Don't Fall For the "Racist Trolls" Red Herring [Warden] #CNNBlackmail

CNN defenders, including many of their fluffers in the legacy conservative media, argue that doxxing the Reddit user responsible for posting the Trump wrestling gif would no only be professionally permissible, but also morally righteous.

HanAssholeSolo, the person who posted the gif, is not just an ordinary citizen, you see. He is a troll, and an anonymous one at that.

Anonymous trolls, they reason, are bad people--bullies, shit-stirrers and cowards who should be held accountable for their actions. This one in particular, they'll tell you, was even engaging in racist and anti-semitic speech.

Outing these hateful people, they say, is reasonable. Hell, it's a public service. They're destroying decency and civility.

Don't buy it. It's all self serving rubbish.

Let's be 100% clear on what happened here: CNN hunted down a random person posting anonymously on Reddit because he created a silly gif that made them angry. Then they forced an apology from him and crowed about it, threatening to out him if he posted anything else that made CNN employees angry.

That's it. Period. End of story.

His allegedly offensive trolling makes no difference whatsoever for the very simple reason that CNN couldn't have known what he'd posted previously if they hadn't been investigating him in the first place.

Did he make racist posts? I don't know and I don't care. It doesn't matter in the slightest, the most direct reason being that "racism" is nothing more than a post hoc justification for what was a very personal payback-seeking witch hunt conducted by a powerful media organization against a private citizen, the results of which hold no news value whatsoever.

And all over an absurd gif that hurt someone's feelings.

Yet we have the usual quisling cons in the legacy conservative media parroting this line of attack. "I have the courage to post under my own name," they boast, "so why don't you? Why would you care about being exposed unless you have something to hide."

Cut the bullshit. These people know damn well the power of the media. They work in it.

Did Joe the Plumber have something to hide? Justine Sacco? CNN, along with the rest of the media, has the power to unleash hundreds of thousands of angry avenging progressives right to your doorstep. We know this because they've done it. Memories Pizza had to close their doors because they were being harassed so badly. Justine Sacco got fired over tweeting a stupid joke. Fired. And every potential employer who ever Googles her name will attach her to it for the rest of her life.

In a world where having the wrong opinion about gay marriage can cost you your job the way it did Brendan Eich, we've all got something to hide. Even the most squeaky clean among us don't want a bunch of leftist goons hassling us or our spouses at work simply for posting a gif someone at CNN doesn't like.

This move by CNN--one applauded by the majority of the #NeverTrump conservative media--has nothing to do with anonymous internet trolls. It's about intimidating and silencing anyone with an opinion that they find offensive.

And as we've seen over the last few years, that list is long and ever growing.

It's easy to opine, as the boot-licking "reasonable" conservative media does, that anonymous internet shit-posters and trouble makers should be willing to be accountable for their speech when almost everyone writing for a major media organization, conservative media included, enjoys at least partial immunity from repercussion that your average Twitter user does not have.

How? Well, people in the media are paid to have opinions, even controversial ones. It's expected. They can say things that might get the average anonymous internet user in hot water at work should their words be exposed.

Those in the major media also enjoy being wired into the Ruling Class machine in a way that other Americans aren't. These people are insiders. Most have a vast network of professional and political connections including parents, siblings and spouses to pick them back up and find employment. Losing your DC media job may not be fun, but you'll probably be okay. Just call your Harvard buddies or have your spouse, who works as a political consultant for a high ranking senator, help you out.

This is generally not so for the rest of us. If you're a small town accountant working for the only major employer in town, getting fired over a tweet is going to be a real ball buster. Good luck telling your spouse that you're going to have to move out of state to find a similar salary because you tweeted a joke about Bruce Jenner or posted on Reddit that Mexican illegals who fly their home country's flag should go back home if they like it so much there.

So, what are these quisling cons in the conservative media saying, that average people shouldn't have access to even a fraction of the public megaphone that they, themselves, possess? That, for the rest of us, the cost of voicing a controversial or offensive comment or even *gasp* shit-posting, should be personal and professional ruin?

Well, yes. That's pretty much it.

Legacy conservative media has a few things in common with the likes of CNN. First, they're connected to the power structure. Second, they live inside the progressive bubble. Third, and most importantly, they despise having their authority and credibility challenged.

And that's exactly what has been happening through the rise social media and of Trump. Regular people have seized the megaphone from them and started shouting back.

This is not something that they welcome. Legacy conservative media gets tormented by anonymous internet trolls almost as much as the regular media. These trolls, and I'm occasionally one of them, are a pain in the ass. They mock, challenge, insult, and hassle people who've established themselves as the final word on politics, culture, the economy and a slew of other issues.

They resent it. They'd rather just have Twitter to themselves as another distribution channel and have you keep your thoughts and opinions to the comment section and email, where they can more easily be silo-ed off and ignored.

So what's happening here with sophistic "anonymous racist trolls" defense from the conservative media is a simple confluence of personal interests.

You see, they don't like anonymous dicks tweaking their noses. And if that means a few people get their lives turned upside down for speaking their minds under a pseudonym, well that's fine with them. It's not about your speech. It's about theirs.

As for me, I readily admit that I'm disrespectful and sometimes nasty to these people online. There's a reason for it: I'm damned sick and tired of them wrapping their personal interests under the blanket of principle, then lecturing everyone else that they have none.

Bullshit. We see you.

We see you well.

posted by Open Blogger at 06:28 PM

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