In Conversation with: Brianna Wu

Brianna Wu is a righteous badass. I don’t consider myself the fan type but if I were to be a fan of anyone it’s women such as Brianna Wu. In 2022 I started following Wu, who was at the time one of the bravest and most forthright voices standing up against a sea of Johnny Depp fans in the Depp vs Heard trial, and I was impressed that someone who had been through their own version of online hell was prepared to go through it again for the sake of another survivor who Wu had never met.

And for that, I deeply recognized myself in Wu, because I too have not been afraid of taking on the wars of others, even when I know that the people on “my” side in one sphere are not always the people on “my” side in others. The fact is that about half a dozen prominent women withstood an entire disinformation campaign during a media circus that took hold of the entire world. Wu was one of them. If you want to learn about online harassment, we gotchu.

I have moved in progressive and feminist circles for years, fully knowing that when the time came, many of my fellow sisters would not join me in arms given I am a proud Jew who believes in the right for Israel to exist and defend herself. So after October 7, as Brianna Wu came back into my timeline to - again - defy the cultural trend, and stand with the Jewish people, I couldn’t wait for the day we’d get to discuss the how and why of that given Wu’s own background as a leader of progressivism.

Six months on, and one slide into her DMs later, here we are on Zoom; myself in LA and Wu from her home office in Massachussettes. By way of introduction, according to Wu’s Twitter bio she is “Executive Director of @RebellionPac. Former Candidate for US House in MA. Software engineer. Bond dog proponent.” In case you’ve missed Wu’s own controversies, her profile first blew up as a computer game developer in 2014 when her personal details were posted on the online forum 8chan after she made criticisms of Gamergate (a group of angry male gamers who were launching a war against women in technology). The volume and violence of the rape and death threats that Wu received were so overwhelming and disruptive that they drove Wu from her own home. At the time, Gamergate was a major cultural talking point, and Wu has become a mouthpiece for social media bullying since.

When we meet for the first time after years of following each other, our excitement to bond over the insanity of online discourse and our resulting mistreatment of internet trolls is palpable. “Oh my god!” says Wu, logging on. “I feel such a para-social connection to you because we've gone through so much of the same shit.”

Indeed, we have. When I told Wu I was honored she agreed to take the risk to be published here on Blacklisted she responded as predicted. “Are you kidding me? Of course!” Wu has been an endless source of comfort and nourishment as she has educated herself in real time on not just the Israel-Palestine conflict, but the root of antisemitism outside of the singular lens of the Holocaust. A smart person willing to learn in front of a pitchfork-wielding public, while experiencing a trial by fire on Twitter. A female warrior willing to stick her neck out for the truth. Brianna, welcome to the tribe…

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Are you following the media coverage of OJ Simpson's death today?

Brianna Wu: “Wait. I haven't seen this, oh really?”

Yes – OJ Simpson is dead. The New York Times and NPR have minimized his history and are celebrating the “athlete” OJ Simpson. For the last six months, I've been posting about how these media outlets have been the least reliable narrators with respect to Israel and the war in Gaza. When we warn people that these are publications with institutionalized bias who obfuscate from the facts, I am perplexed as to why liberals are prepared to accept these news sources as their record of truth…

B: “Can I give a really concrete example of something? Yesterday you showed an example on your iPhone of you typing in the word Jerusalem [into the emoji search bar] and the Palestinian flag emoji coming up [see below]. Six months ago if I saw that I'd have thought – That's a little bit paranoid, I'm sure that's a bug. But I know today that you're not paranoid at all. That is very deliberate. Somebody at Apple did that to jab, right? There's no question at all that the New York Times is guilty of watering down different narratives and amplifying others in a way that takes us further from the truth. I would not have seen that six months ago but I really see it now.”

I wanted to ask you first and foremost – have you always been a rebel?

B: “It really comes down to growing up in Mississippi. Somebody Jewish moved into my street when I was about 8-years-old. I remember being at Thanksgiving dinner and having a bunch of my white supremacist relatives around me. I was too young to know about the Civil Rights Movement. I didn't know what a Jewish person was. I was sitting listening to these adults laughing and farting it up with the most horrible stereotypes I've ever heard in my fucking life. I was sitting there as a child, feeling my blood boil listening to this. Why were my parents not saying anything? Why were the neighbors not saying anything? I thought they were good people. I realized in that moment that most people don't speak up. When bad things go down, most people keep their heads down. They're silent. They're afraid to speak the truth. I remember realizing that if there was going to be an adult in the room, I had to be the adult and help lead the way. I don't mean to make myself sound like Jesus. I'm a very flawed person. But I've always felt a responsibility to speak out with compassion when things I see are wrong. That's something I see in you too. That's why I identify with you.”

