Civil Servants Increasingly Targeted by Alt-Right Trolls in Trump Era
Conservatism became a hollow shell, and then the trolls and the opportunistic cons moved in to fill the space. The kooks and the cons are now driving movement conservatism.
After 43 years in the State Department, Anne Patterson got a plum job offer from the Pentagon and thought the opportunity would be an honorable way to cap her long career as a foreign service officer.
But then Patterson’s nomination unleashed a torrent of articles in conservative media that painted her as a clandestine partisan or worse. And shortly after the headlines rocketed around the Internet, then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis withdrew Patterson’s nomination, and she eventually left government.
She was “trying to do her best to do her duty as she saw it, and in return just got these kind of nasty, baseless attacks,” said Jerry Feierstein, who worked with Patterson for decades at the State Department.
More: Civil Servants Increasingly Targeted By Alt-Right Trolls In Trump Era : NPR