Mobbing is a hate crime. This is true whether or not the mobbers are the captains of some northeast Seattle neighborhood watch group, some low-end real estate speculators, or white supremecists. This is why I wrote a post a few years back suggesting that the Southern Poverty Law Group should class real estate mobbers as hate groups (The Southern Poverty Law Center should consider real estate mobbing as a hate crime). This is why I wrote about how mobbing is intrinsically a bias crime (Real estate mobbing is a crime of bias (part 2)). The nature of mobbing as a bias crime that affects those who rent remains clear in the relationship between economic class and race. When neighborhood watch groups attack those who rent, they attack those who may have lower socioeconomic status because of factors like gender and race (Why real estate mobbing is a good reason to make renters a protected class). You can’t say you support the rights of minority groups when you’ve nothing but derision for those who rent. The hypocrisy is clear when mobbers wrap themselves in the American flag or hide behind liberal trappings–for example, signs proclaiming “Black Lives Matter” and “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights.”
It was with some concern that I recently noticed a spate of referrals to On being mobbed from a prominent gun site known for the anti-feminist and general anti-other views of its members. I don’t know how often On being mobbed is accessed by haters or those who profit in some way from mobbing others and want to protect their platform. I did move to protect On being mobbed from DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks by installing a Cloudflare service a few years back. But I harbor no illusions that the privacy of any individual who publishes a webpage is protected. I knew that even as I wrote this blog in part to keep me safe as I resisted a predatory crime, that writing about it could make me a target, that the victims of hate crimes, minorities and women, who speak the unspoken, can attract the attention of those who would silence them. Victimization begets further victimization.
This is what happens when the City of Seattle tolerates the anti-other views of its neighborhood watch groups, the erstwhile neighborhood councils that were compared to “cartels” and even some city managers whose departments are charged with giving Seattle residents an equitable deal. This is what happens when the City of Seattle is suckered into acting on the behalf of white upper-class men and their real estate scams and prosecutes their female victims. This is what happens when cities like Seattle and Albany, California whose city councils pass resolutions proclaiming their status as “sanctuary cities” are represented by the elected but run by those who may not agree. This is what happens when victim reports of predatory crimes and domestic terrorism are ignored. This is what happens to women.
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Addendum: In “The Rise of Male Supremecist Groups: How age-old misogyny morphed into an explicit ideology of hate,” Stephanie Russell-Kraft reported on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s formal addition of two male supremecist websites to the long list of recognized hate groups. The relationship between white supremecism and male supremecism is strong. For a brief but cogent read on male supremacy as backlash to the gains of women since the feminist movement, see https://newrepublic.com/article/147744/rise-male-supremacist-groups (The New Republic (2018)).
