After Charlottesville, many people came to understand that white grievance didn’t just gestate beneath feminist or anti-racist articles; the terrifying fury of white men with too much free time didn’t merely throb and bubble in reddit. Instead, it lit up with tiki torches and took to American streets, crying for domination, yearning for others’ extermination.

Any pretense of protesting the removal of a statue was quickly blown out when Nazi chants, flags, and so on dominated every picture from the marches. It’s laughable that protesting the removal of a known racist Confederate general is not, in 2017, enough. No: Instead, in the reign of the sun-gazing President, the world needs Nazis and the KKK marching together, a malignant fraternity of toxic values.

What Really Happened In Charlottesville
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These are dangerous people with poisonous ideas. They want harm, division, hatred. These are not people with legitimate concerns, and it’s precisely this lack of legitimacy that helps fuel their rage. They camouflage their gradual reduction in entitlement to, well, everything, as some kind of rights violation.

They expect the world to still bend the knee, then express fear as we stand up as equals.

Regardless, the question I’m concerned with is whether or not it is ethical to release the identities of these people to the world at large.

“Effective Saturday 12th August, Cole White no longer works at Top Dog.” And so it was that a hot dog restaurant chain announced it would no longer employ a Nazi. And in so doing, it showed greater moral leadership than the President of the United States.

Mr. White (how appropriate) was one of several men identified by social media users as part of the Nazi marches at Charlottesville. Another man was publicly disowned by his family, after they discovered he intellectually masturbated to genocidal beliefs.

When ‘Free Speech’ Kills
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In an excellent article for Broadly, Steven Blum summarized a lot of the current doxing fears of white supremacists. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Keegan Hankes told Blum: “It’s hard to get a job, hard to make a living, hard to have a normal social life when all your friends and family know you believe in ethnic cleansing.”

And this is where the moral issue lies. So let’s frame it:

If you know that by revealing a Nazi’s identity, you could cost them their job and their livelihood, expose them to threats, and so on, should you do so?

First, it’s important to clarify two terms: “doxing” and “Nazis.”

Doxing is revealing identifying information about someone on digital platforms — such as blogs or social media. This isn’t only about revealing the true identity behind a pseudonym or someone’s address. As the very smart Noah Berlatsky highlighted, the point isn’t whether data is private or public:

“the essence of doxing isn’t the privacy of the information. It’s how it’s used… Private information can lead to harassment. But public information can do the same thing.”

Berlatsky points out that many people list their names on social media spaces and those names can be traced fairly easily to, say, home addresses. What matters is putting disparate pieces of information together, under the banner of antagonism — regardless of whether that information was secret or just needed a quick Google search.

Second, by Nazis, I mean those who were waving Nazi flags and chanting Nazi slogans, yearning for racial murder and division. I’m also talking about all white supremacists, but Nazis are the most open, obvious example of a group worth opposing by almost anyone you’d probably meet. (Or so we thought, before too many white people began expressing hesitation at saying Nazis are the worst, including the President of the United States.)

There are some considerations to the main moral question to take in, before coming to *spoiler alert* an unsatisfying conclusion.

Mistakes

The main problem with any unauthorized administration of justice is that there are no rules, qualifications, or neutral observers to ascertain the veracity of an accused’s guilt. This means an accusation is sometimes sufficient reason to conclude guilt. Naturally, an accuser would have a barebones justification, such as a grainy picture contrasted with another linked to an identity. But this causes problems, especially in this age of social media and quickly shared images.

Kyle Quinn, an engineer whose life’s work is dedicated to saving lives, was misidentified as a Nazi marcher after Charlottesville. As the New York Timesreports:

“Mr. Quinn, who runs a laboratory dedicated to wound-healing research, was quickly flooded with vulgar messages on Twitter and Instagram, he said in an interview on Monday. Countless people he had never met demanded he lose his job, accused him of racism and posted his home address on social networks. Fearing for their safety, he and his wife stayed with a colleague this weekend.”

There were efforts in attempting to rectify the mistake, with people asking others to remove their tweets and posts identifying him. However, it was not nearly as successful as the initial spread.

