The left can’t leave tragedies as tragedies — it has to politicize them.
Following the deadly mass shooting Monday at a Boulder, Colorado, supermarket, prominent left-wing media figures and others rushed to Twitter not to denounce the heinous act as a heinous act or to mourn the 10 people who were killed, but instead to condemn the shooter because of his skin color.
Many posted that the incident was an example of “white supremacy” or the actions of an “angry white man” — probably a “right wing, MAGA, white male.”
Their inferred meaning was all too clear: The massacre had to have been perpetrated by a European-descended, American-born white male, fitting their narrative that white American males are evil.
Julie DiCaro, a senior editor at Deadspin, said on Twitter that she was “[e]xtremely tired of people’s lives depending on whether a white man with an AR-15 is having a good day or not.”
Extremely tired of people’s lives depending on whether a white man with an AR-15 is having a good day or not.
— Julie DiCaro wrote a book (@JulieDiCaro) March 23, 2021
Hemal Jhaveri, billed in her Twitter bio as a “Race and Inclusion Editor” at USA Today, replied to DiCaro by saying “it’s always an angry white man.”
DiCaro responded to Jhaveri’s tweet by saying, “And they are always angry about women.”
And they are always angry about women.
— Julie DiCaro wrote a book (@JulieDiCaro) March 23, 2021
Francis Maxwell, host of The Young Turks’ “The Breakdown,” said in a since-deleted tweet that “a white man walked into a grocery store in Boulder and killed 10 people,” as Caleb Hull noted in a Twitter thread of such comments.
and again… pic.twitter.com/td9I3ajphS
— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) March 23, 2021
Even musician and author Mikel Jollett had something to say about the shooter’s race in a since-deleted tweet.
Hey @mikel_jollett, just saw you blocked me. Is it because you knew you pushed a false narrative? pic.twitter.com/YLL8vrohxg
— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) March 23, 2021
It turns out the suspect was not a European-descended, American-born white male but a Middle Eastern, Syrian-born Muslim.
Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, 21, has been charged with 10 counts of murder in the first degree, Boulder police said Tuesday.
This is the booking photo of the #BoulderShooting suspect Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa pic.twitter.com/mAUVq9WBfx
— Boulder Police Dept. (@boulderpolice) March 23, 2021
At least some on the left had the wisdom to remove their false narratives from Twitter. For example, Jhaveri deleted her tweet and apologized.
Others, however — including self-proclaimed activist, feminist and author Amy Siskind — simply commenced a paradigm shift.
After initially claiming the suspect was “almost certainly a white man (again),” Siskind told her followers not to “glorify the killer with the attention of having his name widely known” once the suspect’s name was revealed. Instead, she attacked the sale of firearms.
The shooter is was taken into custody.
In other words it was almost certainly a white man (again). If he were Black or Brown he would be dead.
— Amy Siskind 🏳️🌈 (@Amy_Siskind) March 23, 2021
Let's mourn the victims, but not glorify the killer with the attention of having his name widely known.
— Amy Siskind 🏳️🌈 (@Amy_Siskind) March 23, 2021
Do we really need to hang on for this sick f*ck's motive? Just stop selling AR-15 style assault weapons to individuals!
— Amy Siskind 🏳️🌈 (@Amy_Siskind) March 23, 2021
Others refused to even slightly modify their narrative. DiCaro tweeted that she wouldn’t delete her initial tweet because “it’s still true.”
For everyone asking me if I’m going to delete this tweet and apologize to white men, no, I am not, because it’s still true. https://t.co/RxW0kz5GbM
— Julie DiCaro wrote a book (@JulieDiCaro) March 23, 2021
Another Twitter user said the suspect’s “white skin kept him alive” regardless of his nationality and ethnicity.
The fact that the Boulder shooter has been identified as Ahmad Alissa changes nothing for me. His white skin kept him alive, while innocent black men and boys are murdered.
— Denise Oliver-Velez 💛 (@Deoliver47) March 23, 2021
The fact that so many “journalists” and other prominent people on the left jumped on the same narrative bandwagon immediately after the shooting is sad enough. Many somehow found a way to paint themselves in an even worse light by refusing to acknowledge the mistake they made.
This alone is evidence of how heartless the left is. Yes, some may tell their followers to mourn the victims of a mass shooting like this one, but behind the curtains, it’s all the same. The message isn’t to mourn victims because they were innocent men and women who didn’t deserve the deaths they received. Rather, we ought to mourn these same people because they were victims of a greater crime altogether.
Even if the crime in question was never committed in the first place.
Story cited here.