Thread by @brooklynmarie

Perhaps six weeks before, I had watched a group of white supremacists rush a Jewish lawmaker, back him up against a pillar, spit on him, scream "JEW" in his face, and punch an aide before I tracked them to Stormfront where they threatened to return with weapons.

https://twitter.com/DrJasonJohnson/status/1347531330159050757

My partner, another journalist, took the video in this story (not sure why it kept getting credited to San Diego CityBeat, as the only people who got footage was us and the Southwestern Sun.)

gawker.com/5733427/angry-…

I was gravely concerned by the rhetoric and violence I had witnessed, and so sent this footage to every contact I had at every news network and begged them to air it and show the sort of violence taking shape in the San Diego Tea Party and likely elsewhere. They threatened us too

Meanwhile I monitored Stormfront, where I watched exultant people post images and their own accountings of the night with an increasing sense of urgency. My colleagues wrote back saying it was interesting but probably just a one-off and "something to watch"

It didn't stop them from trotting out my partner's footage (without attribution, naturally) after the Gabby Giffords mass shooting, when news organizations rent their figurative garments and asked, Was this anti-Semitic violence??? and Could anyone have prevented this???

The answer to both of those questions was always YES. I've worked in the intervening years to try to get people to understand that the rhetoric directly informed the violence which directly informed the rhetoric etc... but I don't think it was clear -- until this week.

Oh and "someone" identified and narced out all the shitstains bragging about it because of course they are all in that video and "someone" deeply enjoyed it when they all got arrested later lol. Fuck Nazis.

I remember the day of that mass shooting. I was in such despair. Had people seen what I had seen I think there would have been a lot more concern. It was a really, really ugly scene that night, hard to communicate even with that video.

Just to make it really, really clear: I'm not faulting anyone for what happened that day ten years ago. It was a hideous tragedy. But better coverage and understanding of the relationships between weaponized rhetoric and violence could have added extra layers of security.

Well I mean I'm not faulting anyone except for the mass shooter and the shitbags who encouraged and pushed weaponized rhetoric, who are all now backing away from it hard and fast now that their plausible deniability suddenly dried up this week. This is entirely on them.