In recent days, while Providence residents reeled from the horrors that unfolded at Brown on December 13, a different horror was playing out on social media. A wave of racist and bigoted conspiratorial tweets emerged blaming Islam, “leftism”, and “wokeness,” for the shooting. Large conspiratorial Twitter/X accounts eventually accused innocent Brown students of being the perpetrators or of otherwise being involved simply because the students were Muslim or possibly involved in local progressive politics.
These accounts then plastered the images and names of these people everywhere. One of the targeted students had a page on Brown’s website highlighting some of their academic work. In order to avoid harassment and potential danger, Brown took this person’s identifying web page down, and the same person apparently deleted some of their social media accounts. The student has since released a statement confirming that they received numerous death threats.
At the same time, other conspiracy accounts began claiming that College Hill was a “Muslim neighborhood” due to the presence of local Middle Eastern restaurants and tea shops. Some users drove to the campus area to “document” the situation and “interview” already heavily traumatized students.
As a resident of the Mount Hope neighborhood which abuts Brown’s campus, watching this happen in real time was just as terrifying as the campus shooting itself. All I could think of was past shootings where people targeted Muslims, Jews, and racial minorities. In 2018, the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pennsylvania targeted innocent Jews. In 2019, the garlic festival shooting in California that targeted Hispanics. In 2016, a mentally unstable man fired a weapon inside a Washington, D.C. pizza shop believing that the restaurant was connected to a child trafficking conspiracy called “pizza-gate.”
After the Brown shooting, there was nothing preventing another dangerous person from coming into the East Side to cause more harm while their head swirled with ideas of government coverups and “Islamic invasions.” My neighborhood was a target. And even now, with the shooting suspect dead after an apparent suicide in New Hampshire, it still feels like a target.
Because even though there is no evidence of any sort of government coverup, or that this tragic event was a target against conservatives (as conspiracy accounts claimed early on due to the death of a Republican college student), or that this event had any connection to religious extremism, these accounts have continued to move from one nonsensical claim to another (such as that Brown didn’t have cameras on campus to “protect illegal immigrants”). In the face of facts, they are unwilling to admit defeat.
Sites like Twitter/X or YouTube have financial incentives to attract as many clicks and viewers as possible with earned ad revenue from content engagement. It’s quite obvious that a user posting “Let’s not do witch hunts and let police do their job. Call the police with tips rather than naming and shaming people you don’t know,” does not attract high engagement. But inflammatory remarks do. Those make good money.
As Providence resident and former Rhode Island state assembly member Aaron Regunberg wrote on Twitter/X this week, “It’s crazy to think…how there will be no accountability for the people who made up a conspiracy and targeted innocent kids…They’re just going to keep doing it.”
There are legitimate critiques that can be leveled at local law enforcement or elected leaders with how they handled this event and the investigation. I am sure, in the weeks ahead, we will uncover blind spots and points of failure. Could Brown have had better campus security? Why didn’t city residents get 311 emergency alerts on their phones during the shooting? Could improved background checks or gun legislation have prevented this? Those are fair questions to ask.
But what is not acceptable is the peddling of bigoted conspiracies and the witch hunting of innocent people without evidence for the sake of hate and clicks. No gap in official answers is an excuse to make a dangerous situation even worse.
Regunberg is right that these merchants of hate will likely face no repercussions. They will simply move on to the next tragedy and do it again. They do not care about facts, or reason, or truth.
It is our social responsibility to rebuke such dangerous and baseless claims. The peddlers of hate cannot go unchallenged.
Daniel Morris rents in Mt. Hope, Providence. He is an active member of the Providence Streets Coalition and Providence Urbanist Network. His interests are safe street designs, affordable housing advocacy, and live jazz in the city. He is originally from the South Shore of Massachusetts.
Want to comment? Click!