Robert Bowers and scapegoating social media

By Ben Crystal

Robert Bowers and scapegoating social media 

In keeping with American custom, the aftermath of the terrorist attack which stole the lives of 11 Americans at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh was filled with the usual politicized finger-pointing at the expense of legitimate concern for those affected. Why waste time with icky old mourning when we can blame President Donald Trump's bombast, the Democrat Party's association with vicious anti-Semites, and/or the NRA? It's just a complicated way of avoiding pinning the tail on the right donkey, a Nazi-wannabe wingnut named Robert Bowers? The debate over who incited him continues endlessly across the politisphere. But nearly all the accusers have noted a common suspect: social media. And nearly all of them are wrong to do it. In fact, humanity's increasing interconnectedness is actually forcing us to be better, not worse.

Social media may be a "wretched a hive of scum and villainy," but wretched hives of scum and villainy have existed since well before we could email other neat-o gifs we made of Obi Wan Kenobi explaining Mos Eisley to Luke Skywalker. Social media, which is merely the latest method by which humans communicate with one another, is no more to blame for the human condition than the invention of the telegraph. It's merely another web, overlaying another era.

To be sure, Bowers made his intentions known before he began his brief reign of terror, flooding internet outlets with voluminous diatribes against Jews, Trump, and anyone and everyone else who made his tinfoil hat feel too tight. Multiple legacy media outlets have since pointed to Gab, the platform on which he really let his freak flag fly, as somehow responsible for Bowers' rampage. The left-wing mouthpiece New York Times labeled Gab, formed partly in retort to Twitter's simultaneous crackdown on conservatives and promoting of extremist liberals, an "extremist-friendly site." Former Democrat Party fuhrer and failed presidential candidate Howard Dean even demanded Gab be prosecuted as Bowers' accomplices. Surely, the snakes filling Robert's head wouldn't have squirmed so much if the internet wasn't filled with so much snake squirming fuel. I have never visited Gab. I have been told there are, in fact, a sizeable number of trolls under that particular bridge. So, what if there are? Louis Farrakhan has nearly half a million followers on Twitter, and feelings about the "Chosen People" which neatly mirror those of Bowers. Let me know when they demand someone slap the metaphorical cuffs on Twitter. I won't hold my breath.

And history doesn't bear out blaming social media for human failings. How many people were murdered in the name of politics, religion or land prior to the first Instagram post? While I'm sure ISIS enjoys the convenience of whichever encrypted messaging app they use to direct whichever jihadi to blow up whichever nursery school is next on their list, Al Qaeda had a pretty big run in late 90s and early 2000s using dialup modems, cell phones the size of bricks, and VHS tapes of Osama bin Laden yukking it up with that Zawahiri creep. Hitler, Stalin, Mao and the other superstars of fascism and communism's heyday piled up body counts in the tens of millions in eras in which communication technology was barely one step past Morse code. Scrolling backwards through history, as "social media" is reduced to "outdoor yelling," humanity gets progressively more Hobbesian, not less. In light of the Pittsburgh atrocity, ask any Jew about the "good old days" before Facebook.

The argument that social media is to blame for acts of terrorism is just another way for the human family to explain away the behavior of the cousins we don't invite to Thanksgiving; another way for us to avoid taking responsibility for our own poor performance as a species. The proper response to monsters is to shine the light on them, not let them haunt the dark. If anything, people would be better served by MORE involvement in whatever media is available, not less. There's a reason the first thing tyrants do is get control of the people's access to information, and therefore, each other.