Chapter 2. Keri Smith Swoops In
No one mentions Keri and yet she's there to smear me. December 2020-March 2021.
If you haven’t read Chapter 1 yet, start here.
Everyone says that you ignore a bully, and they’ll go away.
“Just ignore her” was everyone’s favorite advice.
Well, let me show you what happens when you ignore Keri Smith: She goes after you anyway.
Swooping In
One of Keri’s favorite tactics to smear me is to wait until someone high profile is upset at me for one reason or another, and then swoop in to shit-talk me to that person, or even just piggyback off the thread, even if she hasn’t been mentioned at all.
Here’s an example of that.
In December 2020, post-election tensions were heightened because not only was Trump raising hell, but there was also a run-off election in Georiga to decide who would fill two senate seats.
But Republicans were doing the most boneheaded thing - they were literally telling people not vote.
This was at a time before I understood that the GOP would take absolutely every opportunity available to it to shoot itself in the foot.
Of course, I was incredulous. These races would decide who controls the senate, and big-time Republican influencers were telling people that it was all rigged and so it wasn’t even worth trying.
Morons.
Ali Alexander was one of the main organizers behind Stop The Steal. I was never directly involved with the movement, and I really couldn’t stand Ali Alexander (I think he’s a grifter and a snake). He and I would get into Twitter spats every now and again, and in this particular one I don’t remember what he said (probably something about me going to the gym and losing weight) and I responded that he should call for everyone in Georiga to go out and vote.
Then he responded to me…and Keri (who had not been mentioned in any way) swooped in to take advantage of the controversy to reply to him and shit-talk me.
Notice that Keri had absolutely nothing to add to the topic of the conversation. She simply attacked my character, not the content of what I said.
By the way, was I wrong about anything I said in that tweet? The Republicans ended up losing the Senate because Georiga Republicans didn’t go out and vote. They literally lost the senate because the influencers wanted to screw around and throw the election.
But Keri doesn’t care about accomplishing goals, winning elections, or changing culture. She cares about none of that.
Her highest priority is smearing me. It’s more important to her than defeating the Democrats.
Keri was also still interacting with that account stalking me with the slight variation on the spelling in my name. I don’t know what the account posted about me here (it posts exclusively about me so it’s not possible it was another topic), but you can see that Keri took advantage.
And then there was this.
I hadn’t spoken about Keri in two months, but here she was randomly throwing my name out there when no one had mentioned her.
Leah Cohen, the person Keri is agreeing with, is a far-left progressive activist in New Hampshire. Again, smears are more important to Keri than winning.
Post-MAGA
After the election and January 6, I came back to New Hampshire and started getting involved with local politics. In my experiences throughout the previous year, I had become convinced that things were so corrupt that local work was really the only work that mattered.
And that’s when I met the libertarians.
All throughout 2020, I remained politically independent. I had left the Democratic party, but I was very careful to communicate that I was never a conservative. This is me from the speech I gave at the #WalkAway Rescue America Rally in October 2020:
Even though I hated the Democrats, I wasn’t completely on board with the Republicans. I toyed with the idea of joining them as the only viable alternative to the Democrats and did officially register with the party for about 15 minutes to troll Lauren Witzke (more on that in a second), but my heart was never with them.
After Joe Biden entered office, I started seeing a side of the political right that I hadn’t seen at all in 2020 - the alt-right and the moral majority Christian conservatives. And they were saying things like if you were gay or trans, get the fuck out of their movement.
I don’t support that. I don’t support social conservatism and never have. It’s authoritarian. And it sickened me to be associated with people who would believe that was OK or make excuses for it.
But as it happened, I lived in a place where I didn't have to choose between insanity on the left and Christian conservatism on the right.
I live in the Libertarian homeland of New Hampshire. I just hadn’t realized what I had in my own backyard yet.
But there was something far more important to me than New Hampshire was the first state to introduce a state-level banning on teaching critical race theory (divisive concepts) and I was doing what I could to support the effort.
I was also experimenting with a lot of different tactics to fight back against the woke left, immersing myself in it as much as I could both in person and online to really understand what was driving them and how to combat them. I tried a lot of stuff, everything from the most passive techniques to the most aggressive - I wanted to see for myself how they would respond to a variety of stimuli. I used all this later to write my book Actively Unwoke.
