Overview

#TrumpAnime / Rick Wilson controversy refers to an online event that occurred after statements made by political commentator and Republican strategist Rick Wilson about Donald Trump supporters offended anime fans.

Background

On January 19th, 2016, Republican consultant and strategist Rick Wilson appeared on an MSNBC talk show, where he referred to Donald Trump's supporters on the "AltRight," a.k.a. /pol/, as "Childless single men who masturbate to anime."^[1]

The mention of anime on television, especially in the context of masturbation and Trump's presidential campaign, caught the attention of users of 4chan's /pol/ board, who often discuss all three of these topics. The users viewed Wilson's statement as a personal attack, and responded both by generating the hashtag #TrumpAnime as a forum for their protest, and by real-life harassment of Wilson and his family.^[3]

Notable Developements

Harassment Campaign

Following Wilson's statements on MSNBC, /pol/ began harassing Wilson and his family on Twitter and in real life: sending photos of semen on pictures of Wilson, and his wife and daughter, sending hundreds of dollars worth of pizza to his home, placing threatening letters "from Reddit" on his daughter's home, and flooding his twitter with hentai.^[2]

#TrumpAnime

The #TrumpAnime hashtag first appeared on October 8th, 2015 as a series of puns unrelated to the Rick Wilson controversy, however the tag resurfaced on January 21th, 2016. The hashtag features photoshopped images of anime characters wearing Donald Trump's "make America great again" hats and comments about Donald Trump making anime real among other things.^[4] Wilson responded to many of these tweets with further insults, causing even more tweets to be created.

Search Interest

External References