This reveals a central risk with doxing: It’s much easier to spread information targeting someone than it is to fix a mistake. Information dispersed via rapid-fire social media sharing is often a case of toothpaste squeezing, as there’s no way to put it back. This is especially the case in emotionally charged scenarios, such as the threat of white supremacy.

The main problem with any unauthorized administration of justice is that there are no rules.
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It is precisely because of this heated passion, coupled with the inability to rectify mistakes, that the law operates on the basis of neutral judges and judicial procedures requiring sufficient evidence. Such mechanics simply are not part of doxing.

Of course, the most pertinent response is that Professor Quinn’s case is an outlier. There are more hits than misses when it comes to people being doxed, responders might claim. The other men who’ve lost their jobs, for example, indicate that the techniques, while not foolproof, are effective — if not veryeffective — in identifying the right people. Even proper administration of justice through police and court systems are not beyond reproach, weighed down by their own issues and often breaking the lives of many innocent people. Indeed, legal administration in the U.S. sometimes leads to innocents’ death, thanks to the death penalty in some parts of the country.

So You Want To Fight White Supremacy
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Furthermore, many who dox are aware of the dangers of mistakes. The question, then, is whether that means doxing should never occur or whether doxers should simply use better mechanisms when they dox. For example, instead of relying on their own judgement, doxers could have an informal collective that verifies their claims before posting. Fact-checking is always important, especially in situations that could put someone else at risk.

It’s hard to imagine doxers would disregard mistakes, since identifying the right person is the entire point behind doxing. Whether we agree with doxing or not, it’s safe to assume those who dox want accurate information, since they would lose credibility in their goals if they consistently had the wrong people. It’s in no one’s interest for doxing to fail.

However, this only brings us back around to the main question of whether doxing can ever be good.

The Power Of Fear

After writing an opinion piece about race in video games at the height of the Gamergate harassment campaign, my name spread through the various online channels that to this day generate abundant hatred. When obsessive trolls dug up my education history, going as far back as high school, it was frightening.

As noted above, the fact that all this is easy to find didn’t negate what it meant to see such information being distributed in circles obsessing over me and sending me death threats. It was more effective at instilling fear than any badly written threat or images of nooses I was being sent. The simple display of my schools, alongside fee amounts, rattled me more than most of what I’d received.

I’m hardly the only marginalized person who has been a victim of this tactic by those with more power. The internet has, to a large extent, been the great equalizer, as those in positions of privilege are forced to at least know of others’ concerns they otherwise could always ignore. But it’s also reinforced hatred that’s always been there.

Why Punching Nazis Is Not Only Ethical, But Imperative
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This moral distinction is important; if doxing is going to be used, let it be used against those who want to see me and my loved ones dead, erased, undermined. As I pointed out in a post about punching Nazis, if we had to choose, I’d rather we had a world where Nazis were afraid rather than their targets. And, after all, doxed Nazis are more afraid of losing their jobs and social ostracism than anything.

I am, however, concerned that they will receive death threats, as often happens when one’s profile and identity is marked out online. Whether they are Nazis or not, I am uncomfortable with any mechanism that increases the chances and spread of death threats.

There is, however, another objective to doxing that is much easier to get behind.

Creating A Hostile Environment

Many view doxing as an effective mechanism for public shaming. It’s often written about in that context — but I think this misses the point.

Few of these doxed white supremacists were silent beforehand about views that are widely regarded to be noxious; if they were going to feel shame, they likely would’ve felt it already. It’s hard to see how anyone with enough Nazi conviction to willingly march with torches and reveal their face to numerous news media could be shamed into undoing their beliefs.

What doxing can do, however, is make the environment in which targets operate more hostile to their views.

We should want more environments to be hostile to Nazi beliefs.
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It’s problematic, of course, when this framework is applied to me and other marginalized people. My stalkers didn’t share details about my education to shame me for my anti-racism views or belief that marginalized people deserve justice; they did it to tell me they knew me, that they could see into parts of my life that were closer to home than a Twitter account or email.

