But somehow Trump is to blame?
When you go through the day, how often are you hurt and inconvenienced by demographics likely to vote for Trump vs unlikely to vote for Trump. Most of the bad behavior I endure is by people in demographics unlikely to vote for Trump.
Y'all know how to get a social worker in NY barred? I'm being stalked and harassed by a white nasty white woman Francesca Rossi in NYC.
— Juan M. Thompson (@JuanMThompson) February 27, 2017
Know any good lawyers? Need to stop this nasty/racist #whitegirl I dated who sent a bomb threat in my name & wants me to be raped in jail. pic.twitter.com/B1IU0RkNCZ
— Juan M. Thompson (@JuanMThompson) February 24, 2017
.@SecretService Francesca Rossi, a disgusting nasty racist white woman, who filed a false lie against me, has threatened to kill Trump.
— Juan M. Thompson (@JuanMThompson) February 27, 2017
Juan Thompson, the suspect in the Jewish Community Center bomb threats, had a very active Twitter page in which he posted a series of incendiary tweets, calling capitalists “blood suckers” and retweeting Hillary Clinton criticizing the president for not speaking out fast enough on hate crimes.
He criticized Donald Trump, calling him a “coward” and accused the president of wanting to ethnically cleanse Chicago. However, the criminal complaint alleges that Thompson called in bomb threats to Jewish Community Centers as part of a campaign of harassment against a woman he had dated. He had harsh words for the Democratic Party too, accusing it of being boring, flaccid and useless.
He also criticized white people (writing that they have “no shame”) and their “vile ilk” and the “white media.”
He wrote: “You show me a capitalist, and I’ll show you a bloodsucker | Director of Communications–Gateway Housing Foundation |” on his Twitter profile.
He also posted on the bomb threats themselves.
Thompson, 31, was arrested in the string of threats against the centers, which had led to commentary about a troubling rise of anti-Semitism in America, as well as denunciation of it by Donald Trump in his speech to Congress.
A senior editor for the Atlantic says Thompson was fired by the Intercept.
The arrest was revealed on March 3.
What does Thompson’s Twitter account show? It shows a series of angry tweets about politics, white people, and other topics. Here’s a sampling of some of them:
Thompson Claimed He Was Set Up By a ‘White Woman’ He Dated
Heavy has deleted the woman’s name. Thompson pinned this tweet to the top of his Twitter page. However, the complaint alleges that Thompson was harassing the woman for months and made the bomb threats to try to set her up for falsely accusing him of making them.
* A lot of people have talked about how the rise of Trump/Bannon/etc has emboldened the fringe of bigots inclined to beat up minorities, burn down mosques, vandalize Jewish graveyards, etc. And that seems sort-of plausible–we’re a big country with our share of wackos, after all, and some of them are on the far right. But almost nobody seems to get that the over-the-top rhetoric and 24/7 outrage coverage also drives the other side’s crazy people toward this kind of hoax.
This guy was fired as a journalist for making up sources (I guess he was an early innovator in the use of alternative facts), and his hoaxes were being done as part of his crazy obsessive stalking of his ex. I suspect a lot of hate hoaxes (and almost all done by someone who is out of college) are done by people who are fairly messed up like this.
There’s this creepy pattern that applies to mass shooters and jihadi recruits, too. You’re a loser, a small time crook who can’t regularly pay the rent, can’t seem to get his life together. And somehow some big narrative captures your imagination, and you can see yourself as being something greater than yourself by following it.
Sometimes the narrative is somewhat beneficial–maybe you straighten yourself up and start going to church, or join the army. Often it’s predatory–you spend your meager savings on self-help seminars provided by con-men, or you join a cult. And sometimes, like with going postal and shooting a bunch of strangers, or (much less bad!) doing a hate hoax, it’s destructive.
