A slew of verified leftist “blue checks” took to Twitter after the news broke of a mass shooter in Boulder, Colorado, to claim — without evidence — that the suspect was a “white male.” The platform allowed verified users to spread this misinformation without restraint or punishment.
“The Atlanta shooting was not even a week ago. Violent white men are the greatest terrorist threat to our country,” tweeted Vice President Kamala Harris’ niece Meena Harris on Monday.
But after it was later revealed that police identified the suspect in the Boulder mass gunman as 21-year-old Ahmad Al Aliwi Al-Issa, Harris issued a backhanded follow-up tweet admitting that she was wrong, making sure to caveat her new tweet with a comment disparaging white men.
“I deleted a previous tweet about the suspect in the Boulder shooting,” Harris wrote. “I made an assumption based on his being taken into custody alive and the fact that the majority of mass shootings in the U.S. are carried out by white men.”
Harris, however, was one of many verified Twitter accounts to claim the Boulder gunman was a “white man” simply based on the fact that police had taken him into custody alive — a narrative oftentimes pushed by the left in an attempt to promote the subjective claim that police treat white gunmen with more respect than gunmen of other races.
“Description: ‘Police have taken him into custody.’ Translation: He was white,” tweeted author Don Winslow.
Feminist Amy Siskind also made it clear that she believed the gunman was “a white man” due to the fact that the suspect was “taken into custody” alive.
“If he were Black or Brown he would be dead,” Siskind affirmed.
But the next day, after the suspect’s name was released, Siskind interestingly shifted gears by encouraging her followers not to give the gunman “attention” by having “his name widely known,” but rather, “mourn the victims,” instead.
Other blue checks on Twitter responded to the Boulder shooting by claiming there exists a “culture of entitlement” that causes “white men” to go to on shooting sprees at the drop of a hat.
Others even suggested that AR-15s are somehow to blame.
“Call it what it is ..White supremacist domestic terrorism,” chimed in actress Rosanna Arquette after the news broke of the shooting in Boulder, Colorado.
Twitter has not taken action against these verified users for their misinformation, despite the fact that in other cases it has “fact-checked” memes and obvious parody.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler @alana, and on Instagram.
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