A group allegedly dedicated to stopping online harassment and abuse used the same tactics it claimed to abhor to harass those it disagreed with politically.

Crash Override Network, founded by Zoe Quinn after she became well known for being publicly shamed online by an ex-boyfriend, targeted people with whom it disagreed with – most notably, people who supported the Gamergate movement.

First, a couple steps back. The Gamergate movement launched in part because of the accusations by Quinn's ex-boyfriend, Eron Gjoni. Gjoni accused Quinn of being emotionally abusive and of cheating on him multiple times. In an overt double standard, Quinn was seen as the victim, whereas if the tables had been turned and she had written the same post but about Gjoni, she still would have been seen as a victim, but this time as the victim of an abusive and adulterous man.

There had already been complaints among gamers that video game journalism (and mainstream journalism) was unethical, and also that the video game industry itself had some ethics issues. These existing complaints, combined with the double standard shown by social justice warriors for Quinn, among other things, resulted in the Gamergate movement. Unscrupulous media outlets continue to claim the movement was designed to harass and intimidate women and minority gamers.

Quinn used her new celebrity status to found Crash Override Network, which was supposed to stop online bullying. But internal chat logs from members who would eventually create the group, leaked by a member of the group, reveal that it used tactics such as doxxing (by which a person's private contact information is published online in order to intimidate them) to harass people in the Gamergate movement or those who members of CON had a personal grudge against.

For example, the group discussed trying to contact the superior officer of a Purple Heart recipient who had expressed support of Gamergate to try to silence him. The group also discussed contacting Google in an attempt to get Justine Tunney fired after she also voiced support for Gamergate.

While responding to the logs, one of the people involved, Randi Harper, explained away the behavior as some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, writing on Twitter: "fact: when people are under abuse for an extended period of time, that trauma can modify their behavior and make them imitate their abusers."

That doesn't make it okay, especially if one is denouncing abuse while engaging in the same tactics.

There's much more in the leaked logs, which Ian Miles Cheong has been documenting over at Heat Street, and I encourage you to read it. The point I want to make is that members of CON, including Quinn, have spoken out against online bullying before the United Nations, and have also worked with Google and Twitter allegedly to stop online harassment, all while engaging in the very same harassment.

Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.