its players to incite assaults and murder of innocents and witnesses.
Anyone ever arrested?
let alone at 6AM.
Posted on 01/29/2019 3:26:51 AM PST by vannrox
IS SOCIAL MEDIA HATE SPEECH?
receive columns by email Vincent Vetromile is a 19-year-old Eagle Scout who likes guns.
His Twitter account shows that he follows the president and the vice president, is a Christian, and likes Fox News.
His profile picture is of a 1776 patriot in tricorn hat in front of a Betsy Ross flag, with an AR15 in his hands.
He’s got a Gadsden flag at the house.
He’s an all-American kid.
Who was arrested over the weekend for, according to the police, wanting to travel across the state and kill a bunch of people living at a religious commune called Islamberg.
The alleged terrorist from the suburbs is, on social media, exactly the stereotype progressives have of militant conservatives. He is the monster the Democrats warned you about. But the claims made about him are not a progressive fantasy, they are a conservative reality.
And they are one more chilling cautionary tale about the rage of social media and its potential to spill over violently into the real world.
I write this as a conservative myself. I write this as someone who scrolled uncomfortably through the accounts Vetromile follows on Twitter, hoping not to find my own. I was not there, but many others were who are part and parcel of the conservative cheering section on social media.
As well as still others – Confederate pride groups – who smell of something worse than conservatism.
On his @xXrebel1Xx Twitter account, Vincent Vetromile follows 71 and is followed by 298. That means he wasn’t just drinking out of the bucket, he was pouring in, too. Among his followers were CSA4EVER, Deep State Exposed, CSA Patriot and LifeNRA Patriot.
Among the people he follows are the conservative icon actor James Woods, conservative humorist Cloyd Rivers, Fox News commentator Sheriff David Clarke, and various Confederate, Second Amendment and Trump posters.
He mostly retweeted messages from others – including the White House and Fox News – having to do with illegal immigration, border security, terrorism and the chiding of Democrats and progressive causes.
In short, except for the Confederate fixation, he swam in the mainstream of conservative social media, and the things he followed and retweeted are followed and retweeted by large numbers of conservatives and Republicans all across the country.
And he is accused of being a terrorist.
Which ought to give us pause.
Do we dismiss this kid – and his alleged three confederates – as freaks on the edge, motivated by their own evil and dysfunction? Do we pluck them out of the stew in which they simmered and cast them aside, but keep the stew because we like it?
Or do we wonder if the increasingly vicious tone of political social media has crossed the line that separates civility from savagery?
I believe, increasingly, that it has.
It is easy for me to see the pure hatred that oozes from every particle of progressive social media. It is a battlefront where the only rule of engagement is the destruction and humiliation of anyone whose differing opinion renders them an enemy. It is a cesspool where violence is hinted at and fantasized about.
It is easy for me to see that in progressive social media.
But I cannot deny seeing it in conservative social media as well. Perhaps not to the same degree, but perhaps that view arises from my own partisanship.
There is a bloodlust which dominates the social media postings of progressives and conservatives alike. Not all, but most, in varying degrees. It is not love of country, it is hatred of opponent. There is less fighting for something, and more fighting against something else.
It is the language not of fellow citizens in a Republic, it is the invective of instigators in a civil war.
Some of it is done for money, as invisible patrons fund organizations, or clicks draw advertisers. People define themselves professionally as online assassins. Many do it out of the thrill of passion – even dark passion such as this – and the shallow and weak pose as big and tough behind the anonymity of faceless postings.
It is a knife that cuts both ways, that allows for the exchange of ideas and the advocacy of beliefs, but which also fosters verbal assault and relishes personal destruction.
And somewhere, on the edges, there are Vincent Vetromiles who will believe it is real. And who will take the hyperventilated rage of hateful postings and translate them into tragedies on American streets.
The wise will stop and think, and make sure that the current approach to social media is intelligent and righteous. Viewpoints should be strong, beliefs should be passionate, the tongue should be free. But the hatred should be restrained – by conscience, and by social convention.
For progressives and conservatives alike.
Right now social media is a Molotov cocktail that threatens to burn down the real world.
Vincent Vetromile is just one more indication of that.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2019
Our side’s lawyers if this is true, I hope have lined up to take his case asap.
I hate going to the dentist. I hate when I choke on a fish bone.
I don't agree with abortion. I don't agree with homosexuality. I don't agree with this transgender cr**. Absolutely nothing to do with hate.
How the heck do you define hate?
I hate going to the dentist. I hate when I choke on a fish bone.
I don’t agree with abortion. I don’t agree with homosexuality. I don’t agree with this transgender cr**. Absolutely nothing to do with hate.
...
Hate is defined by what the Left deems it at a moment they see fit to use it.
I hate how the propagandist (DNC/Hollywood/MSM/NWO)
Intentionally twist things to advance their otherwise twisted agenda.
The concept of hate speech is unconstitutional. Of course RBG will say it is just because she can which is why she must be replaced by a person who actually reads the Constitution.
JoMa
They are all Glenn Close.
YOU WILL LOVE ME or I’ll kill your bunny!
_____________
Much of it is.
(jmo) -- When so many of the public, have the easy occasion to spill their thoughts and emotions on a semi-constant basis, on all that reaches their minds .......... we will have or do have an undisciplined, and weaker society.
I can remember being raised in the early 50's and the following years. A child's opinion on matters then was generally supposed to be kept to him or herself.
We reap what we sow now. Undisciplined, uneducated know-it-alls. (See A.O.C., etc.)
Up to this point, Social Media is a character wrecker.
******
ps -- Excessive celebrations by professional athletes is contributing to our dying society also. Celebrating what you were supposed to accomplish in the first place is absurd.
As coaches used to say, ("Act like you've been there before.")
(jmo)
It isn’t hate, social media is trash...when you look at twitter casually, within the span of reading the first few...an odor seems to start coming off your screen. The language, the anger, the total lake of empathy...which MUST be present for any real discussion...all of it combines to make sort of a virtual container for mental excrement. Turn it all off, I guarantee you will have a better, happier, and therefore probably more productive day.
___________
I will blow (my nose) on Sarah Beattie.
They have gotten to that point, and, they are never punished.
Has Lonsberry been under a rock?! Social media has been a hotbed for viciousness for years already. There are many savage and uncivil characters out there hiding behind an avatar spewing hatred and division daily.
Is she the one that made the New Year’s Resolution and thirty minutes later had one in her mouth?
How the heck do you define hate?
If you are against anything a black person, women, gay lesbian, transgender, Islamist, brown person, socialist, fascist communist, anarchist, dumba## rat politician has to say
Because if so it sounds like one need punch no one. Just hang around her general vicinity and eventually your turn will come up.
And then uses the conviction to launch.
I'd have to wonder what information led the police to arrest the kids. Were they SWATTED for their gun loving conservative views?
In the last week, Twitter has suspended me for 12 hours for criticizing Ann Coulter and for quoting a hateful message by another Tweeter who is liberal and was not banned for his tweet. I got suspended for tweeting his hateful tweet.
False Flag attack.
TRUST NO ONE.
In other words democrats.
Because conservative blacks, women and the like are mocked on the “News” channels and in leftists rags like NYT or WaPo.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.