But while it’s dangerous when those fighting for equality are subjected to such hostility, when applied to Nazis, this tactic becomes effective and even moral. Put simply, we should want more environments to be hostile to Nazi beliefs.

Again, this isn’t about shaming Nazis into disbelief (making them rethink their ideology would be great, too, but that’s not the immediate goal of doxing). This is about creating an awareness in them that their views are not welcome, that they are not welcome, while they chant about eradicating and seeing Jewish people, people of color, and so on vanish. Doxing appears highly effective at producing such an environment, as many white supremacists are conveying fear among themselves about it.

Nazis, It’s Time For A Common Sense Approach To Not Getting Punched
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So does that mean doxing suspected Nazis is always ethical? Not necessarily. And this is where that aforementioned unsatisfying conclusion comes in: I don’t know whether I support doxing and, even now, I am uncertain about whether it is a moral act. Doxing is, after all, imperfect, unregulated, and leads to false positives, and it can and has caused innocent people to fear for their lives.

That said, if it can be shown to have a significant effect on creating hostile environments to Nazis, with mechanisms for double checking to prevent mistakes and retraction upon mistakes’ occurrences, doxing could be a tool for those who feel powerless against a rising tide of white supremacy.

The ethics are complicated, as always, but I hope by engaging with the issue in a moral way, we gain clarity on these tools we use for justice — even while the world apparently turns to hot piss.

I was in the Petco wrapping up my purchase of cat supplies with my mother who had come to visit from out of town. We were heading over to the machine to inscribe the name “JELLO” and a phone number on the tag when I got the call. Jello, the little tortoiseshell cat that I’d been approved to adopt and take home the next day, who had spent seven years in a hoarder’s home and now could finally come home with me, was “very sick” and might well die. My world, already chaotic from a sudden move from the Atlanta area to Washington, D.C., a new job, and rats in my ancient apartment building, shattered.

A few days later, my mother went home to Georgia.

I fell into a major depression, as I had many times before in my life — I have a history of such episodes — but this time was the worst yet. I was already frayed by the move, the rats, and adjusting to a full-time job. I began thinking about all the knives in the kitchen — frequently — and burst into tears every time I looked at the corner with all the stuff that was supposed to be Jello’s.

We Need A Review Site For Psychiatric Hospitals — So I Built One

I biked to the cat shelter to visit her, but I wasn’t allowed to because they didn’t know what she had. On the way home, I almost biked into traffic. I had a complete breakdown at work the next week, sobbing into the phone to a friend that nothing was working and there was no one to help me be safe — my friends thought I might die.

My workplace helped me hail a cab to take me to a hospital.

The cab took me to George Washington University Hospital’s ER, where I waited for some time to be admitted to the ER. Finally, upon being processed, they handed me a new outfit. The gown was too big and paper thin. Even amid mental agony, I worried about it slipping down my shoulders. The emergency room was too bright and blurry through my tears. I was asked to tell my story over and over again — I muttered my misery to two psychiatrists, two nurses, a host of medical students at the university hospital, and finally, a social worker. None of them seemed to coordinate with each other. The nurses drew blood and did other tests. I was crying off and on; I didn’t have my headphones. It was loud and confusing. I wanted to die even more now that I was here and couldn’t go back. The social worker complimented me on the butterflies I had drawn on myself using my highlighter and ballpoint pen instead of stabbing myself with the pen.

Police officers and EMTs bustled about, occasionally bringing someone in. One of them appeared to be a homeless man. The police went through his belongings and pulled out discharge papers from his recent visit to the same hospital; they sneered and laughed. I grew paranoid that my story was making people laugh.

I wrote down people’s phone numbers on the sheet of paper they gave me, and clung to it like a lifeline before they took my phone.

They whisked me in a wheelchair up to the sixth floor after hours of waiting. The ward doors read “FLIGHT RISK — KEEP DOORS LOCKED.” The nurse deposited me on the ward, where another nurse with a computer asked, “Is this your first time in the system?”

