This is what Elon wants Twitter to be, a place where actual experts like this excellent historian is mercilessly harassed by hateful reactionaries for trying to talk about racism in a nuanced way. There is no reason to expect it will get any better with Elon at the helm.
After a while I just got used to having to spend a significant amount of time blocking threatening or insulting a-holes every time a tweet went viral, esp. one that mentioned race, gender, or sexuality. Sometimes I just set my account to private mode to let the storm die down.
At this point I'm just done with it. Hateful reactionary a-holes have a right to say what they want (but not make death threats, to be clear), but I also have a right to take my attention and content elsewhere. Like Mastodon and Post, for now. #twexit
I do this not because I'm a snowflake who can't handle criticism. I do this because my time is too valuable to deal with the bad faith propagandists and truly ignorant dolts who Elon has amplified lately.
Worth noting that Don Jr. seems to have been a key figure behind the army of flying monkeys who went after that historian. Using media to distract and disrupt our public discourse has long been a central MAGA tactic that Elon appears to be on board with.
As I point out in this Post, Elon's transformation of Twitter into a right wing propaganda site (masquerading as a supposedly non-partisan place where "reasonable moderates like Elon" gather) is proceeding rapidly. It's time to get out if you can. post.news/article/2JkXCg…
I don't judge people who make a different decision about this, but to my mind it's just not a fair fight between people wielding only tweets and the person with his hands on the algorithmic dials and is making all of the decisions regarding back end policies, suspensions, etc.
If the ads I’m seeing every five tweets or so on my timeline are any indication, things seem to be going great for the company providing the highest quality content and most accurate information on the planet!
Not a dissimilar feel from these classified ads from the January 1980 edition of the "National Educator," an antisemitic, racist, anti-communist far right newsletter run by Jim Townsend.
Nothing like being at work and having journalists sliding into your BMs.
I hear the employees have set up a shared collection of toilet paper in the middle of their workspace that they affectionately refer to as “the public square.”
This article screenshot is from January 2019. The APA has subsequent made changes in response to criticism. For good measure, the account he’s responding to frequently repeats the Putin talking point that Ukraine = Nazis. Just pure right wing propaganda brain worms. Get. Out.
The person Elon is interacting with thinks calling someone a “communist with a hair cut I don’t like” is a counter argument, and has a fifth grade understanding of the history she’s confidently pontificating about.
Today Elon and a Malaysian right wing propagandist, who as a young gamer had a habit of spouting antisemitic bile, are trying to resuscitate the old "Obamaphone" panic on the basis of an easily debunked Fox News story they both know is inaccurate.
Get. Out.
This is him as a young man. It's so strange how Elon ends up being social media pals with people who have a habit of spouting antisemitic crap.
Not sure if Elon is aware, but Twitter has this useful function where easily debunked lies can be identified and then not recirculated by people who actually care about the truth.
Here are some excerpts from a far right bible study from November of 1964. The false claims about "rigged elections" and "the liberal media" and so on might ring some bells. In the next tweet I will tell you who this is.
It's Wesley Swift, one of the primary originators of Christian Identity theology...which is a white supremacist and neo-Nazi variety of Protestantism. It formed the groundwork for what became the Posse Comitatus movement. jhs.press.gonzaga.edu/articles/10.33…
One of the people inspired (in part) by Swift's theology was Ralph Forbes, who went on to have a long career as an Arkansas Nazi (and almost GOP Lt. Gov. nominee in 1990).