The woman who shows how toxic America s culture wars have become

2016-04-12 05:05:07

By BBC Trending What's popular and why

Why is a "happy wife" with "paleoconservative" political views a near-constant

topic of conversation on Twitter?

Her name is Andie Pauly. She's an illustrated example of America's deep

divisions, and the anger that flares up between left and right.

To her critics, she's a racist troll who harasses her opponents, and she offers

rewards to those who dox - reveal personal information about - her enemies. To

her defenders, she's a proud conservative standing up for free speech, and a

victim of online abuse and harassment herself.

Image copyright Twitter

Image copyright Twitter

She has more than 18,000 followers on Twitter and there's a constant low-level

hum of discussion about her on the network. Tens of thousands of tweets mention

her every month.

So what do we know for sure about her - and how did she become such a divisive

figure? Pauly tweets as @andieiamwhoiam. She lives in Joliet, a city of 150,000

people in Illinois about an hour's drive from Chicago, and is married to a

Joliet police officer, Michael Pauly.

Her Twitter bio describes herself as a: "Happy wife. Homeschool mom. Proud

police supporter. Paleoconservative. I block beta males & shrieking Godless

harridans as matter of course." Her positions - as vociferously spelled out on

Twitter - are mostly consistent with the culturally conservative American

right. She defends gun ownership and the police, and criticises President

Obama, abortion and the Black Lives Matter movement. Many of her tweets use

blunt or vulgar language.

Among her more extreme messages are ones which call people "ferals" and a

series of missives that called for the hanging of the mother of 12-year-old

Tamir Rice, who was shot by police in Cleveland while playing with a toy gun.

Image copyright Twitter

Image copyright Twitter

Image copyright Twitter

Image copyright Twitter

Of course, the internet - and Twitter in particular - is full of armchair

radicals, and the US Constitution strongly protects free speech. Pauly - who

turned down repeated requests for comment and instead referred Trending to her

Twitter timeline - would seem to fit into this category, just one of thousands

of people with fringe views who have found a platform online. On her Twitter

account, she denies using racist language and says her "feral" insults and

others aren't aimed exclusively at African-Americans, but rather more generally

at her liberal and progressive opponents.

But there's an additional dimension to Pauly's online activities. Her critics

say she's taken her views way too far - that she has crossed the line to

harassment.

Image copyright Twitter

Image copyright Twitter

For her part, Pauly and her supporters accuse liberal activists of targeting

her for her views. Personal information such as her phone number and family

pictures have been posted online, and she accuses her enemies of threatening

her and her husband.

Sacked

One woman who spoke to BBC Trending claims that she was fired from her job

because of Pauly. Tara Dozier, a single mother who lives in Washington state,

says she joined Twitter in late 2015. She befriended some Black Lives Matter

activists - on the left of the American political spectrum - which led her to

Pauly's tweets, some of which she re-tweeted.

"She believed that meant that I was stalking and harassing her, because I was

re-tweeting her, and she blocked me," Dozier says.

It was an unremarkable internet spat - until people started calling her bosses

at a local chocolate company, asking for her to be sacked. Dozier said that at

first, the company's human resources department sided with her, and she

deactivated her Twitter account in hopes of ending the online nastiness.

But the calls continued. In November, the company's Twitter account was

bombarded by naked pictures of Dozier, pictures she says she was tricked into

sending to another Twitter user. Not long after that, Dozier was sacked from

her job. The company declined to comment about the incident, saying that their

policy is not to discuss current or former employees.

"The second your picture is tweeted and out there it's a huge violation,"

Dozier says. "The stalking, revenge porn and the harassment - people kill

themselves over this. There are not enough laws to prevent it and I'm still

being blamed for what's happened."

Although there's no evidence that Pauly was behind the phone calls to her

workplace, Dozier believes that she may have encouraged the campaign, and

points to tweets where Pauly offers rewards in the form of Starbucks gift cards

to people who post information about her enemies online:

Image copyright Twitter

And even though she has lost her job, Dozier says the harassment hasn't ended,

and that she's had death threats as well as threats to report her family to

local social service agencies.

Calls continue

Dozier's case and others kicked off much of the recent online chatter about

Pauly, but in the course of reporting this story Trending received more than a

dozen messages from individuals in several US states, claiming that they too

had been targeted by her supporters.

These sort of allegations also caught the attention of liberal tweeters

including Conover Kennard who writes the liberal blog FreakOutNation (Motto:

"Making Tea Partiers cry since 2009").

"I said I'm writing this up - that's just awful," Kennard told Trending.

Kennard wrote a blog post revealing some of Pauly's personal details as well as

posting examples of Pauly's extremist views and similar comments made in

accounts under her husband's name.

After that post, Kennard says, Pauly's supporters turned their aim on her,

sending her abusive messages and even maliciously editing a Wikipedia page

about her late husband, who was a musician.

"Then I started getting angry calls and then a death threat," she says. She

later posted a screengrab of a now-deleted tweet from one of Pauly's Twitter

followers which says "Bang bang. You're dead!" followed by gun emojis.

Pauly has in the past claimed that her social media accounts have been hacked

and that abusive comments have been tweeted by the hackers in order to ruin her

reputation. In one online post she claimed that she was the target of

anti-police trolls online: "They do it because their hatred of police is

stronger than their sense of common decency."

It's hard to evaluate these claims. After BBC Trending contacted Pauly - who

refused to answer any questions - some of the tweets were taken down. But many

others are still available on Pauly's account.

Stuck in the middle

Those who are most aggressive in attacking Pauly online say she is fair game

because she is the wife of a police officer. The deputy chief of Joliet Police,

Tab Jensen, said that the force has been aware of Mrs Pauly's online activities

for more than two years.

Jensen confirmed that Joliet Police had received "lots" of complaints about Mrs

Pauly, but could not give an exact number, as the department only makes a

written record of complaints by victims, not third parties.

"We have no proof of any type of crime having been committed," Jensen says,

"She's claiming that her accounts are [hacked]. She's made a police report.

She's said they've been threatened and harassed."

But despite Mrs Pauly's claims that she is the real victim of harassment and

abuse, and personal information including her phone number and address has been

posted online, none of her opponents have ever been arrested or charged.

One of Mrs Pauly's chief targets is the Black Lives Matter movement, which has

arisen in response to the deaths of young black men shot by police. She

champions the rival Blue Lives Matter campaign - "blue" refers to a common

colour for American police uniforms - which is designed to back officers and

highlight cases of police killed in the line of duty. However, there are signs

that the Joliet's deputy chief is uncomfortable with some of her online

interventions and finds them potentially unhelpful to police relations with

parts of the community.

Jensen, who said that he had personally spoken to Andie Pauly about her online

presence on "numerous occasions," hinted at the tensions between the mostly

negative attention given to the wife of a police officer, and America's

cherished principle of free speech.

"It looks bad for our police department and we don't want that," he says. "We

do want to do the right thing, though, and if these are in fact her posts - she

has the right to her beliefs."

BBC Trending contacted Mrs Pauly several times, but she refused to answer

questions and instead repeatedly referred reporters to her Twitter timeline.

Image copyright Twitter

America's culture war - the fundamental and seemingly growing divide between

conservatives and liberals - is of particular importance in this election year.

Andie Pauly's supporters declare their support for the top Republican

candidates, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, while her opponents back Democrats. The

two camps have little in common and if they have any common ground at all,

they've failed to find it online. Both sides sling accusations of harassment

and abuse. And both sides think their opponents are dead wrong.

Blog by Olivia Crellin