What It's Like to be the Center of a Swarm

I have been targeted on Twitter for going against the status quo many times before. So many times, in fact, that people have continually urged me to either shut up or get off of Twitter. Neither of these options are easy solutions. Shutting up would require some sort of brain operation that would stifle my own need to speak up when I see things that don’t make sense or are inherently unfair. Getting off Twitter would be the preferable option, but since I run a website I do have to maintain some sort of Twitter presence.

Here are some examples of some of the worst swarms I’ve experienced: Not liking the film Little Women, or worse, accusing the film community of grading it on a curve because it was directed by a woman. Calling Ansel Elgort a pedophile because he at 21 had a relationship with a 17 year-old is simply factually inaccurate. Didn’t matter. I was thrown into the churn for 24-48 hours, dehumanized screamed at and eventually blocked by hundreds on “film twitter.” I have stood up for people who are being bullied, I have dared to respond to Ben Shapiro and link out to Megyn Kelly’s podcast. I don’t like the feeling of being intimidated or bullied so I all too often push back. I operated from the principle that people know me who follow me - that we’re all in some long conversation where we still give each other the benefit of the doubt that we are good people underneath it all, even if we don’t go along with the status quo.

I was wrong.

We’re living through a time where each new traumatic event hyped by the media for ratings, is sent like a shockwave through social media where millions of people experience the same feeling all at once results in subsequent purges. The vigilant “children spies” rally the troops, digging into every word they see on Twitter or in an article or in a comment to root out the bad thinkers.

This “mass hysteria” continues to cycle through the cultural Left on a daily, sometimes hourly basis. By the time the 24-48 hours are over they move on to something else, as the fight or flight mechanisms in their brains subsides at last. If you were the target during the swarm, however, you won’t recover. They will never apologize, never humanize you. You must now live with the consequences. They expect you to grovel and apologize. They expect you to feel great shame for breaking the rules of conduct, for daring to think for yourself. They will ask you, as many did me, why I never am accountable for the things I say online.

If you knew me well and shared my social media space on Facebook or Twitter you would have witnesses my ideological shift for the past year. The short version is that I discovered I was mostly existing in an ideological bubble. Whenever I try to explain it I sound like a desert exile caught in a van at Burning Man trying to explain the secrets of the universe in between bong hits. But really, it’s just that I realized that the media and social media are divided so sharply that seem like separate realities. I vowed to break out of my own ideological bubble and venture forth, ask questions, find out what was true what wasn’t.

As I began to notice the hypocrisy on the Left, the ongoing persecution and dehumanization of people who weren’t totally on board with the doctrine, I struggled more and more with what what was right, what was true and how to tell the difference. I did it loudly and publicly. I tried in my own small way to puncture the bubble and point out the hypocrisy, the bias in the media, the dehumanization of the opposition. I never brought anyone over to my side. I just alienated many people who suddenly saw me as the enemy.

I was paying with fire.

Had I simply deleted my Facebook posts and my twitter there would be nothing to cherry pick and drag out as “proof” that I was a “baddie.” But I didn’t really think about it. I didn’t think my posts would be picked over and used against me a whole year later, but that is exactly what happened.

Last week, I was accused of being a “white supremacist” because I pointed out that hate crimes against Asians were not exclusively a white crime and that if people were serious with their hashtag “Stop Asian Hate” they would want to talk about what is really going on, why it isn’t only white people committing those hate crimes. I had seen several disturbing videos that morning such that I forgot for a minute the rigid rules on Twitter about being a white person discussing race in any form. You are only allowed to express your own shame and guilt. In fact, it’s better not to speak of race at all in any context. Here, “White Supremacy” had caused everything and thus it had to be the cause of anti-Asian hate crimes. My brain could not square that with the reality. What I saw was yet more virtue signaling - having it both ways without having the difficult but more honest conversation about what was driving the recent spate of attacks.

If you watch Tik Tok or Youtube, or follow any prominent voice on the Left in 2021, you see them speak in a kind of coded language. Everyone knows the rules of the language - what can and can’t be said, what must always be conveyed. If anyone slips up even one time their large following will feel the impact of the waves of call-outs, which lead to a mass hysteria event that accuses them of something much bigger than a simple mistake. That is really “cancel culture” in its purest form: punish those who break the strict rules of the doctrine. As a result, though, it has led to a blandness in culture, in art, in criticism. Speaking in code is no way to speak at all. It is not honest. It is not interesting. But it does satisfy the need to curate and protect our utopia.