We're living in this extremely weird dichotomy right now where it feels like everyone is looking at each other and commenting but the bystander effect has never been stronger.

B: “I agree. If you're a Democrat there's every incentive to blame everything on the Republicans. If you're a Republican there's every incentive to blame everything on the Democrats. But that's lazy. It takes a lot of bravery to stand up and challenge our own tribe. To say – This is the way we should go, this isn’t quite right. There's a real lack of people willing to put themselves and their integrity on the line to change the narrative, which is why the conversation keeps dissolving.”

When did Twitter – or X – begin to interest you? And what's the value of it to you?

B: “I think when you're a woman it is so much harder to get into the discussion. I am sure you've had the experience of being in a conference and feeling like you need to get into the boys' club, right? Twitter for me has always been a way of getting around those power structures and to build a constituency, for lack of a better word, to get my point of view out there. When you're selling a game or selling yourself as a congressional candidate that's particularly useful. I do think Twitter is really important for the cultural zeitgeist, and it's really sad that so many journalists have left in the Elon Musk era. That's the biggest value of X, and he's taken it away.”

You talk about selling a game or selling a political campaign. If you look at what the Islamic Republic of Iran has achieved not just via its tangible proxies in the region but online in terms of propaganda and selling ideas, what is your take on how they've used social media against Western democracies?

B: “That's just it. My good friend Richard Stengel wrote the definitive book on this called Information Wars, talking about how hostile foreign powers, and particularly ISIS, have conducted this information war on the West. They're turning our own values against us. They exploit the fact that we believe in free expression and open discussion of ideas, even as they repress it in their own societies. We're in an all-out information war, and the ultimate example of that right now has been taking the useful idiots of the fringe Left and convincing them that the Iranian regime is the underdog – the oppressed. And that the people of Israel are the Goliath. It's a pure propaganda war. We're losing. If we're really serious about protecting our democracy and our ideals we need to wake the fuck up and develop some institutions to hit back.”

I like how you use the term exploit. I wrote here this morning that the First Amendment is being eroded in real time. It's meaningless. It depends on who has the power, who wields the power, who can manipulate the power of free speech. This is a prime example of how our rights are being used against us. If the Left keeps using their free speech in an abusive way to spread extremist ideas, what is free speech?

B: “That's dead on. This algorithmic exploitation… Just today someone posted an obnoxious comment with a screenshot taking something I wrote out of context, and I blocked him. Literally 15 seconds, they're back to post the same thing with another sock puppet [annonymous secondary account]. Then 15 seconds later it happens again, and then 30 seconds later it happens again, and then 45 seconds later is happens again. We are seeing bad actors weaponize the holes in this platform. Not just Twitter. YouTube, too. Across the board. They manipulate the public conversation and manufacture a consent that does not exist.”

Where were you on October 7?

B: “I'm gonna cry talking about this. I was sitting here in this office, in this chair. I read about it. I've talked openly about how I've not paid enough attention to [the Israel-Palestine conflict]. I remember reading about paragliders coming into a festival and civilians getting killed. I started seeing people that I considered friends, people that I had worked with on serious policy initiatives, talk about that in the most dehumanizing ways, in a way that paralyzed me. You can look at my Twitter in the first four days and I was silent on it, because everyone in my friend group was treating it like it was a joke, like it was a party, like it was progress. And I was sitting there in shock going, What the fuck is going on here?”

Do you remember a specific thing that someone said? Language that shocked you?

B: “The pro Palestinian stuff: Here's a blow for freedom! The voices of the Palestinian oppressed will be heard! All those sentiments that are common to Free Palestine. And again, these were Democrats who were political professionals who I had worked with, I knew their kids, I considered friends, and they were saying stuff that just made my goddamn jaw drop. Again, this was my failure, but I was just silent on it because I didn't know what to do.”

You tweeted the following only a few weeks after October 7.

I just have to say it takes so much courage to say that publicly on a platform like Twitter in these times. It really moved me. We live in a morally puritanical age where nobody can admit error, and it's become the undoing of us.

B: “I appreciate that but how else can I call myself a leader? I'm not trying to sound arrogant but if you wrote a list of women in tech who have really talked about feminism, or who stood up during Amber Heard's trial… I am one of them. I am vocal. How can I pretend to be a feminist leader if there's some fucking cancer going on in my own friend group and I didn't see it. If I missed that, then what else am I missing? I appreciate you saying this but I am truly mystified as to why there's not more soul-searching about this? Why are so few people willing to speak about this? It's baffling.”

