haithabu wrote:I regularly encounter progressives who try to play this equivalency or karma game and it only makes sense if you subscribe to their ideas about collective guilt. Sometimes it can be taken to absurd lengths such as when one expresses concern about the churches burned in Mali and someone comes back with "...but the Crusades!" Sadly, the last time I heard that it was from fellow Christians. It seems that we can be prone to internalizing accusations against our own faith, some of which are slanderous and others if true are irrelevant to the case in hand.
I don't think that's what I'm doing. Actually, I think what you just said is a false equivalency.
The current rise of extremist hatred and violence is a scary thing. I think internet bullying of people who disagree with you is a scary thing. And I think the kind of vitriol coming out of the White House and people associated with the current president of the United States is a scary thing. That's not some obscure thing back in the middle ages, that's now. What's new is that we're seeing it on the political left too.
And I'm not sure we know what the professor said. His Facebook page is not public, perhaps it was before the controversy. I don't trust the more vitriolic media and blogs to report accurately on this kind of thing.
This article says his statements have been misconstrued, discusses the death threats against him that have forced him and his family into hiding, says that he did not call for violence, and says he has issued a public apology:
Trinity College Professor Johnny Eric Williams Thursday issued a public apology and said he was in hiding far from Connecticut as the campus reopened amid a furor over his recent controversial Facebook posts.
Williams said his posts were not a call for violence against white people, as some claimed when the posts spread across social media. Some of his colleagues spoke out in support of Williams, who fled Hartford after receiving death threats.
Many professors at Trinity signed
a statement saying that this has been misreported:
On June 18, 2017, Prof. Williams was targeted by several conservative websites. They initially and incorrectly attributed a blog post to Williams, which he had not written but only shared on social media. They also misconstrued several comments Williams had written; creating a false narrative that Williams was advocating violence. These inflammatory posts were widely shared, inciting a campaign of violence and intimidation. A barrage of violent threats by phone and email were directed Williams and Trinity College. So extreme were the threats, Trinity College was forced to shut down all operations on Wednesday, June 21st.
Death threats and targeting someone in social media looks a lot like vitriol to me. Calling for someone to lose his job based on hearing something on the news looks a lot like vitriol to me. The appropriate venue for this kind of thing is a trial or a hearing, not vitriol on social media. Williams is now the target of a campaign driven by media and social media that almost guarantees the kinds of death threats he is getting. He's hardly the first. Let's stop participating in that.
Is it biblical? Is it Christlike? Is it loving? Is it true? How can I find out?