Last January, a New England woman was inspired to design a new beanie, commemorating the construction of President Donald Trump’s planned US border wall. Her knitting pattern spelled out “Build the Wall” with a brick motif. “Deplorable Knitter,” as she calls herself, then posted the pattern on Ravelry, the internet’s largest collective of knitters and crocheters.

The response was vitriolic. “Everyone was so angry about it,” she says.

But Deplorable Knitter, who’d previously just used the site to browse patterns, was fired up. When Trump announced he was running for reelection last June, she designed a Trump 2020 “Keep America Great” cowl. “That one blew up,” she says, describing threats and bullying that have forced her to remain anonymous. Her cowl pattern got flagged for hate speech, and on June 21, Deplorable Knitter was banned from Ravelry.

She was not alone. On June 23, the site banned “support of Donald Trump and his administration.” In a statement at the time, Ravelry said: “We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy. Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy.”

The ban tore Ravelry apart, with opponents of the policy making a bitter exit while liberal supporters offered a flood of patterns featuring pride flags, donkeys, and anti-Trump phrases. It has also splintered the knitting world at large, with new, overtly political (and many right-wing) sites springing up to fill the gap.

But the infighting in one of the internet's most niche communities is about more than just politics and knitting. It’s a glimpse of how otherwise ignored populations—here, predominantly older women—are using online platforms to organize and make their voices heard. And the Ravelry falling-out highlights questions other platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, have tiptoed around: What constitutes hate speech, and how should censorship work online?

A decade of pattern-sharing

Ravelry boasts about 8.5 million registered users. Half a million of these are considered active, and there are 40,000 subgroups. The site is pretty ugly: its tab structure, font, and blocky formatting recall an earlier, simpler time on the internet when chat rooms reigned. It hasn’t updated its design since it launched in 2007.

The site originally started as a platform for knitters and crocheters to share their works in progress, swapping tips and selling patterns. Soon groups formed around other common interests. Some were silly; others focused on things certain users had in common, like being from a similar region or being a fan of a cult TV show. The most volatile and active groups, however, were political.

Unsplash: John Cameron

For some, the politicization of knitting groups started in earnest with the Women’s March in 2017. Thousands of women knitted “pussy hats” to protest the “grab ’em by the pussy” comment the president was revealed to have made in 2005. Nearly 5,000 knitters were active on Ravelry’s dedicated subgroup for the march. Three years later, a majority remained active, says Sandra Markus, a professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Together with Ioana Literat, a professor at Columbia University Teachers College, she published a paper last year that chronicles online “craftivism” and how politics has grown with it.