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freenewstoday · 4 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://freenews.today/2021/01/19/why-t-shirts-promoting-the-capitol-riot-are-still-available-online/

Why T-Shirts Promoting the Capitol Riot Are Still Available Online

The day after the violent attack on the Capitol, Shopify declared that it had removed e-commerce sites affiliated with President Trump, including his official campaign store. The sites had violated a policy that prohibited the support of groups or people “that threaten or condone violence to further a cause.”

The move was initially lauded but it soon became clear that the technology company, which powers more than one million online shops, was still fueling plenty of other sites with merchandise promoting the president and goods emblazoned with phrases like “MAGA Civil War.” Apparel with similar phrases and nods to QAnon conspiracy theories also remained available on e-commerce sites like Amazon, Etsy and Zazzle.

Even as the companies scrambled to remove such merchandise, new goods commemorating and glorifying the Jan. 6 attack were proliferating. As of Friday, “Battle for Capitol Hill Veteran” shirts with drawings of the Capitol building could be purchased on Amazon for $20, Etsy was selling a “Biden Likes Minors” shirt that mimicked the look of “Black Lives Matters” signs and Zazzle had a “Civil War 2020” shirt on its site. Etsy and Zazzle have since removed the merchandise; the “Capitol Hill Veteran” shirt was still available on Amazon on Monday.

Just as the violence put new scrutiny on how social media companies were monitoring speech on their platforms, it also highlighted how e-commerce companies have enabled just about anyone with a credit card and an email address to sell goods online.

These companies have largely been built with scale and ease of access in mind, with scant oversight of what vendors were actually selling. But questions about the businesses have emerged as many rioters donned what amounted to a type of uniform that could be purchased online. This included shirts with certain phrases or illustrations printed on them, and flags that not only supported President Trump, but promoted a civil war, conspiracy theories and debunked election claims. One shirt infamously worn by one of the rioters that said “Camp Auschwitz” was later found on Etsy, prompting an apology from the company, which is known for handcrafted goods.

“There’s so much focus on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, but, in our view, the platforms are much, much wider than social media,” said Danny Rogers, chief technology officer and co-founder of the Global Disinformation Index, a nonprofit focused on the spread of falsehoods online. “There’s a broad diversity of platforms that support and enable these dangerous groups to exist, to fund raise, get their message out. It’s not just kicking people off social media, it’s kicking people off merchandising platforms.”

While Shopify, which declined to comment for this article, is not a household name, its technology supports a huge number of vendors from Allbirds to The New York Times. These companies use Shopify’s tools to build sleek online stores, where they can easily upload images of their wares and sell to customers. Shopify, which is valued at more than $100 billion, earns money through subscriptions to its software and other merchant services, and has said it has the second-biggest share of the U.S. e-commerce market after Amazon.

After its removal of TrumpStore.com and shop.donaldjtrump.com, the company was still powering other sites selling Trump-related merchandise, including shirts and banners that featured guns and military equipment. Following complaints, Shopify appears to have removed some sellers and products, including a “MAGA Civil War” shirt with the date Jan. 6, 2021.

Shopify has also run into problems with thousands of online stores selling items that falsely claimed to treat Covid-19, as well as others selling Confederate flag merchandise.

“It’s great that Shopify finally pulled the plug on Trump’s retail store, but what we urgently need is to see a strategy from it and other popular e-commerce platforms about how they will stop profiting from hate as a whole,” said Shannon Coulter, president of the Grab Your Wallet Alliance, a nonprofit that stemmed from a social media boycott of companies with ties to President Trump.

Amazon and Etsy have also rushed to remove merchandise promoting hate and violence from their sites this month, including wares tied to QAnon, the internet conspiracy theory that has become increasingly influential with a segment of President Trump’s supporters.

On Jan. 11, Amazon said that it would remove products promoting QAnon and that third-party vendors who attempted to sell the wares could face bans, according to NBC. But on Monday, hundreds of products from dozens of vendors were still selling QAnon-related merchandise. Some product reviews expressed support for the baseless conspiracy theory in a casual tone. “I got these to support #Qanon … i love them,” one woman commented on a pair of “Q” earrings. “Wish they were a little bigger!”

