Vigilante Injustice
Vigilante justice is never pretty — whether it’s an avenging mob running wild or an online feeding frenzy targeting people in the name of hunting haters.
And that’s precisely what’s happening now as a self-appointed leftist posse has been trolling the Internet in search of white supremacists to harass.
Only these amateur sleuths are often unleashing their wrath — and provoking others like them — on innocent victims.
Like Kyle Quinn, a university professor forced to flee his Arkansas home when a “doxxing” Twitter account, @YesYoureRacist, misidentified him as one of the white supremacists who rallied at Charlottesville.
His Twitter and Instagram accounts were flooded with thousands of vulgar messages calling him a Nazi and demanding he be fired from his job. Many posted his home address online.
All this took place because a Web site wrongly identified a photo of a Charlottesville mob member as Quinn — who was 1,100 miles away at the time. And he’s hardly the only victim.
Yes, some of the marchers have been identified correctly, outed and suffered the consequences. But online photo identification is an inexact science, even for professionals. Combine careless amateur sleuthing with a vigilante atmosphere and you have the makings of an online lynch mob.
Sometimes, you don’t even need the Internet: A Colorado man last week was slashed by someone who thought his long-on-top, buzzed-on-thesides haircut meant he was a neo-Nazi.
We’ve seen this all before. In 2012, ABC News wrongly identified the man who killed 12 people in an Aurora, Colo., theater as a local Tea Party activist — in fact, it was someone else with the same (very common) name and no Tea Party connection.
And in Boston last weekend, 30,000 protesters — urged on by the city’s mayor — turned out to “counter” what they thought was a white supremacist rally. In fact, it was a demonstration for free speech that cut across ideological lines.
Yes, hatred needs to be fought and self-styled Nazis held to account. But over-reacting to the threat can too easily become dangerous — especially when the Internet is turned into a free-forall instrument of justice by those who aren’t careful about what they’re doing.