A Vox.com editor who encouraged anti-Donald Trump protesters to riot has been suspended.
“We at Vox do not take institutional positions on most questions, and we encourage our writers to debate and disagree,” the site’s founder, Ezra Klein, said Friday.
Protesters in San Jose, Calif., were caught on film Thursday assaulting and berating Trump supporters. One woman was surrounded and pelted with trash, and a man was sucker-punched. As news of the violence trickled back to the East Coast, Vox’s Emmett Rensin applauded the anti-Trump action.
“Advice: If Trump comes to your town, start a riot,” he said on social media late Thursday.
He followed that note with a series of messages arguing that rioting is the only good and reasonable response to a visit by the GOP nominee.
“Listen, if Trump is Hitler then you’ve got no business condemning rioters. If he isn’t, you’ve got no business pretending normal is better,” he wrote. “It’s very simple: All violence against human lives and bodies is categorically immoral. Property destruction is vastly more negotiable.”
“But again, the point is that you cannot spend a year calling a man a unique threat to democracy then be shocked when people act that way,” he added. “You spent a year saying Trump was a fascist, and particularly an anti-Hispanic bigot. Hispanics take that seriously, and you’re Shocked.”
He went on like that for quite awhile.
“If you too believe he’s a fascist, then ask yourself what it means to concern troll poor, Latino folks who take that belief seriously,” he argued.
By Friday afternoon, however, he was suspended for his tweets.
“[D]irect encouragement of riots crosses a line between expressing a contrary opinion and directly encouraging dangerous, illegal activity. We welcome a variety of viewpoints, but we do not condone writing that could put others in danger,” the statement added. “In this case, Emmett’s tweets violated Vox’s standards and Emmett has been suspended as a consequence.”
