Refusefascism.org’s petition was a list of people who signed a letter condemning the Trump administration and accusing it of spreading fascism.

“We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America! Drive Out the Trump/Pence Regime,” the petition reads. “The Trump/Pence Regime is a Fascist Regime. Not insult or exaggeration, this is what it is. For the future of humanity and the planet, we, the people, must drive this regime out.”

The petition was linked to on 4chan, with a user writing, "These fucking imbecilic ‘antifa’ have given us a wonderful gift!! They have created a list of names for /pol/ to crawl through and cross check all the hundreds of antifa sympathizers."

A day later, 4chan users began organizing a way to look up the names on refusefascism.org’s petition by turning it into a game. Instead of usernames, 4chan gives users a number generated by the order of when they post. The original poster told users that if their post ended in 00–04, they would look up last names with A; if it ended in 05–08, they would look up last names with B; and so on.

“We will respond to this attack by exposing to the world the nature and danger posed by these fascist cowards, by defeating their attempts to destroy people’s lives, and by bringing forward even more people to stand up against the fascist regime to say: NO! We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America,” Refuse Fascism told BuzzFeed News when the pastebin file started getting compiled.