I’m not much of a basketball fan, but I do know that the Brooklyn Nets' Kyrie Irving is the NBA’s equivalent of Ye, formerly known as Kanye West.
Irving shared a link on Twitter (we’ll get to that in a minute) to an anti-Semitic film, deleted it, didn’t apologize for doing it, wouldn’t say the Holocaust happened, and dribbled around the question of whether he was anti-Semitic.I’m rarely on Twitter, mainly because I’m not very opinionated, but I’ve been reading all the news about racist dogma that has skyrocketed once Elon Musk inherited the soon-to-be equivalent of former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social.
Just to give you an idea of how quickly bigotry spread, in the 12 hours after Musk signed on the dotted line, researchers from Montclair State University found an "immediate, visible, and measurable spike." That included significant vitriol about race, religion, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, such as the n word, the k word, and the f word.If you’re a person of color, Jewish, or queer, you are persona non grata in the new era of Musk’s “hellscape.” He says it won’t be, but it will.
And if you’re a drag queen whose sole purpose is to spread enjoyment as opposed to spreading hateful tweets, you are target number 2 (runner-up to democracy) for the Proud Boys and their ilk, who will storm your reading hours, and even firebomb your local doughnut shop.