Columnist Fired From NY Times After Six Hours Says She Befriended Nazi Because She’s a Pacifist
The New York Times found itself in something of a firestorm two weeks ago when they hired, and then quickly fired, a writer named Quinn Norton after it was revealed that she had posted slur-laden tweets and written columns in which she told of her friendship with noted neo-Nazi Andrew Auernheimer.
Norton has now written a piece for The Atlantic attempting to defend herself, saying that the picture of her that was painted in the media was simply a caricature or, to use her word, a doppelgänger.
“Social media created a bizarro-world version of me,” Norton wrote. “I have seen strange ideas about me online before, but this doppelgänger was so far from resembling me that I told friends and loved ones I didn’t want to even try to rebut it.
“It inspired a horrified confusion in myself and those familiar with my work and my character. A digital effigy of me was built and burned.”
Norton, who refers to herself as an “anarchist pacifist,” went on to describe her long-time friendship with Auernheimer, which she says she allowed to continue because it is not her place to judge another’s beliefs.
“I was called a Nazi because of my friendship with the infamous neo-Nazi known on the Internet as weev—his given name is Andrew Auernheimer; he helps run the anti-Semitic website The Daily Stormer,” she wrote. “In my pacifism, I can’t reject a friendship, even when a friend has taken such a horrifying path. I am not the judge of who is capable of improving as a person.”
The tech writer described her fictional doppelgänger, which now has eternal life, thanks to the rapid pace of Internet fame.
“Regardless of who I am and what I’ve done, there is now a Nazi-sympathizing and homophobic ‘Quinn Norton’ out there,” she wrote. “She is an abusive and deceptive person, who lies about her family, her disabilities, and even her sexuality.”
Finally, Norton told readers to do their homework, to “look for context” if they hope to understand her.
“I’m not particularly important,” she wrote. “But I am complicated.”
[image via screenshot]
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