User:Jennytacular/sandbox/Learn to Code

Learn to Code was a right-wing online harassment campaign that primarily targeted journalists. It was conducted on Twitter against recently laid-off journalists from media organizations such as HuffPost and BuzzFeed. Beginning in January 2019, Learn to Code originated from 4chan's /pol/ messageboard, where journalists were targeted with malelovant tweets. The harassment campaign included death threats and targeted harrasment.

Origins
The origins of the phrase have been attributed to a man teaching web development to coal miners. In January 2019, over 1,000 jobs in journalism were eliminated by news organizations, which included Buzzfeed, HuffPost and Yahoo. On 1 February 2019, messages were made by journalists and users on platforms such as Twitter discussing the layoffs. Messages encouraging unemployed journalists to "learn to code" quickly began circulating around the platform. When Talia Lavin, a former freelance writer for HuffPost started seeing the messages, she discovered posts from 4chan encouraging harassment against journalists with "learn to code", with it being attributed to the /pol/ messageboard. The phrase has been described as dog whistle, or having a double meaning to justify harassment.

Organization
Posts encouraging the harassment campaign originated from platforms such as 4chan and Gab. Talia Lavia found 4chan threads about users bragging about taunting journalists with sock puppet accounts. She described how users on the /pol/ messageboard, which is popular with the far-right, were discussing a plan to spam social media accounts of journalists with the phrase. She described that the tactics were remiscent of the Gamergate harassment campaign. Twitter took action against the campaign, as it violated their terms of service.

Harassment and spread
Targets of the harassment were subject to hate speech, antisemitism and death threats. Some targets were met with messages with the "Day of the Rope", a far-right meme about executing journalists. Other right-wing commentators and websites mentioned the campaign, such as Donald Trump Jr., Tucker Carlson, and The Gateway Pundit.

Devin Nunes, a republican politican, mentioned the phrase on Fox News's The Ingraham Angle.