“Yes, You’re Racist” is a backlash movement that uses online crowd-sourcing to identify, expose and shame individuals who participating in the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia over the weekend. Acting most prominently on Twitter, the “Yes, You’re Racist” account has been posting the Ids of those individuals, under a slogan that pledges, “I’ll make them famous.”
So far, the Berkley, CA hot dog restaurant Top Dog has released a statement saying their employee Cole White, who attended the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, resigned from his job following reports of his involvement in the protest. “We do respect our employees’ right to their opinions. They are free to make their own choices but must accept the responsibilities of those choices,” the statement said.
Jon Ronson, the author of “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed,” cautioned that Twitter is “a terrible information swapping service,” and warned that innocent people are inevitably going to be hurt by this electronic lynch mob.
I AM NOT A NAZI
HERE IS MY RESPONSE TO THE FAKE NEWS
PLEASE SHAREhttps://t.co/djD7e1tm0g pic.twitter.com/1VAslUXX1w— Joey Salads (@JoeySalads) August 13, 2017
One Joey Salads, who was captured at a Trump rally wearing a Nazi armband to see, as he later explained, the reaction from Trump supporters: would they disavow or accept him. Not big fans of details and context “Yes, You’re Racist” grabbed the image and published it with the suggestion it had been snapped in downtown Charlottesville. To which Joey responded with an all-caps “I AM NOT A NAZI” tweet and a YouTube video. Alas, like the man who’s asked if he is no longer beating his wife, Joey’s real message is not likely to reach all the folks who had seen the fake message.
So, to summarize, the accomplishments of this leftwing equivalent of the neo-Nazis so far: one guy left his job serving hot dogs in Berkley, and one guy shamed for a creative stunt he pulled five months ago.
Here’s another embarrassing fail: according to NPR, a photo from the rally was misidentified as a white supremacist, extreme anti-Semite named Billy Roper – except that Roper did not go to Charlottesville for the weekend, because – wait for it – one of the scheduled Nazi speakers works with a Jewish fundraiser.
Otherwise, it’s probably not easy to shame a guy who advocated for the elimination of all the non-whites on the planet.
And University of Nevada at Reno student Peter Cvjetanovic, whose picture was tweeted by “Yes, You’re Racist” took to the media and explained, in an interview with CBS News explained, “I came to this march for the message that white European culture has a right to be here just like every other culture. It is not perfect; there are flaws to it, of course. However I do believe that the replacement of the (Robert E. Lee) statue will be the slow replacement of white heritage within the United States and the people who fought and defended and built their homeland. Robert E. Lee is a great example of that. He wasn’t a perfect man, but I want to honor and respect what he stood for during his time.”
But there is scant room for subtleties and nuance at a lynch, and Cvjetanovic’s argument was chewed up by the leftist mob like a white tennis shoe caught by an albino golden retriever.
The “Yes, You’re Racist” account is currently packed with mostly unidentified images of white guys which may or may not have been shot at the neo-Nazi rally. Police follow a similar procedure at various public demonstrations – snapping shots of participants in the hope of connecting them to unresolved crimes, or just to be added to their files for future use. Now the Internet is enabling vigilantes of all stripes to do the same, except without the judgment and accountability we expect from police.
Some genies should stay inside their bottle.