Would you say it's the rape denial and the hypocrisy among feminists that tipped you over the edge?

B: “Yes. 100%. I'm sorry, there's not a woman alive for whom this is not a fear that you feel, right? I can't watch stories about rape. It's too triggering. And to see people purport to be the liberators, and the moral authority to speak about the public policy of what women need… To see those women look the other fucking way about rape? We can have an adult discussion about Netanyahu and Ben Gvir, and the exact point at which we should invade Rafah. But if you're engaged in rape denial, you're on the wrong fucking team. Some stuff is not as complicated as these women want to say.”

To this day I don't feel satisfied by Pramila Patten's UN report. It's too little too late, and the UN had to balance it out with baseless accusations about the IDF that there's no evidence for. The international human rights lawyers are supposed to be the leading feminist scholars in the world and they can't bring themselves to recognize what happened to women on October 7. They’ve never condemn Hamas.

B: “Why are we not having more soul-searching on the Left? Again, it's not like Jews have not been telling me the truth of what The UN does and says for the last 46 goddamn years of my life. It's not like I haven't heard this stuff. What is wrong with my judgment that I heard this stuff about the way we distribute food and aid in Gaza and I just said, Nah that's just complaining, that's sensitivity, this is both sides. Why did I assume that The UN was a force for good in this conflict when Jewish people have been telling me my whole goddamn life the opposite? What is it about the culture that I fucking missed, and what changes do I need to make going forward? The information is there. There's no honest conclusion you can draw other than that the UN has some real antisemitic tendencies and highly anti-Israel tendencies. Where is the force in the Democratic party to reckon with our inability to see this? What I don't know how to do is to get other people who aren't Jewish to wake up. My mentions are filled with people who are Jewish who have nice things to say about me and I appreciate them, but where are the people who aren't Jewish? This isn't just [the Jewish people's] problem to solve. I don't know how to make people care.”

There's a part of me that resents the canary in the coalmine argument but the fact of the matter is that the Jewish people are a litmus test for the health of society.

B: “Can I say something? That is not an esoteric argument. I can put this in concrete terms. I live in Massachusetts. It's 5% Jewish. I work in progressive politics. If I wanna go have a feminist event to do with #MeToo, you know who I'm calling? Jewish leaders in my state who have donated money, time, resources and places to have that. If we wanna have a Black Lives Matter rally, do you know who's gonna help plan that? Jewish people. If you wanna have an LGBT event, do you know who's gonna help write checks to fund that and donate space and show up to support queer people even if they aren't queer themselves? It's Jewish people. And I can look back now that I've educated myself and go – Oh this comes back to the Jewish enlightenment. This is how Jewish people have taken a lead in society to guarantee some safety. They assumed they were gonna get some support back. Which is clearly an incorrect assumption. This is not theoretical stuff. I can give you the names of people who are not gonna come to us with aid next time Black people or women or queer people need some help in our state.”

On a psychological level, why do you think you overlooked your Jewish friends’ gripes with progressivism before October 7? Is the Jewish perspective an inconvenience on an otherwise workable movement, or are Jews less trusted, less believable narrators of truth? October 7 should have woken a lot more people up, but it hasn't.

B: “I think it's the fact that this stuff is hard to understand. To really understand the UN's bias, you have to sit down and read studies, and understand background. It's not something you can just read about in a New York Times article. You have to do some research. If you're trying to conclude – does Hamas have a legitimate point of view, is the violence justified? That's a lot of work to sit down and figure out. It's an education process that is never prioritized. People think – That's the Middle East, that's complicated, and it's going to continue through our whole lives.”

And you learned the facts while engaged in a trial by fire online, just like me, to be honest. Having the knowledge is a key to survival for us, but do you think that’s maybe the case for non-Jewish allies too? If you're on the wrong side of the debate you won't fully see the abyss we're sprinting towards and instead will be consuming poisonous disinformation.

