Soledad O’Brien went to Twitter to expose a real threat to this country.  A semi-anonymous Twitter user.

Fascinating digging into crazy troll and racist @amymek whose real name is apparently Amy Jane Mekelburg and whose husband used to be a WWE Executive. Worthwhile read. https://t.co/KoVMA9d6xy

— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) June 2, 2018

Her link ultimately goes back to this HuffPo article:

Trump’s Loudest Anti-Muslim Twitter Troll Is A Shady Vegan Married To An (Ousted) WWE Exec.

Here is where it gets really scary:

@AmyMek anonymously spread hate online for years. She can’t hide anymore.

So this woman is a private person.  She says things which are anti-Islamic, but not factually incorrect.  The problem is they are incredibly politically incorrect.

Other than being a Twitter troll, why the fuck does any of this matter?

It doesn’t.  Which is why HuffPo decided to publish this woman’s entire life story.  The next part is truly fucking horrifying:

Mekelburg appeared to operate without fear of fallout anywhere. As this story neared publication, she kept tweeting hate, even when her husband’s job was in jeopardy. Last Friday, after HuffPost asked the WWE a second time if anyone there had known about @AmyMek before hiring Siino, the company responded definitively.

“No,” said the WWE spokesperson. “Now that it has come to our attention, Sal Siino is no longer an employee.”

So HuffPo’s digging into a Twitter account cost her husband his job?

After all of this, who is going to hire him?  Nobody, his going to go broke.

But the horror isn’t over yet.

A HuffPo costing this man his job by haranguing his employer was not going to teach them a lesson.  They had to be stalked and threatened too.

Unfortunately, hate that festers online against any group of people doesn’t always stay online. Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik murdered 77 people in 2011 after radicalizing himself with the same anti-Muslim propaganda that Mekelburg spreads. In the U.S., assaults and hate crimes against Muslims have risen alarmingly since MAGA xenophobes mustered on social media.

No they haven’t.  They’ve been nearly universally hoaxes.  Muslim attacks on Jews however is on the rise.

And hate isn’t always so explosive. It often manifests as a quiet cruelty. Last year, according to Mekelburg’s other former friend, the Twitter troll stopped at a Sunoco in Fishkill to buy bananas at the gas station’s convenience store. Inside, she found an older man ― a Muslim immigrant ― working behind the counter. Mekelburg paid for her bananas but refused to speak to the man. She wouldn’t look at him. She just threw a few bills on the counter. When the man tried to place some change in her hand, she made it clear to him that he was not to touch her.

Then she went home to tweet.

Now HuffPo is systematically targeting her friends too.  No one in this woman’s sphere will be left unmolested by HuffPo until the wrongthinker is unpersoned by everyone who knows her.

There are bigoted assholes on Twitter, but costing an account holder’s husband his job is beyond the pale.

This is begging for regulation.  Nobody should be fired because of what a spouse, parent, sibling, child, or friend says online.

“Bob, you are a good employee, but we are Woke.  Your brother-in-law supports Trump on his Facebook page.  So either we’re going to have to fire you or you will have to get a divorce.  It’s up to you Bob.”

This is a Soviet tactic and it needs to be fought back against, and hard.

I’m a big believer in the First Amendment, but a free press should not be used to destroy the real lives of people in the sphere of anonymous or semi-anonymous online accounts.

Had this been nearly 250 years ago, this HuffPo reporter would be tracking down Silence Dogood to make sure everybody knows how awful Ben Franklin is.