Q&A with Ben Garrison

or nearly five years, Ben Garrison, a 58-year-old commercial artist living in Lakeside, Montana, has been on the receiving end of a relentless online smearing campaign waged by a persistent group of trolls on 4chan and other affiliated image board communities. Since first discovering the campaign in 2010, Garrison has consulted numerous lawyers in pursuit of legal actions and even has written a book about his bouts with the trolls, but the campaign still seems to be ongoing in the light of the recent on-air prank that was orchestrated by 4chan pranksters during Fox News coverage of the Baltimore riots. We spoke with Garrison to find out more about his ordeals with online trolls and what he has learned from the experience.

Interview

Q: How long have you been illustrating political cartoons? What inspired you to start?

A: I drew political cartoons part time at a couple of newspapers early in my career. That cartooning effort lasted only a few years. After about a 20-year hiatus, I decided to draw them again, independently, after the big banks were bailed out in 2008. I wanted to expose the corruption I saw in the country as well as what I consider to be the 'heart of darkness,' the Federal Reserve. The Internet made it possible for my cartoons to be seen by people from all over the world. Before the trolling struck, my cartoons were reposted on many websites and blogs.

Q: When did you first realize your work was being defaced online? How did you initially react to the phenomenon?

A: I began getting trolled in 2009--within months of drawing my first anti-Federal Reserve cartoons. At first they began leaving disgusting messages on my blog. I had to shut down the comments and I was accused of being against their free speech. In actuality, I had no time to monitor their hate and personal slurs. I didn’t find out that 4chan was a main source of the trolling until early 2010. My wife was the one who found out about it. I had never heard of 4chan until then. I added a disclaimer to my site. I have to admit, I was naive about dealing with trolls and couldn't understand why someone would deface my work and then maliciously spread it all over the internet. What they were doing was obvious and outrageous libel and defamation as well as copyright infringement. Frankly, I had no idea how to handle it.

Q: Are you still looking to pursue legal action against those who have defaced your comics?

A: Yes, I am. I'd like to sue Christopher Poole, the owner of 4chan. He has willingly allowed and encouraged the trolling against me to occur almost daily for five years and all of the nonsense shows up on Google searches. I continue to amass evidence. Another main perpetrator lives in Florida and he has made it his life’s mission to destroy my reputation. He alters each and every cartoon I draw into hate. He has attacked me, my wife and my son as well as my business. It’s very difficult to prove such a case. A total of five lawyers have now stated that there’s very little they can do. This emboldens the trolls to push the envelope still further since there is no way to make them legally accountable for their actions. I was hoping some book sales would help me pursue a case since such legal help is extremely expensive.

Q: Speaking from your own experience, do you have any advice for someone in a similar conundrum?

A: If people can’t obtain justice to help end some of the egregious attacks on their business, their character and their own intellectual property, two things will end up happening:

1. Everyone will be forced into anonymity due to the trolling culture.


Anyone who uses their identity to express political opinions can get hammered by anons with no responsibility or accountability. Their hate speech will trump free speech. My experiences with trolls inform me repeatedly that I ‘deserve it’ because I was stupid enough to use my real name. Public figures and/or famous can easily ignore the trolls, but people like me who are not public figures become targets because the trolls delight in ruining such people. It’s easy because the general public accepts whatever they read about unknown people on the Internet. That is the main source of ‘lulz’ among trolls. The political aspect of my cartoons were largely irrelevant. It was the trolling opportunity that attracted them. This ‘fear of the trolls’ helps end genuine discourse and debate. Their kind of unaccountable hate speech shuts down real, reasoned ‘free’ speech and forces everyone to become anons.


2. Excessive and prolonged abuse by trolls can be seen as excuse by government entities to step in and ‘control’ dialogue on the Internet.


I don’t want this--I believe in free speech, even anonymous free speech. Anonymous people are able to attack and destroy the work and reputations of people they don’t even know and they can do it without fear of legal rebuke, or even a punch in the nose. Things that they wouldn’t dream of saying to their victims’ faces. The trolls do it for sport and laughter…and their victims have little recourse. The targets either forced into frightened and frustrated quiescence, or they can speak out and risk making it worse. That is, they will get blamed for the entire ordeal just because they reacted by trying to repair their reputation. If they object, they will almost certainly be accused of ‘feeding the trolls,’ which attracts more trolling. Or they could become a vigilante and end up risking jail time because the legal system makes it way too difficult and expensive to obtain justice.

Q: What is your view on the culture of 8chan and its founder Frederick Brennan? What drove you decide to engage 8chan’s /pol/ board?

