is a reporter who writes about tech, money, and human behavior. She joined The Verge in 2014 as science editor. Previously, she was a reporter at Bloomberg.
The ultimate source for The New York Times’ story about Zohran Mamdani’s college application is an open secret. It’s an anime-loving neo-Nazi whose hobbies include furry drawings, posting fan art of a video game character, and hacking universities. On X, the alleged hacker is followed by New York Times freelancer Benjamin Ryan, who was the first byline on the Mamdani story.
The alleged hacker uses an online handle that is a racial slur, so I will be referring to them as the Anime Nazi; they have taken credit for five hacks of universities. Three of them, as first reported by Bloomberg, targeted the University of Minnesota, New York University, and Columbia University.
Social media reviewed by The Verge — including X and fediverse accounts — shows a series of reposts of statements and images such as swastikas, “miss u hitler,” and “minorities have no place in our world.” The Anime Nazi themselves posted such things as “I am racist,” “I am violently racist toward black people,” and a picture of a unicorn sitting on a swastika.
On a post from November 5th, 2024, when then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ X account was encouraging people to vote, the alleged hacker’s account replied, “You will be executed.” The next post after that was “kill them all please, mr president.” When another X account asked the Anime Nazi if they were concerned about law enforcement, they replied with a quote of a post from President Donald Trump: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
The Anime Nazi appears to have been specifically targeting universities, often for admissions data. They claim to have stolen data from millions of people. The data include Social Security numbers, addresses, family members’ information, and citizenship status. Perhaps significantly, that information also includes self-reported race — meaning that someone who is, in their own words, “violently racist toward black people” has lists of people who identify as Black.
The alleged hacker, in response to a request for comment, wrote that this story wouldn’t achieve anything but making The Verge look ridiculous and “giving funny publicity to me.” Most journalists, they claimed, “are smart enough to figure that out before publishing, so end up removing my name and any direct references to me.” They added, in a separate email, “My comment: her name is [slur].”
In what little reporting exists about the actual Columbia breach (and not what stolen data reveal about a mayoral candidate when he was 17 years old), the hacker has been said to be “politically motivated.” Bloomberg, which spoke to the hacker, reported that they are acquiring information about whether universities persisted in affirmative action admissions after the Supreme Court effectively banned the practice in 2023. Insofar as open racism can be said to be a political motivation, the hacker is indeed politically motivated. But it also has the effect of soft-pedaling the reason for repeated attacks on institutions of higher learning. The Anime Nazi is an activist like a Klansman is an activist.
This is important because journalistic best practices around the use of hacked materials is to contextualize the hacker’s motivation, if the materials are used at all. While it appears to be true that the hacker opposes affirmative action, it may be more relevant — particularly when the news article in question attacks a left-wing politician of color — that the hacker’s pseudonym is literally a racist slur.
The redactions in the New York University data were imperfect, however
... continue reading