The social-media account Libs of TikTok has been suspended by Twitter simply for showing videos of leftists talking about themselves.
Meanwhile, the vile and racist videos of criminal Frank James, who wounded at least 29 people in the high-profile April 12 subway shooting, weren’t even flagged by Big Tech.
This raises a question: Were the woke GoogTwitFace overlords hesitant “to flag James’s videos and post[s] because they simply don’t regard targeting White people as racism and fear being called racist”? So wondered American Thinker writer Rajan Laad this past weekend, as he asked, “Could the NY subway attack have been prevented with a mindset change in social media?”
James certainly wasn’t shy about expressing his beliefs. He said in one video that “the white motherf*****s that I want to kill, you know, I really want to kill them because they’re white.” Not much left to the imagination there.
In another video, he referenced the Ukraine war and stated, “These white motherf*****s, this is what they do. Ultimately, at the end of the day, they kill and commit genocide against each other. What do you think they gonna do to your black a**?” James also was upset that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s husband is white.
Moreover, on Facebook, “James posted a meme with the caption ‘Oh Black Jesus, please kill all whiteys,’” relates Laad.
Joining Big Tech in the double standard was the mainstream media, which was comically opaque about James’s motives. CNN wrote (hat tip to Laad for the following quotations), “Many of the videos that James uploaded to a YouTube channel included references to violence, including at a set group of people he believed had maligned him, in addition to broad societal and racial groups that he appeared to hate.”
CNN didn’t specify what these “broad” groups were. This is much as when media report on Muslim riots in France and describe the mob members merely as “youths.”
Not to be outdone, NBC reported that “James’ posts date to 2016. He has used slurs, denigrated women, and made racist comments — some of them against Black people.”
So identity-politics-favored groups can be mentioned (e.g., women), but no others, perhaps leaving readers with the impression that the problem was anti-black racism!
As for the paper of record,The New York Times mentions the shooter’s “‘harshly bigoted views’ and ‘videos delivering extended tirades, many of them overtly concerned with race and violence, often tying those subjects in with current events,’” relates Ladd, but “doesn’t mention the targets of James’s bigotry.”
These aren’t outliers, either. Laad also cites MSNBC, The Washington Post, CBS News, Politico, and ABC News as likewise obscuring the facts.
This is quite explainable, points out Laad, because the leftist narrative holds that “racism” is only identified as such when a member of a culturally disfavored group (e.g., whites) targets a member of a culturally favored group (e.g., blacks).
Not only are a black individual’s anti-white tirades unworthy of mention under this agenda, but “calling out racism in non-white people will probably be termed racist,” Laad writes. “Liberals and their BLM allies may even claim that slavery, segregation, and Trump’s presence justify non-white people being racist toward Caucasians.”
“In fact, James’s ideas are actually quite similar to those of commentators on MSNBC, CNN, NYT, etc.,” Laad also contends. “It is just that James acted upon his idea, whereas handsomely paid pundits and columnists return to their luxury homes after spewing venom on TV.”
Thus is the mainstream media complicit in many racial attacks. Just consider people such as James and 1993 LIRR shooter Colin Ferguson, who were perhaps already bitter due to their upbringing. Add to this that all they hear on TV is anti-white propaganda (e.g., “white supremacy”) and the stories of white-on-black crimes/violence and police shootings, not the far more common black-on-white variety, and it’s not surprising they could be driven to violence.
As for Big Tech, Laad mentions that it’s likely it “hesitated to flag James’s videos and post because they simply don’t regard targeting White people as racism and fear being called racist.” The commentator also points out that investigative agencies, which are supposed to be monitoring social-media hate, can exhibit the same mindset.
This isn’t just conjecture. Laad cites how a security guard confessed after a 2017 bombing at a concert in Britain that he was reluctant to approach the terrorist, who’d seemed suspicious, for fear of being labeled “racist.” This politically correct phenomenon was also a reason why timely action wasn’t taken against U.K. Muslim rape gangs, which ended up abusing approximately 1,400 white girls over the course of 14 years.
Yet how might GoogTwitFace and law enforcement “have reacted if James were a Caucasian man spewing hate against non-white people?” Laad asks. For a clue, he avers, we need only consider the treatment of the January 6 martyrs or the Covington Catholic kids.
This said, many understandably fear Big Tech censorship, and we certainly don’t want government arresting people for “unacceptable” internet comments. But the point is the double standard. Just consider the shocking 2013 case of then-teenager Justin Carter, a Texan who spent months jailed and faced eight years in prison for making a very obvious joke online. But Carter was white — just like every person James shot.
As for racism-charge-induced wariness of scrutinizing suspected black criminals, there are those who’d intensify this problem with the force of law. In 2018, for example, a New York state senator actually proposed that making 911 calls deemed “racially-motivated” should be a “hate crime.” Of course, such a law’s application could be quite selective in a society where some racial motivations are more equal than others.