Other shirts for sale on Amazon promoted misinformation related to election fraud, spreading false claims that the election was “stolen” or rigged and saying, “Audit the vote.” Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.

While some of the sellers appear to be individuals or groups devoted to right-wing paraphernalia, others are peddling a broader array of misinformation, including Covid-19 conspiracy theories. Still others have included the material with a wider variety of internet memes and jokes, apparently looking for whatever might prove to be a hit.

The vendor behind the “Battle for Capitol Hill Veteran” shirts on Amazon, for instance, is called Capitol Hill and appeared to begin selling merchandise on Jan. 1, initially promoting false Covid-19 conspiracy theories like the so-called “plandemic.”

A study by the Global Disinformation Index and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that examines extremism, identified 13 hate groups offering products on Amazon in October. Smaller e-commerce platforms like Zazzle, which allow people to customize apparel, also played a role in allowing hate groups to make money through selling products, the report found. “Platforms facilitating on-site retail seem to be plagued by either poor enforcement of their policies, or a complete lack of an adequate framework for governing their use by hate groups,” the groups wrote in the report.

“Platform policy people are still trying to wrap their heads around the concept of risk of harm,” Mr. Rodgers of the Global Disinformation Index said. “When QAnon emerged initially, it was dismissed as a bunch of kooks online, but what we’ve seen increasingly over the years is the apparent and obvious harm that results from this organized online conspiracy activity. The tribalism, the us versus them, and the adversarial narrative is fed by selling everyone a team jersey.”

Zazzle began more than a decade ago as part of a wave of a start-ups that gave consumers new, seemingly infinite options for customizing goods to their tastes. Now, the company is struggling to balance its original mission with the darker forces at play online.

“As an open marketplace, we are faced with the opportunity to allow people to express their creativity and sentiments, coupled with the challenge of expression that offends and is intentionally obfuscated,” Zazzle said in a statement.

While Zazzle uses automated filters and algorithms to try to block offensive designs and tags, it said it recognized “that technology is not foolproof,” and did manually remove certain products. The “Civil War 2020” shirt was taken down after questions from The Times, and Zazzle said that it had been identifying and taking down QAnon-related goods since mid-2018.

The challenge of identifying and removing such merchandise — and whether that is done by people or machines — mirrors the issues faced by platforms like Facebook and YouTube.

Josh Silverman, Etsy’s chief executive, said in a Jan. 12 blog post that the company and its human moderators relied on automated tools and reports from users to find merchandise that violated its policies. The company has more than 3.7 million vendors selling more than 80 million items. On Friday, after receiving questions from The Times, Etsy removed the “Biden Likes Minors” shirt, which seemed to nod to QAnon and the #Pizzagate conspiracy.

Etsy and Zazzle also acknowledged that they were trying to quickly make decisions involving certain phrases and symbols, particularly those harnessed by fringe groups.

“While an item may be allowed today, we reserve the right to determine based on evolving context that it is a violation at a later date, for example if it is deemed to cause or inspire real world harm,” a representative for Etsy, said in a statement.

Brooke Erin Duffy, an associate professor of communication at Cornell University, said that it was hard to imagine established brands carrying these products in stores. But, she said, accountability was difficult to demand online.

“We don’t have the ability to talk back to platform owners,” she said. “We don’t always know who’s responsible for creating the merch, so it enables everyone to evade responsibility for the circulation of these harmful products and messages.”

Contact Sapna Maheshwari at [email protected] and Taylor Lorenz at [email protected].