I say all this to express that I was focused on my mission: To understand and explain the far-left ideology to as many people as I could in plain English, and teach people how to combat it effectively.
Keri was nowhere in my train of thought…but I was always in hers.
And then Lauren Witzke happened.
Lauren Witzke is a psychopath that somehow managed to become the Republican nominee for senate in Delaware in 2020 (probably because she’s thin and blonde). And she also called for the deportation of my husband on Twitter.
My specific husband.
Her account has since been suspended (too bad, so sad) but here are some tweets I sent at the time about the incident (this was before I learned to screenshot everything).
Lauren also declared that I would NEVER be a Republican.
Remember how I told you I joined the Republican party for about 15 minutes? It was all to spite Lauren Witzke.
All that stood between me and driving her nuts was to take a quick trip to town hall and fill out a form.
I was scheduled to appear with her in a debate on Slightly Offensive the following week on whether LGBT people should be “allowed” in the MAGA movement (don’t even get me started on how twisted I thought this topic was to begin with) and I knew I wanted to break Lauren.
So, I registered as a Republican just to spite her. And I tweeted my intention to do so:
Two days later, I went to town hall and changed my registration from independent to Republican.
The timing of this change was entirely to be able to spite Lauren Witzke in the debate, in which I also broke her by reminding her that I was the one with the husband while she was lonely and unloved.
Question my methods if you like, but I have a whole site about triggering your enemies for fun and enjoyment. After this happened, Lauren complained about me for three straight days in her Telegram group and on Gab. Mission accomplished.
And then, just days after calling for my husband to be deported, Lauren Witzke got banned from Twitter.
One of Lauren’s best friends (and fellow psycho) Cassandra Fairbanks tweeted the news.
I RT Cassandra and said GOOD.
No, I’m still not sorry Lauren got banned. Don’t ask for sympathy when you call for the deportation of someone’s husband.
And for that, Cassandra RTed me and sicked her followers on me. And then Keri went on a rampage against me. I later recounted what happened to one of my followers who asked.
Remember, when Keri posted the series of tweets we’re about to see, NO ONE HAD EVEN MENTIONED HER.
This was a difference of opinion between Cassandra Fairbanks and I. No one had involved Keri.
But Keri chose to involve herself. Here’s the thread she posted about me in response to Cassandra:
And per usual, she used the replies to continue to attack.
NO ONE HAD EVEN MENTIONED KERI.
And here she was, swooping in when a high-profile influencer was attacking me (which meant a lot of eyes were on me) to make sure I got attacked as much as possible.
Keri told so many lies in this thread that I posted my own response to her to try to set the record straight.
Like every other time I posted about Keri, it was strictly in response to what she had done to me:
Keri even responded to some of it. For example, Keri said I was lying about her tweeting the texts.
But we already established in Chapter 1 of this story that Keri did tweet them, and that text did end up in the hands of someone who was sending me harassing messages all the time.
Keri lies all the time about her behavior, refusing to take responsibility. And most people are just too lazy to go back and look to find the posts that live on the internet to this day.
And Keri always and perpetually accuses me of being the one to attack her, and not the other way around.
Here she is claiming to go grey rock, which means not talking about someone and ignoring them entirely.
This was two days after Keri posted that massive thread out of nowhere when no one mentioned her.
Of course, Keri never provides evidence of these attacks.
Because there is no evidence to provide.
How is it that I’m always able to present receipts, while Keri always somehow leaves them off?
And of course, she continues to attack in the replies:
Keri seems to be especially annoyed that I block her followers who attack me. This will be another running theme throughout this story. And it’s ironic, because Keri herself will instantly berate and block anyone who comes to my defense.
I’ll show evidence of that in later chapters.
The following day…
Keri was still talking about me on the following day, March 10, 2021, this time also posting a post from my IG where I had posted a message one of Keri’s followers sent me asking if Keri was STILL shit-talking me, and declaring she needed to work on her jealousy.
Keri declared this was an “unprovoked attack” by me.
She had posted her massive thread on March 7, 2021 out of nowhere, when no one had mentioned her, was STILL talking about me three days later, had sent probably dozens of people to harass me with messages like this, and then declared it was I who had initiated the attack:
And then she wrote ANOTHER thread about me. I have to love that one of my long-time supporters called her out:
This entire thread is pure gaslighting.
