Whether people in the US are extremely oversenstive to tweets and words, or that the tweets and words have the power to suddenly make regular people hateful and violent - neither of those states are normal.
Either that, or the country really is a few Twitter sparks away from civil war, which again would... not be a normal state of things.
Are we sure about that? There are politicians who have coordinated/enabled things with consequences that would justify capital punishment if someone believes in that as an option. For example, from a raw moral perspective a reasonable person could support executing the entire congressional Aye vote for the US sending the army into Afghanistan.
That would be a terrible mistake, because the incentives don't check out, politics would become a bloodbath when people make honest mistakes, bloody vengeance helps no-one and there is a plausible question around whether the person voting is making a personal decision or just trying to channel their voters. But since it is a superficially reasonable position I assume people would say that sort of thing regularly. To argue it out and learn why it is a bad idea, if nothing else.
While I'd argue for a normal person that posting something like that would just fly under the radar and disappear into the aether of the internet, the same does not apply to someone who heads a large publicly visible company, and who posts publicly on an account associated (implicitly) with that company.
It's literally illegal to give death threats (not that I think this qualifies as a particularly serious one). But that's the difference between this and your argument with politicians rattling sabres. (Just to make it clear, I don't feel so strongly about the whole situation, but I do think making false equivalences is misleading)
1. Votes come at the end of a process starting with someone calling for action. Has to be a first person to bring the idea up; and Twitter is as good a place for public debate as we have. (If only people could master the longform paragraph, or even essay-length debate and move to somewhere a bit more nuanced.)
2. Reflecting on the "Die slow motherfuckers" for a little while - Tan didn't actually make a call for action. Exactly what that means is ambiguous, and it is without a doubt poor form.
> someone who heads a large publicly visible company
If the board wants to sack him I could certainly see that happening. Although as a practical matter, I don't think this is a sustainable standard. A good CEO is worth their weight in gold, sacking them over being a Twitter troll from time to time seems like a bad call. Musk is an example; both a troll and also a pretty amazing CEO. The right thing to do might be to tolerate the situation unless the pressure gets overwhelming.
On that point we've been tolerating outward displays of political speech from corporations for a while. I'm against it both on principle and because it is typically left-wing-aligned but since it happens I don't see why this sort of political diatribe is needs to be stepped on. Dude has political opinions. We all do.
One benefit I see of it is normalizing the presence of historical out-groups (racial minorities, gender minorities, etc.) that have always existed in society.
But, in practice, the "support" can be paper-thin and the chasing of support from out-groups simply as a means to push profit margins is sometimes obvious and thinly-veiled enough to the point of growing discontent towards the groups that they're ostensibly supporting.
This sort of critique (even if I can't guarantee its accuracy) is a bit more nuanced and feels a little bit less cargo-culty than just left/right.
There exist people who see benefits of any political stances. That is why the stance is taken. Arguing about whether it is a benefit is at the core of politics. For example, Mr Tan probably sees benefit from certain SF supervisors resigning immediately and is frustrated that they don't.
But it is better to keep businesses out of that, I believe we're better off if they are relatively neutral and thoughtless engines to achieve highly specific goals.
> But, in practice, the "support" can be paper-thin ...
1) This situation is also paper thin. I'd bet money that Tan doesn't do anything that would cause the supervisors to die a slow death. Most attack on politicians are.
2) I've had it made quite clear to me in companies I've worked at that if there was a candidate with different skin colour or gender to me they'd be before me in the line for hiring and promotions. That is paper thin support, but it is due to political ideology and I still don't like it. I would like companies to promote equal treatment and be scrupulously neutral on politics.
If the other side said it, oh dear. We'd best remove them from their job, their payroll, shun them forever, and make sure they never have power again.
I think the correct approach is to have a conversation, to seek an apology, and to hold the party to being better. Strike one; it's water under the bridge.
Some of us have enough principles to complain even when "our" side does horrible stuff. When a friend does it, I might be more inclined to talk to them in private rather than blast them in public, but that's a mix of "I am more likely to change their mind if I don't antagonize them by making this public" and "I have absolutely no social media presence, so me calling someone out doesn't really make a difference."
> If the other side said it, oh dear. We'd best remove them from their job, their payroll, shun them forever, and make sure they never have power again.
Care to share some examples?
Go ahead and post it yourself, it seems reasonable, yes?
Your comment would be just fine without that bit.
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/trump-pinata-school/
https://am870theanswer.com/all/la-antifa-group-hangs-trump-i...
https://wpde.com/news/nation-world/donald-trump-effigy-hangs...
https://www.coloradoan.com/picture-gallery/news/2021/01/01/f...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3500960/I-hate-Trum...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/fibonacciblue/31620818443
https://www.newsweek.com/protest-trump-doll-guillotine-outsi...
And that's just the last president. If you search, you'll find plenty of similar examples for Obama and Bush too. Going further back than that will probably be harder to find records for, but yeah we have a long tradition of wishing death on our politicians and expressing that quite loudly. And almost all the time, it's certainly legal, whether or not the local community is keen on it varies.
Funny. That makes it sound like USA is the USSR from the childhood jokes about the difference between USA and the USSR.
Can we all just like I dunno chill out a bit? Who cares, and how does this affect me?
