This post is mainly aimed at a few fans who might do a name search – but it’s an interesting – traumatic – story about a ‘pop’ singer and a toxic fan club.
Hopefully this case ends up in court one day (please be soon) so I’ll keep things anonymous.
There was a pop singer, who nearly ten years ago, was denounced as a racist. This scandal was taken as confirmation that previous allegations had been true and the journalists who made the previous allegations went to town on his reputation. There are thousands of articles and social media posts, not only denouncing the pop singer, but actively promoting the far right to young/vulnerable music fans – something the far right has been dreaming of since the 1970s.
I didn’t think it was possible for the press to be mistaken at this scale – but a lot of things didn’t make sense. I started checking the original sources of the ‘terrible things’ he was ‘increasingly saying’ and almost all of them had been taken out of context. Having said that, he was increasingly saying things that were almost a far right talking point, but not quite, as if he was picking them up second hand and thought that they were ‘reasaonble’ or even ‘old left’. Then he claimed that a racist politician wasn’t a racist politician. This racist politician was suddenly under pressure from other racist politicians who wanted to steal the celebrity endorsement – which at this point was the only credible celebrity endorsement a far right politican had ever had. Caving in to the pressure, the racist politician lurched into open white nationalism, and I panicked and wrote a fan letter wailing about it.
The pop singer didn’t see the letter, but someone close to him did, and things both improved, and got worse. He stopped referring to the racist politician, but he was still saying things that could easily be interpreted as racist dog-whistles.
Again, it made no sense. If he’d always been a racist he wouldn’t be coy one minute, then blatant, then coy again. Everyone believed he was neo-Nazi – he was gaining nothing by being coy. If he’d been radicalised online then there would be a clear pathway – but he was zig-zagging between idolising Black civil rights leaders and being aligned with Stormfront.
Some people accounted for the discrepancy by saying he was a troll or a tease, and believed he was loving the controversy – but he really didn’t look as if he was loving the controversy – and had all but withdrawn from public life.
I suspected that some far right activist was feeding him propaganda – but I had no idea who – or how. So, I moped around a fan site posting my worries and having random arguments. For once my doomscroll/gossip addiction wasn’t a waste of time. Eventually a mod on the fan site pointed me towards a fan I will call, Slime.
I went to Slime’s social media accounts and it didn’t take long to connect him to the far right and to find out that he’d been claiming to be, or be in contact with, the pop singer for decades. He was a salesman by trade and had used those techniques to groom ‘superfans’ into an abusive cult where he was their ‘umblical cord’ to the pop singer they idolised. He told them that the pop singer was using multiple anonymous accounts and blogs to secretly communicate with fans, but Slime also wrote a blog where he posted the ‘secret communications’ and ran a comment section to harvest emails. He told them that the pop singer was sending them signs and wanted a token to be brought to gigs. If they doubted the signs he told them the pop singer hated them. He was also using social media to track and groom the pop singer’s friends, family and crew and was contacting journalists, celebrities and far right activists, to get attention.
All of this might have been pushy, but harmless, except Slime’s mission was to nudge the pop singer’s public image – and even his actual opinions – as far to the right as possible. Slime wanted to vicariously be the pop singer, and be the most special fan, and promote his own exteremly racist political beliefs. He took things the pop singer had said, and entwined them with far right talking points so that if the pop singer said the word ‘England’ it would immediately be interpreted as meaning ‘England is dying because of non-white immigration’. Slime and his small band of fans and fascists were bombarding social media and fan forums with racial hatred using the pop singer’s name, they also pretended to be against racial hatred, because either way, they were associating the pop singer’s name with racial hatred.
I thought the mod might be interested in everything I’d found out – but he went ballistic – threatening me, insulting me, editing my DMs, making me agree that he hadn’t pointed me towards Slime – eventually he was so abusive I stopped posting on the fan site and he sent me a couple of DMs about things I’d tweeted (which had nothing to do with the site), then banned me. I wouldn’t be mentioning this if he hadn’t proceeded to take public digs at me while encouraging the site members to harass me in real life – which he believes I deserve because I decided that Slime’s lying and bullying needed to be stoppped.
To stop it, the first thing I tried was – in hindsight – dumb. I thought I’d tell Slime, via Twitter and the fan site, that I knew what he was up to and give him and his cronies the opportunity to delete and find a new hobby.
That didn’t work.
I tried telling people close to the pop singer – but Slime’s patter had them confused and anyway it’s not a thing that’s easy to process out of the blue.
I tried the police.
I tried anti-fascist groups.
He’d stop – or go stealth – for a bit – then be right back at it. Always at his worst when there was a gig or a record deal to destroy.
I tried journalists – and that was very hit and miss. Arts journalists are mostly freelance, and while they’re very judgemental about politics, they’re more concerned about peer pressure and vibes. It was hard to make them understand or care that by denouncing the pop singer as a racist, they were giving an actual racist – Slime – a platform to promote racism.
What worked – was music PRs. The pop singer is iconic. He’s very difficult, but very important. If you love music, the idea of having to let go of his songs because they’re basically Musical Hitler, is devastating. They also wanted to protect their clients. If there was a possiblity of a future documentary that made thier client look as if they’d furthered fascism by answering questions about the pop singer, they knew that was bad. Someone passed on my email and suddenly – yay! – we had lawyers involved.
Unfortunately, I knew Slime still had his hooks into some crew, and after yet another dog-whistle, I aimed a narky tweet at one of them. I deleted because I don’t think narky tweets should be online for longer than you’re distraught about something – but it was too late. Suddenly I was accused of being Slime – and while it was sorted out – waters had been muddied. Slime had to be careful – but he could still slither about convincing his followers that he’d been telling the truth and future rightwing scandals were just around the corner with some song or other.
As of now, that’s where we are – but I think it’ll be fine. I think the pop singer is talented enough to – however slowly – get his status back, and I think Slime will be exorcised.
Kay Marquis 