Digital PTSD is real
Are you happy now?
Noah Clark
Christian Gutierrez
In my case, continuously watching videos of the rally only seemed to exacerbate my body and brain’s response to the incidents of the day. My heart would start racing, my chest would tighten up, and breathing would prove difficult. Sometimes I would get so anxious that I would vomit. Usually, these episodes would culminate in a feeling of uncontrollable rage or panic, followed by periods of dissociation, an extreme defense against trauma that causes a disconnect between a person’s thoughts, memories, and body, which I also experienced in the immediate aftermath of the car attack in August.
Over the phone with The Outline, Ramsden compared the state of the brain on trauma to an overworked muscle that cramps up. “The brain has the same issue, and just wears itself out and becomes much more sensitive,” she explained. Once this happens, she added, the hippocampus — or the part of the brain at the center of emotion and memory — becomes more sensitive, and “the smallest situation can even trigger” a reaction.
Journalists and activists looking to cover far-right movements arguably have more access to them than ever before, from the thousands of leaked Discord logs released by Unicorn Riot — a decentralized, independent media collective — to social media posts on Twitter, Reddit, and Gab. Fascist groups like Patriot Front, whose members split off from Vanguard America after last summer’s rally to form a new group, and the recently dissolved Traditionalist Worker Party often chat and organize on forums like Discord. But that greater access can also entail regular exposure to violent and hateful content.
“You dig through [Discord logs] for hours and hours and spend a lot of time seeing what they say, and watching them formulate plans, and the weird, sick jokes they make online,” said freelance journalist Elizabeth King. “Seeing them in real life or knowing you will because you cover them, it’s super jarring.”
While reading up on the alt-right for an upcoming book about fascism and free speech, Moskowitz remembered coming across some particularly violent and triggering conversations online. “I was trying to do research on how the alt-right was trying to frame Charlottesville and was seeing pictures of Heather Heyer’s body and people making fun of her weight,” Moskowitz said. “To see what was so traumatic for me be turned into a joke and a fat-shaming session was like ‘Wow, really no one cares.’”
Chris Schiano — a reporter with Unicorn Riot who covered the Tiki torch march on UVA’s campus — also worked on the Discord leaks. Schiano’s work involved going through all the messages to redact anything that targeted specific people before publishing, and reporting on the details of the discussions taking place on the app.
Speaking with The Outline, he recalled that going through the violent logs was stressful — even though, as a white man, he knew he wasn’t a target of these groups. “I think my ability to be cool and keep doing it is a level of privilege,” Schiano said. Still, he said that he avoided violent content of the night of the torch march, where he was concerned for his safety. “I’ve had to re-watch it at other points in my own work,” he said. “It wasn’t until a month ago this year that I went back and watched the stream. I still need to process more of it.”
Moskowitz said they also mostly tried to avoid graphic content of the rally after they came home.
Julian Scott
Anna Merlan, a Jewish journalist who writes for Gizmodo’s Special Projects Desk, told me that the first time she interviewed a Neo-Nazi, she was mostly “surprised by the depths of their ignorance and what they would say” to her. Allowing them to spread misinformation was not something she would allow, however. Merlan said that while covering Neo-Nazis, she has felt obligated to tell them she was Jewish. “I let them know when they say something that’s not true,” she said.
The Raw Story’s Al-Sibai said that in the course of her work covering the alt-right over the past two years, her personal information was once found and shared by right-wing trolls in a body-shaming Reddit thread. “They found my OKCupid and were saying I looked like I photoshopped myself,” she said.
“When I first learned about the r/FatPeopleHate thread about me, it was honestly more devastating than others because rather than finding out about it myself, I was alerted to it by someone else,” Al-Sibai said. “I was driving when a friend texted me about it, and I definitely had to pull over because I started having a panic attack about it.”
As many journalists I spoke to expressed to me, when you’re writing about the far-right in 2018, it’s easy to find yourself in a kind of catch-22: you have to be online to do your work, but the more of an online presence you might have, the more likely trolls are to glom on.
Nolan Nelson
After the events in Charlottesville, my immediate response was to get back to covering these violent movements, because I didn’t want to feel that I’d lost my ability to do my job. Journalists are exposed to violence all the time and continue doing their jobs, I thought — so why couldn’t I? Often, I’d get to the end of the day and drink too much, rather than take a break from my work.
Al-Sibai told me she’s had a similar response to her trauma. “Especially in this job, I find myself drinking more than I want to. It’s not a great coping mechanism,” she said.
James Ward
For those journalists who do continue to do this work, Merlan explained, it’s important to prepare for the potentially traumatic impacts of covering violence on the ground and online. “I encourage people to know about trauma, how it can affect you, and how being a target of hate can feel, and to be ready for it,” she said.
In the months since “Unite the Right,” I’ve had to work on putting my mental health first. I’ve made a conscious decision to take a break from attending and covering protests, and to limit my exposure to particularly graphic content online. Most importantly, recovery has meant accepting the reality that putting my sense of safety and my health first is OK — and that contrary to what I’d learned from colleagues in the past, journalists don’t always need to be tough.
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