Show of Hands

Against trial by Internet mob

In the normal course of Internet news cycle churn, the story of Elon Musk’s Inauguration Day “salute” should be yesterday’s news. Yet, for some reason, this particular stupid controversy has kept on churning away. For those blissfully out of the loop, I’ll summarize: Elon gave a very excited speech, having clearly started his day with way too many bowls of chocolate-frosted sugar bombs, then ended by tapping his heart and throwing his arm up and straight out in…some kind of awkward gesture. A second later, he turned to the audience behind him, made another salute, and added some verbal context, touching his chest again: “My heart goes out to you.”

What, exactly, was this awkward gesture? That is the endlessly debated question. On the surface, it resembled a Nazi salute, at least the first time. The second salute, not so much (it was essentially just a wave). And when put together with the verbal explainer, it seemed clear that the gesturing was intended to be benign and intended for a universal audience, not a coded wink to Nazis. Unless, of course, one had already resolved that Elon was a closet Nazi.

Even the Anti-Jewish Defamation League, not famous for giving grace in such scenarios, scored the salute as nothing more than an “an awkward gesture,” which prompted a wave of backlash. A progressive Jewish organization declared that the ADL had made itself “a willing partner in the neo-fascist governing coalition.” Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez slammed the group for “defending a Heil Hitler salute that was performed and repeated for emphasis and clarity” and pronounced them no longer a “reputable source of information,” because “You work for them.” “Them” meaning our neo-fascist governing coalition, presumably.

Granted, the ADL’s own patience ran out when Elon used the controversy to troll with throwaway Nazi puns, in his typical man-childish fashion. (“Bet you did Nazi that coming,” “Some people will Goebbels anything down,” etc.) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt came out to emphasize that “the Holocaust is not a joke,” and the puns were “inappropriate and offensive.” The media continued to chatter away meanwhile, including a long and smarmy Vox article arguing that “Musk doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt.”

A grab bag of reasons has been offered for this thesis—that Musk had positively replied to a tweet accusing Jews of anti-white racism (for which he later apologized, but you never know, maybe he was lying); that he’d compared George Soros to Magneto; or that he told a crowd of right-wing Germans that today’s German youth should be able to embrace German pride without feeling permanently stained by generational guilt (an idea apparently so beyond the pale it shouldn’t even be thought, let alone spoken out loud). The facts that he’s visited Auschwitz and built good relations with Israel, proudly worn a necklace given to him by a hostage relative, and repeatedly asserted that he’s a “pro-Semite” and “philo-Semite,” are all explained away as 4D chess moves to throw people off the scent. And just like that, “Elon Musk is a closet Nazi” has become unfalsifiable by fiat.

Why does this bother me? And, along similar lines, why does it bother me when I see pundits relentlessly insisting that Trump is literally Hitler? I’ve never voted for the man even once. I have no personal loyalty to him, nor to Musk, and no great admiration for their characters. Both seem to have the qualities of man-children. Neither seem worth imitating by example, to put it mildly. So why do I care? Why should anyone care?

The answer is straightforward: I care about what’s true, and I believe people should receive criticism proportionate to what they actually say, do, and believe. In particular, I have a deep-seated loathing for trial by mob, something I’ve condemned on the right as well as the left. Once “Because the Internet egregore says so” becomes your guiding ethical principle, you’ve lost. Whatever your politics, whatever the topic, it doesn’t matter. You’ve lost. You just have. And so has the rest of society.

Last fall, there was a lot of buzz around immigration, specifically the phenomenon where a lot of migrants moved into a small town in a short time frame. The town of Springfield, Ohio was a particularly hot topic for about five minutes, based on a jumbled blend of information and misinformation about Haitian migrants. If more proof were needed that I’m not infallible, I failed to do my own due diligence and perpetuated some of the “eating dogs and cats” discourse on what turned out to be flawed evidence. But I was happy to own the mistake, and happy to put even more distance between myself and the sort of far-right pond scum who love to use this kind of discourse for their own repulsive purposes. That might not have been enough for some people, but some people aren’t worth bothering about.

Meanwhile, National Review journalist Rich Lowry did an interview on the topic where he accidentally started pronouncing the word “migrants” with a short “i,” paused, and started over. The resulting sound bite rhymed with a certain slur. This was enough for the leftist Internet egregore to decide that Lowry had actually said the slur, which in turn was enough for him to lose a couple speaking engagements, due to the “environment.” Because we all just know that a rich white guy who writes for National Review walks around with that word on the tip of his brain every day, amirite? Lowry’s tart follow-up column was on point:

I don’t want to suggest this is anything on the order of what other people have suffered in losing their livelihoods and reputations to cancel culture. This episode is worth dwelling on, though, because the underlying phenomenon is so pernicious and stupid, and people who don’t have gallons of ink to defend themselves the way I do and don’t work for a conservative organization the way I do are particularly susceptible to this kind of cut-rate McCarthyism.

Just so.

Lest there be any ambiguity: I think actual “edgelording” is bad. Posting actual Nazi memes in an attempt to signal far-right coolness is bad. Using the n-word in contexts other than teaching Flannery O’Connor is bad. Teenagers who do this sort of stuff to impress their friends should be told in no uncertain terms that it’s bad. I don’t think they should have their college acceptances rescinded over it years later, mind you, especially when they say, “I was a stupid kid, and that was bad.” But be it resolved: It’s bad.

However, so is refusing to be a reasonable human being and take your political blinders off long enough to give another human being the benefit of the doubt. And just as we have a critical mass of people in society who believe actually Nazi, racist, etc. edgelording is bad, we need a critical mass of people willing to stand up and say this is just as bad. We need to break the spell of the egregore.

That brings me to Fr. Calvin Robinson. Fr. Robinson is a British cleric who built a very large online platform very quickly through conservative political punditry, then skipped the ocean to become a small parish priest in Michigan last fall. The church where he was installed happens to be in my own former denomination, the Anglo-Catholic Church. For those who aren’t up on their super niche American Anglican history, the ACC is a denomination that broke away from the Episcopalians in the 70s over women’s ordination. It’s not Catholic, but it has some Catholic vibes. It’s its own thing, and it’s a bit complicated. But it was the church where I learned to love liturgy and sacrament, and I’ve never really gotten over the closing of the tiny parish where I grew up, which happened to be a sister parish to St. Paul’s, Robinson’s church. Because Robinson is a nichey character himself, I thought the ACC suited him rather well. From my own observation on visiting the church, plus the report of a reader who attended there for about a month and a half, so did his congregation.

However, it appears that the ACC bishops disagreed. Last week, they abruptly chose to pull Robinson’s license after he posted a video of himself capping a speech at the National Pro-Life Summit in D.C. with a mischievous, very quick soft imitation of Elon’s gesture, saying, “My heart goes out to you.” He grins, the audience loudly laughs and applauds, and everyone moves on. It can be safely wagered that this was not an audience full of alt-right edgelords, and the people laughing understood what Robinson meant, and what he didn’t mean. But because the Internet egregore had already decreed that Elon made a Nazi salute, by Internet egregore logic it followed that Robinson had too. Apparently, that was enough for the bishops, whose statement duly described it as “a gesture that many have interpreted as a pro-Nazi salute,” though they generously add that “we cannot say what was in Mr. Robinson’s heart when he did this.” With equal generosity, someone else on Twitter conceded that Robinson “probably” didn’t mean to support Hitler.

Now, I’m not Fr. Calvin’s keeper, and I certainly don’t intend to die on the hill that Fr. Calvin is some infallible prophet or has handled his platform in a maximally wise way. I’m not even claiming this particular little gesture was wise, even if I think it was objectively innocuous. He’s naturally brash and pugilistic, and I don’t share all of his political enthusiasms. As I’ve told him directly, I especially take issue with his views on Israel, along with his choice to boost academically sloppy content from a pastor claiming Judaism is a uniquely pernicious religion. His superiors claim they’d explicitly opened a conversation with him about this, he denies it, it’s a whole back-and-forth and I’m not going to bore everyone with a blow-by-blow here. Meanwhile, I will say certain people in his corner should stop “helping,” like the woman in this video who worries that calling Hitler evil might put him outside “dialogue,” though she’ll grant he made “poor choices.”

However. None of that makes it acceptable to allow the Internet egregore to hijack our discourse, our personal and professional relationships, or our firing decisions. None of that makes it acceptable to comply with the redefinition of something innocuous as objectively offensive, “harmful,” or “contrary to the tenets of Christian charity” because thus sayeth the egregore—particularly when this has immediate and distressing consequences for uninvolved people, like Fr. Calvin’s congregants, who don’t have another Anglican church down the street where they can receive the sacraments. If the fallback argument in cases like this is that the guy had it coming anyway because he’s a knucklehead or a liar, then let people say so if they feel compelled, and let the man with the best receipts win. But such fights should be fought fairly and openly, not behind the shield of artificial controversy.

Like Elon, and like Rich Lowry, Fr. Calvin has a large platform and friends in high places. But as Lowry observed, most people don’t have those luxuries. A society where privileged people become the center of stupid Twitter wars for stupid reasons is a society where no-names will be fired for equally stupid reasons, and no one will know or care.

Other people can keep that sort of society going if they like. Count me out.

And now, let us all take a deep breath, relax, and enjoy Norm Macdonald on Hitler’s dog: