Mann muss sechs Monate Knast befürchten, weil er Feministinnen auf Twitter widersprach

Dass Feministinnen Widerspruch zu ihrer Ideologie als zutiefst unmoralisch, wenn nicht schon fast kriminell betrachten, ist für niemanden etwas Neues, der diesem Lager längere Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet hat. Die Netzfeministinnen auf Twitter reagieren auf Widerrede normalerweise mit Blocken, was in endlos lange Listen mit "Blockempfehlungen" führt. Ich selbst stehe auch auf einer solchen Liste, obwohl mein Twitterkonto seit Jahren ruht und ich mich nie mit einer Feministin auf Twitter unterhalten habe; schon das Risiko eines potentiellen Widerspruchs scheint für die Ideologinnen gravierend genug zu sein. Strategisch machen solche Entscheidungen (begrenzt) Sinn, denn in einer offenen Debatte könnten Feministinnen nur verlieren.

Eine neue Eskalationsstufe gibt es jetzt mit einem Fall in Kanada, über den mehrere englischsprachige News-Seiten berichten, darunter die kanadische National Post und Infowars. Der Originalartikel stammt zwar von der National Post, aber Infowars fasst meines Erachtens nachvollziehbarer zusammen, worum es bei diesem Fall geht. Es bietet sich an, dass ich diesen Artikel Paul Joseph Watsons im Volltext zitiere:

54-year-old Greg Elliott could be charged with criminal harassment simply for expressing his opposition to a campaign by activists Steph Guthrie and Heather Reilly to publicly shame a young man in Northern Ontario.

Father of four Elliott was arrested in 2012 and fired from his job as a graphic designer after he opposed Guthrie and Reilly’s plan to generate "hatred on the Internet" targeting the designer of an online video game which allowed players to simulate punching feminist blogger Anita Sarkeesian in the face.

Elliott felt that the two activists’ plot to publicly shame the young man "was every bit as vicious as the face-punch game," and could cause the young man to commit suicide, urging Guthrie and Reilly not to follow through.

Guthrie and Reilly then claimed that Elliott’s refusal to endorse the plot (he had previously helped Guthrie’s feminist group by offering to design a free poster), represented "criminal harassment."

Under Canada’s draconian anti-harassment laws, the victim merely has to claim that the offending conduct made them "fear for their safety."

In other words, if Elliott is convicted, feminists in Canada could claim that anyone who disagrees with or offends them is engaging in "criminal harassment" and demand they be sent to prison.

Guthrie and Reilly also claimed that Elliott was engaging in harassment merely for tagging them in tweets. At no point did Elliott make any remarks directed at the two that could be construed as sexual harassment, hate speech, or violent rhetoric, according to Toronto Police Detective Jeff Bangild.

The very worst comment that Elliott made in reference to the activists was a tweet in which he indirectly referred to the women as "fat" and "ugly".

The National Post’s Christie Blatchford writes that the ruling, expected to be made on October 6, will have, "enormous potential fallout for free speech online."

"Basically what he did was disagree politically with these young women ... he just disagreed with some of their politics," said Blatchford.

The notion that someone could be arrested and incarcerated for engaging in vigorous online debate "will have a chilling effect on people’s ability to communicate, and not just on Twitter," said Elliott’s attorney Chris Murphy.

The astounding thing about this case is that Elliott himself was clearly subjected to harassment by Guthrie and Reilly when the two activists sent him a barrage of hateful tweets. Another supporter of Guthrie and Reilly even pretended to be a 13-year-old girl to try and portray Elliott as a pedophile.

"If anybody was being criminally harassed in this case, it was my client, it was Mr. Elliott," Murphy told Ontario Court Judge Brent Knazan.

Guthrie and Reilly also met in August 2012 to discuss how they would attempt to disparage Elliott.

"That was a conspiracy to commit a criminal offence ... they were conspiring to go out and publicly shame Mr. Elliott," said Murphy.

This case once again illustrates how politics is downstream from culture. The sewer pipe of social justice warrior mental illness, once restricted to the dark recesses of Tumblr and Twitter, is now infecting law and government – posing a direct threat to free speech.

It’s bad enough that Twitter acquiesces to contrived hate mob outrage and bans prominent anti-feminists from its social media network, but to actually send people to prison for politely expressing disagreement with feminists represents a staggering lurch into unbridled authoritarianism.

In der National Post gibt es einige weitere Artikel über den Prozessverlauf, beispielsweise diesen, in dem unter anderem die folgenden Szenen geschildert werden:

"Blaming the majority of normal men for rape ... is wrong," Mr. Elliott, a 53-year-old Toronto man, wrote back in September of 2012. "Rapists are not normal men; they’re crazy. Why not blame the mentally ill?"

It hardly rang in my ears as the ravings of a perverse woman-hater, nor apparently in Mr. Murphy’s, because after reading it for Ontario Court Justice Brent Knazan, Mr. Murphy asked, in his reasonable way, "That’s a pretty good point?"

In the witness stand, Ms. Guthrie snorted, yelled, "Are you kidding me?", pounded her fist and then announced, "I know lots of normal men who have raped; I have been raped by normal men."

(...) When he asked her to point to one — just one — [Tweet] that had instilled fear in her, she snapped, "That’s not how feelings work, Mr. Murphy. They develop over time." When the lawyer suggested she wasn’t fearful, that she’d made fun of Mr. Elliott and taunted him, she sighed theatrically and said, "There’s no perfect victim, Mr. Murphy, and no perfect way to respond to being stalked. Sometimes you have to fight back a little bit ... I’m sorry if I wasn’t a perfect victim."

Mr. Murphy then suggested that what Mr. Elliott had been doing was defending himself, and his views, when he was being attacked on Twitter by her and the other complainants. Wasn’t he entitled to do that?

"He’s entitled to defend himself to the world, Mr. Murphy; he’s not entitled to do it to me."

"No matter what you say about or to him?" Mr. Murphy asked.

"Not to me," she said.

Fazit: Wer heutzutage eine kleine Diktatur errichten und sich zugleich als ewiges Opfer fühlen möchte, hat dazu in der feministischen Bewegung die besten Aussichten auf Erfolg. Und die Leitmedien sowie zahllose Politiker helfen tüchtig mit. Ich habe keine Ahnung, warum Liberale weltweit nicht viel entschiedenere Kritik an dieser Bewegung äußern.