As many folks have said, the striking thing here is less the initial misperception than the dogged refusal to acknowledge a pretty clear-cut mistake. Beyond the general aversion to admitting error, I think part of what’s going on here is specific cases take on symbolic weight.
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1394256597241798659
You see this in a bunch of situations where a particular incident gets cast as a stand in for a bigger Social Problem. Starting from the perception the guy was making white power shadow puppets, any counterargument is Minimizing the Problem of White Supremacy in American Culture.
I’m thinking, e.g., of that Rolling Stone story from a few years back about the confabulated frat house gang rape at UVA. The first folks pointing out problems with the story took a ton of heat, because in some sense it wasn’t really about whether the particular event happened.
The particular event had become an illustration of the problem of rape culture on campuses, and for some folks “did this actually happen?” seemed equivalent to “is this a serious problem?”
Almost definitionally, once it’s a national news story it’s not really about the specifics of the case. Whether this particular dude is a racist, after all, is not really of that much interest to people other than his acquaintances & coworkers.
What IS of general interest is whether white supremacist ideologies are having a disturbing resurgence & finding increasing mainstream expression. Drawing attention to the broader issue is the only reason anyone really cares about the particular guy.
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