Sally Kohn is having a hard day. Yesterday she was clearly in her glory offering encouragement to Black Lives Matter groups across the country:
Rise up! Refuse to be silent! Refuse to be complicit! Refuse to accept that injustice & inequality are inevitable!! https://t.co/PaItTE9IGI
— Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) July 8, 2016
And then, last night, a man angry about police shootings shot 11 police officers, killing five of them. So just a few hours later she’s feeling defensive.
More horrible news to wake up to. #Dallas police shootings are tragedy. Please don't blame movement that exists to OPPOSE VIOLENCE!
— Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) July 8, 2016
Now, the argument about how much culpability groups and their message have for the actions of individuals is one we seem to come back to after every mass shooting. So there is a long and well-worn history of activists on every side saying ‘Don’t blame us, we are against violence!’ So you’d think, on this morning, Sally Kohn would have some self-reflection about her own history of blame-casting which, as Twitter user ‘neontaster’ pointed out, is well-documented:
Remember, rhetoric is ALWAYS to blame, unless it is rhetoric @sallykohn supports. pic.twitter.com/AizEkqYDQ6
— Noam Blum (@neontaster) July 8, 2016
Her attacks on pro-lifers after a shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic seem like a particularly apt comparison since, as pro-lifers like myself see it, their movement is also about opposing systemic violence. But Sally isn’t buying that:
Yes, difference between smearing lies about Planned Parenthood "selling baby parts" & saying #BlackLivesMatter https://t.co/HofWSQ3LRZ
— Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) July 8, 2016
Note that the only part of “selling baby parts” that is even in question is the word selling. That the organs were transferred and money exchanged is agreed to by everyone. The only question is whether a profit was made. But even if you think it was not, there is still plenty in the story to find objectionable. Even the head of Planned Parenthood apologized for the heartless tone. Sally’s next tweet doubled down on her double-standard:
Calling abortion clinics "baby killers" is rhetoric that incites violence.
Whereas #BlackLivesMatter message literally *opposes* violence.
— Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) July 8, 2016
Well, it’s not really that simple is it? First of all, saying someone else is a killer doesn’t necessarily incite violence and might just be accurate. But if it does incite violence then there are certainly plenty of examples of people involved with Black Lives Matter calling police killers or even murderers.
Any body who says @deray does not incite anger & police hatred is lying. #SandraBland autopsy proves she hung herself pic.twitter.com/drmXCPp1a9
— Alexiis Starr (@AlexiisStarr) July 24, 2015
In fact, Sandra Bland committed suicide. There is no evidence she was killed by police but there is evidence she was depressed and had previously attempted suicide. There are of course lots of other examples we could cite of BLM leaders and people sympathetic with the movement calling police killers and even some of people calling for violence against police.
But back to Sally Kohn and her lack of self-awareness. Just a few moments after criticizing the language of pro-lifers, Kohn retweeted this:
The murderers in Dallas just took the attention off the murderers in Baton Rouge and Falcon Heights. Mission accomplished, motherfuckers.
— Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) July 8, 2016
The latter “murderers” in this case are police officers. So spparently Kohn sees “baby killers” as a problem but “murderers” is not a problem. Again, maybe these aren’t incitements at all but accurate descriptions, but Kohn wants to have it both ways, i.e. it’s incitement when pro-lifers say it but just descriptive when BLM says much the same. At some point her tweets became borderline incoherent:
How's about instead of blaming protest movements for violence against police, we blame policing for violence that necessitated protests?!?
— Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) July 8, 2016
Do we really need to be told the protests were a response to what looks like bad policing? Didn’t everyone know that? It seems Kohn is once again trying to rule out the blaming of the protests for inciting the violence but, again, that’s not a stance she takes consistently. She is eager to blame violence on a protest movement when that violence is against a Planned Parenthood clinic. She is unwilling to acknowledge that she is guilty of the same behavior she deplores in others.
So now the right will stop accusing #BlackLivesMatter of encouraging and condoning violence, right?!?!!! https://t.co/hzLBMmksxv
— Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) July 8, 2016
I don’t know, Sally, did you stop blaming pro-lifers after national leaders denounced the Planned Parenthood shooting? Did you, Sally?
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