CYBERSPACE – An alt-right troll has taken credit for a Thursday attack on Wikipedia that left presidential candidate Hillary’s Clinton’s page and the page of her husband, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, plastered with pornography and a message supporting the candidacy of Donald Trump.
The message, in bright-red letters on a fluorescent-yellow background, read:
Reminder that voting for Hillary Clinton this Novmeber [sic] means proving how much of a spineless, boring cuck you are. Nuclear war will be inevitable, as will be Bill Clinton raping more women and children. Save the America you know and love by voting for Donald Trump. Also girls send ass pics to @Meepysheepy.
This message has been brought to you by Meepsheep and the Gay Nigger Association of America. Thank you for your time.
Meepsheep is a known troll who has been locked out of Wikipedia numerous times since April 2011. He or she purports to lead the GNAA, a bush-league Anonymous-wannabe with the goal of crapflooding wikis, blogs, forums and other online hangouts for no apparent reason. Crapflooding, also known as shitstorming, overwhelms its targets with garbage comments that often include ethnically offensive terms and almost always contain vulgar images.
The GNAA also has taken credit for defacing Barrack Obama’s campaign website, CNN and Slashdot. Following Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the group distributed a fake news story about looting in New York City, complete with images and Twitter streams. The Drudge Report and the U.K.’s Daily Mail were among the media websites taken in by the ruse.
TrackingTerrorism.org classifies GNAA as an “extremist right-wing terrorist group.” The group has been active since 2007.
In addition to its role with the GNAA, Meepsheep also is an administrator for Encyclopedia Dramatica, a Wikipedia parody devoted to offending absolutely everyone.
Meepsheep explained its rationale for the attack to Jezebel’s Brendan O’Connor via email.
“I know a lot of people who really blindly support the Clinton campaign for what I interpret as very trivial (and more or less retarded) reasons,” Meepsheep wrote. “I have a hard time understanding why someone concerned with issues such as women’s rights would support the same woman whose husband’s legacy included sexually harassing nearly every women he came in contact with. At the same time I view Trump as being the objectively better candidate.”
The troll also told O’Connor it does not respond to established gender descriptors.
“I only identify by the pronouns All/ahu/akbar,” it noted in the email.
Allahu Akbar is an Islamic phrase meaning “Allah is greatest.” It has become a rallying cry for militant Muslims. (There is no evidence Meepsheep is a Muslim, militant or otherwise. The troll’s previous behavior indicates it attempts to tie its malicious acts to other subversive organizations in order to create confusion and friction.)
As for other aspects of the vandalism, “cuck,” short for cuckold, is internet slang for a man who needlessly relinquishes his masculinity, especially in the neo-Nazi context of perceived anti-white rhetoric. The term was popularized by 4chan.
The @MeepySheepy Twitter page contains only eight odd tweets, the most recent of which is dated 25 May 2012.
Wikipedia editors restored and permanently locked down the Clintons’ pages within 30 minutes.
