What are your thoughts on people being doxxed for ripping down missing israeli posters?
It’s all over twitter lately, people getting recorded ripping down posters with a graphic about the missing Israeli children and then their real names are found and are quickly fired from their jobs.
Doxxing someone for doing something that’ll make a lot of people angry is a dangerous game and should not be done unless you’re 100% sure you’d be ok with their blood being on your hands for exposing them to their would be attackers.
That said, poster rippers are mad about the right thing but at the wrong people. Those hostages are victims just as much as the people stuck in Gaza between the leviathans of Bibi and Hamas.
Missing civilians are not soldiers. People are experiencing the social consequences of their actions when they get blowback for destroying a missing persons poster.
This happened to a Muslim dentist here in Miami. He lost his job as a result. He later clarified he did it to deescalate the situation and promote peace. But the damage has already been done and he is now an antisemite to many.
Did he also explain how tearing down the poster of a missing child would deescalate the situation and promote peace? This line of causation doesn’t seem obvious to me.
Assuming this is in the USA it’s either family that is hurting and wants to show it, or, more likely, some White National Christian Fashists who see this as a possibility for a new PizzaGate/Adrenochrome panic, this time with actual children involved, but as usual with call to actions that help no one but hurt innocent bystanders.
All I can say is everything about this conflict is getting out of hand, and this is a big part of that. The “remember the human” rule isn’t acknowledged by anyone over there, and with the elephants fighting, the grass continues to get trampled. Saddest part is we’ll probably see a bigger version of what’s going on when Pakistan and India boil over some years from now.
It’s difficult to explain if you’re not in their cultural atmosphere reading the room (in my case I have family from there). Outsiders can currently see propaganda show-offs going on, India is maneuvering thought in favor of Israel (one might say going against previous sympathies in the process) while Pakistan is covertly one of the strongest sympathizers of Palestine. Nothing out of the ordinary, but it’s the subtleties in the expressions that would raise the first alarms if an outsider begged for hints that something is about to erupt. I’d give it one to three years.
After reading the Jon Ronson book “So you’ve been publicly shamed” where he interviewed a load of people that were outed for both bigger and smaller ‘crimes’, no, I don’t agree with it. Doxxing and other public shaming can have consequences you could not expect.
Plus, what if you get the ID wrong and dox someone innocent? That happens all the time too.
Never before in history have minor disputes been able to be aired to millions of people over the internet. I think it makes the response a bit disproportionate.
TL;dr - Did you actually just allege 'crisis actors' played victim's families? That's not just wholly unsupported, it's also wholly offensive to most people, and certainly to those who have connections to any of the victims.
First, let me state for the record that the entire situation is positively out of control - especially in light of the recent comments from one of Israel's minor ministers. I don't disagree that it appears to be headed towards full-blown genocide. I don't disagree that the folks being killed in Gaza are NOT the ones responsible for the attack, nor connected to the same. We are entirely on the same page there.
What I take exception to, however, is your absolutely unsupported statement regarding 'planted fake victim families.' First, because if one is going to make an allegation that inflammatory, one should ensure clarity. Who are you alleging is fake? The victims? Their families? Both?
I make light of the word choice and clarity, not just because it matters, but because I find it exceptionally unlikely that you could support any of the statements your words 'could' convey. When some asshole killed numerous children in a school, a certain subset of the population whined about 'crisis actors' for some years afterwards. I've heard similar allegations in reference to victims of Hurricane Katrina, and even in reference to Uvalde.
All of them are pure garbage, which places your allegation on exceptionally unsteady footing - In the improbable event that you are able to support that allegation, I'll happily hear out whatever evidence you're able to present.
Until then, there is no need to peddle conspiracy theories, too-vague allegations, etc.
Right now, the state of Israel is showing a grave disrespect to the families of the victims. They even planted fake victim families amongst the real ones, who were there exclusively to excuse the actions of the IDF.
And unlike random people that are getting doxxed, the state of Israel is being given billions of dollars to perpetuate a genocide
Honestly – and I before I say this, Free Palestine – if you want to be a person who tears down a poster looking for a missing person, I think you should be prepared to live your life as a someone who everyone knows tears down posters of missing persons.
I think people have a right to privacy in the ways that don’t affect other people, but when you do things that affect others – whether that’s not cleaning up after your dog or anonymously harassing whoever hung a poster of a loved one by tearing it down – I don’t feel you’re exercising a right that I have some obligation to defend. Live with the reputation of who you are.
Again, I say this as a critic of the genocide in Gaza. Bibi Netanyahu deserves to be dragged into the Hague to face the International Criminal Court. At the same time, I still hope as many of the Israeli hostages are returned safely as possible, and I have no sympathy for people who are inclined to tear down a missing person poster and want anonymity. That’s not liberating Palestine, that’s just anonymously terrorizing whatever grieving person hung the poster when they discover it’s been torn down.
Honestly – and I before I say this, Free Palestine – if you want to be a person who tears down a poster looking for a missing person, I think you should be prepared to live your life as a someone who everyone knows tears down posters of missing persons.
I find it interesting that you felt the need to explicitly say you support Palestine, even though your opinion isn’t really controversial IMO.
This is not the first time I noticed this about a comment, it almost feels like people are afraid of being ostracized by “their side” for having a slightly “wrong” opinion about this conflict.
Right, the point of a missing person sign is to get help finding a person. You put them up in places where the victim is likely to be so the people who see the sign can identify them.
not sure that getting fired is a suitable punishment for removing posters, but the removal of posters about missing children is a heinous thing, social ostracization is a more fitting reward.
Doxxing is bad. I don’t care if the person is a murderer or a protestor. Doxxing can have many, very nasty unintended consequences that can hurt more than just the person being doxxed.
I’m with you, while the people doing the bad things deserve to be found out by their friends, family, employers, etc…The means that this discovery happens matters and doxxing is not ok, full stop.
Great question! Initially, I was 100% against doxxing because it turns into vigilante justice when people gang up on a suspect that hasn’t been properly tried in a court, so innocent people could become victims for something they didn’t do or pay excessive consequences. However, with your question, I think it points out some nuance.
In the case of the Jan 6 insurrectionists, the FBI was trying to find them to press charges, so I think it was appropriate to doxx them. Protesters that didn’t partake directly in the insurrection were also outed and I’m iffy on that one. Their presence still had an impact on the insurrection because it gave energy to the thing and possible increased intimidation. Imagine if there was 1 person outside your house with a guillotine vs 100 people with a guillotine. The latter would likely instill more fear.
Ultimately, I think the main issue is not with being doxxed, but with the vigilante justice that people like to enact when someone is doxxed. Rather than say firing this dentist, the people that had the power to do so could have just accepted that the dentist had his own opinion on the matter irrelevant to his employment and left it at that. Yet, they acted on the desire to punish him by firing him. I think that’s messed up because for all we know, he might have had a valid reason for that behavior or at the very least, it was not affecting his work. I think it’s normal to be frustrated with the situation and have emotional responses to it. Rather than punish and isolate him, they could have had a compassionate talk with him to hear him out and possibly come to a collaborative stance to help ameliorate the situation. After all, conflicts aren’t resolved by increasing antagonism. It’s resolved by engaging in understanding and healthy interdependence. If anything, all they did was further radicalize the dentist.
That’s a pretty fair response. Although I would say that I am against doxxing people who just happened to show up and didn’t actually enter the capital/participate in any illegal behavior. You can’t predict what the crowd will do and I think we would all agree it’s wrong if a BLM protest got out of hand and they decided to punish everyone who was there simply because they “increased intimidation”.
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