The Atlantic, which I cannot tell apart from New York (nor from the New York Times' magazine), has a piece about trolls. This piece comes with a recommendation from one of the Internet's most-seasoned practitioners of weaponised-narrative.
And I get it. Of course Our Betters in media, politics, and academia want to fight trolls. Nobody likes to be second-guessed and especially not if delivering pronouncements is how they make a living.
Trolls are just as cruel as the cult-leaders, of course. Their methods are often just as illegal. One service that trolls do provide is to deflate the powerful. Overall we may consider trolls as a fourth-generation column of insurgents - as terrorists, at the extreme. That was pretty much how Saul Alinsky saw them.
It is certainly in - say - Vox Day's rights to fight back; and if the trolls have broken laws then that's the trolls' fault, and they should pay for their crimes. When you fight, you must reckon the possibility that you may lose.
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