A: In my book, I lambasted both 4chan and 8chan--especially the former. After my book was published I decided to take a different attitude. I now treat the troll attacks with humor instead of anger. I posted an image on 8chan. It showed Frederick Brennan in a burning, hellish wheelchair as he maintained a quirky smile on his face (shown below, left). “Hot wheels” has gone through hell due to his affliction. I didn’t intend for the cartoon to be an insult, unlike the one I drew about m00t (shown below, right). To me, I was merely illustrating reality. He's a kid with a sound mind, but he got shafted by fate when it came to his physical body. He liked my drawing and we agreed to put it on a coffee mug and sell it. We sold a great many mugs and we will split the profit. More importantly, his reaction made me realize that he could take the heat, unlike 4chan's 'm00t' whom I consider to be a money-grubbing, trolling scoundrel. Christopher Poole actually sent me an email accusing me of being a 'racist,' so I know he was in on the trolling almost from the beginning. He could have stemmed the incessant trolling against me at any time, but instead he encouraged it even though he did shut down GamerGate and the nude celebrity photos. It was not OK for anons to start threads that attacked Zoe Quinn, but m00t made sure that it remained A-OK for them to constantly post about me being 'Zyklon Ben." By allowing me to be perpetually smeared as a white supremacist and Nazi, Poole has endangered me, my family and has compromised my reputation. As for 8chan, to my pleasant surprise, I had many comments from people there who claimed they were my fans. Not everyone who posts on 4 and 8 chan are Nazi trolls. Some are smart, intelligent and decent people. That's what I've learned. I just wish there were more of them like that.

Q: Tell us a bit about your creative process in the making of a Ben Garrison cartoon. Do you have a certain approach or do you like to just run with an idea?

A: I do a lot of reading and I listen to YouTube and podcast broadcasts. A lot of times I hear good metaphors being used and I will jot down the ideas in a cheap spiral-bound notebook. I get a lot of ideas out of nowhere when I go on daily walks. I call that vertical thinking--the ideas arrive like thunderbolts. Those ideas often make the best cartoons. The ones cobbled together via horizontal thinking are more difficult. One thing I never do: I never ask myself 'what's funny in this situation?" I'm not a comedian and I don't think cartoons need to be funny in order to be successful. To me the cartoons are serious business.
The cartoons begin as a chicken-scratching until I get a composition sorted out. Then I will develop them on a tracing pad and transfer the sketch onto a large piece of bristol board. I use a pocket brush pen to ink it in, and then I erase the pencil marks. I scan it in and add color using Adobe Photoshop. Sometimes I will draw the cartoons as separate pieces and assemble them in Photoshop. I sometimes get good ideas from people who send me email. If I use their idea I will credit them (usually their first name and last name's initial) on my cartoons.

Q: As a political cartoonist, what are your thoughts on the Charlie Hebdo attack and the recent shootings in Texas?

A: I did draw a cartoon in support of Hebdo. (It too was defaced by trolls). We can't let fear stop us from using our free speech. It's a use it or lose it scenario. I'm not religious and don't like organized religion in general, but I have no interest in drawing cartoons about religion and race. I concentrate on the deeds of men and the clique of corrupt mobsters who currently constitute government. Those at the top of the pyramid must keep us all in fear and now that there's no longer the Soviet Union as the boogey man, the elite have trotted out fear of Muslims and 'terrorists' to keep us preoccupied. They've helped arrange things so a lot of Muslims now reside in the US and in western Europe in order to keep people distracted with hate and cultural conflict. That way the citizens don't go after their puppet masters. The real terrorist who are those at the top of the pyramid. They are the scum of the Earth. That includes people such as the Rothchilds and the Queen of England.

Q: What was your reaction to the Fox News guest call-in prank involving your name during the Baltimore riots coverage?

A: It was completely ridiculous. To me, it was the 'jump the shark' moment in the trolls' Zyklon Ben meme. I wasn't mad and I won't sue Fox. If anything, it shows how the mainstream media are now largely unprofessional, incompetent and irrelevant. They could have spent a few seconds to research my name and discover the trolling, but instead they stupidly parroted the trolls' tweets. Nobody will remember the incident aside from a few celebrating trolls. They must lead very small lives indeed if that's how they extract happiness from life.

Q: What are some of your go-to sites? Are you active in any online communities? Webcomics or webcomic artists you admire?

A: I like the Drudge Report, Zero Hedge, Judge Napolitano's site, InfoWars…places such as that. I listen to a lot of YouTube videos. Jim Willie is good, as is Bix Weir…and people such as Karl Denninger. He's sharp. I frequent a lot of Libertarian sites and pages on Facebook.

Q: What is your favorite internet meme?

A: The Pepe the Frog meme is interesting because there are endless variations. I had no idea people actually collected him and bought original ones on ebay, etc. It's like the old Pokéman cards that my son used to collect when he was a kid. I myself became a meme because many young people are frustrated by the hopelessness and bitterness at the unjust world around them. I'm the bearer of bad news and I want to help them. Instead many enjoy using me as the focus of their hatred and fantasies of violent revenge. As the elite-owned Walter Conkrite used to say, "That's the way it is."

Ben Garrison is an American freelance commercial artist based in Lakeside, Montana with many years of professional experience as a staff graphic designer for various newspapers, including the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He specializes in illustrating infographic design for corporate clients all over the world. In addition, he has written about his work and experiences with Internet fame in the book Rogue Cartoonist. This interview was conducted over email on May 14th, 2015.