Update: When I originally wrote this post I was determined to take the high road. I deliberately left out any names and instead just shared my thoughts. More than two years later, this person is still stalking my Twitter account, and now she’s harassing my fiancée as well, and gleefully mocking my fight with cancer. Therefore, I have decided to name her: She is Rachel Goodine of ACORN Canada.
What motivates people to hate others so much?
I ask this question because it has recently become clear to me that I am hated by a certain group of people for no other reason than because I have an opinion than differs from theirs.
When I say hatred, I mean hatred. Insults were thrown at me with wanton disregard for their real meaning and in such a way that I can only assume they were intended to convey hatred, and perhaps incite a reaction out of me. Threats were made. I was encouraged to cut of my own testes and film the event so that these people could watch.
And all of this un-provoked. By people I wouldn’t have even heard of had they not decided to take an interest in me. People I do not know, will never know, and never wish to know.
I won’t get into the details, but a quick perusal of my Twitter feed will allow you to see for yourself.
Essentially I made an off-hand comment supporting the gentrification of the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood of Vancouver. For those of you who don’t know, the DTES is perhaps the worst neighbourhood in all of Canada. It’s a den of drug addicts, and not much else.
At least that’s what it was. In recent years there has been a real effort to clean it up. New developments have gone up, businesses have opened, and for the first time in decades there is some light in what has been a very dark place.
But a certain group of anarchists don’t like that. They want to keep the DTES horrible. They want to make sure that the drug addicts don’t ever get help, unless that help is in the form of free needles to help feed their addiction. They want to keep anyone with an eye to improving things out, to preserve the “culture” of the DTES. That culture basically consists of drug addicts dying in the streets, but hey, to each their own right?
In response to the threat of an improved neighbourhood they have taken to smashing the windows of some local businesses, stealing the property of others (including one, a restaurant, that has a meal token program, in which diners can purchase a token and give it to a homeless person), and picketing another and harassing its customers. In short, they are behaving badly. Very badly.