At the very least, tweeting bat shit crazy stuff while drunk is nothing a CEO should be excused for, at the very least it is a sign of aerious self-control and judgement issues. Regardless of what politicak side said CEO, or anyone else really, is on.
Also, the name of a great song by Wang Chung. I had never heard it until asking Google to play To Live And Die in LA and it played the Wang Chung song instead of Tupac.
We're pretty much there, yup.
But stochastic terrosism[1] isn't a new or unique thing.
Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated after similar remarks were said by Netanyahu[2], which was arguably a pivoting point towards the war in Gaza we have today.
Public figures talking about specific people dying should always be treated seriously. It's not disturbing that we do.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_terrorism
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Yitzhak_Rabin...
If you can't tell the difference, you don't belong in public spaces or forums.
If "XXX of party YYY is a disgusting piece of human garbage" than I don't think that should be called terrorism.
Specific example that I linked:
>Rallies organized by Likud and other right-wing groups featured depictions of Rabin in the crosshairs of a gun. In July 1995, Netanyahu led a mock funeral procession featuring a coffin and hangman's noose at an anti-Rabin rally where protesters chanted, "Death to Rabin".
>Netanyahu denied any intention to incite violence
Rabin was subsequently shot dead.
The definition in Wikipedia says:
>Stochastic terrorism refers to political or media figures publicly demonizing a person or group in such a way that it inspires supporters of the figures to commit a violent act against the target of the speech.
Of course, direct "kill this person" language is not a requirement for that. "Won't someone rid me of this meddlesome priest?"[1] is a famous example from the 12th century.
>If "XXX of party YYY is a disgusting piece of human garbage" than I don't think that should be called terrorism.
By itself, it wouldn't be. However, if XXX of party YYY subsequently starts getting death threats or other harrassment as a result of this statement being made, there is a problem.
Which language a public person uses to indicate a target to their followers highly depends on the context and history of the particular public person and the group they are addressing.
Hopefully, you understand why doxxing[2] is problematic. There are real-life consequences for the person being doxxed. However, the language is perfectly benign; after all, there is no explicit call to action in an address, a phone number, a name.
Stochastic terrorism similarly leverages context and publicity to highlight targets. It's not about how you would interpret the message; it's about how the target audience interprets it.
In Tran's case, both the message (die slowly) and the target audience's interpretation (a call to harrasment) indicate that there was no miscommunicaiton.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...
How can you control that, though? Are people responsible for the mental state of all their followers? Or do they have to ensure that every utterance is so milquetoast that no action would ever come of it?
I'd have less of an issue if these rules were to be applied in a politically neutral fashion, but we know they never will be.
No. There is an extent, however, to which leaders are responsible for the actions of their followers.
They know what audience they're speaking to.
>Or do they have to ensure that every utterance is so milquetoast that no action would ever come of it?
False dichotomy.
They have to not encourage their followers to commit violence against others.
The entire point of someone engaging in this would be plausible deniability; the ambiguity is a part of it.
>I'd have less of an issue if these rules
Which rules? It's not like we're discussing legislation here.
We're discussing a concept.
>a politically neutral fashion
Oh, how curious. Do you seem to imply that certain political groups are more likely to be accused of inciting violence against individuals or groups?
Perhaps with a documented track record of spikes in violence following public statements?
Hmmm.
Yes, like Maxine Waters committing "stochastic terrorism" against the Supreme Court.
Or maybe you're talking about BLM?
A while back somebody put up some stickers with his face on an octopus and the tentacles holding his various assets. The Twitter mafia went all out saying this was clearly racist and totally unacceptable in civil society, because of some prior art where an asian individual was offensively caricaturized atop an octopus. I tired to point out that the octopus has been used as a symbol of a many faceted organization since forever, and the racist aspect of the prior art wasn’t the octopus but rather the ridiculous caricaturization. The picture of Gary used in his octopus was a totally normal photo, so the racist prior art was of no consequence. Gary somehow saw my comment and decided to launch a tweet thread telling his hundreds of thousands of followers what a terrible racist horrible idiotic person I am, which resulted in a huge hacking campaign being launched against various little personal projects I had posted on my Twitter.
Ugh.
I don’t use Twitter anymore.
Garry Tan should know better. As an earlier article mentioned [1], he was previously quoted as saying "this kind of stuff should have zero place in San Francisco politics," referring to an activist's taunt that millionaires and landlords should be guillotined.
[1] https://missionlocal.org/2024/01/garry-tan-death-wish-sf-sup...
But him saying <specific, named people> should "die slow" shuold be taken as just a joke, bro.
Hmmm.
It should absolutely be unacceptable behavior for any CEO to do something like this. If I can get fired for it, they damn well should too.
Elsewhere in the world, only retroactively - in retellings, in legends, in K12 history lessons. The nice, patriotic fiction of good person saying something, galvanizing the population, and then large changes happening.
> It's actually a cultural and historical norm.
It's not. Broadcast media are barely 100 years old. The ability for any rando to broadcast thoughts outside their direct social circles exist for less than two decades.
Randos telling other randos within their social circles that they want bad things to happen to public personas - that is a cultural and historical norm. Nothing ever coming out of it, except maybe said randos landing in shit if the word reaches the public personas - that too is the cultural and historical norm. For such talk to be an actual danger to anyone else, and especially the subject of discussion? That is a very recent historical and geographical aberration (or rather, I suspect believing such talk to be dangerous is the aberration).