I hadn't thought to post about the public exposure of far-right political cartoonist StoneToss, but now that Twitter is censoring discussion of his alleged name it's once again time for everyone to experience the Streisand Effect. For Hans Kristian Graebener of Spring, Texas, the barrel beckons.
From the quickly-established "Know Your Meme" page about his deanonymization:
On March 12th, 2024, the Antifa groups Anonymous Comrades Collective and Late-Night Anti-Fascists doxxed the person suspected to be the artist behind the StoneToss comics and its precursor RedPanels, revealing the identity of Hans Kristian Graebener, a 34-year-old resident of Spring, Texas who used to work as a security guard and an IT specialist.
Stonetoss's works are racist, homophobic and antisemitic, and while he insists he is not a Nazi, his strips regularly feature Nazi bugbears, symbols and rhetoric, not least holocaust denial. Details from an 8-year-old Reddit AMA, LinkedIn and other sources linked the RedPanels and StoneToss personae, but a leak of user information from right-wing site Gab is what appears to have linked them to Graebner's name and email address. The evidence shows he went to extraordinary lengths to protect his anonymity—all for nothing, thanks to the slapdash security of the platforms he used.
That said, this case is remarkable because no-one outside of extremely online spaces cares1. If Graebner had simply let it pass, his name might not have found its way out of the gyres of trash-talk and gossip found on Twitter and adjacent forums.
But Elon Musk censoring things, be it the movements of his private jet, the BBC or his own errors of judgment—guarantees media interest. So when StoneToss begged Elon directly to silence those discussing his name (offering en passant the common right-wing claim that allowing others to speak is tantamount to silencing him) the standard magic happened.
Musk and Twitter are being accused of hypocrisy, given their claimed free-speech aspirations. But it's not as if there's much history of him or it living up to those standards in the first place. Twitter often censors commentators there—left wing ones, more often than not. Its policy against doxxing was applied here, but reactionary accounts are generally free to publicize the identities behind internet accounts that displease them and there are examples of Musk personally approving of doxxing individuals on the platform.
1. Though Internet users of a certain age may be surprised to find out that StoneToss was not, after all, Shmorky in repose.