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trending-apparel-2021 · 4 years ago

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Maga Civil War T Shirt

Maga Civil War T Shirt Hope You'd Like This, Maga Civil War T Shirt and Maga Civil War Shirt Special Lunch Just For Trump Fans Shop Now > https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/67636851

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barbjkuehn · 4 years ago

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ramon-balaguer · 4 years ago

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Praise God for another beautiful day He's Given US and the world He Created and Sustains... And for Christopher Columbus sailing in the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria from Europe to China only to find US in the Island of Hispaniola (shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti) in 1492 giving birth to the new world and death to the old world. Rarely is there Good without Bad or vice versa, and so is the case with US some 528 years ago as with all other nations conquered by the mightier and better equipped forces. Cancel Culture Idiots would love to cancel Columbus after which many cities are named, like us here in Columbia, South Carolina and destroy or remove statues and or history; but Christopher Columbus' life matters and Amerigo Vespucci, after whom America was named, his life matters, and on up the line of Conquistadors, to The Colonial Settlement, 1600s - 1763. The American Revolution, 1763 - 1783. The New Nation, 1783 - 1815. National Expansion and Reform, 1815 - 1880. The Civil War and Reconstruction, 1861-1877. Rise of Industrial America, 1876-1900. Progressive Era to New Era, 1900-1929. Great Depression and World War II, 1929-1945. Desegregation and Korea/Vietnam wars, 1945-1979. Reagan years and Global assertiveness, 1980-1991. The Cheating Clinton years, 1992-2000. 9/11 Islamic Terrorists Attacks and Iraq war, 2001-2008. The Obama/Biden Corrupt Administration years, 2008-2015. The Republican Resurgence, 2014-2015. Trump #MAGA years to Restore America, 2016-... Obviously I can't tell it all hear, but you should get the idea that throughout History #AllLivesMatter Not because of a "Peaceful Protest", a T-shirt or a mug... But within God's Divine will and plan we all MATTER and in my heart of hearts You matter. So enjoy, be Blessed of God and get out to Vote 🙏🌏❤️🇺🇸 #REBTD 😇 (at Columbia, South Carolina) https://www.instagram.com/p/CGQPnFlD2yl/?igshid=3wkb59u9t0tz

#maga #alllivesmatter #rebtd

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siothishere · 4 years ago

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wechampstore-Maga Dad shirt

Yet we can have McClellan Air Force Base, named after a man who did as much to aide the Maga Dad shirt Also,I will get this Confederate cause than any southern general. Most statues were erected during the pre civil rights era, long after the civil war. It’s an awesome idea that we pull down all the monuments to slave labor.

Maga Dad shirt, hoodie, tank top, sweater and long sleeve t-shirt

Teresa…

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thuethamtuuudam · 4 years ago

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wechampstore-Maga Dad shirt

Maga Dad shirt, hoodie, tank top, sweater and long sleeve t-shirt

Teresa…

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the-sayuri-rin · 3 years ago

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A new paramilitary group is handling security for MAGA events and gathering "intelligence" against Donald Trump's political enemies.

The 1st Amendment Praetorian, whose volunteer members wear black T-shirts with their Roman-helmet logos, were on the lookout for anti-fascist activists at a QAnon conference last month in Dallas, but turned their attention to kicking out reporters after the antifa threat failed to materialize, reported The Daily Beast.

"There's a shadow underbelly to all of our society," said the group's founder, former Green Beret Robert Patrick Lewis. "We can't allow things to continue as they are."

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deniscollins · 5 years ago

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Why This Iowa Campus Is Erasing Political Chalk Talk

College students have long participated in the tradition of “chalking” sidewalks with comments, and during election time many of them are political in nature. What would you do if you were a college administrator and student groups complained that bigoted and hateful messages were appearing in chalk on campus, sometimes alongside political slogans, and requested that you ban chalking: (1) ban chalking to minimize incivility, or (2) allow chalking due to tradition and encouraging First Amendment freedom of speech? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

The well-trodden pathways at Iowa State University are usually caked with chalk during an election year. Students streaming past the domed administration building, hunched against the biting cold, could look down at their phones and expect to see “Trump 2020” or “Pete!” in dusty block letters.

Instead, the sidewalks are bare.

With the Iowa caucuses just days away, the university has effectively banned the tradition of political chalking in the name of civility, provoking a standoff over free speech that some students say has only deepened divisions on campus.

