In an attempt to destroy the viral meme-making powerhouse that Donald Trump fans have created at Reddit.com/r/the_donald, the moderators of the subreddit have been threatened, purged, and replaced.

CisWhiteMaelstrom, the original moderator of r/The_Donald recently announced he was leaving the subreddit after being threatened in personal messages.

“CWM was doxed. I tried to continue the hard-line policy but was removed by TrumpGirl,” wrote former The_Donald moderator u/GayLubeOil. “If a post gets too many upvotes the admins will remove it if the mods don’t axe it first. Soros is a major stakeholder in Reddit and won’t let the front page lean right.”

With the original moderator gone, a new moderator – TrumpGal – was promoted. TrumpGal instituted a rule on r/the_donald that amounted to censorship in an effort to appease Reddit administrators. Following this move, dozens of moderators of r/the_donald were removed, until TrumpGal was the only moderator that had been on the board for over three weeks.

“Former #2 mod here. It was a coup,” wrote u/Trumpirium. “Can’t post about it in the_donald since they’ve added the usernames of all purged mods to the Automod filter.”

Since the takeover, former the_donald mods and users have created and moved to Reddit.com/r/the_donaldunleashed, Reddit.com/r/Mr_Trump, and Voat.co/v/thedonald.

Former The_Donald mods have reported that The_Donald is now autobanning posts that contain the words “Islam”, “Muslim,” and even “Trigglypuff”. The explanation from the new mods for the mods changes lacks any credible explanation for their actions.

One previous moderator suggested the new moderators could prove they aren’t part of the team of online trolls paid by Hillary Clinton to disrupt the Trump campaign by making well-known Trump supporter Milo Yiannopoulos the new moderator.

Whether you support Trump or not, the censorship of free speech and harassment of political activists is heinous, and the tactics used by social justice warriors to threaten a man and destroy an online community must be brought to light.

Going forward, expect r/The_Donald to slowly stray from it’s core message. To continue influencing Reddit, dedicated users may want to build r/Mr_Trump and r/The_DonaldUnleashed. But to help guarantee an independent online forum, Trump fans will also need to build voat.co/v/TheDonald, as Voat is not owned by corporate media like Reddit. Reddit is owned by Conde Nast parent company Advance Publications.

In October, Matt Drudge, the independent media powerhouse creator of the Drudge Report, had this warning for users of corporate social media ““This is ghetto, this is corporate, they’re taking your energy and you’re getting nothing in return – nothing!”

In a similar recent move demonstrating the power of the The_Donald users, the subreddit began using sli.mg instead of imgur to host images after imgur began censoring content – and raised the value of the sli.mg by $1.2 million in two weeks.