Social and mainstream media facilitates the mob-whipping progressives.

As un-fun as it no doubt was, Patricia Morgan’s experience as a sudden Emmanuel Goldstein for progressives across the country was an opportunity to observe how the mania mob is whipped up.

At 10:02 a.m. on December 28, she tweeted the now-infamous comment about the loss of a black friend, presumably over the promulgation of critical race theory and “anti-racist” ideals.  This wasn’t a wild supposition.  Over a while of not seeing her in person, Morgan had observed comments her friend had been making, and then found her reception cold when next they met.

Locally, progressives pounced, calling for her resignation and removal from legislative committees.  That could have been it, with the activists in Rhode Island playing their assigned roles and everybody moving on to New Years Day weekend.

By 4:32, however, Twitter had somehow served Morgan’s tweet up to Star Trek celebrity George Takei, who satirized it for his 3.2 million followers.  Shortly thereafter, Boston Globe reporters Brian Amaral and Edward Fitzpatrick featured Takei’s tweet in a roundup of reactions large and small, even as content-free as, “My favorite part of this tweet is ‘a.'”

The stage had been set, and the hatefest was on.

Entering into the exchanges, I pointed out the extremity of some of the comments and noted the different response (as in none) when another legislator tweeted a facially much-more-racist comment in November.  Consequently, I became a minor side target for the hate.  Some of the more vitriolic statements came from people who, upon review of their Twitter profiles, turned out to be deeply unhappy, with statements about their “crippling depression,” for example.

So, we start with an innocuous, if potentially thought-provoking, comment from a minority-party state legislator in America’s smallest state, which generates to-be-expected protestations from local activists.  Twitter delivers the issue to big-audience celebrities, who give mainstream journalists, both regionally and nationally, a hook for newsworthiness.

Next, the pile-on draws people with a psychological need to feel as if they are part of something — something moral, righteous, and marking them as good people for being on the right side.  Then, Morgan begins receiving emails like this, from Jackson Euler:*

I read your racist, ignorant and hateful comment in the Projo and had to write to tell you what an incredibly stupid, uninformed, racist and pathetic piece of garbage you are!

I’m wishing the worst for you in 2022! Perhaps covid for you would be nice!  Yes, I’ll hope for New Years that you get covid and have a fateful outcome!

Rhode Island would be a FAR BETTER PLACE if covid took you from it!

Hateful and racist POS!

Euler appears to be a lawyer from Pawtucket, and this is not the first time his email address is associated with a heated response to a woman with whose politics he disagrees.

Naturally, this is where the media’s “reporting on the controversy” will stop.  Mr. Euler will get no “coming under fire” coverage.  Indeed, it is only a matter of luck whether an emotionally unstable person whipped into a frenzy does something more drastic than wish for Patricia’s death, and all those who generated that atmosphere will quietly walk away.

Whether they’ll walk away with a modicum of shame or with a feeling that their mission was accomplished, only they can know, but people responding to Morgan’s hate mail clearly thought it inappropriate to fret about Euler’s escalation rather than joining in with his sentiment.  That is, they thought it justified.

 

* Note that Euler did not confirm for Anchor Rising that the email published by Morgan was accurate, but responded to our inquiry with the message, “Go f*** yourself, traitor” (without the asterisks).

 

Featured image by Issy Bailey on Unsplash.

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