“It is strange for the sidewalk to be naked now,” said Daniel Hayes, 20, a junior majoring in political science who is backing Senator Elizabeth Warren for president. “I personally miss it a lot.”

On college campuses, chalking — for all its impermanence and association with childhood games like hopscotch and skully — has become a potent weapon in the arsenal of rival political groups and ideologies. Provocative chalking that spread across campuses during the 2016 presidential race, often in support of Donald J. Trump, became known on social media as #TheChalkening.

Some schools have banned or limited the practice. Wesleyan University issued a chalking moratorium in 2003, and the University of Iowa imposed restrictions about a decade ago.

This year, the frenzy of the presidential election has only added to the dispute. Iowa State instituted its anti-chalking rule in November, under pressure from student groups who complained that bigoted and hateful messages were appearing in chalk on campus, sometimes alongside political slogans.

A fledgling civil liberties group, Speech First, sued the university this month, arguing that the new policy violated the First Amendment. The federal lawsuit also challenges a policy barring students from using university email accounts for mass political mailings.

From a distance, clashes over the chalking issue appear to fall along partisan lines. Many members of the university’s College Democrats have lined up in support of the restrictions, while the College Republicans are largely against them.

The law firm representing Speech First, Consovoy McCarthy, is known for supporting conservative causes. It is one of the firms that brought a suit against Harvard over its race-conscious admissions policies, and one of its partners, William S. Consovoy, is representing President Trump in his fight to keep his financial records private.

But in this potential battleground state, on a campus where staunch Trump supporters mix with die-hard liberals, the chalking debate has been anything but clear-cut. Many left-leaning students support the chalking restrictions with a strong dose of ambivalence, and some are against them, arguing that the best antidote to hate speech is not censorship but persuasion.

“Countering bad ideas is the best way to promote good ideas,” said Ben Whittington, 22, a political science major from Chicago who was lining up recruits for Senator Bernie Sanders one afternoon this month. “I don’t think a few bad apples can remove a tool students use to promote themselves politically.”

In a statement, Iowa State’s president, Wendy Wintersteen, said that the university had to balance its commitment to free speech with its obligation to protect students from “illegal discrimination and harassment.” University officials declined to comment further.

Iowa State’s policy, which is similar to the University of Iowa’s, says that only recognized student groups can chalk, and only to advertise events in a strict format: the group’s name, a title for the event (up to seven words), a place and a time. Messages that violate the rule are power-washed away.

Sitting in a Starbucks near campus recently, Taylor Blair, 26, a senior and a former president of the College Democrats, said that chalking had its upsides. He did it himself as the campaign manager for a fellow student who won a seat on the Ames City Council last year.

But he thought some limits were needed. “There was horrendous chalking this past semester,” said Mr. Blair, who is studying industrial design. “White supremacist, anti-Semitic, transphobic.”

“BUILD THE WALL” and “It’s ok to be white” appeared on sidewalks, students said. Then came what some students called the chalking wars, in which messages were defaced and turned into hate speech. “Smash the Patriarchy” was crossed out and rewritten as “Smash the Hooknose,” students said. “Eat the Rich” became “Eat the (((Rich))),” with the triple parentheses as a code for Jews. And “HH” — for “Heil Hitler” — appeared next to “MAGA.”

Mr. Blair said that, as a gay man who had experienced discrimination, he believed that speech and symbols could be inherently violent. “Maybe we should ban the Confederate flag,” he said.

A group called Students Against Racism formed last October to combat the chalking and other incidents they perceived as racist. Alexa Rodriguez, a sophomore who helped found the group, cited “the mental exhaustion that comes from seeing these types of messages.”

Nobody seems to know the identities of the perpetrators, who apparently acted at night, sometimes wearing masks, Ms. Rodriguez said. Left-wing students suspect the mischief was wrought by Trump supporters, and conservatives say it may have been sabotage, to make them look bad.

