I posed this not-very-hypothetical parallel yesterday about the treatment of the Libs of TikTok account in the pages of the Washington Post: “If an account posted TikToks from neo-Nazi or white-supremacist police officers and soldiers, would it be treated with the same hostility by Twitter or the Washington Post? We all know the answer.” I had not yet seen that the Post itself had published this Associated Press article yesterday morning:
The names of hundreds of U.S. law enforcement officers, elected officials and military members appear on the leaked membership rolls of a far-right extremist group that’s accused of playing a key role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, according to a report released Wednesday. The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism pored over more than 38,000 names on leaked Oath Keepers membership lists and identified more than 370 people it believes currently work in law enforcement agencies — including as police chiefs and sheriffs — and more than 100 people who are currently members of the military.
The Post and the ADL report name names. Either this sort of thing is journalism, or it’s harassment. It can’t be one standard for one cause, and a different standard for a different cause.