Nazi group called the Atomwaffen Division.

Kelley and the group leader, John Cameron Denton, were ultimately arrested along with four other Atomwaffen associates.

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OldWiseGuy said:

Heck, I'm called a racist for trying to help black people.

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Not saying you're doing this, but someone can still be racist if they describe another group of people in a generalized way, especially if a person describes a group as if it is afflicted with a pathology. It doesn't matter if one is sympathetic to that group, those are racist views. We should view racism less as in someone being a bad person, and more as the views and ideas denoting a racist attitude. Describing a group of people with a pathology based on their skin tone, even if someone makes the weak attempt to swap skin tone for "culture," is racist. For instance, "So many black people live in poverty and I am sad to see that. I would love to see more investment in their communities. But most importantly, they need to look at how their black culture is the real problem; once they understand that, they can more easily elevate themselves." Yeah, that's racist.