If you’re at all familiar with The Nation justice correspondent Elie Mystal’s oeuvre, it should come as absolutely no shock to you that he’s losing his mind over Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover. He even went so far as to change his Twitter avatar to reflect the dark times in which he now finds himself:
Dying laughing at @ElieNYC’s new avi. pic.twitter.com/bYnz51I0yJ
— Small Fringe Shoshi 🚚🚛🚑🚒🚜💨 (@shoshido) April 26, 2022
OK, the Twitter avatar thing is legit hilarious. But Elie Mystal’s actual explanation for his outrage is decidedly not funny. In fact, it’s downright disturbing — and pretty damn racist, to boot:
To me, the principle danger in the new Twitter overlord is that an impulsive, bad faith actor with a history of racial animus now owns messages to and from Black people that were intended to be private or quasi private.
— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) April 26, 2022
I know a lot of people, and journos especially, are like me and use DMs for sourcing, for background conversations, and for market testing opinions before taking them *live.*
In the future, Elon will own all that. Do you trust him to protect your privacy?— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) April 26, 2022
If you're white, maybe you can. Maybe you implicitly can. Maybe you are so secure in your whiteness and your "but the market would punish him" expectations that you just *assume* that there's no way ol' Elon would sell you out when Roger Stone comes calling. I'd say you're wrong.
— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) April 26, 2022
Once Elie gets going, he just can’t stop himself. Not that he wants to.
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But even if your whiteness protects you, it won't protect me. Or my sources. I have to assume that anything I DM or is DM'd to me could now be "leaked" or "hacked" or "whoopsie'd" to Stone or Breitbart or Newsmax or Mediaite or any white wing actor or organization looking for it.
— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) April 26, 2022
Elie’s very proud of that “white wing” line.
Put yourself in the mind of a megalomaniacal racist, imagine the worst thing he could do, THEN IMAGINE HE'D DO IT… because the Black experience in America is simply that: the worst thing white folks can think of to do, they do, to at least some of us.
— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) April 26, 2022
Why would we want to put ourselves in the mind of Elie Mystal? It seems like a terrifying place to be, full of anger and racially driven paranoia.
So I can, more or less, keep on the *public* side of Twitter. Or at least my objections to the public side are simply about creating content for Elon's Web.
But the private side. What I actually *use* Twitter for? Can't do that anymore. Elon is too untrustworthy.— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) April 26, 2022
Untrustworthy why? Because he’s white? We do know that Elie Mystal has a lotta problems with white people.
Elon Musk has better things to do with his time than persecute Elie Mystal. Unfortunately, Elie Mystal literally has nothing better to do than go off on viciously racist screeds.
The blatant, open racism that Elie Mystal engages in here is quite stunning, and that fact that he is saying these thing in a thread where he fears his *private* conversation will be exposed makes it even more amazing. I mean, what he he saying in DMs that would be worse?? https://t.co/583tYCCtMi pic.twitter.com/WiDCWGWOip
— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) April 27, 2022
I mean, seriously, "the worst thing white folks can think of to do, they do"?? Would a commentator or writer who publicly said ""the worst thing black folks can think of to do, they do" not be excommunicated from speaking/writing publicly? pic.twitter.com/tddNgyAjZh
— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) April 27, 2022
Um, yes. Yes they would. And understandably so. But Elie Mystal, who’s so worried about what Elon Musk’s Twitter stewardship will mean for his freedom to be who he is, doesn’t have to worry about any professional repercussions for his own flaming racism.
Actually, I'm wrong, because Mystal wrote this in 2020 for Washington @PostOpinions with a broad, racial stereotype "gives White people license to harass Black suburbanites" in the subhed. He gets a pass, apparently. pic.twitter.com/BQWnLUm96O
— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) April 27, 2022
Again, imagine someone writing that when Obama was president, he gave "Black people license to harass White suburbanites" in a Washington @PostOpinions subhed. Not in a million years. pic.twitter.com/sBdDzsrC9S
— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) April 27, 2022
Elie Mystal thrives on racism. He’s not afraid of “an impulsive, bad faith actor with a history of racial animus”; he is an impulsive, bad faith actor with a history of racial animus.
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