A Social Justice Warrior’s attempt to get a British professor fired for his YouTube channel isn’t going as planned. Jenny Keller aka Laughing Witch was involved in a campaign targeting Dr. Phil Mason aka Thunderf00t over comments he made on Anita Sarkeesian and #GamerGate. There were a few others involved in it as well, all going after Mason for not believing Sarkeesian. Mason struck back by pointing out Keller’s name (which she revealed), revealed the business she co-owned, and put up a link to Yelp. His YouTube subscribers then inundated Keller’s business Yelp page with negative reviews, and caused Keller and her husband, Paul Burns, to respond by going to the FBI. How did that work? Not well, according to WUSA.

[ Paul ] Burns has contacted the online reviewing sites, receiving varying levels of cooperation in removing the negative reviews. His appeals to the FBI to investigate what he calls online harassment of his wife have gone unanswered.

They even call what happened “economic cyber terrorism” because the Yelp reviews are allegedly causing them to lose business. She and Burns even got Yelp to start doing an “Active Cleanup” to delete reviews which happened before October 21st (for the record, bad reviews of Memories Pizza are still up on their Yelp page). This ignores the fact Keller tried to do the exact same thing by sending a letter to Mason’s job in hopes of getting him fired. It’s completely hypocritical for Keller to think what she did was okay, but what Mason did wasn’t. It’s pretty amazing how Keller is clinging to the “free speech” banner, but tried to silence someone else. This isn’t surprising because it’s something which has happened in America for a long time. Congress and President John Adams got the Alien and Sedition Acts passed, while Hollywood went after suspected communists in the 1950’s. These days Hollywood, universities, and other groups go after anyone who says something “offensive” in hope of cowing them into submission. It’s an unfortunate byproduct of what happens when people in power get worried about being knocked off. Instead of trying to re-tailor their message, they just try to shut down the opposition by going after their livelihood.

Keller and Burns are trying to play the victim card even more by launching a a crowd sourcing website in hopes of raising $25K for a “Brigading Cyber Review Attack Defense Fund.”

They are angry with my wife for attempting to stand up to a man on YouTube who targets feminism, promotes misogyny and are trying to take my business down and destroy the lives and families of our innocent employee’s.

This group could easily target you or any business, destroying your livelihood, which had nothing to do with a YouTube channel. I was completely unaware of what was going on and now that I have looked into it, I don’t condone her actions and wished she had not gotten involved in these battles.

What’s curious is a judge recently ruled the company owed Wells Fargo around $25K, which is what the “Attack Defense Fund” is trying to raise. Keller and Burns say the two aren’t connected because they were prepping for bankruptcy a long time ago. They also claim if they wanted to keep the bankruptcy from happening they would have asked for $100K. It’s completely possible they’re telling the truth, but it’s an interesting offshoot of what’s going on.

Personally, I’m not a fan of either for their tactics. It’s complete rubbish to contact someone’s employer just because they don’t agree with what they’re saying on the Internet. The point of free speech is allowing people to say what they want to say, whether I agree with it or not. Winston Churchill was right when he said, “Some people’s idea of free speech is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.” It’s really just unfortunate this is what the Internet has become. The perpetually outraged cabal decides to target someone and destroy their livelihood because they don’t agree with their political beliefs. It’s unfortunate this is happening on both sides of the aisle. There are people on the Right who start targeting someone for saying something stupid, and try to get them fired from their jobs. I remember the Subway employee who was fired because she posted on Facebook how great it was two cops got killed. Her comments were reprehensible, but she wasn’t doing it as a representative of Subway. Now Subway had every right to fire her once they learned of her comments, but that may have been more of a PR action than anything else. Actions do have consequences and it’s certainly ironic what happened to Keller. But targeting someone because they decided to target an ally isn’t the right thing to do. Just desserts, maybe, but is this really a case of the ends justifying the means? I’m not so sure.