NPR’s Weekend Edition September 12 story by “domestic extremism correspondent" Odette Yousef once again only spied extremists on the right side of the ideological divide, ignoring worse activity on the left, and ridiculously implied that conservatives invented “doxxing” -- revealing private information about a person online toward hostile ends -- after the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Yousef’s story began at Utah Valley University, the place where Charlie Kirk was assassinated on September 10 of last year.
The quiet of the courtyard belies the violence that took place in it a year ago, and the deepened social rupture that followed. The hard-right activist was killed in front of an audience of thousands while he was debating a student with progressive political views. The co-founder and then-leader of Turning Point USA, Kirk was arguably the most influential conservative youth movement leader in a generation – and his death set off an unprecedented frenzy of intimidation, harassment and threats that seemingly reached into every corner of the country.
“Unprecedented frenzy”? Was Yousef sleeping during Woke One, where anyone in liberal-leaning occupations who dissented online from the prevailing views about George Floyd, transgenderism, or vaccination were at risk of harassment or firing? X is full of woke atrocities that the elite media would prefer be flushed down the memory hole.
Now, Yousef seems to lament that liberals can’t express glee over the murder of conservatives without consequence. She conveniently pinpointed the “accelerated erosion of political norms” onto the “last decade” -- i.e. Trump’s first election.
"After Charlie [Kirk was assassinated]. … you didn't need to be [targeted by] one of the big [social media] accounts, obviously, for anyone to find you," said Shauna Dillavou, CEO of Brightlines, a doxing prevention service. "Your neighbor found you or your friends found you. A comment in a closed group chat that would get screenshotted and passed up the chain. And that was the big shift: the neighbor-on-neighbor, trusted circle, inner sanctum violence."
Again, it sounds like daily life for several years, where curtain twitchers were eager to condemn anti-mask dissenters while keeping schools and businesses shuttered, or people (many not even conservatives) getting fired or pushed out of positions for insufficient worship of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement. One of the more notorious examples -- the firing of Democratic data analyst David Shor after calling attention to a study by a black scholar showing that violent black protests in an area tended to make it more Republican. Just don't expect Yousef to file a report on the victims of Woke One, OK?
(Speaking of doxxing, NPR hasn’t filled us in on the one performed by NBC News’ Boston affiliate on the lone holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy murder case.)
….Kirk's death, Dillavou and other experts said, removed the final guardrails – democratizing the practice of doxing at a speed and scale they never had imagined.
"That creates terrible impacts for people," Dillavou said. "It's job losses. It's career losses. People have to move. They get death threats, and lawsuits. And … those impacts are lasting."
In other words, what happened for years to dissenters from the liberal line is suddenly now a dangerous scandal spurred by “social media posts…dangled in front of an angry mob” when done to liberals for celebrating a political assassination.
To Dillavou, the tech-enabled outing of Kirk critics felt less like a call to civility, and more like incitement to violence.
Kirk “critics” is quite a euphemism for the gleeful, ghoulish, and continuing celebration of Kirk’s death on left-wing social media.
Our friend “stochastic terrorism” is back, a line borrowed from left-wing academia to blame anything bad that happens in America on Republican rhetoric:
Doxing is stochastic terrorism," she said, referring to a phenomenon in which an influential voice's call to violence increases the likelihood that a random "lone wolf" will act on it.”….
Dillavou gave her ideological bona fides away:
"It's the same as like a sex offender registry, in my mind," Dillavou said, noting that she does not struggle much with the question of whether it's ethical for antifascists, for example, to dox members of white nationalist groups….
: “Antifascist” stands for the violent left-wing masked marauders of Antifa.
