Belief that negative coverage will disinfect harmful action/people goes back generations- it backfired spectacularly in coverage of the 1st & 2nd Klans (eg see work by @FelixHistory), and does the same w/ populist demagogues now. Yet it remains for many an unshakable assumption
And of course for some, this coverage can be helpful, but CAN is the strongest thing you can say. It just as easily normalizes & bolsters hate, providing bad actors all the manipulation fodder they could dream of-- which Klansmen knew in the 1920s and the late 1860s before that
That's what makes shock over the current state of things so ...ahistorical, for one thing. This shit has been happening for 100+ years in exactly the same ways. More intensified now due to network/technological changes etc etc but a generationally-compounding problem
Hence, these questions speak to nothing less than a network crisis -- one that is so much bigger and deeper than our immediate problems. We HAVE our immediate problems because the reckoning that should have happened decades ago never did
