Thank you to all of you for your support as I report on the frontlines of the cognitive warfare that adversaries of America are waging on the country.
There are a few lessons that I'd like to share with you from this video that's getting amusing hate-views from Hasan Piker's loyal fanboys.
In my career, I have faced off against terrorists, militants and murderers. Witnessing the tactics and misogyny of a militia of internet fanboys is bemusing to say the least.
As I cared for my father, 93, in the hospital, I caught Hasan Piker speaking about American Marxist Neville Roy Singham, living in China, funding a "political movement" that has put America in its crosshairs.
We were waiting for a nurse to help us with discharge, and my dad was resting.
As an investigative journalist, I know that what is most important is documentation, receipts and first-hand information.
It's been my mission for 20 years since 9/11 to not miss a beat in a warfare that national security experts call non-kinetic and cognitive -- in a war for our brains -- that seeks to capture the minds of youth. I will use all tools available to make sure that I always have the receipts.
Including filming with my phone as I navigate my responsibilities to my beloved nation and my beloved family!
In this world, this is one lesson: nothing will be perfect.
We can't alway access software for screen recording, transcription services for transcripts or sophisticated AI programs for data analysis. We won't always look good, get our words right or sing on tune.
But our duty is to show up.
This is my lesson for all of you: being mission-driven, whatever it is, means being scrappy, nimble and diligent.
It means being persistent even in the face of slings and arrows.
I'm told that some of Hasan Piker's followers are even juveniles under the age of even 13. Most followers are young males.
It sure seems like that in their childish antics.
I explained Hasan Piker's Marxist worldview to my father, who has witnessed World War II, British colonialism and the American civil rights movement. He marched with Gandhi to literally fight "settler colonialism."
My dad shook his head, politely, smiling, at the naivete of anyone believing that Marxism is anything but a failed system that is its own autocracy on freedoms. We all know that there are challenges with free enterprise systems but Marxism and communism are not the solutions ideologues pretend they can be -- because even in their communist nations they exploit, hoard and divide people into haves and have-nots.
For me, be certain that the childish tactics of ridicule, curses and spamming that I'm witnessing by Hasan Piker fanboys to try to distract me from my reporting are ones I have long seen by the Islamist groups that I have challenged for years as a Muslim feminist fighting for women's rights.
It's youth claiming to be leftists, but really they illustrate a peculiar understanding of liberalism with their use of these beloved words of misogyny in their messages to me: "cunt," "whore," "slut," "bitch," "psycho."
I experienced the same with Islamists who have aligned with the communists to try to destroy civil society.
Remember this: I was put on trial at my mosque in West Virginia for daring to walk through the front door instead of a back door for women, and I didn't surrender.
I hunted for a decade the men who kidnapped and murdered my friend Danny Pearl, and I named every single one of them without fear or favor.
My North Star is truth-telling so that we can fully understand the operations, infrastructures, businesses and machines that produce propaganda and create systems that adversaries deploy to divide people, foment hate and stoke violence of the nature that motivated a cell of men in Karachi, Pakistan, to murder my friend.
I can see indoctrination and propaganda, and America is facing an industry that is attempting to indoctrinate our youth with toxic, divisive, hateful ideas.
I will use every tool available to me, raw or sophisticated -- most importantly my feet for pounding the pavement, my fingertips for holding pens, phones and microphones and my voice for asking the questions that need to be asked.
The goal is one: truth-telling.
Along with being a journalist, I'm a mother. And I wish growth, critical thought and freedom from toxicity and dangerous ideas for the young fanboys who are now in my orbit.
Welcome to my young new fans. I will always support you through your growth in this world.
Asra