Keri did not walk away from me quietly. She tweeted an entire thread about me AFTER she had blocked me so that I couldn’t see it. A reminder from Chapter 1:
That is what Keri claims is “quietly walking away”.
Remember, I wasn’t even aware she did that until a week and a half after she posted it.
And in the last post in her thread from March 10, 2021, she was speaking directly to me:
This is obvious paranoia. She spoke to me as if I was reading something I wasn’t allowed to.
Keri doesn’t seem to understand that all of this is PUBLIC, which means the PUBLIC can access it. She seems to just want to be able to post whatever she likes about me without me being able to see it.
As an aside, if someone is making public statements about you, you have an absolute right to read anything they say for the sake of being informed about which attacks are being hurled.
She also claimed that would be the last narcissistic supply she would give me.
If only that had been the truth.
Three Days Later…
Mike Harlow is Keri’s best friend. Always was. We had toured together for #WalkAway, and I had always done my best to support him, have him on my platform, introduce him to contacts, etc.
But at some point, Keri convinced him to turn against me. I honestly don’t even remember what specifically happened - he was my “friend” one day, and shit-talking me the next. I could probably go back and try to figure out what happened, but (honestly) I just don’t care right now because he’s not the focus of this particular journey.
Well, three days later, Keri resumed her “narcissistic supply” when Harlow decided to come at me:
And then she came at me. Again. When NO ONE HAD MENTIONED HER.
And you know how this story goes…she also came at me in the replies:
Keri’s strict no contact regime to cut off my narcissistic supply lasted less than a half a week.
While all of this was going on, I started my journey with the Libertarian party and the Mises Caucus. Even though I had become a Republican to troll Lauren Witzke, I really wasn’t thrilled with the direction I saw the party already starting to go in during the post-Trump era.
And, at the same time, I had learned about this thing called the Mises Caucus within the Libertarian party that was trying to get rid of all the woke people in it.
Two Mises Caucus recruiters in my area had reached out to me. Here is a picture of us out for beers and a pretzel.
This becomes relevant later. Just remember, it happened in March 2021.
In the state of New Hampshire, you can actually be registered as both a Libertarian and as a Republican. I joined LP national and the LPNH in April 2021, and was deeply involved with them and the Mises Caucus leading up to the Reno Reset takeover in May 2022. And some other stuff happened to that we’ll get to later.
For now, I’m offering this to show you a timeline - this will become important several months from now.
Read chapter 3 here.
Dr. Karlyn, My heart hurts for you. The reason your experience rings true to me is because I've been through something similar. Back in my early 30s, I started a new job that I was excited about at the same time as my co-worker, let's call her Hope. We essentially figured out the job together and supported each other in making professional reports. I considered her a close friend and invited her to my daughter's first birthday party.
Unfortunately, Hope had been on anti-depressants since she was a teenager and after researching on the internet decided to go off of them cold turkey. This caused her to have ongoing severe panic attacks and uncontrollable ticks. She ended up in the hospital one afternoon and I visited her there and met her dad and her boyfriend. The whole thing was awful and scary.
Hope pulled me into a dark office one day and told me she was scared that she was going crazy and asked me for my help. And of course, I vowed to do whatever I could to help her through this. I asked her if she was suicidal and she admitted she'd been thinking of driving her car into a tree. I demanded that she call up either her Dad or her boyfriend and tell one of them what was going on so she could have support outside of work, and she did. A few days later, Hope thanked me and said that was the right thing to do.
At the same time, I'd started taking Master's level classes and would be out of the office for an hour a day a few days a week. Hope told me that while I was out of the office, she found herself gripping her desk in panic, just trying to breath until I got back into the office.
I was naïve and stupid. I went to our mutual boss, (let's call her Anne) who was our age and someone we both considered a friend. I asked Anne to check in on Hope while I was in class, to make sure she was ok. Our boss demanded that I tell her what was going on and I told her it was private and not my place to say. But she continued to insist.
I told Anne that our friend was going through a health crisis and feeling suicidal and I was scared for her. I didn't elaborate, just that one sentence.
Anne agreed to check in on our friend and I thought that was the end of it.
Yes, I did consider at the time that this was a huge breach of privacy and trust, but I believed that Hope needed to have someone in the office keeping an eye on her because of how severely the panic was hitting her when I wasn't there. And at the time, I was still very inclined to bow to authority and do what my boss told me without questioning it.