The idea is that if you have a brain and you have original thoughts you know are not in keeping with the status quo, you still must keep your head down, shut up and don’t make waves. Millennials and Gen-Z have come of age knowing to self-censor what they really think. They know never to say it publicly by now.

Back during the Oscar race for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and the film before that, Green Book I had defended both of those movies against massive Twitter attacks that called not just th movies themselves racist, but everyone involved in the movie a racist. At one point, it was even difficult for Sam Rockwell and Frances McDormand to win their acting prizes - at least online. I’d been accused by a prominent black film Twitter person who said I should not bring up the fact that many black film critics named Three Billboards as one of their best films of the year. The movie was racist and that was that. You could not and were not allowed to defend it or you were a racist too. It was bad enough then - I lost a lot of followers and readers because of it.

The thing is, I have no problem discussing race and racism in Hollywood and the Oscars. I’ve been doing it going on ten years now. In fact, I was known for that back in 2011 when I fought for Viola Davis to win Best Actress. Back then, that was why I lost readers and many of them are the same people now carrying torches and screaming at me on Twitter or subtweeting or silently shunning - now that they are “woke” and speak in proper coded language they get to stand on the side of the bullies and feel okay about it.

This time was different, though. This time the people who had given me the benefit of the doubt during the Green Book and Three Billboards years suddenly began to distant themselves. My tweet about Asian hate was sent quickly around Twitter and used as the smoking gun. By now, the idea was - if I was getting in so much trouble on Twitter then I must be a “baddie.” No, what I am is someone who mostly refuses to go along with the hive mind when I don’t agree with it.

As the hysteria mounted and a quadrant of Film Twitter mobilized for attack, the fearless leader - a wild-eyed 20-something (white, of course) was making grand proclamations about me in a shocking way that I’d never heard before. They were out for total destruction, to make sure I was punished for my wrong think.

I wasn’t the only one targeted. They targeted everyone who works on my website with me - publicly calling them out by name and accusing them for working for a “white supremacist.” A friend of mine who defended me accidentally used the wrong pronoun and was then accused of transphobia - and if there is one thing on Twitter worse than being called a racist it’s being called transphobic.

No one I knew, save for a small handful of people, would vouch for me, someone they knew for years both in person and online. Their only solution was to tell me it was my fault. I should have shut up or gotten off Twitter. Never did any of them say “come on, people. This is ridiculous.” They would not say it for the same reason people never say it. They instinctually know, in the darkest regions of their primal brain, that they only have two choices: stay silent or go along with it. That’s the really scary part - how fast people crumble in the face of fear.

Most of them are babies. They are younger than my daughter and yet they have somehow been allowed to turn into tyrants online with no one to stand up to them and teach them the RIGHT lessons in how to survive this world. They think this is the way they should behave - and unfortunately for them, reality will come and will come hard and fast. This is not the real world, this online utopian bubble. Not even close.

Although it’s being called “Cancel Culture” what is happening now is really “Baby Marxism.” They believe they can police the hearts and minds of ordinary citizens and race them to admit their deep and hidden sins. Every day is a new case of a person being hauled into the public square, called a racist and either fired or shunned.

There is a reason that the young were targeted by people like Hitler, Stalin and even the KKK back in the 1930s. If you own the minds of the young, you own the future. In 1984 the youth were the ones tasked with spying on the citizens of Oceana to make sure they did not break the rules set in place by Big Brother. Orwell clearly wrote the novel as an indictment of the USSR after the Russian Revolution under Stalin’s rule.

People aren’t being slaughtered by the millions, thousands aren’t left to cry and suffer in orphanages and then turned into the Secret Police, but there are eery similarities to the Communist Party of the USA that rose up after the Russian Revolution to mimic much of its ideology. Here is a quote from the new book called A Time of Fear, America in the Era of Red Scares and Cold War – Albert Marrin:

The [CPUSA] comrade was supposed to begin each day by reading Communist literature, preferably the Daily Worker, an all-around newspaper with columns on sports, music, the arts, and fashion. Its lead articles and editorials, however, hammered away at issues of concern at the moment, but also fostered groupthink, a mentality that discourages individuality and the questioning of official “truths.” Not only did the paper tell readers what and how to think about an issue, it gave them slogans and arguments to support the Party line. “More and more,” an ex-member recalled, the Party exerted a “soul-destroying authority.” Indeed, “our entire lives became enmeshed in the Party to the point where every judgment on every question ranging from high politics to family matters issued from this source.”

