Can people be this illiterate? Even white nationalists?

I find myself wondering this today, having come across a new posting from the Council of Conservative Citizens (which despite its rather innocuous sounding name is a well-established hate group), encouraging people to show up at my speeches over the next several months and challenge me, presumably with words, but one suspects quite possibly with more than that.

According to the CCC, I deserve to be confronted because I have openly advocated killing members of the Tea Party. Wait, what? Oh, you missed where I did that? Yeah, that’s because it never happened. Thus my earlier reference to the rather stunning inability of right wing racists to read the plain English found in my tweets or columns. Sadly, this claim is believed by others in the larger Nazi orbit, like the folks at DailySlave (yes, they actually think white people are being enslaved, seriously), who announced on their site: “JEW RAT TIM WISE TO SPREAD ANTI-WHITE HATRED ON NEW SPEAKING TOUR” Ah yes, spreading the anti-white hatred. Because — and much to the surprise of my very white wife, children, mom and best friend — I am all about the anti-white hatred. And if you don’t like it, cracker devil, you can kiss my white ass. Oh, by the way, later the same folks who called me a “JEW RAT” also called me a “pig devil” (sort of a mixed metaphor and totally ironic given the whole Jew thing), so you know they mean business. Just sayin’.

Anyhoo, I was concerned when I saw the thing about calling for the murder of Tea Partiers. Though I certainly didn’t recall saying such a thing, I suppose one never knows. I have said some shit on social media I later regretted (haven’t we all?), so I must admit I was curious and clicked the link provided by my Nazi friends just to make sure…

Oh, that…nope that’s just Nazis being Nazis: either unable to to read (education not being their strong suit), or deliberately distorting the facts so as to gin up hostility and possibly violence against me. Well played skinheads. Well played.

So let’s clear some shit up, shall we?

First, I have never advocated violence against anyone. Ever. I have called repeatedly for the right to be crushed politically, utterly and completely destroyed as a viable political force. But not through violence, as I actually think violence for those ends would be not only immoral but counterproductive and only engender more violence and repression from the right in response. I want the Tea Party politically decimated, in other words, as with the larger conservative movement, but not physically harmed. There is a huge difference here as any remotely intelligent person should be able to discern. The fact that I have to actually explain it is pathetic, but sadly, this is the illiterate social media world in which we live, where context and analysis don’t matter, so when you say you want people “crushed” there will be those who accuse you of wanting to drop heavy buildings on them for that purpose…sigh.

As for what I actually said, and which was twisted into “Tim Wise encourages his followers to shoot Tea Partiers in the head,” here’s the deal. All of this, literally all of it, is based on a tweet. This tweet:

Ok, Ok, so saying “fuck these assholes” wasn’t very nice. My bad. I would have written, “aggressively fornicate with these cretinous anal sphincters,” but it was Twitter for God’s sakes and one only gets 140 characters, so ya know, give me a break. Anyway, as for the rest of it, only a complete fool or craven liar could think it amounted to advocating killing people.

The story to which I was referring in the tweet had to do with Tea Partiers who were openly trying to stop certain people (of color, of course) from voting by challenging their legitimacy as registered voters. They were also upset that voters of color in certain precincts with long voter lines were being provided with bottled water as a way to encourage them to stay on line (thinking such a thing tantamount to “buying votes” apparently) and were seeking to disrupt the water handouts. Their goal? To make waiting in line to vote as unpleasant as possible and thus, hopefully, to limit how many such persons of color would actually cast a ballot. In other words, they were interfering with one of the most fundamental privileges of citizenship—the liberty of voting. I was merely saying that if someone tries to suppress your liberties, you should exercise one of the most basic of those (at least, according to the very right wingers who are now complaining), by pulling a gun from your waistband, to which you are legally entitled apparently, and pointing it at anyone who would do such a thing, in effect telling them in very obvious terms to back the hell up. Such a thing is not tantamount to advocating murder unless one believes that “exercising their second amendment rights in their faces” means shooting people, which would first require believing that the second amendment gives one the right to kill people, which even the Supreme Court hasn’t said (yet!).

That anyone would interpret that as a call for violence is self-evidently preposterous. If the whole cause of my anger at the Tea Party that day was their attempt to limit black and brown voting, why would I want voters of color who were being harassed to shoot anyone? After all, I’m pretty sure that after you shoot someone, police don’t wait for you to cast your ballot before arresting you. In short: violence towards the right-wingers promising to interfere with the voting process would only serve to limit the number of persons of color getting to vote that day—the exact opposite of my desire and the inverse of the entire reason for sending that tweet in the first place.

Ironically, the threat of force against those who would interfere with basic liberties is pretty much the daily banter on right wing websites. They don’t just threaten it, they promise it, if any of those awful black UN helicopters show up at their door to “take their guns,” or send them to a FEMA camp or whatever the hell. In short, reactionaries regularly call for pulling guns, and even using them against those who would interfere with their rights. But when I say the same thing — basically calling for folks of color to demonstrate their second amendment rights if and when conservative activists try and keep them from exercising their liberties — then I’m the bad guy, and I’m the one who is calling for murder? Seriously, the stupid hurts it’s so raw and filled with infection.

So no, Tea Partiers: I didn’t advocate shooting you in the head. I mean, with those stupid revolutionary war tricorn hats y’all wear that wouldn’t be a very high percentage shot anyway. Everyone knows, body mass fool, body mass…*

*This is a joke assholes.