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
If I want to fight,
On the whole, I would rather
Fight with my good friends
Quite a list.
...just a slight tweak there...
It’s a strictly voluntary venue.... tune it OUT of your life. PERIOD
Oh no, he had an online friend who goes by LifeNRApatriot? And?
Having worked many real terrorism issues overseas and domestically for over 20 years, I’m amazed at the things that make it into the public limelight and those that don’t. We worked dozens of stateside cases involving Muslim terrorist training camps in the United States, methods radical Islamic groups use to move their people into the US, methods they use to make and launder money and the list goes on. Scant few of those stories ever make it into the media, but one misguided and seriously pissed off conservative kid represents all of us?
p.s. My online ID is “Manhunter” (which was also my call sign and nickname at two different points in my career); I’m a Benefactor Life Member of the NRA; I have an NRA decal and a Retired, US Army decal on my truck and a Gadsden Flag license plate on the front. I suppose that makes me a terrosits, huh? Janet Napolitano and Barack Obama obviously think so...
Just more cuck virtue signaling from a good little house wigger.
Halfrican had apparently been surveilling the population for a long time———had “a hate-America agenda” from the get-go.
Steven Crowder has a great segment on Hate Speech isn’t real. Change my mind.
TRUTH is the new HATE SPEECH, when uncomplimentary and spoken about the “protected” classes.
That is much better.
My faith in you is restored
Make it a great day
My Twitter experience is that if your follower number is greater than the number you follow in sort of this ratio, you're either a minor celebrity of some sort, or you think a lot of yourself.
I'm guessing "thinks a lot of himself".
You're not a serious participant in the conversation.
Lefties proudly use their real names on social media - because there are no consequences to doing so.
Conservatives will be fired and/or harassed in other ways.
Social Media has real issues. But we don’t have any reason to believe the charge is true. On the other hand, we have every reason to believe that the PC FBI is ignoring Islamist training camps in Islamberg
The current definition of hate is the saying or doing of anything that would have been considered normal and not worthy of notice fifty years ago.
“we are on the march towards tyranny”
“Bull turds! We are in a state of it, as it is currently being practiced. We are in the opening salvos of the second civil war and to pretend otherwise could be lethal for ourselves and our loved ones.”
I am 74, I have seen this coming since I learned to walk and yes vannrox, we have been in a state of tyranny for decades, not marching toward tyranny, it is becoming worse every day, to say we are marching toward it is like someone saying we are marching toward a mud hole when he is already knee deep in mud. If this is not already tyranny then I cannot conceive of what tyranny might be. Apparently many Americans have no real concept of what actual freedom might be, one must have a concept of freedom to know when he is already living under tyranny. Perhaps we should set about defining freedom for the benefit of those who have no idea of what it might be.
War Zones are what we have. War Zones and no go zones will be the foreseeable future.
Is there anyway to prove you are an american? Who lives in Indiana without HVAC anyway? Your Chinese Agitprop is showing.
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