And:

Those who failed to bestow themselves, who were not in lockstep with Party dictates, might be subject to mock trials—in fact, struggle sessions meant to publicly humiliate and punish offenders. Verbally assaulted by friends-turned-persecutors, the defendant had to answer to charges of displaying “anti-leadership tendencies,” “corrupting the Party with your ideas,” and being “a petty bourgeois degenerate.” The aim was to break the accused, make them confess their “errors,” beg for forgiveness, and do penance in the form of carrying out a special assignment. If they refused, the penalty was expulsion. For the ardent Communist, expulsion felt like being cast into utter darkness. The sinner became a nonperson, one who had never existed. Former comrades, even close relatives, would have nothing to do with them. Communist neighbors brushed past them without saying a word, and Communist shopkeepers turned them away. Communist physicians and dentists refused to treat them. Communist nursery schools expelled their toddlers.

The tricky part was that the Communists, like the “Cancel Culture” thought police, were also a force for good, particularly when it came to civil rights. Without them, for instance, the Scottsboro Boys would have been lynched. The Communists were among the only forces in the 1930s, heading into WWII, who fought for the rights of black citizens. In Russia too they believed in the same kind of equality the new Left believes in: everyone is equal.

Of course, Orwell nailed the hypocrisy under Stalin who quickly formed an elite ruling class - all animals are equal, only some animals are more equal than others. Despite their efforts at equality, racism was rampant in Russia and in America. Despite its good intentions, the Communist movement turned out to be yet another way for a handful of people to gain power over a majority. And in the end, the Civil Rights movement was unfortunately linked to the communist threat and persecuted as a result.

What is happening now on the Left is simply the need to hold onto power, the power the Left had under Obama. The Left dominated culture and they believed they dominated politics too - that they were building an America that was just and equal and progressive. That “renaissance” was blown wide open by Trump. The hysteria, the fear, the purges is all done to preserve what they feel slipping away. They are holding on harder than they ever have without realizing that their collective insanity will ultimately drive people away from their movements.

Everything that drives mass hysteria feels real to those caught up in it. Making people afraid of whole groups of people is something we do with regularity and we continue doing it unless we’re stopped by a war, for instance. The fear of black citizens during Jim Crow felt real to the terrified whites who heard stories that made their heads spin. To the Puritans, witchcraft was not only real but it was their greatest threat. And now, in the post-Trump Left, any white person is potentially a bad apple who must be monitored, scrutinized and then given a verdict on whether they can stay or whether they must go.

I am not comparing my insignificant treatment to that of black citizens or Jews or victims of Stalin or even the citizens of Salem. I am merely pointing out that the process, at its heart, is the same.

For me, the worst that happened was a threat to call my advertisers, put me out of business, de-platform whatever minuscule platform I had. I will live with a kind of virtual Scarlet letter and I’m sure people will whisper about me, gossip about me, and continue to police everything I say and do in their quest to obliterate me from the online sphere. But this is not a serious threat and it can’t be compared to the trauma suffered in the past by true victims of hysterical mobs.

But the thing is, if you find yourself in one of these situations do not apologize. Do not admit wrong doing if they are punishing you for “wrong think.” Are there things I wish I had not said or deleted? Yes. Do I think they found me out as a “white supremacist” because of what I said? No. I broke the rules of conduct. They rendered their verdict and their punishment. But for the most part, I can still do whatever I want with my life.

When will it end?

With Salem and other episodes of mass hysteria they end once the absurdity overpowers the fear. In Salem, the Governor’s wife was accused and for whatever reason it seemed so ludicrous the entire thing collapsed like a house of cards. “Cancel culture” will collapse too. Some good will remain behind when it does. Those who led the charge will be held accountable. When that happens you want to make sure you are on the right side of history. The right side of history has always been and will always be, without any doubt, standing up against purges, persecutions, mass hysteria and yes, “cancel culture.”

I don’t want to belong to the generation of self-censorship. I belong to the generation of free expression, of being tolerant of others even if you don’t agree with them. I want the young to understand that the country, the world is a much better place when we are a tolerant society, that you can’t and shouldn’t police people’s thoughts. That you should start from the fundamental truth that we are a shared species who must learn how to live with each other rather than divide and conquer.

They will not listen to me, that’s for sure. The corporations and cultural icons are too afraid to speak the truth - so they pander and in so doing, set the next generation up for failure by teaching them exactly the wrong lessons. What is the lesson? It is very simple.

Honesty. Decency. Humility. Humanity.

And in truth I would rather leave the internet entirely than be yet another person invaded by the body snatchers.