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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   35753 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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Can we talk about Rebekah Jones? Should we? I'm honestly incredibly conflicted about these questions. One of the rules of the Motte is that we shouldn't weakman:

There are literally millions of people on either side of every major conflict, and finding that one of them is doing something wrong or thoughtless proves nothing and adds nothing to the conversation. We want to engage with the best ideas on either side of any issue, not the worst.

Discussing Jones feels like walking a tightrope (called "meaningful cultural and political issues") that has been strung over an open toxic waste pit (called "are my political opponents just mentally ill?"). Out of sheer both-sides-ism I want to say "there are surely equally bizarre figures in right wing politics" but I can't actually find any. The best I can do is to say, suppose you combined Marjorie Taylor Greene's extremism with George Santos' fabulism, then made the resulting chimera guilty of the things Matt Gaetz was only ever rumored to have been guilty of doing--that would get you pretty close to Jones, I think. Except that MTG and Santos and Gaetz aren't darlings of reddit and don't command fawning loyalty from major media outlets, which Jones also does.

As a refresher, I first learned of Jones back in the old subreddit, when someone posted about her COVID activism. I don't remember when I learned of her criminal activities, but to simply quote the Wikipedia:

Jones has had prior criminal charges. At the time the search warrant was executed, Jones was facing an active misdemeanor charge on allegations of cyberstalking a former student of hers who was a romantic partner and publishing sexual details about their relationship online. She was fired from her Florida State University teaching position for threatening to give a failing grade to her romantic partner's roommate. She faced prior charges including felony robbery, trespass, and contempt of court stemming from an alleged violation of a domestic violence restraining order related to the same ex-boyfriend, but those charges were dropped. In 2017, she had been arrested and charged with criminal mischief in the vandalism of his car, but the charges were dropped.

Jones faced criminal charges in Louisiana in 2016 where she was arrested and charged by the LSU Police Department with one count each of battery on a police officer and remaining after forbidden and two counts of resisting arrest after refusing to vacate a Louisiana State University office upon being dismissed from her staff position.

Jones went on to say she was going to run for office in Maryland (IIRC), but when that didn't pan out for unclear reasons, she returned to Florida. I don't know how much she has received in crowdfunding from the anti-DeSantis crowd at this point, but two early efforts pulled over half a million dollars. Jones has continued to hold herself out as a "whistleblower," specifically against the DeSantis administration in Florida, even though these claims appear pretty thoroughly debunked.

"Aha!" You might say. "PolitiFact leans left, and debunks Jones, so even the Left is willing to disavow this nut!"

Sure, maybe, to some extent. She went on to win the 2022 Democrat primary to challenge Matt Gaetz for his seat in the House of Representatives, so at least 16,000 Democrats still preferred Jones to someone with an actual legal education and genuinely relevant experience. And yes--by this logic, some 50,000 Republicans preferred the candidate who was under investigation for sex trafficking minors! It's baffling, I agree. But this is one of those "meaningful cultural and political issues" I mentioned--the only way I can make sense of any of this is to take a deep breath and remind myself that most people lack anything approaching coherent principles, they don't care about these details--they only care to win.

Anyway, that's all just the background!

This morning I woke up with this in my feeds.

If you don't want to read "WhitePeopleTwitter" (and I wouldn't blame you), it is a tweet from Rebekah Jones, followed by others, which I have partly reproduced here:

Today's events will tell a story so enraging, heartbreaking and brutal that I'm sure when I'm ready to tell it, no one will ever defend the Florida governor's actions again.

My family is not safe. My son has been taken on the gov's orders, and I've had to send my husband and daughter out of state for their safety.

THIS is the reality of living in DeSantis' Florida.

There is no freedom here. Only retaliatory rule by a fascist who wishes to be king

A week after we filed our lawsuit against the state, a kid claiming to be the cousin of one of my son's classmates joined their snapchat group. They recorded their conversations, and anonymously reported my son to police for sharing a popular internet meme.

