Today I got my first community violation on TikTok. It was a video about Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing that went on for minutes but failed to mention that McVeigh was a far right Republican white supremacist. That seemed like a pretty stark omission to me, so I left the fact as a comment. First, I was flooded by hateful responses. Then TikTok deleted the comment and issued me a “strike.” I appealed and was denied. I doubt a human ever reviewed it.
The fact that McVeigh was a Republican and applied to his local KKK chapter and sold copies of the antisemitic racist book The Turner Diaries are all listed on his Wikipedia page. This info is not hard to find. But this is how white supremacy works. When zealots follow the ideology to its inevitable conclusion and commit a terrorist act, we whitewash the history to turn them into a lone crazy person with inexplicable motives.
@fraying I’m just now watching an HBO doc about the bombing, and 10 minutes in they’re already covering the Nazi / extreme right connections. Ignoring the connection is blatantly ignorant. It’s not subtle, and it’s not in dispute. I’m sorry (but not surprised) to hear about your experience.
@fraying I mean, I always assume that EVERYBODY knows that, but I lived in OKC in 1995 (four miles from downtown). The line between McVeigh and today's MAGA crowd is very short and very straight.
@fraying It especially bothers me when my fellow Oklahomans who I know had "never forget" magnets on their '95 Blazers and Neons are on the same side as McVeigh now.
@mattblaze@fraying It would seem that completely ignoring the actual context of whatever thing people are waving around as an in-group defining symbol is one of the most common human things in the world to do.
@fraying I once had someone on Hacker News question my assertion that the OKC bombing was right-wing terrorism. I was flabbergasted. I really thought everyone knew who and what McVeigh was. But, white supremacist violence really does get washed away in the retelling over time. I don't know if the questioner was asking in good faith, but there is a widely held (incorrect) belief that most terrorists are brown and Muslim, when they're actually mostly white Republicans.
@swelljoe@fraying Even I (a white Canadian news-avoiding city person) know McVeigh is a white terrorist guy who blew up a gov't building with a daycare in it with a literal load of literal fertilizer. That story is how I learned you can make big big explosions with farm supplies.
@fraying@evan Every spam comment I’ve ever reported on that site was upheld. They’re obvious spam soliciting for fake investment professionals on any clip that mentions budgets. I have no idea what’s going on with their moderation.
Add comment