Ryan Hurley, president of the College Republicans, said his group was not to blame. Mr. Hurley, a sophomore majoring in business, waited outside the campus bookstore on a recent morning wearing a T-shirt that condemned sex trafficking. He showed off a photo of 800 sticks of chalk, ordered on Amazon, as if it were a cache of ballistic missiles.

He would never have written something like “HH,” he said, adding that he did not even know what it stood for until the chalking appeared. “I thought it was Hulk Hogan, honestly,” he said.

To defend themselves, Trump supporters started videotaping all of their chalking as they did it, Mr. Hurley said. They blanketed the campus with chalked American flags and wrote “Keep America American,” a message they considered patriotic.

Sehba Faheem, the president of the College Democrats, said students were so upset by some of the chalk messages last semester that they would try to wash them away using water bottles. She recalled recoiling at a message that said, “Send them home.”

Ms. Faheem, 21, a junior studying biological systems engineering, said that stealth chalking made it easier to be hurtful. “Chalking you can do in the middle of the night,” she said. “When you’re handing out fliers, you have to do it face to face. You’re standing behind what you say.”

Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, a Republican, signed a law last March that forbids public universities to create free speech zones that are set aside for protests and demonstrations. But the university encourages students to advertise their political views in an area called the Agora, a stretch of high-traffic sidewalk near the library. A sign marking the spot reads: “In ancient Greek society, the ‘agora’ was the place citizens would gather to discuss matters of their shared civic life.”

On a recent weekday, volunteers for Mr. Trump, Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders prowled the Agora, trying to win over fence-sitters.

Mr. Hurley complained that students had become too sheeplike and were treating the area as if it were a mandatory free speech zone. In the fury of anti-Trump sentiment, he said, the normal rules of civil liberties had been willingly suspended.

The past few months have brought a flurry of Democratic candidates and their surrogates to campus ahead of the traditional first-in-the-nation nominating contest on Monday. But students say it is not the same without chalking.

Mr. Hayes is making do by turning himself into a roving signpost, a kind of Pied Piper with a Warren button on his chest and a sign jutting out of his backpack on which he writes his message of the day. “Anything is possible,” read one, which was disputed by his philosophy professor.

The day after the Democratic primary debate in Des Moines this month, his sign offered a quote from Ms. Warren about courage. It got compliments, Mr. Hayes said, but he still missed the spontaneity of chalking.

Regarding the new policy, Mr. Hayes offered a quotation from Benjamin Franklin: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

#Higher Education #Chalking

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citizentruth-blog · 6 years ago

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On Punching Nazis, Serving Sarah Sanders, and Matters of Civility - PEER NEWS

New Post has been published on https://citizentruth.org/on-punching-nazis-serving-sarah-sanders-and-matters-of-civility/

On Punching Nazis, Serving Sarah Sanders, and Matters of Civility

Sarah Sanders getting kicked out of The Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia has prompted conversations about whether people should be kicked out of establishments for their political beliefs and whether “civility” is warranted in these situations. While not all calls for civility have equal merit in light of their source, restraint, mediated by facts and precision of language, is still a worthy aspiration. (Photo Credit: Twitter)

You’ve probably seen T-shirts or memes devoted to instructing others to “PUNCH MORE NAZIS.” This sentiment, which invokes Richard Spencer—who doesn’t call himself a “Nazi” or a “white supremacist,” but an “identitarian,” though that basically means he’s a white nationalist and doesn’t want you to know he’s a white nationalist—getting punched in the face by a protestor on the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration, is one that many of us can probably get behind. After all, who really likes Nazis outside of actual Nazis?

As sympathetic as we may be to the idea of Spencer and his ilk getting decked, however—or, for some of us, wish we could’ve been the ones to do it—just because we can punch more Nazis, does it mean we should? Political theorist Danielle Allen, in an August 2017 column for The Washington Post, emphatically rules for the negative on this question. She writes:

White supremacy, anti-Semitism and racism are false gods, ideologies to be repudiated. They must be countered and fought. We must separate the violence that flows from those ideologies from the ideas that animate them. Different tools are at hand for fighting each.

