The alternate title to this post is “No normal person could be so prolific and prejudiced.” I don’t know about the “prolific” part, but HuffPost writer Luke O’Brien — the author of the quote — certainly lets his biases shine through in an unfortunate attack on a Twitter user who supports Donald Trump and is concerned about the spread of radical Islam.
The title of O’Brien’s piece, “Trump’s Loudest Anti-Muslim Twitter Troll Is A Shady Vegan Married To An (Ousted) WWE Exec,” is a thumbnail of all the personal information he has dredged up about a Twitter user who uses the handle Amy Mek. According to Mek, O’Brien himself can take credit for the “ousted” part: Her husband, she laments, was fired after the HuffPo hit piece threw shade on her and opinions.
So who is Amy Mek? As O’Brien tells it, she is someone with “200,000 [Twitter] followers, including Sean Hannity, Roseanne Barr[!] and the personal account of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and has earned endorsements from Donald Trump and Michael Flynn.” Since O’Brien himself has only 4,360 followers, those who put stock in Twitter numbers would have to concede that Mek is more than 40 times as popular.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Whether that was O’Brien motivation for probing deeply into her personal life and history, he nevertheless uses details gathered from it to rationalize his invasion of her privacy. He reveals the fact that she comes from a Jewish family to promote the view that “she’s a major cog in the Islamophobia machine.” The words are those of Ibrahim Cooper, a spokesman for the CAIR [the Council on American-Islamic Relations], which O’Brien describes with a straight face as a “Muslim advocacy and civil rights organization.” O’Brien’s lust for facts didn’t inspire him to dig for more info about CAIR, which has links to Hamas and has itself been designated a terrorist group by the UAE.
Some have taken umbrage at the fact that O’Brien’s target is not affiliated with any news organization or government agency, but I would submit that in this era of “citizenship journalism” any Twitter user with 200,000 followers is fair game. Doxxing a person because you don’t like or share their political views, on the other hand, is not.
According to Mek:
My family and friends are being harassed by O’Brien. O’Brien has obsessively contacted me despite my having him blocked on social media. He has contacted my personal cell phone and email.
— Amy Mek (@AmyMek) May 31, 2018
O’Brien has sent me scary, made-up information that he pretends to quote from “sources”. Despite my showing proof on my social media that my safety is in jeopardy, he continues to threaten to publish information that can help dangerous people locate my family.
— Amy Mek (@AmyMek) May 31, 2018
If true, this is a matter for the police.
