What, he asked himself, had he done to deserve this? Ponce had no idea what had started the onslaught of hate speech and death threats. Give that guy some helicopter therapy,” read one Facebook comment, a reference to a series of memes, popular in white nationalist circles, of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s practice of throwing political enemies out of helicopters. They slung racial epithets, told him to return to his home country (Ponce was born in Orange, California) and made thinly veiled death threats. Hundreds of people were calling for his firing. Ponce soon discovered that his Facebook page and personal website were cluttered with nasty comments as well, and his office answering machine was full. “Your (sic) racist, Marxist filth, you ave (sic) been noted and we all know you now,” read another. “I might just take a trip to Mexifornia and sit in on one of your hate speeches,” read one of the hundreds of messages. Instead, he found an inbox full of vitriol. Ponce logged in to his college email account expecting the usual: work messages, a few season’s greetings from family and colleagues, maybe some spam. It started just before Christmas last year. “Only Mom and Dad can touch the mail” became a new house rule.Įach night after putting his daughter to bed, Ponce would peek through the windows of his home in Martinez, California, to check for strange cars or people outside, “precautionary measures,” he said, after an internet troll army had targeted him.
Diablo valley college professor eric clanton how to#
Ponce, a political science professor at Diablo Valley College in the San Francisco Bay Area, and his wife didn’t know how to explain to their 9-year-old that her father was receiving death threats.
When the threatening letters started to arrive, Albert Ponce stopped letting his daughter touch the mail.
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