The new ghetto

Some right-wingers are, of course, saying it’s not fair, it’s censorship, it’s plickal krecknis.

Williamson’s hiring in March outraged some liberals, who pointed to 2014 tweets (since deleted) in which he opined “the law should treat abortion like any other homicide” and added, when considering an appropriate punishment for women who undergo abortions, “I have hanging … in mind.”

Williamson’s firing on Thursday prompted equally-angry responses from some of his fellow conservatives in the media, who contended the move shows they are an oppressed minority — “ghettoized,” in the words of the Resurgent’s Erick Erickson.

Ghettoized by the Nazis of plickal krecknis. It will be the gas chambers next, just you wait and see.

https://twitter.com/EWErickson/status/981969864515555331

https://twitter.com/SouthernKeeks/status/981967695653625857

Yes, “a different world view” that women should be killed for deciding to stop being pregnant. Opposing abortion rights is one thing, and advocating mass murder is another.

Atlantic editor Jeff Goldberg initially defended Williamson against critics, arguing that isolated remarks on social media should not preclude Williamson from working at the magazine. The liberal watchdog Media Matters on Wednesday resurfaced a 2014 podcast that revealed Williamson’s tweets were not isolated remarks.

“I would totally go with treating it like any other crime, up to and including hanging,” Williamson said of abortion.

“I’m kind of squishy about capital punishment in general, but I’ve got a soft spot for hanging, as a form of capital punishment,” he added. “I tend to think that things like lethal injection are a little too antiseptic. … If the state is going to do violence, let’s make it violence.”

That kind of thing should just be beneath the Atlantic. There are plenty of frankly trashy outlets that are suitable for Williamson’s fantasy about killing lots of women, but the Atlantic should be better than that.

In the Atlantic’s reversal, we find one standard of civil discourse: It is okay — or, at least, forgivable — to tweet that women who undergo abortions should be hanged, so long as the tweet is hyperbolic rhetoric. It is not okay to actually think women who undergo abortions should be hanged.

No that’s not it. It is not okay to say that women who undergo abortions should be hanged and mean it. We can’t know what people actually think, we can merely know what they say and possibly whether or not they were joking or hyperbolizing when they said it.

Anyway, chalk up another win for plickal krecknis.

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