The Identity of Politics: A Short Essay/A Long Read
By: Gweerdentity
Tags: Abuse, Twitter, Politics, Discrimination, Anti Semitism

The second tweet was a joke I made using a Yiddish word. I took ‘mensch’ and turned the meaning around to make it a word used to describe someone negatively. I am entitled to this humour. Hell, anyone is entitled to that humour, it’s a word, I personally don’t think it can be held in too much of a protected status. I made the joke referring to a person who held that surname and with whom I had had an extremely negative interaction with. It may not be funny to people but as a linguistic joke, it stands.

She really wasn’t a mensch and this really wasn’t antisemitism. It is worth pointing out this particular person reported me to the police on a lie and received a warning for wasting police time as a result.

These two tweets alone were what they held up in evidence of me being anti-Semitic, a cruel person and, ergo, somehow not Jewish. They were also used in response to people identifying antisemitism from right-wing responders. Two tweets from over a decade of Twitter use. Those two screenshots were intentionally shared hundreds of times, to tens of thousands of followers. Followers who, it would seem, are primarily followers of a political nature rather than of a cultural identity. The purpose of their sharing was purely to have my Twitter account closed. They didn’t use any links and, thus, users went to my account and used general brute force reporting. Personally, I reported the continued use of these tweets as targeted harassment but no fault was found by Twitter support admins, I just had to tolerate the 100+ notifications of mentions each day for 3 days, even putting my account behind a lock didn’t slow it down. These two screenshots opened the floodgates to 5 days (and counting) of abuse, violent hate, extreme targeted harassment and one very hard-hitting crescendo. It is worth pointing out that the tweet by Jeff Samuels had thousands of negative replies, yet it was my reply that was picked by Gnasher Jew. I still maintain curiosity as to why that was.

Public tweets aside, it mainly got dark when the DMs began. Every DM I received in response to the tweet Gnasher Jew made calling for people to report me was from an account that followed Gnasher Jew, and most followed back by them in return. A lot of them referred to me as an “Asa”, apparently you cannot make reference to being Jewish if it is contrary to the main centre/right political view of Israeli/British politics. You cannot say, for example, “As a Jew in the UK, I find myself being used as a political football.” The first of the really dark stuff targeted my mental health. It said they wished my mother had aborted me because it must be awful to have a crazy for a kid. Another later one went for a tried and tested “Fukin faggit.” This was a theme, there was a lot of “disgusting” being used and “sick” being mentioned. Then there were the darkest ones, the ones that said the Nazis would’ve killed me anyway, Jewish or not, said without any sense of irony. The ones that said my ancestors should have burned to stop filth like me being born. The ones that said they hope I am tortured by “Arabs who hate homos.” I reported these DMs to Twitter, and to the police, as of yet nothing has been done by the latter and I have no idea if anything was done by the former. The reason why I have no idea and cannot ‘name and shame’ those abusers, aside from legalities and self preservation, is about to become clear in its absurdity.

At the same time the DMs started, I also began to get repeated blocks on my account by Twitter admin because images in my tweets were deemed to be private media of another person. When Twitter block your account and ask you to delete a tweet or appeal, they don’t let you ‘view’ the tweet beyond the screenshot they present. A report on an image doesn’t let you see the image, just a URL. The first block I got was on a picture I posted of me goofing out over some breakfast pancakes from the yellow arches. There was nothing to identify the brand in the image nor any proprietary items in the background, it was just my stupid face and some pancakes, and I was so confused by the block, and was unsure what the actual image was, that I agreed and deleted the image. I carried on thinking there must be a genuine reason for this anomaly. A day or two later it happened again, this time I knew exactly what the image was. It was me on my sofa making myself look unattractive and lazy as a joke about exercise. This image was reported as private media of somebody else and Twitter asked me to delete or appeal. So, this time I appealed. This was my image, my face, my personhood that was being claimed as private by someone else and I was being forced to delete myself from my own account for that reason. I had to appeal this on principle as it was wrong; factually and ethically wrong. I realised then, in the silence of awaiting the appeal decision, that this was all caused by Gnasher Jew’s tweet, and ultimately my standing up to Jeff Samuels. The reason I was being targeted in this manner was political, and my identity was being used to do so. Twitter ultimately found no reason to overturn the appeals and I had to delete the tweets or have my account suspended. I was also warned if I violated these rules again, I risked permanent suspension of my account. 3 hours later, another block for an image on a tweet discussing the previous blocks and the images I had to delete. This time there was no delete or appeal. My account was gone. My identity on Twitter removed in its entirety.