I cried. They handed me a cup of water, my usual medication, and two additional ones — an anti-anxiety medication and a sleep aid, both to make me stop bawling. I felt I was part of a machine that processed patients and spit them back out; some experienced resultant trauma from the stay, while others bore shattered self-esteem and dignity. Very few “recovered.”

I slept most of the next day.

One of the therapists really wanted me to go to groups, where patients participated in staff-led activities. I found them boring and unhelpful. Most patients seemed to go only to pass the time. My psychiatrist saw me for a total of 30 minutes in three days and four nights.

I watched as another patient laid down on the floor — they picked him up, medicated him, and made awful noises of pity. “Poor thing,” I heard them say, “we just found him lying there in the day room.” I met with a therapist sometimes — who liked to talk about my caffeine intake and my trouble sleeping.

My roommate had kids. She liked watching the sun set in the sky out the window, over a bustling city as busy and bright as the emergency room, a city that we watched from the inside.

My psychiatrist saw me for a total of 30 minutes in three days and four nights.
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Breakfast was at a scheduled time. So was lunch. So was dinner. They took the phones away during group sessions, presumably to encourage us to go to groups. There were only two phones. I spent most of my time calling friends. I am not sure others were so lucky. Doors to your room got opened by nurses every 10 or 15 minutes.

It was very clear who was and was not a person, and who had control. We were flight risks in skid-proof socks and scrubs; not people, but DSM labels.

They called me “vibrant and passionate” when I got frustrated at one of their mental health resource recommendations — the group in question supported a rights-restricting bill, H.R. 2646, the “Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act.” This bill has recently passed out of committee and is on the House floor, poised to cut funding for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) housing programs.

It would also increase institutionalization and forced treatment through court systems, with states given a financial incentive to do so. Disability rights groups and LGBTQ+ groups alike have condemned the bill. The psychiatrist told me later that he at least agreed the bill needed significant revision.

Eventually they discharged me with referrals. I had simply waited until I felt less like wanting to die to push for leaving. Nothing they had done had helped with that.

I still have echoes of being an unperson.

There is an urge to repeat the not-so-distant past that is in living memory, a perfect storm aimed at people with mental illness: the resurgence of state mental institutions. This damaging momentum comes in all kinds of forms, from University of Pennsylvania ethicists to psychiatrists in the New York Times. The Times even recently published a “A Room for Debate” debating whether we needed “asylums” again for the mentally ill — without having a single person with mental illness write for it.

I still have echoes of being an unperson.
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There is no fundamental problem with hospitals and institutions, but instead a complicated and interrelated web of failings. They’re not comfortable enough, the staff do not treat patients as people; these entities exercise total control and ultimately become custodial, often trapping people in a cycle of neglect or mismanagement for their entire lives. They are a dumping ground for America’s unwanted; the abuse within hospital and institution walls was and is rampant. (Read “Behind Locked Doors — Institutional Sexual Abuse” by Maureen Crossmaker for more chilling insights into this phenomenon.)

Is there a set of serious problems facing American people with mental illness? Yes. But the solution is not more beds in psych wards. The solution is not more “asylums.” The solution is not H.R. 2646, which would limit what little community funding there is and strip protections and rights for the purpose of easily forcing treatment and institutionalization.

The solution is to fight to deliver the funding for community living promised in the Kennedy administration that never came — particularly in the wake of President Kennedy’s assassination. The solution is funding peer-respite centers, 24-hour drop-in centers, and community-based programs such as Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) housing programs (and restructure those to provide more immediate assistance), and to provide support of our choosing if needed.

Funding is an ongoing concern — and tangible hurdle — but according to research by Disability Rights Washington, funding would stem from freed resources from the closure of state institutions; legislation could be fought for to allocate this funding toward peer resources and SAMSHA.

Ultimately, the solution is both simple and humane: Treat the mentally ill as people with agency, allowing us to direct our services, even if we need supports to do that. The solution is not to rip us away from everything we know when things go badly, but to surround us with community and the people we care for most.

All illustrations: Flickr/Josep Novellas