Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs. NBC News/AP.
Press secretary for Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs has resigned after posting a violent meme on Twitter in the wake of the Nashville shooting. NBC News. Josselyn Barry posted an image from the movie Gloria with a woman holding two revolvers with the caption "us when we see transphobes". The tweet was posted just hours after Audrey Hale, a female to male transgender person, shot and killed six people including three children. The post was removed from Twitter as it violated twitter rules against violence. Governor Hobbs accepted Barry's resignation and said she did not support violence.
My Comment:
I've got mixed feelings on this one. On the one hand it's pretty clear that this was going to go against the Twitter terms of service and was posted at the absolute worst possible time. On the other, I think it's a pretty big over reaction and the same over reaction could be used to target conservatives and gun rights supporters.
Obviously, I can't think of worse optics of posting an image that appears to threaten violence right after a major act of terrorism in the name of the same cause. To me it seems like a very clear threat to people that were understandably upset about a mass shooting that targeted people because of their political and religious beliefs. Given how the transgender community labels anyone who is even mildly critical of them, or even not critical of people who are mildly critical of them, as transphobes, there were a lot of people that got threatened here.
After all we are only a few weeks removed from the Hogwarts legacy fiasco where transgender activists sent threats to anyone that was trying to play the game. Popular V-tuber Pikamee ended up retiring due to the harassment she suffered merely for playing a video game the trans community didn't like. And not only has J.K. Rowling been attacked for some mild criticism for the transgender community, actress Evanna Lynch was threatened for defending Rowling. It was all insane and just goes to show that anyone can be labeled a transphobe by these people.
This particular incident is another example of an obvious threat coming from these people and it's something a lot of people are not aware of. As someone who has spent a lot of time on social media for the past few years I have been aware of it, but a lot of other people are not.
Part of me has to have a little schadenfreude over this incident. The left has long accused the right of stochastic terrorism, a largely meaningless accusation that says criticism of people can cause dehumanization and leads to violence. I find such accusations to be ridiculous but under that definition, this post was clearly an example of it. Barry appeared to be saying that it was ok to shoot people she politically disagreed with and under there standards she's just as guilty as the the woman that killed those kids.
Despite that, I do think that this is not something to celebrate. I think the entire concept of stochastic terrorism is a joke and isn't an actual thing that happens. I understand why she was fired and I am not surprised that she was, given the bad publicity she brought to the Hobbs administration. But I do fear that the rules suddenly imposed on the left here will be used on the right and come on, we are talking about posting a gif on Twitter.
After all, a lot of people are posting against gun control right now (largely because the left is in a panic about what happened and are trying to do anything to distract from the gender identity issue). Couldn't they use the same standard to ban and cancel people saying that a war could erupt if a major gun control push actually happened? After all, Molon Labe is an implied threat right?
Indeed, a few conservatives did get caught up in the ban wave after the Nashville shooting. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who I am not a fan of due to what she did to Kiwi Farms, had her account suspended for reposting information about a supposed "Trans day of Vengeance" rally supposedly happening at the US Capitol on Saturday. Obviously she didn't support the rally and it's obvious threat of violence but she still got suspended.
It makes me nervous to even post this post to social media as I did decide to include the post that cost Barry her job. I am hoping that if Fox News can get away with it, I can too, but I am still worried I could catch a suspension or something. That is not at all helpful as it's not like you can really discuss what happened without any real context of what happened.
Regardless, I think that the backlash has begun against trans activism. In the past it would be unthinkable that someone like Barry would have a post removed like this. There had been some pushback against things like drag queen story hour and puberty blockers but this is the first time the transgender community has been so directly linked to violence. Violence against children. And violence that I do fully expect to continue...
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