B: “Yes. I think two things. That's dead on. Forgive me if this is an offensive statement. I cannot claim to be any expert on the Holocaust, but I can tell you what I knew six months ago. When I thought about Jewish people and Jewish oppression I thought about the Holocaust as a one-off event and as a really sacred thing that meant that we had to stand up to injustice when it happens. What I didn't consider it as was 2000 years of Jewish people getting kicked out of every goddamn country that you were in. I didn't think about it as a bunch of random tribes in the Middle East all being unified in their hatred of Israel. I didn't think about it in Jewish history and how y'all have worked so hard to find safety in the United States. I didn't see that as a deliberate political project, more of a happy accident. I think by focusing so much on the Holocaust well-meaning people like me who don't mean to hurt Jewish people just don't know. There's got to be an awareness that this particular tactic isn't working. The other component of that is that Jewish people are losing the information war badly in new media. If you're on Twitch, especially if you're on TikTok, you're not hearing another point of view. I'm not seeing some of the organizations who should be involved in that really step up and commit to 21^st century efforts to educate people.”

You're correct. All our establishment organizations have been woefully reactive with no proactive strategy, and it's not a level playing field.

B: “That's right.”

You and I have a different normal from a lot of people. Your experience re Gamergate makes you a sharper detective for online trends, trolling, smear campaigns. And it doesn't surprise me that you stood up against the Depp vs Heard disinformation two years ago, nor that you identify the smear campaign against Israel now.

B: “It's the same playbook. The bots are the same, the algorithmic rewards for putting out a viewpoint is the same, the sensationalism is the same, the refusal to see one side's humanity and assume bad faith intentions is the same. Obviously the stakes are massively different but the tools are all the same. Literally before our eyes, Israel is being dehumanized. I understand some Americans disagree with me on this but I genuinely think that America gets more from our relationship with Israel than Israel gets back. We get stability, we get a partner in intelligence in the region, we get cyber security, we get expertise. If we end up going to war with China over Taiwan we will lose that war without Jewish expertise and cyber security in cyber warfare. That's just a fact for anyone in this field.”

There's also a chilling effect.

B: “That's right. People are afraid to speak out.”

And the ramifications of that chilling effect are difficult to quantify here.

B: [Pause] “God. Israel is the most successful decolonization project in history. I don't know how you can care about this subject and not see the massive success there. It's mind-boggling to me that up is down, black is white and lies are truth. When it comes to this. Don't believe your lying eyes, believe Twitter?! It's so overwhelming. I don't even know where to begin from a public policy perspective to push back on it. I don't.”

Since October 7, you've been battling every day, and there are points when you've needed to take steps back, which is important, and the respite has been brief for you. What sources have you relied upon for information? How has your network evolved?

B: “Well obviously Benny Morris is ten out of ten. Sit there and read everything he's ever written. I use my New York Times subscription to go back and read articles for every single conflict. I've bought pretty much every book on Audible on this subject. The Ethnic Cleansing Of Palestine, I think is garbage. It's not a good book and doesn't align with reality. Dig in and pick up one book, ask questions, and compare it with others. When I take a break from Twitter, sometimes it's because I'm emotionally overwhelmed, but – and this will sound really dark – I've dealt with enough rape and death threats at this point to know when it's reaching a fever pitch and I'm going to have to get the FBI involved. That's when I step away. I'm so used to getting death threats that I can tell when they're getting crazy, direct and specific enough that I need to alert law enforcement for my own safety.”

I totally understand that.

B: “Can I ask you a question? I am resentful on your behalf about the way you've been treated by Twitter. You are a decent person who speaks up and is thoughtful. There's a deep humanity to you that I have always really respected, so to see your name turned into a joke and a meme, and to see them breathe the most misogynist, hateful bullshit into you… Do you ever just wanna scream? Because I wanna scream seeing how they treat you.”

I always answer this by saying that the trolling reaches such a fever pitch that it's almost like white noise, and I can't even register it any more. I do remember the first time my hate name trended on Twitter at #2 nationwide on a day when there was a public shooting in San Diego and that was trending at #3. I remember registering that this millisecond of a moment had enough power to change the course of my life purely because of the power we attribute to a social media platform like Twitter. And the powerlessness that came with that. At the same time, I registered immediately how deeply not personal it was to me, that I became emblematic of something bigger than me, and that's why I didn't see a fork in the road, but rather an urgency to keep being a strong Jewish female voice of truth despite it. I do want to scream but I also want to show it to people, because the trolling itself is proof that I'm correct.

B: “That's right. It really makes me angry because being honest with you, it's people more on my side than on the other side. They can't engage with any fucking point you're making so they have to mock you.”

There's a lack of intellectual capacity and a cowardice. An ability to use this as a ladder to moral piety while they're stepping on my neck. How big of them. And it was effective because I was a prolific and well-loved music and film writer, who wrote on average 10,000 words a week, and now if you Google my name it's as though 15 years of my life never happened.

B: “That's right. Who you are is really clear to me. I just want to say that to you.”

