"I'm going to cause you pain beyond your imagination" "Get a rope" "Time's running out" Threats from #ChrisKyle fans pic.twitter.com/BmDwoOCfIr
— Abby Martin (@AbbyMartin) May 5, 2015Fans of “American Sniper” Chris Kyle have threatened to rape and kill former RT anchor Abby Martin for criticizing the deceased Navy SEAL and creating a T-shirt they find offensive…. “Some psychotic Chris Kyle fan just doxxed me & my family’s personal information on a bunch of sniper forums. If anything happens to me or them you know who to blame. These are the real f-cking terrorists,” she wrote on her Facebook page. Martin had criticized Kyle in the past for describing Iraqis as “savages” in his book. She also described the American Sniper movie as “dangerous propaganda that sanitizes a mass murdering psycho.” But it was her shirt that appears to have set off a campaign of harassment against her.
I find it interesting that some Conservatives seem to honestly believe that freedom of speech only applies to points of views they approve of. Stand up and wave the flag…and you’re golden. Dare to criticize the Homeland or something about it…and you’re a traitor worthy only of a painful, lingering death. I could go on at some length about the hypocrisy at work here, but that’s self-evident, and I have other things on my mind.
Regardless of whether or not you support Abby Martin (I support her right to say her piece, though not necessarily the inflammatory manner in which she chose to express herself), she’s well within her 1st Amendment rights. While I think wearing a “F-ck Chris Kyle” t-shirt was rather immature and unnecessarily inflammatory, that’s her choice. You don’t have to like it…but you don’t get to threaten her or her family for exercising her constitutional rights. The expectation that Americans fawn over Kyle as some sort of hero is offensive at best and ignorant of the facts at worst. Kyle was not the American Saint so many on the Right believe him to be. He was a racist and a liar who killed people because that was his job. There was nothing glamorous about it. He wasn’t protecting our freedom, he was doing his job. No one that Kyle shot posed a threat to the Homeland, not from halfway around the world. He killed because that’s what he was trained and ordered to do. What’s heroic about killing people from distance behind the safety of a long-range scope?
I haven’t seen American Sniper, nor do I intend to. That sort of uber-patriotic war porn makes me nauseous. His small role in the American military effort wasn’t unimportant, but it shouldn’t be glamorized and given the Hollywood treatment. There was nothing any more “heroic” about Chris Kyle than any other American soldier, sailor, airman, or marine. He had a job to do, he did it well, and he dealt with the consequences, just as many thousands of other Americans who served. His death, while certainly tragic, did nothing to protect our freedom. For anyone to claim that he’s some sort of hero whose memory should be sanitized to the point of near-beatification is as insulting as it is absurd.
Another such website complained: “Chris Kyle is an American hero who is an easy target because he is no longer alive. Abbey Martin [sic], is just a coward hiding behind the freedoms that our military has granted her when she was born on this great land that we call the United States of America.”
The reaction on social media was even more visceral. Users of Twitter and Facebook have mentioned raping and beheading her, threatened to murder her, told her to kill herself, and bombarded her with misogynistic insults…. [O]ne person called on American Sniper fans to “put on our raping shoes and find this b-tch.”
“F-cking c-nt. How dare you disgrace his name like that. He gave his life so you can have yours. F-cking b-tch. Don’t worry I know where you live thanks to your ip address. And don’t worry I’m a Marine,” said Jamie Lugo in a message shared by Martin.
I realize that Twitter is where racists and haters go to prove their street cred by demonstrating how thoroughly hateful and astonishingly ignorant they can be. You wouldn’t think that a 140-character limit would be sufficient to allow one so inclined to remove any doubt as to their abject dickishness…but Lugo and many others have done themselves (not so very) proud. Mama must be fairly BEAMING with pride, eh?
I don’t necessarily agree with Martin’s methods; being inflammatory solves nothing. Sure you piss off a lot of knuckle draggers…but to what end? You’re not about to change hearts and minds, and it’s entirely possible- though rather unlikely- that someone like Lugo might follow through on his threats.
I do agree with Martin that Kyle was a troglodyte and a killer who enjoyed his work, probably a little bit too much. He had a job to do, and while he did it well, he’s hardly a hero. There are plenty of those who served who could be accurately described with that appellation, but not someone who kills people from behind the safety of a long-range scope.
Lionize Kyle if you must, but if you do so, you should at least be able to make a case that doesn’t involve threatening the life of those you disagree with. Freedom of speech applies to ALL Americans, not just those whose viewpoint you agree with. If you can’t get behind that, if you think cheap personal insults and death threats are perfectly acceptable, you’re closer to being a terrorist than a patriot.
Isn’t it interesting that the very people who (inaccurately) claim Kyle died to protect Abby Martin’s freedom of speech are threatening to rape and kill her for exercising it?