I find it hard to believe a human reviewed this appeal and upheld a complaint that my own face and images belonged to someone else. FYI Brazda/Seel were two gay men held captive in Nazi internment camps and abused physically, mentally and sexually. They survived because they escaped. Their families shunned them after and they have no familial legacy. I claim their legacy and the legacy of hundreds of thousands of other gay and bisexual men, and the fight that it represents. This is another aspect of my identity and politics.

During this current period of ‘Pandemia’, everybody on the face of the planet has faced some kind of social difficulty, some kind of sadness and/or hardship somewhere. None more so than the already socially isolated. I consider myself to be one of those socially isolated people. I find the world a difficult place. I find it difficult because of the sensory issues I have, light and sound in particular. I find social interactions difficult. As I have explained, I struggle a lot with social cues and boundaries, I upset people, I hate myself for it and I am always left having to rebuild bits of my identity and personality. My anxiety and depression disorders sometimes make it difficult to even cross my front door. I can pace my hallway for 30 minutes trying to convince myself to leave and go to a shop for essentials, only to just take off my shoes and jacket and retreat to my living room defeated. As a result of this, I hold the few real interactions I have with people very dear. They are crucial to me. I need those people to help balance out how I experience the world. The world is terrifying and confusing for me otherwise. At the current time I, like countless others, cannot have those interactions but it damages me more so because every day I am alone is one notch lower on my wellness scale. Even the charity that supplies my support worker has been casualty to the pandemic, having closed their doors as funding dried up/was withdrawn by government. This is why Twitter is so crucial for me in this climate. It is my only social window. It is the only place I can balance out my internal personality with how I perceive and rationalise the world. It is the only place I can speak to people who understand me, or might have an interest in what I say. It is the only outlet I have to distract me from the darkness that follows me constantly, beckoning me to give up and go with it. Having Autism means my routines are equally as crucial. The pandemic erased all of my previously held routines and, in developing new ones, Twitter became an important basis which some new routines were placed on. People I became friends with were checking on me, making sure I was doing the basics like eating or sleeping in my bed. Having my routines changed or removed in a sudden or immediate manner can cause me all sorts of emotional stress. Not having Twitter to discuss this with other Autistics, or with friends, was a crushing paradox. I couldn’t discuss having a support structure removed because the support structure I used to discuss these things was the very thing that had been removed. Because of the politicised actions of a Twitter set, my entire identity and support has been erased. I went from being a low-ish follower nobody, someone surviving ‘lockdown’ with Twitter friends; to being an ‘othered’ Jew with nothing and nobody to talk to. The morning I awoke to find my account gone was a morning that the darkness didn’t have to beckon too loudly.

I didn’t realise it was possible for blood to both boil and run cold at the same time.

I will not discuss what happened next. I will not glorify it or sensationalise it. I won’t turn that part into a story to tell. The important aspect of all of this is what led up to it and what caused the response. I have spent three days having my every move monitored because I cannot be trusted to keep myself safe, because I have lost my support structures. I will be under a 3 month ‘Community Treatment Order’ because I have no demonstrable support structure. That order means that if I slip, if I don’t find a way to keep myself well daily, if I don’t have support then it’s back to the four walls I go. I have appealed this suspension with Twitter. I have explained the situation to them. I have pleaded to the better nature of whomever reads my appeal. I have literally typed the words “I beg of you…” As pathetic as this may read to some, I need Twitter. Being locked out of Twitter for me isn’t an inconvenience, or the loss of a distraction, it is complete social isolation, being locked out of any interaction with living society. This was imposed on me, falsely, by people who attacked me all because I said I didn’t consider myself protected from anything by the IDF and didn’t want to be. All because a portion of my identity and politics, my ethics and morals, gave me impetus to speak out. Political discourse will always be a fractious environment. It is not for the weak of heart, be that good or bad. Arguments will be won and lost. Opinions will be changed or cemented. It is right that the fight happens and wings are challenged but when we challenge individuals, particularly individuals who display their personhood so clearly, maybe we ought to try and rend their politics and identity apart. Perhaps winning a political argument isn’t worth the potential damage that can be done to an individual. Having an identity in your politics is no crime, enforcing silence on political voices without any arbitration is wrong. I didn’t lose a political argument, I lost the only place of support and solace that has kept me going through 2020. Most important of all is that the identity within my politics was the spark that was seized upon and stoked, the thing that almost caused me to lose my life.

At present, Twitter still maintain their account suspension. I am in week one of a twelve week observation order. The accounts responsible for where I am are still active and keeping on at what they do best, targeting and silencing.

ATTN - GRIFT ALERT : If you want to contribute to keeping me fed/healthy/well then click here and know that I am eternally grateful if you choose to do so. I live on legacy benefits and I have a restricted diet a lot of the time as a result of medication. Supplements don’t come cheap when the NHS won’t supply them.