Name:

Social Justice Group: 2022-2023, Technology: Free Speech v Hate Speech Online

Date of Fieldwork: February 22, 2023

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):

Type of Fieldwork: Interview

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?:

We sat down for an interview with Tanya Gersh, Tonya Gersh was a victim of an Anti Semitic Troll Storm, a troll storm is when a group of people gain access to your professions, address and contact information and decide to spread hate about you online. This can be done through direct messaging, doxing, or leaving hateful comments on sites related to a person. Not only was Tanya attacked, but her 9 and 12 year old sons.

Tanya spoke about how she had this naive understanding of hate, especially antisemitism, she claims she thought that “as a society we had moved past hate and become more accepting” but when everything happened to her she described it as “An instant change, I was almost heartbroken”.

After the attacks in 2017, Tanya went to court against Andrew Anglin, the founder of the Daily Stormer, a Right Wing Nazi. Tanya won 14 million dollars against the Daily Stormer and got it removed from the web. Tonya spoke on the difference between hate speech and free speech, she said “They were allowed to tell me that they hated me because I was a “Dirty Jewish Kike”… Where they crossed the line, you can not insight violence upon somebody, you can’t say “Ok Masses! Let’s gang up on this person and make their lives hell!” (17:34)

Even though Tanya was a victim of a hate crime, she claims that if it had never happened to her, she would never be as happy as she is today, she used the quote “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. Tanya talked about how growing up Jewish, she learned resilience, and how every Torah portion, and every Jewish holiday was praising resilience and how she used her faith to persevere through her struggles.