Jackman-Atkinson: Mob mentality 2 . 0
- Details
- Published on Wednesday, May 14, 2014
By: Kate Jackman-Atkinson
myWestman.ca
The proliferation of smart phones and the internet has brought the world to our fingertips and made it harder for those in power to hide objectionable words and actions.
The reality that almost everyone is carrying a video camera and documenting people’s actions has never been easier. The ease at which videos can be uploaded has meant that an audience for these videos has never been more accessible.
Turning everyone into a citizen journalist has had a powerful positive impact.
For the good it can do, the technology has made it increasingly easy to jump on a bandwagon and participate in today’s equivalent of a pitch fork wielding, angry mob.
About three weeks ago, a recording was released showing Donald Sterling, owner of the LA Clippers NBA team, making a string of racist comments to his girlfriend. A public firestorm erupted and the NBA investigated. Ultimately, they banned Sterling from the league for life and levied a $2.5 million fine against him.
Sterling’s comments were deeply racist, but in a recent Time Magazine opinion piece, former NBA player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar made some interesting observations about the controversy. Abdul-Jabbar points out that going back to 2006, there were well-documented cases of Sterling’s racism, none of which elicited such wide-spread condemnation, from either the public nor the NBA. He has been sued multiple times for housing descrimination and was reported to have said, “Black tenants smell and attract vermin.”
Abdul-Jabbar condemns the racism but also points to the concern we should have that a private conversation was recorded and released to the public. “Shouldn’t we be equally angered by the fact that his private, intimate conversation was taped and then leaked to the media? Didn’t we just call to task the NSA for intruding into American citizen’s privacy in such an un-American way?”
Closer to home, a similar situation faced Tom Flanagan, a conservative political insider and one-time campaign manager for Stephen Harper. The Albertan recently released a book, called “Persona Non Grata: The Death of Free Speech in the Internet Age” about his experience as the target of a “virtual mobbing”, as he called it.
In February 2013, Flanagan was speaking at an event at the University of Lethbridge. He was filmed answering a question from the audience in which he said that he had doubts about mandatory jail sentences for people who view child pornography, as opposed to those who make and distribute it. The video went viral and in the fall out, Flanagan was shunned by the federal Conservative Party and the provincial Wild Rose Party, for which he was an advisor. He was also dropped by CBC’s Power and Politics program. The University of Calgary, where he was a professor, distanced themselves from him.
Despite the questionable comments, the making of the video doesn’t appear to be innocent, At the end of the video, the videographer can be heard saying, “Gotcha”.
Last week, Flanagan was on CBC’s Q program talking about the incident. He explained that he believed he was speaking in an academic setting in which one advances theoretical ideas that may be divisive in order to stir debate. He added that this was the only comment on the topic of child pornography and he received no feedback in the informal question period after the presentation. It wasn’t until he was driving home the next morning did he hear that the video had gone viral and that his one-time friends and supporters had so quickly and publicly distanced themselves from him.
In both cases, I don’t agree with what was said, but that doesn’t mean we should blindly engage in public witch hunts. We need to be ever mindful of the motivations behind those making and publicizing videos aimed at stirring widespread public condemnation. Whether it’s racism or child pornography, these continue to be issues facing our society and we need to continue to discuss what we deem acceptable as a society. If everyone is too afraid of saying anything for fear of widespread backlash, we will lose the ability to rationally discuss topics that should be addressed.
