[I have a new macro post over at Econlog]
Tom Brown pointed me to a report by David French, on the abuse directed at conservative reporters who stood up for their principles:
I distinctly remember the first time I saw a picture of my then-seven-year-old daughter’s face in a gas chamber. It was the evening of September 17, 2015. I had just posted a short item to the Corner calling out notorious Trump ally Ann Coulter for aping the white-nationalist language and rhetoric of the so-called alt-right. Within minutes, the tweets came flooding in. My youngest daughter is African American, adopted from Ethiopia, and in alt-right circles that’s an unforgivable sin. It’s called “race-cucking” or “raising the enemy.”
I saw images of my daughter’s face in gas chambers, with a smiling Trump in a Nazi uniform preparing to press a button and kill her. I saw her face photo-shopped into images of slaves. She was called a “niglet” and a “dindu.” The alt-right unleashed on my wife, Nancy, claiming that she had slept with black men while I was deployed to Iraq, and that I loved to watch while she had sex with “black bucks.” People sent her pornographic images of black men having sex with white women, with someone photoshopped to look like me, watching.
As you read the article (and you really should read the entire piece) keep in mind that while Trump may or may not be alt-right, it is beyond dispute that his message is extremely popular among the alt-right, and that his campaign chairman previously ran Breitbart, a leading media outlet for the alt-right.
Erick Erickson experienced his own ordeal more than a month before we did. After Erickson dis-invited Trump from his Red State gathering, angry Trump supporters showed up at his house. A grown man yelled at his children at a store, condemning their father for opposing Trump. Erickson wrote in the New York Times that his son is still fearful that Trump supporters will come back to their home.
In March, writer Bethany Mandel related her own experience. After tweeting about Trump’s anti-Semitic followers, she was called “slimy Jewess” and told that she “deserves the oven.” It got worse:
Not only was the anti-Semitic deluge scary and graphic, it got personal. Trump fans began to “dox” me — a term for adversaries’ attempt to ferret out private or identifying information online with malicious intent. My conversion to Judaism was used as a weapon against me, and I received death threats in my private Facebook mailbox, prompting me to file a police report.
Nor are these isolated incidents:
Earlier this month, Mi-Ai Parrish, president of the Arizona Republic, wrote a powerful response to the deluge of threats and bullying prompted by the paper’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton. An Anti-Defamation League report identified 800 journalists who’ve been targeted with anti-Semitic tweets, ten journalists (including NR’s own Jonah Goldberg) who’ve borne the brunt of the attacks, and one — my friend Ben Shapiro — who’s received a staggering amount of hate:
The article is full of many more examples, including death threats. And for these reporters and their families the abuse never ends. Some are buying guns to protect their families. We are becoming more like Russia, where it’s open season on reporters. No wonder the alt-right likes people like Putin and Trump, who have total contempt for a free press.
Trump and his sleazy alt-right supporters still have a 17% chance of winning the election next month. Imagine waking up Nov. 9th into that sort of America.
Yes, the alt-right is only a small share of Trump supporters, and there are crazy people in all ideologies. But I think it’s fair to say that the conservative opposition to the Trump campaign (especially the Jewish conservative opposition) has been attacked with an unprecedented level of vitriol and abuse. This is not like other elections, and it’s because of one man.
This is even worse than political correctness. They are just as intolerant as the left-wing campus PC police, and fight for a far more disgusting cause.
An Australian named Lorenzo is one of my most thoughtful commenters. In the comment section of a previous post on PC run amok, he made the following observation:
The classical liberal tradition is that your worth as a person gave you the freedom to express your opinions.
The underlying PC principle is that your opinions set your worth as a person, which is, of course, exactly the same principle that Mao operated under, particularly during the Cultural Revolution.
Respect people who have different opinions from you, disrespect people who behave like bullies.