In the world where the current US President routinely and publicly calls people who disagree with him or disapprove of him “traitors” and his political opponents “criminals”, “crooked”, etc., and fumes that anything negative that the media report about him is a pack of lies.
This is not normal or typical. Wearing a MAGA hat is not comparable to wearing, say, a “Whip Inflation Now” button in the Ford years or some other standard Presidential-slogan insignia. Wearing a MAGA hat is declaring “I support Trump and I accept his version of reality”, even though that version is blatantly and unprecedentedly hateful and dishonest.
No, of course wearing a MAGA hat isn’t an actual crime, nor should it be. But it’s symbolically announcing the wearer’s open enmity toward people who criticize Trump, and the wearer’s embrace of the “alternative facts” and dishonest spin that that enmity is founded on. Like any other bigoted hate symbol, MAGA gear should be regarded with wariness rather than trivialized or ignored.
Why would they need it? Do black people, or Native Americans, need permission from white tribal leaders if they want to draw a picture of a white person, or play classical or country music? Do the Minnesota Vikings need to beg for permission from the King of Norway?
Bigoted hate symbol? Oh goodness. Better tell Kanye that he’s a racist bigot. People need to stop projecting their biased interpretations onto others. That’s been a problem with many of those subjects. People think their one interpretation is the one true interpretation. That doesn’t end well in religions or politics.
The fact that a child was doxxed and threatened with violence and death on social media because of a hat and a smirk is madness. It’s absolutely absurd and insane that people on social media are overreacting, in many cases disingenuously mind you, over this. If I were Russia or China I’d be pouring billions of dollars into stirring the pot. Social media and a hyper partisan atmosphere are far more dangerous to the West than a few more nukes or a carrier.
People need to ask themselves if a hat, a flag, or a party affiliation is that triggering or that threatening do they feel comfortable being the desired audience for Russian and soon to be Chinese psy-ops?
This isn’t really as baffling as you’re making it out to be. And it’s certainly not comparable to, say, black people playing classical music, or to the use of a term for a group of medieval sea raiders as the name of a sports team. (Although note that if the Minnesota team had instead been called the “Swenskies” or “Bohunks” or some other mocking term frequently used by Anglophone Americans making fun of (white) Scandinavian or Central European immigrants, that would be offensive, and there would have been plenty of pushback from those ethnic groups about it.)
It’s one thing to treat the long-dead medieval Vikings or ancient Trojans or Spartans as a mere symbol or mascot for modern sports teams in the western world, but it’s another thing to appropriate pieces of the ethnic and cultural identities of currently existing disprivileged minority groups for that purpose.
It poisons discussions and divides more nowadays, and it is used to troll others who are the targets of his hate. As we can see it also normalizes his reprehensible insults and dog bullhorns among followers that were not into that kind of thing before.
I’m not in any way disagreeing with you that doxxing and threats are wrong. What I’m disagreeing with you about is your nonsensical claim that wearing a MAGA hat shouldn’t even be considered “noteworthy”.
But there’s nothing absurd or insane about pointing out that wearing a MAGA hat is advertising a hate ideology. Plenty of us are capable of objecting to the deliberate nastiness of MAGA ideology without wanting to doxx or threaten other people in consequence.
Well, perhaps you should mention that to all the hyper partisans going around in their hate-symbol MAGA hats to proclaim their endorsement of the lying, shit-stirring, social-media-trolling, hyper partisan President.
And if it had a swastika, still a hat? Obviously not. So, a hat can be a symbol, it can be a statement. The MAGA hat, for instance, clearly states “I am a hat resting upon a cranium that surrounds a vacuum”.
Reducto ad Hitlerum? At some point hyperbole and violent overreaction is going to go too far. But whatever, if hatcrime is the offense of the day is doxxing and threats of violence suitable punishment?
Erik Abriss, writer for Vulture.com (which is an offshoot of New York Magazine): “i don’t know what it says about me but I’ve truly lost the ability to articulate the hysterical rage, nausea, and heartache this makes me feel. I just want these people to die. Simple as that. Every single one of them. And their parents.”