Thank you. Were you surprised by the cruelty of people on your side of the aisle?

B: “Yeah. Gamergate is what people know me for best and it's really upsetting to see my own side become Gamergate. There is no difference in behavior or tactics or cruelty or intellectual dishonesty between what the progressives are doing and Gamergate. There's none. It's really horrifying to see that, right? There's a real cost in this because the people that support me are from the progressive side, and there's a really deep cost to speaking up against them. There's every social incentive to keep your head down and not engage in it.”

You said it's the worst trolling you've ever seen. You tweeted:

B: “It's true. Congress hasn't called me about it, yet. What I can't figure out is: where are the fucking reporters covering this? I probably did 1,000 interviews during Gamergate. I understand that internet harassment is more mainstream now. But what is going on in mainstream media when the same figure (me) is under attack with the same tactics? Why is it that when I'm defending Jewish people and Israel that the same media outlets aren't calling me to cover this now? That is very, very telling.”

It's also very telling the amount of DARVO going on and the convenient lie that the Jews run the media, which is categorically untrue, while the people who are driving Jews out of mainstream media narratives are the ones participating in the same smears against us.

B: “That's right. I'm sure your DMs look exactly like mine. ‘Hi Brianna, I'm a really big fan, I work at [big institution]. I don't feel like I can say this publicly. Thank you very much for speaking up on this.’ Over and over. If you don't see how Jews are being silenced on this subject, you're just not paying attention.”

Do you feel like you've lost anything since October 7?

B: “Oh my god, yeah. I don't want this to sound like I think I'm the victim. I have spent the last decade getting the resources together so that when [Congressman] Stephen Lynch retires I can have $2m and a constituency ready to go to run for Congress and win that seat. That dream is goodbye. I've lost friendships, I've lost jobs. The cost to me personally and professionally has been a very high price, and I have zero regrets about paying that. I'd rather lose those friendships and opportunities than stand with the antisemites. That's a very clear choice.”

Thank you. Truly. What do you think you've gained?

B: “I've gained a lot more Jewish friends and I appreciate that, but it's embarrassing, because these are friends that I took for granted my whole life. And it's only now that I saw what happened after October 7 that I've been able to be a friend to them. I feel guilty about that. This is the bare minimum that someone like me can do.”

It doesn't feel minimal to us, as Jews, because we often feel like we only have each other, and we never take our allies for granted. You have noted that there's been an emphasis on only reporting on antisemitism when it's coming from the far right in America…

B: “It's astonishing. When I tweeted that I 100% anticipated that the New York Times would reach out to me. I assumed that and I don't know why I did.”

Which side of the aisle scares you more?

B: “If I'm being really honest with you, I think the right wing is a threat that is not a new threat. I don't mean to discount Nazis marching on Charlottesville. That shocked a lot of us and I don't mean to make that sound benign. But what scares me more is the thought of losing generations of Americans to this garbage because of the way schools are being run and the way the media is being run with people that are blind to this bias. So I think progressivism is the bigger threat right now.”

Do you have any success in creating dialogue with people who really were questioning what you were saying and have come around?

B: “Yes definitely. I have talked to people in person and on Twitter, and I've had a positive impact on them.”

What's crucial to those discussions?

B: “I think the thread that I got the most positive feedback on was a history of Jews being kicked out of country after country after country and why Israel should exist. I probably got 500 people writing to me saying they'd never thought about that, and thank you. I think the fact that I'm approaching this as a Presbyterian coming from Mississippi and being so stupid about it, there's power in that. Hey, other non-Jews! Here are the facts for when you wake up from this a little bit!”

Ha. Would you visit Israel?

B: “Of course I'd love to. I was talking to my husband about this yesterday. I really wanna go there, especially after reading so much of the history. I want to stand in solidarity with the people I've really come to respect. One of the things I've found inspiring about reading about so much of Jewish history since 1948 is that there's an indominable quality there that is really human. I wanna lay witness to that.”

Do you think progressivism can be salvaged?

B: “No. I don't. Progressivism needs to die in this form. I don't think the policies we believe in need to die. I think universal healthcare and structural solutions to racial inequality are the right policies, and that the Me Too movement and the structural ways that women are mistreated in the work place is the right policy. But this culture we have of morally front-loading every single argument and not being able to engage on it has got to die. I think the unwillingness we've seen to kick the antisemites among us out of our ranks speaks to a moral failure that I don't know if we can come back from. Where do we go from here? How do we get the trust back of our Jewish brothers and sisters? How do we build coalitions instead of burning everything to the ground? We need to answer those questions.”

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