We need to counter extremism’s violence not with punches but with the tools of law and justice. Where hate crimes and acts of domestic terrorism are perpetrated, our judicial institutions must respond. We as citizens must make sure institutions do their jobs, not plan to take the law into our own hands.

When the legitimacy of legal and judicial institutions has come into question — as has occurred because of police shootings and mass incarceration — we must strenuously advance the project of reforming those institutions to achieve their full legitimacy. But to take the law into one’s own hands is only to further undermine legal and judicial institutions. It provides no foundation for reform.

As Allen sees it, we need to be thinking more Martin Luther King, Jr.’s brand of civil disobedience and nonviolence, and less, you know, Charles Bronson’s brand of vigilantism from Death Wish. In doing so, we must address the failings of major institutions—namely the courts, the criminal justice system, and the legislative branch—enduring the process of advocacy for reform. Punching Nazis, while perhaps providing more immediate satisfaction, doesn’t put us on the same long-term path of reform.

In fact, as Allen stresses, countering violence with more violence only takes us further away from the peaceful society many of us would envision — one devoid of white supremacists and their hate. It does not make our world anymore just than it was before we started throwing haymakers, rocks, and the like. It certainly doesn’t make it any more stable.

In other words — Danielle Allen’s words — “Once political violence activates, shutting it off is exceptionally difficult.” Her closing remarks reinforce this theme, with special attention to the morality of nonviolence as well as the impracticality of its opposite:

Why should anyone believe that people who have been committed to political violence will change their minds and recommit to peaceful forms of litigating conflicts? That kind of distrust erodes the foundations of stable political institutions. The path to justice always lies through justice, including the basic moral idea that immediate self-defense is the only justification for the use of force. We need moral clarity on this point.

Along these lines, violence is not the cure or negotiating tool we might conceive it to be. As the saying goes, it just begets more violence and makes people that much more predisposed to taking sides and fighting, rather than willing to change. When people are made to think of political and social matters in terms of a war, they treat it like one—casualties and all.

The topic of punching Nazis is an extreme example, but one that facilitates a conversation about how we as Americans try to interact with and otherwise react to people with whom we disagree on matters of culture, politics, and morality. Recently, Sarah Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant named The Red Hen in Virginia because of her connection to the Trump White House.

The owner of the restaurant, Stephanie Wilkinson, was home when she got a call from the chef that night, who expressed to Wilkinson the notion that the staff was concerned about Sanders’s presence there. For Wilkinson, Sanders’s defense of Donald Trump’s policies within her role as White House Press Secretary was a deal-breaker. As she (Wilkinson) feels, it’s a matter of moral standards. Compassion. Cooperation. Honesty. These are not the kinds of things that Sanders and her briefings are not known for, and as such, Wilkinson took a stand. What’s more, Wilkinson said she would do it again if given the same opportunity.

News of Sanders’s removal from the restaurant has prompted all sorts of reactions, many of them indicative of a political divide that events such as these only seem to help widen. If The Red Hen’s spike in popularity on Yelp is any indication, the actions taken by its owner have proven very polarizing indeed, with scores of 1-star and 5-star reviews being affixed to the restaurant’s online profile in light of the controversy. While I suppose the treatment of guests should be a factor in reviews of eateries, lest we call these new additions illegitimate, to say nothing of the other elements of the customer experience really seems like a waste of an entry. I mean, what if the trout Grenobloise is truly transcendent? You can say what you want about the owner—but leave her and her restaurant their fish dish, OK?

Beyond reputation assassination via social media from anonymous sources, there are other issues raised by Sarah Sanders getting the boot from The Red Hen and subsequently calling out the restaurant on Twitter. For one, Sanders did so in her official capacity as Press Secretary, and that’s an ethical no-no. According to Walter Shaub, former ethics chief under Barack Obama and Trump, Sanders’s condemnation of a business for personal reasons using her government account can be construed as coercive and a violation of a corollary to the ban on endorsements that someone like Kellyanne Conway has blatantly disregarded in the past. As Shaub reasons, Sanders can “lob attacks on her own time but not using her official position.”