Well our boss apparently went to Hope, told her what I had said and demanded to know if it was true. Of course, Hope felt hurt, betrayed, and was angry with me. She had a lot of pride and while I knew that, I didn't realize how important her pride was to her identity.
I truly had no idea what was going on and kept reaching out, in confusion, trying to salvage our friendship. Hope didn't explain that Anne and confronted her, and just kept telling me she was "fine." I believe that Hope felt I'd blabbed her secrets, probably just to gossip or something.
Things got worse over time, because I was an idiot and did stupid things. I kept pushing her, trying my best to save both our friendship and work relationship. I told mutual co-workers that she was mad at me, that I didn't know why, and I asked them for advice. (This was absolutely stupid on my part. I was still so young and looked to others to tell me what to do.) Of course this got back to her and made things worse, cementing the idea that I was gossiping about her, trying to hurt her. Again, I wasn't trying to hurt her, I was confused and stupid and young and didn't know what else to do.
To be clear, the only people I EVER told (until now) that Hope was having a health crisis and was feeling suicidal was Anne and the HR guy, as you'll see in a second.
It got so bad that our boss's boss (let's call him Tom) sent us to HR, who met with us privately and I explained everything to him and after his session with her, he had us sit down to talk.
During that discussion, he asked me about telling Anne about Hope's health crisis. At that point, was when I first realized Anne had confronted Hope and that had been the start of the end of our friendship. The HR guy demanded, "Didn't you know this was a massive breach of trust?"
I turned to Hope and looked her directly in the eye as I sadly explained that I'd rather have her hate me and still alive, than have not said anything at all and risk Hope committing suicide. I apologized to her and told her I hadn't meant to hurt her.
She just glared at me coldly and the HR guy nodded knowingly, understanding my viewpoint. He met with Tom after that and I'm not sure if he said anything about me, but apparently he told Tom that Hope had an anger management issue.
I thought that once she understood my reasons, things would ease up between us and they only got worse. I continued to reach out to her and try to salvage our friendship.
We both had access to Tom's calendar, so that we could add appointments as needed. One day, I noticed there was a new message alert. I'd not seen any messages connected to the calendar before so felt like I should check it. I knew Tom's emails weren't accessible via that calendar.
A glitch in the program allowed me to see all of Hope's emails. I got nosy because a great many of them were about me. The level of hatred and daily complaining over every little thing I did, from the sound of me walking past her office, to the smell of my lunch when I ate at my desk, was shocking. I realized at that point that there was nothing to salvage and stopped reaching out to Hope. She'd gone on a scorched-earth campaign and there was no turning back.
I deleted access to Tom's calendar, after asking my husband who works in IT, if there was a way to disconnect Hope's email. He said his best theory was that it was a glitch in Outlook and couldn't be fixed by us.
I reached out to Tom and told him that no matter what I did, it made things worse. I asked him what I should do, thinking he'd tell me to start looking for another job. He told me to "keep your eyes on your own knitting." I don't knit, Dr. Karlyn, but this felt like the life-raft I'd been searching for and from then on, I kept my head down and my mouth shut.
He arranged for our offices to be moved and we were placed on opposite sides of the building. I was put in an office next to him and she was placed into a different department's suite.
Things continued to slide downhill, despite my keeping my head down and mouth shut.
One example was when we were supposed to meet with Anne and another colleague, we met in a tiny office with only 4 chairs. Hope came in late to the meeting, saw that there was only one chair left, next to me. She loudly dragged the chair away from me to sit as far away from me as possible. She was angry throughout the entire meeting and any time we had meetings together, no matter who else was present. This continued for months.
Ultimately, Tom gave her a performance eval that gave her a "needs improvement" for her interaction with co-workers. She rage-quit and that was that.
I know that I screwed up massively and have learned a lot of painful lessons. I apologized to Hope again, years later after she visited our building.
Dr. Karlyn's attempts to keep her head down and not make things worse with Keri, don't matter. Sometimes the other person goes on a "scorched-earth" campaign and they simply won't stop. My theory is that they think they are fighting a righteous fight for justice.
Dr. Karlyn, I wish I knew how to end this situation. I've seen you own up for your own mistakes and be authentic in the things you say and the emotions you express. I understand the confusion and the need to look around and ask for help from other people to put a stop to it.
I think your intuition that someone/something else is involved behind the scenes is correct.