After the election of Donald Trump, I was asked by numerous media outlets to speak about Trump and GamerGate in the same breath. Initially, part of me wanted to reject the comparison as trite and absurd, along with the very notion that something that happened in a comparatively small industry could be held up alongside an event that will impact the lives of every American, and many around the globe. And yet, despite my initial impulse, the connections are undeniably there: I’ve been seeing them for months and just didn’t want to say it out loud, as if my words were a magic spell that might conjure forth a sinewy darkness. As my friend and colleague Dan Golding tweeted , “How depressing, infuriating, and otherworldly it is to realise that video games were the canary in the coal mine for the politics of 2016.” Our experiences navigating cyber-mobs have familiarised us with this particular breed of hate. It’s a deeply entrenched, vitriolic, organised hate. I used to refer to GamerGate as a large-scale temper tantrum, because if the death and rape threats hadn’t been so terrifying, their behaviour would be analogous to that of a 2-year-old child not getting the toy he wanted. Trump similarly appealed to deep-seated notions of entitlement and privilege — mixing in fear-mongering, racism, and misogyny through the scapegoating of marginalised people — meanwhile offering no solutions for the real problems facing so many Americans — problems like unemployment, low wages, a lack of health care, restrictions on basic reproductive rights, and police militarisation and brutality, among many others. One of the most heartbreaking aspects of GamerGate is that the industry remained silent. As their customers and fans continued to attack women and marginalised people, the major games publishers, developers, and much of the games press refused to acknowledge and condemn the horror that was sweeping through gaming culture. By the time a few of them did speak up, it was too little, too late; so much damage had already been done. Much of the same could be said for our current politicians, many of whom are acting as if Trump’s rhetoric is simply politics as usual, when everyone in this country knows it isn’t. His racist tirades are the stuff of fascism. His boasts about sexual assault are anything but lighthearted “locker room talk.” Since the dawn of the internet we’ve been lamenting, celebrating, blaming, rejoicing, thanking and criticising our hyper connected culture for quite literally everything. The elections went well because of the internet; the elections went poorly because of the internet. Kids have short attention spans because of the internet; underrepresented communities have a voice because of the internet. People get harassed because of the internet; people can organise against harassment because of the internet. And now, of course, fake news circulates because of the internet. Technology is not neutral. It can be used to advance social justice or to promote oppression and maintain the status quo. Many of us have been fighting for years to create safer online spaces. We’ve been working to create a large-scale cultural shift where all people are free to engage and participate in our online world without fear of threats, intimidation, or harassment. But when the President-elect of the United States is someone who regularly uses Twitter to attack everyone from his political opponents, to journalists who are critical of him, to other global powers, what intensely contradictory messages are being sent? Trump, much like the figureheads of GamerGate, often skirts the Terms of Service of social media sites to avoid being banned. Rather than spewing explicit threats himself, his words incite and encourage unpredictable hate from his followers. Within moments of the election results we saw a spike in hate crimes across the country; just a month after election day there were already 1,094 reported hate crimes in the United States. Think of how many go unreported. And let us not delude ourselves into thinking that the only problem with hate speech is the manifestation of physical violence that follows: Hateful discourse in the social sphere represents its own form of violence. Progressive activists and scholars have long documented the emotional and mental effects of this kind of aggression. It is not an exaggeration to say that the continual denial of one’s humanity, of one’s right to live and exist safely, enacts a tangible punishment upon the recipient. While some people who post hate and threats on social media may never intend to act on their threats, they do intend to make the recipients fearful. And sometimes, through the sheer weight of their numbers and the awful intensity of their vitriol, they succeed. They don’t need to escalate to physical intimidation. They have achieved their aims merely by typing words on a keyboard. Many people woke up on Nov 9, 2016 feeling horrified, scared, and lost. Uncertain about what to do next, but with a newfound sense of resolve. They’ve been awakened to the fact that progress isn’t a moving sidewalk that carries us all collectively forward on its own, that we have had to fight every day for what little we have earned, and fight even harder to hold onto those gains. As a nation, we have fought enormous battles in the past and this is yet another. I will be in the physical and digital streets, fighting for the humanity and dignity of all people. I hope you will, too.