4 ms·

"Justine Sacco didn't suffer a "devastating online lynching". She got a ton of nasty tweets and emails, and she got fired from her job. " you can't be serious.

• gizmo 11y ago
  It's funny how the tweets directed at Sacco constitute a lynching, but the killing of Mark Duggan, a person of color, by the police in the next sentence is whitewashed in morally neutral terms as "the death of a young man in Tottenham". The protest that followed is condemned as "looting and destruction", the racial aspect not even deserving a mention. Tweets directed at a white woman: Lynching. Killing of a person of color: "death of a young man".
  • tomhoward 11y ago
    The point is that if the primary concern of all the protestors was about the killing of the young man, the targets of the protest would have been confined to the police and the government. Such a protest could have been conducted in such a way that united all people in protest against the injustice. Instead, thanks to the mob instinct, the killing was used to justify indiscriminate violence, theft and destruction. Thus the real issue - the killing of the young man - was diminished in importance thanks to the mob behaviour, and the opportunity for that incident to be a catalyst for real social change was lost.