#swating

For well over a decade now, I have been in hiding. I never show my face in public. I literally had to flee my home, and do so more than once. I've seen people organize a thread on a hidden message board trying to plan how to pool their money and hire a professional hitman to take me out. I have talked friends who didn't have my level of opsec through the trauma of having people kick their doors in and hold them at gunpoint. This all happened because I and some people I know made an effort way back when to remove an utterly horrific website from the face of the earth, which incurred the wrath of that site's creator and sole owner.

Do your best. Sit with that. The site in question was 8chan by the way. Sexually explicit photos of toddlers. Neo-nazis doing hardcore neo-nazi things. Planning threads for mass shootings that were then carried out. Snuff videos of kittens. Bad bad stuff. If you've followed this blog from the start, I've mentioned it before.

So anyway, today I found out that the creator of that site, again, a nazi pedophile who tried to have me and several other people I care about killed, has died.

So obviously, I have some pretty complicated emotions going on, learning this. This creep has terrorized me for a significant portion of my life, I made a pretty decent effort to get him prosecuted for some pretty damn serious crimes, and again, it's just nice to have one less person who's put my life in danger out there in the world. So mostly, my reaction here is relief. Maybe a little bit of joy. A decent splash of melancholy because I'm an empathetic person and I'm quite sure he had an absolutely miserable life beyond the typical misery of being a nazi pedophile due to a pretty serious medical condition. If I drank I'm sure I'd be downing a bottle of something tonight.

Now, I should really be sleeping better tonight than I have in some time knowing this creep is no longer out there, but there's another emotion in the mix here thanks to exactly how I learned that this particular monster is no longer with us. That particular circumstance has me full of absolutely incandescent rage, and totally unable to sleep.

See, here's the quote I read- "Just heard about Fredrick Brennan's death. He was a genuine example of how a person can try to make right the things they did wrong and do better. He got 8chan taken down and essentially deplatformed."

Now, I should note before I say anything further that I saw this quote by way of someone I hold in pretty high regard sharing it with an addition, and I had a pretty awkward conversation afterwards because I was sincerely pretty sure this was being said in a really ironic tongue-in-cheek tone, and I just really want to be clear that I'm cool with her and her perspective on things, and it's other people discussing this who are, you know, completely divorced from reality and trying to paint a nazi pedophile who founded a CSAM side and tried to have me and some people I care about killed as some sort of hero.

So, just so I can hopefully get this out of my system and get some rest, let me lay out a timeline here. I could go into way more detail here. I very much know my stuff on this.

So, a timeline. 8chan was founded in October of 2013 to serve as an alternative to 4chan, because as awful as that site is, it has never allowed people to post sexualized photographs of naked children. A lot of people are vaguely aware of this, and assume when people bring it up, they're talking about the site being used to host sexual illustrations of child characters, or perhaps "barely legal" porn. Meticulously curated photos, with the victims finely sorted into categories based on age, going all the way down to freaking two-year olds. Plus threads where pedophiles were exchanging tips on abduction, grooming, accessing children's websites. It was a one stop shop in that regard, from day one, explicitly.

Most people associate 8chan primarily with Gamergate, as there was a moment when 4chan's owner felt that site was getting too much heat from the associated threads posted there and banned them, and 8chan was offered up as an alternate host, in keeping with the founding principle of allowing what 4chan banned. Again, a lot of people get confused and think it was founded for that specific purpose, and the CSAM came later. That would still be a horrible state of affairs, as running a full on terrorism campaign, stalking innocent people, planning mass shootings, brainstorming nazi propaganda, etc. are also some real serious and awful stuff, that came in a good year after the site was first set up for the CSAM.

While initial general public interest in the site was focused on the very very visible Gamergate stuff, people broadly made the connection to the CSAM hosted all over it in late 2014. Multiple people did some very in-depth reporting on this at the time, and for a good long stretch articles were available meticulously detailing the history of the site and sharing heavily censored images that had, at the time, been hosted there for the duration of its life. Those I am personally aware of have since been taken down both because their authors were receiving very serious threats and attacks, and their purpose in terms of formerly bringing the site to the attention of relevant authorities is long since served. You'll forgive me for not linking to archived copies.

More or less immediately after these articles were published, a number of people I am personally familiar with attempted to link such to the webhost for 8chan. Due to some miscommunication, these were in fact sent to Cloudflare, whose management opted to forward them directly to the site's owner (Brennan), including the e-mail addresses and other personal information of those who sent them. Almost immediately after this, attempts on these concerned citizens lives were made via SWATing, as mentioned in this here news story from the time. From the available information, it seems rather clear that Brennan is personally responsible for disseminating this info to whoever made the calls, and he made no particular secret of this in public postings at the time.

Other parties came at the issue from a financial angle. As 8chan was supported primarily by donations through 4chan and banner ads, efforts were made to convince the associated companies that it was not in their legal interest to be funneling money to a CSAM site. Brennan made efforts to switch to other payment methods, but eventually reached a point where absolutely no payment processors would accept Brennan as a client some time around mid-2015.

No longer able to pay to maintain the site, and facing federal inquiries about various illegal materials he was hosting (a matter over which he was receiving advice from fellow absolute monster and major Gamergate figure Mike "Based Lawyer" Cernovich), Brennan fled to the Philippines, arranging for new site hosting with fellow absolute moral black hole Jim Watkins, to whom he eventually sold the site, although he continued to maintain it through 2016, and working on Watkins' other, similar sites until 2018.

Meanwhile, nazis being a fickle bunch prone to infighting, a good number of 8chan regulars decided to blame Brennan for Federal investigations affecting the site, if only the inconvenience of various sections being hidden or shuffled around, and started targeting him with the same sort of attacks they visit on anyone else. Between this and some extremely bad blood developing between him and Watkins, largely revolving around investigations into 2019's Christchurch and Poway shootings which had strong ties to 8chan, with serious legal consequences for both men, to the extent that Brennan was forced to flee the Philippines to avoid arrest there, Brennan eventually chose to try and rehabilitate his image by throwing Watkins and the site under the bus, and yes, working to some degree towards getting the site taken down.

I see absolutely no reason anyone should frame this as some sort of moment of moral clarity on his part, just the usual backstabbing one sees in Nazi circles when things start falling apart. I understand several people I know ended up coordinating efforts to bring the site down with Brennan around 2020, but at no point that I'm aware of did he ever express any sort of real remorse over any of the victims of his CSAM operation, and I can tell you for an absolute fact that he at no point showed the slightest bit of concern for any of the various parties whose lives he put in danger over the whole Gamergate thing.

I generally do not swear, but spending a good portion of the last day watching people completely upend this timeline and attempt to to paint Brennan as some sort of innocent victim of Watkins are complete horseshit contradicting years of clearly documented horrors. I have all this preserved in the amber of my personal PTSD, e-mails, and reports to various agencies, but this is also all readily found just looking him up on wikipedia.