There are a lot more who called for them to be punched as so forth rather than killed outright. Here’s a list, with sources, naming a few that was spread around conservative forums on Reddit. It’s a day old so they’ve probably found more since then: Reddit - Dive into anything
Someone named Sarah Beattie, reportedly an SNL writer, publicly offered a blowjob to anyone who punches the smirking kid. Although, I’m having trouble confirming that she’s an SNL write because all searches on her name are overwhelmed with stories about this incident. Actress Offers Sex Act to Anyone Willing to ‘Punch’ Covington Teenager
I myself brought up the MAGA hat not because it makes them bad people, but because the hat has nothing to do with their purported reason for being there. They were supposed to be doing a pro-life protest. Wearing a pro-life hat would make sense. But a MAGA hat shows they were really there for a pro-Trump message.
And then they did say things that fit that. They pushed the “foreigners go home” message. They pushed a white supremacist message. And, like it or not, those were actually part of the “Make America Great Again” proposal.
The MAGA hat was suspicious due to the reason for their protest, and then their actions confirmed the suspicions. Legit pro-life protesters would care more about pushing the anti-abortion message.
And, yes, Kanye West is a bigot. Did you not hear him saying “slavery is a choice”? And when everyone tells him that what he’s doing supports racism, he doesn’t care. He even said about Trump “racism isn’t a dealbreaker.” The guy has been acting like a racist lately.
His only saving grace are people saying he’s just so out of touch that he doesn’t understand the implications of what he’s saying. Or, yes, that his mental illness and refusal to take the drugs are leaving him vulnerable to irrational thoughts. The guy largely doesn’t make sense anymore.
There’s a reason why he’s gone from a guy that black people respect to being considered an Uncle Tom.
Meanwhile, I’ll just quote myself from the other thread on this…
Also, let’s not forget that their bad behavior was not limited to being a rowdy, racist mob. They were also horribly misogynistic and definitely looking for trouble.
Here’s testimony from someone else who was there:
And here’s that footage:
And here’s one of them screaming “it’s not rape if you like it”.
Which one of the shitheads at that school defended by saying, “We always dress up like that for basketball games”, which, as far as defenses go, is pretty fucking weak.
So yeah. The media fucked up. It dropped the ball badly. But it didn’t drop the ball by making villains out of poor innocent high-schoolers. It dropped the ball by apologizing, by pretending this was anything but a gang of rabble-rousing, shit-stirring, racist, misogynistic thugs out for trouble, by falling for the spin of the public relations firm Sandmann’s mom hired for her son, as if this story couldn’t get any more fucking embarrassing. And in reward for their actions, they’re getting booked to mainstream talk shows and invited to the white house. Nicely done.
Obviously, death threats are wrong. Obviously nobody should be threatening violence on the school. But… I have trouble feeling any degree of outrage over that, because this school needs to be burned to the ground. It is the result of a broken culture actively breaking those who come out of it. There are countless stories swirling around about just how awful the culture there is - how sexism, racism, and homophobia are enabled and endorsed, how bullies are empowered, and how children there are taught to hate and never face backlash for it.
And these kids are a result of that culture. And because they’re rich and white, and their parents have a direct hand in enforcing that culture (who hears “your son was part of a racist, misogynistic mob harassing people and looking for trouble” and thinks, "Shit, I’d better hire a PR firm so that my kid doesn’t face any backlash from this?!), they will never, ever face consequences for their actions. Sandmann’s punishment for this was being invited to the Today Show and possibly the white house. What lesson do you think they learned from this? Nobody should face online death threats, but as of right now, that is literally the only consequence these little shitheads are going to take from this, so excuse me if my outrage meter is running at less than 100%. Or, to paraphrase one media creator I’m a big fan of: “I get death threats on a daily basis without being a total shithead, and I’ve never been invited on national television to talk about it.” (He gets death threats for writing articles and making videos on gaming that gamergaters don’t like.)
The list has sources for everything and it stands for itself. It is irrelevant where it was posted. It is posted in conservative forums on Reddit because it is reportedly being deleted by moderators elsewhere there. (This is credible, as in the last year or two there has been widespread left-wing censorship of the main “neutral” forums there such as r/news. Politically controversial threads often have thousands of deleted comments and archiving sites show that many of them are innocuous posts that break no rules.) I could have posted the list myself here, but I’m not going to take the time to reformat the links for the SDMB.
This is Great Debates. Make an argument or get out. “These facts are not true because the person who posted a link to them has been spiritually contaminated by viewing something written by a Trump supporter” is not an argument.
That’s a great bit of advice. Where have I seen someone threatening violence on the school? Oh, that’s right, two pages ago in this very thread, this was quoted: