It’s one thing to say you don’t like Donald Trump’s politics, it’s even reasonable to say you hate him—but to advocate for his death is a little extremist, don’t you think?
You should never tweet, “Somebody should assassinate Trump,” or make any other kind of death threat towards him.
If you search “assassinate Trump” on Twitter, you will see an uncomfortable amount of posts saying he should be killed, or somebody else should off him. It’s not an excuse to say you’re just joking around either, because that’s the definition of hypocrisy.
I didn’t want to believe it either, but you don’t see near the number of death threats directed at Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders on social media.
This is giving the political right the fuel they need to bolster Trump’s campaign. Paul Joseph Watson, a political pundit for InfoWars.com, made a video about this pointing out how absurd and violent it can be, or so he would have us think.
This is just one reason why you shouldn’t tweet these things—you’re essentially promoting his campaign.
Not only that, it makes you and the entire liberal camp look incredibly dumb. It’s hard to compare something minor such as pushing a reporter away to a genuine death threat.
It’s the kind of inflammatory language right-wingers love to see, because they can say liberals are irrational for getting worked up when someone puts one toe over the line of political correctness, but they are the ones calling for people’s deaths and laughing about it.
Canadians aren’t immune to this. Search “assassinate Harper” on Twitter and look back a little. You will find many distasteful comments along the same lines. Not as much as for Trump of course, but still too many for comfort.
Before the 2015 election, one colourful tweeter wrote, “as much as i’d love to assassinate harper, i really think he deserves worse. outed as a child molester or mauled by wolves, perhaps?” Yes, so very progressive.
Now maybe it’s because youth are the ones who will voice their opinions on Twitter more often, and we are more likely to have liberal values. Maybe opponents of Clinton and Sanders share those same views jokingly in private. There’s no real way of documenting that.
I am glad to see none of my peers have sunk to this level, but it is definitely happening. If you see any of this going down on social media, you should let the person know what they’re doing is not only wildly inappropriate, it could be illegal.
Don’t say “kill Trump,” or anybody else. Not now, not ever. I don’t want to sound like the old-timer lecturing millennials about social media, but we are supposed to be the most well-informed, educated, and enlightened generation yet, and uttering death threats on social media reflects badly on all of us.
