One has to be struck by the bad faith and hypocrisy radiating from all the people boldly declaring Sarah Jeong a racist and a sexist. Most of whom are, themselves, apologists for Trump's endless bigotry and vulgarity and who otherwise equivocate in every discussion of prejudice.
That was made clear when I saw a bunch of replies to @HeerJeet's tweet criticising NY Mag for publishing Steve Bannon try to argue that *Bannon* isn't a racist, but Jeong somehow magically is. Despite the man being a literal anti-Semite and white supremacist.
I hesitate to keep getting involved in this, because the whole discussion reeks of Nazi-style disinfo, and is itself a distraction from a variety of real issues. But it's useful if only as a case study of how the extreme right weaponises social media and liberal politesse.
These people, who concern-troll any time a woman talks about sexism or a non-white person discusses racism, who demand impossible proofs, who declaim our lack of "logic," suddenly feel able to boldly declare Jeong a racist? How very funny.
These same people, who would take someone like Roseanne and declare that she's been wronged by hateful ideologues who can't claim to know her state of mind or her secret heart, suddenly have no problem defining Jeong--on an ontological level--racist.
That a news network that built itself on scare campaigns about POC, especially Black people--up to and including a moral panic about a Black Santa Claus--can, with straight faces, wring its collective hands about Jeong being "a racist" is truly beyond.
It is, from start to finish, a mockery. And in the end, for the actual trolls, that's the point. They want to poison any discussion of racism. This is, in the final analysis, just another paralysing round of "both sides" un-discourse, which always benefits actual bigots.
And what makes this easier is our mainstream discourse about "being offended," as I discussed last night. That is part of what's being taken advantage of here.
But it's transparent bad faith, and an attempt to assassinate the character of a sharp-minded reporter and commentator. And, aside from how devastating this must all be to her personally, I lament the fact that her distinguished body of work is being reduced to this.
This is, in many ways, the inverse of a dynamic that plagues any woman known as a "victim of harassment." The latter is all she becomes known for. This GG/alt-right style digging campaign, meanwhile, is meant to tar the target with an insulting appellation. While harassing them.
I have, in moments of frustration, snapped at people on Twitter dot com; sometimes to people who didn't deserve it (you can have that one for free, Nazis). But in the end, it's not my life's work.
And nothing said was so severe as to merit overshadowing that. It's not like the overt and obvious bigotry evinced by, say, Barr or Yiannopoulos, which actually keys into prejudice that costs people jobs, dignity, or their very lives.
The goal of these right wing trolls is to target progressives, particularly WOC, and try to tar them for failing to live up to liberal politeness norms, to sublimate everything about them and who they are into a manufactured scandal. Nothing could suit them more.