They said they had to complete a threat assessment since they received an anon complaint, which both the local cops and the school signed off on as not being a threat. The kids were joking about cops and video games, which included this meme: [pic of a fat cop with text about waiting for a school shooter to commit suicide]

Two weeks later, bringing us to earlier today, an officer told me the state issued a warrant for my son's arrest for "digital threats of terrorism."

I asked on whose orders. The officer said it was the state.

They aren't letting him come home tonight. They kidnapped my son.

I had to get my husband and daughter out of here because CPS now interprets my home as dangerous because they've charged my 13 year old son with a felony for sharing a meme.

Naturally, Jones also provides links to her crowdfunding platforms of choice. The reddit "discussion" is... predictable? Outrage, occasional people (mostly, but not always, downvoted) asking whether this is legit, very few people posting actual information. Well, proles gonna prole I guess. But the headline in the Miami Herald?

13-year-old son of Rebekah Jones, whistleblower who clashed with DeSantis, arrested over memes

So, that sounds bad! But is it really why he was arrested? In fact it is not. He was arrested for posting stuff like this:

I want to shoot up the school.

If I get a gun I’m gonna shoot up hnms lol.

I’m getting a wrath and natural selection shirt so maybe but I don’t think many ppl know what the columbine shooters look like.

Okay so it’s been like 3-4 weeks since I got on my new antidepressants and they aren’t working but they’re suppose to by now so I have no hope in getting better so why not kill the losers at school.

Does your plug have access to guns?

I always keep a knife on me so maybe I'll just stab people idk

As this information was coming out, Jones added to her tweetstorm:

I've been in contact with members of the press whom I trust. They have the videos of the police at my house, of my son being put in handcuffs, of the officer refusing to let us give him his medication, of my 13 year old autistic kid who can't stand to be touched having to spread his legs before going into the back seat of a police car. All of it.

I haven't been given any documents from the state or police. I asked to take a picture of the paperwork and was told no. All they would tell me was the charge. They didn't even read him his rights when they arrested him.

I'm going to the courthouse today. When we're cleared to, we'll join my family out of state.

And aside to get our things, I'm only coming back to see these people in court.

It's not clear when these events are supposed to have occurred; Max Nordau shared video of Jones delivering her son to the police station. Rather, as this tweet suggests, it appears that "Rebekah Jones tried to blame DeSantis and RAISE MONEY off law enforcement stopping a possible school shooting."

I don't know what Jones' problem ultimately is. Narcissism? Paranoia? DeSantis Derangement Syndrome? That she is a habitual fabulist is well-established. That she has profited substantially from vocal opposition to all things DeSantis is a matter of public record. She is a sufficiently shady known quantity that most really big national news outlets seem reluctant to continue signal-boosting her, but the Miami Herald (by circulation, reportedly Florida's seventh-largest paper) still seems happy to run false headlines at her mere behest.

This seems discussion-worthy, and yet part of me wants to just not even post about it because it seems wrong, somehow, to even discuss Rebekah Jones. Giving her any attention at all feels a bit like encouraging a delusional person to persist in their delusions; she clearly wants notoriety, she doesn't seem capable of handling notoriety in a healthy way, surely it would be best to just stop paying attention to her?

But also, this is a kid talking about doing violence at school, with guns or knives. Is narcissism hereditary? Did his home environment contribute to this? [CONTINUED BELOW]

This is...interesting, given the recent context of not one, but two different 4Channers getting busted by a Florida sheriff over Fedposting.

Also, I do suppose that sanity is a resource we are running out of on the national level. Hard to say what'll happen when enough nutty people get into Capitol Hill.

What? That seems like a big deal. How are they arresting internet warriors? Some day I’m going to be in jail for saying something anti trans.

4chan has always responded to US law enforcement requests. In this case it was "X should be shot in the head (in minecraft)" posting.

I meant the government arresting them. It looks like overkill to me. Unless there’s a credible threat in here.

Given that it was a Florida sheriff that was to be minecrafted, I could imagine the man himself getting the ball rolling to do so.

4chan, the biggest honeypot ever. no one should use that site ever

Where else can you even talk without censorship? There's basically nowhere left anymore and the few alternatives glow even harder.

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