Popehat, aka attorney Ken White, has been permanently banned from Bluesky, apparently for a post in which he suggested there was a moral upside to Elon Musk’s death. The Bluesky body politic, meanwhile, is losing its mind over this. Popehat is one of their heroes.
Because Mr. White, once deemed one of Salon’s 25 conservatives worth following on Twitter, is, quite literally, mentally ill, he naturally doesn’t see why he shouldn’t be able to advocate murdering a man who opposes the violent invasion of the UK by foreigners. Also, a correction – he wasn’t permanently banned, he was only suspended for four days.
Elon Musk is the world’s richest man — a trillionaire, briefly, until a market correction. He and his ideology are also supported by the administration of the most powerful nation on Earth. He is immune to normal social, economic, political, or legal limits. He can use his hugely influential platform to encourage pogroms without social, economic, political, or legal consequences.
It’s simply factual to say, as I did, that the only thing that will stop him is dying. Because my medium was a short Bluesky post, I mentioned him being killed. I suppose it would also stop him if he overdosed on Ketamine or choked on a piece of steak or got ass cancer or crashed one of his vehicles or something. But that would make a long post. Though the post has drawn plenty of criticism, nobody has explained to me how I am wrong about the limited circumstances that will stop him from encouraging racial violence.
I wonder if he would apply that logic to other rich people, particularly those who advocate racial genocide in the Middle East?
Regardless, and presumably because Mr. White is mentally ill, he clearly doesn’t understand that he shares what he believes Mr. Musk’s position to be. By his own logic, if there is no way to stop poor, non-white, downtrodden people from invading the UK and victimizing the English people through normal social, economic, political, or legal means, then the only thing that will stop them is the very fate that he is advocating for Mr. Musk.
Of course, Mr. White’s position isn’t the same as Mr. Musk’s position. Mr. Musk wants those poor, non-white, downtrodden people who are invading the UK, and other countries around the world to be repatriated to their home countries, peacefully and legally. And he is warning people, as I have warned people for more than two decades, that every failure to repatriate the immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers will eventually result in large scale violence and war, regardless of whether the country invaded is the UK, Palestine, Germany, Japan, or the United States.
So, ironically, we have a mentally ill individual advocating the killing of someone who is not advocating death for anyone. And, unsurprisingly, Bluesky decided to unsuspend Mr. White after four days, because it is a safe space for mentally ill people who want to be able to publicly advocate the death of public figures on the basis of their positions on social policy in other countries.
Now, I would be remiss if I failed to give Mr. White a chance to defend himself concerning his mental illness.
I’ve made an effort for years to be open and honest about things like depression and anxiety, because I know it’s healthier, and because the social stigma around it should be crushed. This incident resulted, as is often the case, in losers mocking me for being crazy, and slightly more pretentious people obliquely referring to my mental heath.
Mr. White wishes that we would stop observing that he is, by his own admission, mentally ill, and instead pay attention to the illogical incoherencies and death wishes produced by his mental illness. And, presumably because he is mentally ill, he does not comprehend that doing the latter leads invariably to the former.