Also, people have drawn a comparison between the way Sanders was refused service for her political positions and the way some businesses have sought to refuse service to homosexuals, claiming “religious freedom.” As far as detractors on the right are concerned, this is just bigotry on the part of the left, but this is a false equivalency; since it has come up frequently enough, it’s worth addressing. Sanders chose her line of work and accepted her current position, and continues to serve as Press Secretary of her own volition. Gays and lesbians, on the other hand, don’t choose to be gay. It’s who they are. The best argument one can try to make is that Sanders, were she to proverbially fall on her sword, would put her career and her livelihood at risk. Still, that’s a stretch when considering the ostracism members of the LGBTQ community have faced over time.

The issue that appears to loom largest here, however, is the matter of whether or not owners of establishments should refuse service to patrons based on their political beliefs or their association with a disinformation machine like the Trump White House. This is where I’m a little unsure that Stephanie Wilkinson’s choice is the right one. Now, it’s one thing if Sanders and her group were actively trying to cause distress to members of the staff or other patrons, or they were trying to espouse discriminatory views. If I were a restaurant owner, I wouldn’t want, say, Ku Klux Klan members waltzing into my place and ordering cheese and crackers. There are limits to freedom of expression, to be sure.

Assuming Wilkinson has the right to ask Sanders and Co. to leave, though, whether or not she should ask them to leave is a subject worthy of debate. It’s like refusing to serve or otherwise accommodate someone wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat. In April, a New York City judge ruled a bar was legally allowed to refuse service to a man wearing a “MAGA” hat, as it wasn’t discriminating based on country of origin, race, religion, sexual orientation, or other demographic characteristic. It also didn’t help the man’s cause that he reportedly was verbally abusive to staff. In Sanders’s case, meanwhile, there is no indication that anything more than her presence was the source of unrest. Even in the court of public opinion, this seems like less of an open-and-shut case.

What especially gives me pause is that few people seem to be on Sarah Sanders’s side on this one, and I’m not sure if this is my failing in my refusal to join in, or just the left looking to stick their tongues out at a Donald Trump supporter like the White House Press Secretary in the midst of the administration’s flagging popularity, and as we plumb the depths of a crisis facing immigrant families which feels less like border security and more like ethnic cleansing.

Other Trump administration officials have met with similar treatment, with DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and senior policy advisor Stephen Miller both being met with protests as they ate at—irony fully noted—Mexican restaurants. It’s not just Cabinet members and racist advisors to the President, either. A video of New York-based attorney Aaron Schlossberg berating and threatening employees of a restaurant with deportation because they spoke Spanish went viral, and condemnation and ridicule were soon to follow. Heck, a GoFundMe page was even erected to pay for a mariachi band to play outside the man’s office. At a moment in time marked by visible tension between groups, especially whites who support the President vs. minority groups and their defenders, everyone seems to be fair game. The racist rants of yesteryear now run the risk of damaging people’s careers.

In all, there doesn’t seem to be much sympathy for Ms. Sanders—and I don’t know that there should be, quite frankly—but despite what someone like Rep. Maxine Waters would aver, maybe these officials shouldn’t be kicked out of restaurants, and definitely, I submit, they shouldn’t be harassed. That is, if one were to convey his or her opinions to them in a civil manner, it’s one thing, but it’s another to shout epithets at them while they try to eat enchiladas.

At the end of the day, we may find the positions of Nielsen and Miller reprehensible, but they’re human beings. Like you or I or the immigrants who live in fear of the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy, they still need to eat and spend time with family. While I suppose Sanders and her group could have just gone, say, to a Chili’s instead, to try to abnegate the humanity of one because of his or her own abnegation of another’s humanity is to make two wrongs without making a right. It might feel good for a spell, but as with punching Nazis, it doesn’t put us on a path to reform.

To boot, for those looking to discredit people on the political left as intolerant in their own right, the decision to ask Sanders to leave The Red Hen has the power to turn her into somewhat of a sympathetic figure, and given that she’s served as the mouthpiece of an administration which doesn’t seem to have the word “sympathy” in its vocabulary, such is a regrettable turn in these cultural conflicts because concern for her feels unearned.

