Posted on 04/15/2023 8:12:26 PM PDT by Kazan
An Orange County man has been sentenced to one year in prison for threatening the ultra-woke Merriam-Webster dictionary online.
Jeremy Hanson, 35, was angrily responding to definition changes for words like “girl,” “woman,” and “female.”
Prosecutors had argued that Hanson has a history of “threatening communications, nearly all of which were motivated by … biases based upon race, gender, gender identity, and/or sexual orientation.”
Hanson also allegedly sent angry messages to the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, Land O’ Lakes Inc., Hasbro, a nonbinary rabbi and others.
Prosecutors also argued that they wanted to make an example of him and use his sentencing as a “deterrent to others at a time when violent rhetoric is becoming more common,” according to a report from the Orange County Register.
The “threats” Hanson made were sent through the “contact” form on Merriam-Webster’s website.
“It is absolutely sickening that Merriam-Webster now tells blatant lies and promotes anti-science propaganda,” Hanson wrote, according to prosecutors. “There is no such thing as ‘gender identity.’ The imbecile who wrote this entry should be hunted down and shot.”
The messages were sent between October 2 and October 8.
During the sentencing hearing, Judge Mark Mastroianni in U.S District Court in Springfield said that Merriam-Webster management was “fearful that Hanson would come to their office and cause harm.”
Hanson pleaded guilty last year to “interstate transmission of threatening communications in connection with threats,” against the Massachusetts-based dictionary publisher.
Hanson was sentenced Thursday in a federal court in Massachusetts. According to the Orange County Register, he was additionally sentenced to “30 days of home confinement, three years of probation and mental health treatment.”
How is making an example of someone equal justice under law?
I sent Toyota a message through its contact form. I won’t buy their hybrid products the way they’re advertised.
exactly
All the while antifa and blm burned down cities and none were arrested, let alone convicted and imprisoned.
The government is the enemy.
This is America, we are allowed by the Constitution to have whatever bias we want.
Saying we should not have a bias is in fact a bias.
FO Government.
Ordinarily “should be hunted down and shot” is mere rhetoric and not really a realistic attempt to incite an attack. The dictionary editor who made the revisions wasn’t named and probably there was no single person who made them. Threats to kill people — made in anger — or statements that they should be killed are not unusual, but fortunately rarely carried out. (For instance, at a press conference once, basketball coach John Chaney yelled “I’ll kill you” to his coaching rival John Calipari.)
Apparently “should be hunted down and shot” was not the full extent of the threats, though. According to the Orange County Register, “Twice he threatened to shoot and bomb company headquarters, prompting Merriam-Webster to close offices in Springfield and New York City for several days, prosecutors said. Hanson also wrote an email to the president of the University of North Texas in 2022 that said ‘You ought to be shot in the head and have your offices set on fire’”...
The threats that caused company headquarters to shut down for several days aren’t specified. If that happened, though, they may have been serious enough to merit some kind of criminal penalty. Political motivation may have influenced this prosecution (and the extent of the punishment for mere words), but this guy seems to be lacking in common sense. It’s understandable that people would wonder just how far he’d go.
He was convicted in a federal district court, so the next level would be the circuit court, and then the Supreme court.
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