Philosophically, it’s not all that novel a strategy. Beyoncé, Kanye West, and Drake have all found ways to prosper without the traditional pop-promotion playbook in recent years. Doing so embraces the upsides of a huge fanbase, the internet, and the potential for songs themselves to act as gossipy press statements. While the media may have helped these stars succeed initially, at a certain point it—and its tough questions, editorial independence, and, sure, cynicism and frequent sloppiness—can be treated as a disposable middleman. (You may note adherents of this approach in politics increasingly as well.)

But one byproduct of staying relatively silent is that certain actions may inadvertently speak more loudly than they would otherwise. Hence, perhaps, how Swift has now ended up being denounced by the ACLU and directing throngs of internet users to a blog post speculating that she speaks for “the lower case kkk.”

The post in question is at the site PopFront, where the writer Meghan Herning connected Swift’s single “Look What You Made Me Do” with the documented fact that some in the alt-right adore Swift as a supposed vision of racial purity. As Herning noted, Breitbart tweeted out all of the lyrics to the single, as if to double down on the subtext. She also pointed out that the music video uses some visual clichés associated with Hitler, and that one verse could, in a different context, be a xenophobic or racist parable: “I don’t like your kingdom keys. They once belonged to me. You asked me for a place to sleep. Locked me out and threw a feast.” (A bit like Trump’s favorite story, “The Snake,” no?)

Herning’s bottom line: If Swift disavows her racist fans, she should say so clearly.

Right now, PopFront has just 1,169 followers on Facebook and 237 on Twitter, and the post would have not received much attention if Swift’s lawyer William J. Briggs II hadn’t sent a cease-and-desist letter calling it “replete with demonstrable and offensive falsehoods” and “a malicious attack against Ms. Swift.” His argument in full is rather brazen in its illogic: The given evidence for Swift previously rejecting white supremacy is two other articles on the matter that simply take for granted that Swift isn’t actually racist. “Let this letter stand as a yet another unequivocal denouncement by Ms. Swift of white supremacy and the alt-right,” Briggs wrote, but as far as I can tell, the letter is her first unequivocal public denouncement—and it’s only public now that the ACLU, against Briggs’s specific demands, published it.

The ACLU of Northern California got involved after Herning told them of the letter. The organization has now put out a statement calling her post “a mix of political speech and critical commentary,” protected by the First Amendment. The brouhaha has led other culture writers to say they’ve received similar letters from Swift’s lawyers when writing about her alt-right fans and lack of political engagement in the 2016 election.