It comes on the heels of criticisms levied on her by Michelle Wolf, for which members of the media were quick to come to her (Sanders’s) defense, a defense not only unearned but undeserved given that Wolf was only pointing out Sanders’s role as an enabler and liar for President Trump. Thus, when Sanders tweets to say that The Red Hen’s owner’s actions say “more about [Wilkinson]” than they say about her and that she tries to deal respectfully with those with whom she disagrees, you tend to hate that she seems even somewhat credible—compromised ethics and all.

I know my position is liable to be upsetting to some people because it screams Democratic centrism to them (Chuck Schumer, among others, has criticized the desire to harass Trump administration officials). Believe me — I don’t wish to be lumped in with moderates when the Democrats’ refusal to move further left is one of my chief frustrations as someone trying to become more engaged with politics. And I certainly don’t wish to appear as if I agree with Donald Trump, who, though he has much more important things to do — facilitate peace on the Korean peninsula, help Puerto Rico, reunite kids with their families, etc. — felt compelled to rant about The Red Hen’s decision on social media. Say what you want about POTUS, but he’s consistent, you know, in that he never misses a chance to point a finger in a petty way.

Or some might just plain disagree. Ryan Cooper, writing for The Week, defends incivility toward Trump administration officials with points such as these:

In the situations recounted above, no one beat up these officials, broke any property, or threatened them in any way.

If anyone is “uncivil,” it’s the con artists, criminals, and/or racists of the Trump administration and people of a like mind such as Rep. Steve King of Iowa.

President Trump is, like, the most uncivil of us all, and he has a platform much bigger than any dissenter on the left.

This is a natural and perhaps unavoidable reaction to a lack of immediate electoral solutions or an absence of meaningful legislative representation.

Fretting about civility on the left internalizes the belief that it is pointless to try to appeal to people on the right, especially the far right, on moral and rational terms. Moreover, it sows division within “the Resistance.”

Cooper also dismisses concerns about incivility from the left being used as political capital for Trump and other officials, and while I agree to a certain extent that one shouldn’t necessarily worry about the feelings and potential votes of others in the course of public discourse, I also think that these definitions of “civility” and “incivility” are somewhat vague and get muddled with moral judgments. Being “civil” doesn’t necessarily relate to the moral rectitude of your behavior or your speech, but merely to formal courtesy and politeness in their expression. By the same token, however, “political civility” isn’t exactly the same thing as civility as per the dictionary definition, so maybe the problem is simply with our specificity of expression and how we delineate the terms, first and foremost. The line is an apparently fine one, and who is using this terminology is as important as what words are being used.

Plus, for those decrying this fussing over civility as just a ploy to stifle free speech, while addressing how to reach people in the face of carelessness or lack of composure is critically important, and while not all calls for civility are equal considering the source—this can’t be stressed enough—this doesn’t strike me as an occasion to participate in relativistic exercises. So Trump’s henchmen and henchwomen are uncouth. Does that mean we should all up and call them “feckless c**ts” in the style of Samantha Bee? Even if I feel Bee, like Michelle Wolf, shouldn’t feel duty-bound to apologize, her use of profane language didn’t make her argument more credible. At least we should be able to agree on this point.

I get it—so many of us are angry at Donald Trump and his enablers, and heartbroken about the plight of immigrant children, and feeling powerless with the midterms months away and 2020 still seeming remote, and tired of the onslaught of bullshit day after day. It’s not easy. Then again, it never was going to be easy, and for all the hemming and hawing about civility, if this is not to be the goal, at least we can aim for precision of language and factual correctness. Even in the face of haphazard tweets and “fake news,” rationality and truth yet have value.

Is Political Correctness Really Bringing America Down?

#Aaron Schlossberg #civility #donald trump #immigrant children #Kirstjen Nielsen #Red Hen restaurant #Sarah Sanders #Stephen Miller

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