He Was Part of a Twitter Mob That Attacked YA Novelists. Then It Turned on Him
reason.com
reason.com
it is interesting to see this revealed once the op has completed successfully(usually someone's career is negatively impacted), usually multiple news sources write essentially the same story with the same sources. however if you subscribe to only one of them it reads as an interesting piece instead of propaganda i suppose
There have always been clear warnings about why mob justice is bad, but some people just cannot resist its allure: The fame, the righteousness, the feeling of being on some moral high ground where no one can touch you.
It's all so glamorous... until it all turns against you. Once the tide turns there's nothing you can do about it. Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
And yeah, so in the story he gets lynched because he is spotted trying to sneak away from a gorgeous white girls house after dark by a group of racist men in their early 20s who are infatuated by the girl who has no interest.
Any ways, the way they lynch him is very grotesque and done in a very crazy symbolic way that you kinda have to know whats going on in the story up to that point to get.
I kinda wonder what kinda hell id get myself if i actually tried to write this book in an age where people dont believe a white author can lynch a black person in his book and not be racist in either way the pendulum swings in this case. (e. g. you'd be justifiably considered racist if you wrote a lynching into your book if its a form of realizing a fantasy youd like to commit IRL but cant because society doesnt let you get away with it, but oh boy what if we lived in the 50s... thats the obvious way this could be considered racist but the lesser obvious way this racism can swing in the other direction is when you exploitatively use the lynching to make the story appear more interesting and sensationally important than it actually is. In other words to use lynchings inspired by early 20th century jim crow black history as a prop to suggest im trying to make a political statement or something on behalf of black people, like they need my help to ensure their story is heard)
Frankly, i think its a lot harder for people to understand you can actually be racist and yet be totally into the race in question especially when it comes to borrowing from their culture without ensuring you paid proper reparations up front.
Malcom X actually talks about this form of racism where white people at the time of the civil rights movement were trying hard to make black people felt like they were no different that white people when black people didnt want to be recognized as being the same because they wanted people to respect that they want to be seen as black people and treated like black people. They just wanted black people to get the respect they were owed for being major contributors to what made American culture great at the time. In otherwards they didnt want their children to resent not being born white in America because they have done more for far less than any other people in this country and yet people still consider them a second class race nobody would optimistically choose if you could actually select your preferred race to be born into the world as. They deserve to be proud and respected in a way we still havent figured out.
For example Elvis learned everything that made him a star by going to listen to black bands play at jive clubs. He took what was obviously cool and exotic in that black culture and then just whitewashed it for white audiences.
Rock and Roll was invented by black artists, many of whom starved to death never seeing a single dollar for the songs they wrote and are now topping the charts because an all white rockabilly band covered it live on johnny carson.
The major problem in telling a story like this, is that it is hard to force the plot to reveal itself because there are so many pitfalls you can fall into that turns the whole personality of the story into feeling like its kind of a bit of a cliche or just poorly executed.