Nick Sandmann case demonstrates why the internet is driving liberals mad
Many users of social media will have seen it pop into their timeline over the weekend. In a short video taken on the steps of the Lincoln monument a native American is banging a drum. Directly in front of him is a young student standing in his way and staring down the older man. Other high school students – in Trump MAGA caps – are laughing and enjoying the spectacle.
You can watch a version of it here although with smart phones being ubiquitous there are plenty more available.
It looked on a cursory glance like a pretty clear case. The Catholic student, quickly identified as Nick Sandmann, in Washington on Friday to attend the “March for Life”, was being somewhat obnoxious and cheered on by white students blocking an elder, who it turns out was a Vietnam veteran. The veteran, Nathan Phillips, made it to the war that Donald Trump dodged. Twitter exploded in rage, with the ultra-liberal insults amplified by liberal celebrities with mass follower counts. The anger, directed at a young person, was breathtaking in its intensity, violence and cruelty. It went viral. The main news networks picked it up. Sandmann’s family has been the focus of death threats since.
As the story picked up speed, Sandmann’s school condemned the actions of its pupils and promised to investigate. The Diocese of Covington and Covington Catholic High School said: “The matter is being investigated and we will take appropriate action, up to and including expulsion. We condemn the actions of the Covington Catholic High School students towards Nathan Phillips specifically, and Native Americans in general, Jan. 18, after the March for Life, in Washington, D.C. We extend our deepest apologies to Mr. Phillips. This behaviour is opposed to the Church’s teachings on the dignity and respect of the human person.”
Note it condemned the students before promising to investigate. This, terrifyingly, is how it works now when an ultra-liberal social media mob is marching digitally. A panicked person working for the institution suddenly in the line of fire risks opprobrium, or perhaps even the sack, if their response is insufficiently politically correct. It’s going viral, their school and one of its pupils is trending on Twitter. They have minutes to respond and the easiest path, surely, is the one taken this time. After all, the standard public relations advice is to apologise instantly, on the basis of people being annoyed by a video clip being spread millions of times at high speed. And then establish the facts when the social media caravan has moved on.
Then the story took an unexpected twist. The native American protestor had advanced on the students and approached the young man, who had simply declined to move. Why should he? The students had been subjected to a wave of insults from other campaigners. One of the native American campaigner’s supporters, or someone cheering him on, even suggested the white boys should go back to Europe. There are much longer versions of the original video, it seems. You can find them online, if you have time to kill.
Failing that, you can read Sandmann’s statement.
It is worth quoting at length.
“I am the student in the video who was confronted by the Native American protestor. I arrived at the Lincoln Memorial at 4:30 p.m. I was told to be there by 5:30 p.m., when our busses were due to leave Washington for the trip back to Kentucky. We had been attending the March for Life rally, and then had split up into small groups to do sightseeing.
When we arrived, we noticed four African American protestors who were also on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I am not sure what they were protesting, and I did not interact with them. I did hear them direct derogatory insults at our school group.
The protestors said hateful things. They called us “racists,” “bigots,” “white crackers,” “faggots,” and “incest kids.” They also taunted an African American student from my school by telling him that we would “harvest his organs.” I have no idea what that insult means, but it was startling to hear.
Because we were being loudly attacked and taunted in public, a student in our group asked one of our teacher chaperones for permission to begin our school spirit chants to counter the hateful things that were being shouted at our group. The chants are commonly used at sporting events. They are all positive in nature and sound like what you would hear at any high school. Our chaperone gave us permission to use our school chants. We would not have done that without obtaining permission from the adults in charge of our group.
At no time did I hear any student chant anything other than the school spirit chants. I did not witness or hear any students chant “build that wall” or anything hateful or racist at any time. Assertions to the contrary are simply false. Our chants were loud because we wanted to drown out the hateful comments that were being shouted at us by the protestors.
After a few minutes of chanting, the Native American protestors, who I hadn’t previously noticed, approached our group. The Native American protestors had drums and were accompanied by at least one person with a camera.
The protestor everyone has seen in the video began playing his drum as he waded into the crowd, which parted for him. I did not see anyone try to block his path. He locked eyes with me and approached me, coming within inches of my face. He played his drum the entire time he was in my face.
I never interacted with this protestor. I did not speak to him. I did not make any hand gestures or other aggressive moves. To be honest, I was startled and confused as to why he had approached me. We had already been yelled at by another group of protestors, and when the second group approached I was worried that a situation was getting out of control where adults were attempting to provoke teenagers.”
To the credit of the US news networks, on the release of the statement and scrutiny of the longer videos, they pivoted on Sunday evening to reporting that the story was more complex than originally presented. Some of those who had joined the original outrage bus were sensible enough to disembark, although few apologies seem to have been offered. As ever, David Brooks of the New York Times had the good grace to rethink and clarify.
By then, of course, it was already too late. A young student had been made a hate figure for millions, falsely presented as the personification of racism in Trump’s America. A family is being targeted with death threats. The story fades and as it does the clarification usually gets less attention and fewer clicks than the original supposed outrage.
Among the most “woke” – or politically correct – even the new evidence of what happened made no difference. There are still plenty of insults and threats being flung in Sandmann’s direction by Twitter users in the US today, although the celebrities (presumably fearing lawyers) have moved on quickly to other subjects.
I said in the headline that this incident demonstrates how or why the internet is driving liberals, in the US but not exclusively in the US, round the twist. The incident will now be used by grassroots Trump supporters to claim that millions of arrogant liberals use “fake” news or social media pile-ons to create outrage and smear their opponents. Are they wrong?
But this is about more than a new version – old wine in new bottles – of the long-standing explanation of how false gossip spreads and mobs form seeking excitement and revenge before the facts are established. It’s worse than that. This is another indicator of the extent to which a useful technology, the internet, is warping the perceptions of millions of people who, one assumes, like to think of themselves as tolerant, rational people.
There is something strange happening to the liberal mind in the West, under the pressure of rapid technological change, catastrophic visions of doomsday looming, and more immediately events not going in the direction – towards a liberal concept of ever more progress – they were promised for decades by other liberals. Perhaps they are also being pulled leftwards by the social justice movement and the far left’s absolutism online, or by rage at Trump, or by losing to people they regard as their social inferiors.
Whatever the explanation, a persistent strain of liberalism since the late 19th century – ultra-liberal intolerance of those who classify as something other than liberal, say conservative or socialist – is fast becoming the dominant liberal characteristic. It’s there in Britain in the extraordinary rudeness in public on social media to people less well-educated; in citing the concept of the restoration of the British empire as a leave aim when only fanatical remainers think that’s a thing; and in the celebration of death when the dead are leave voters.
In the US, it means a two day social media pile-on involving millions of people directed at a school student, a young person. How liberal is that?
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that liberalism is in the process of devouring itself.