Should we respect each other? Gosh, I dunno. Should we respect their actions? Let's ask Andy Ngo...

The problem is some people are incapable of acting like civilized adults.

It's ok to get a list of Donnie's donors and then refuse to do business or interact with any of them. Hell, I don't even care if you write them an email telling them you'll no longer have anything to do with them as long as they support Donnie. However, it should end there. No harassment, no violence, no stalking, no spurious lawsuits or criminal charges. That's the shit that causes problems.

Still, if someone goes out of business because they support a hugely unpopular politician and thus no one will buy their products anymore? That's just capitalism. When consumers don't want your product, for whatever reason, they'll go to your competitors. Adapt or die. I'm not a huge fan of capitalism, but I still know how the game is played.

I agree that the test of whether this is a good idea is to imagine the shoe on the other foot. Since I believe that Trump supports are much more likely to do violence, publishing lists seems like a bad idea.

However, it is a false equivalency to talk about blacklists that were based on allegations. The proposed list here would have been of publicly available, government-verified information. Being branded a communist is something difficult to refute. Choosing not to make another verifiable contribution to Trump is not difficult.

Why would $hitler’s supporters feel shamed if they don’t think they’ve done anything wrong?

Because they love the sadistic cruelty, sinister stupidity, and sociopathic racism that define the Tr666p regime’s ongoing white trash terrorist attack against everyone else in this country.

They enjoy having an Evilungelical ChrISIStian VP that wants to hang gay people.

They swoon over locking up desperate men, women, and children in concentration camps so that they’ll die from malnutrition and preventable diseases in an ethnic cleansing scheme.

The French shaved the heads of Nazi collaborators, so that the public would know instantly what kind of moral failures they were dealing with.

And Americans are freaking out over sharing the already public information of who’s paying for the demeaning, daily lies and humiliating betrayals forced upon us. Christ, this country couldn’t be more feckless, incompetent, and pathetic.

@4 nailed it: money should not be speech but a corrupt Supreme Court ruled that it was. So as long as Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is the law of the land, yeah, you're damn right we should.

This is a classic liberal situation: our side wants to do the right thing, both because it's right and out of fear of what the other side will do, when the other side is crystal fucking clear they don't give the slightest shit about what's right and will do whatever the fuck they want. So we unilaterally disarm and they promptly rig elections and steal Supreme Court seats and so on and so forth.

So...yeah, no. There a reason the KKK wears hoods. They don't want to be known. Pull off the hoods.

@7 for the same reason people are uncomfortable compiling a list of trans people. If they don't think what they've done is unnatural, surely they have no reason to be discrete, right?

Donating money over the reporting limit is an entry into the political arena. You should expect market consequences. Being afraid of exposure because you support a candidate is a market signal. Market actions have market consequences. If you aren't cool with that maybe overthrow capitalism?

@ 9,

Nice try playing the false equivalency card and comparing people with the tremendous strength and courage to come out as trans with $hitler’s Despicables that want to destroy them.

No wonder we’re trapped in a dystopian morass in which weak-willed, feeble-minded, amoral morons can’t tell the difference between right and wrong and have no concept of the Golden Rule.

Next...

Editorial Crisis

8
So...yeah, no. There a reason antifa wears masks. They don't want to be known. Pull off the masks.

Sigh. More Herzog Horseshit. False conflation, misleading headline, fallacious reasoning.

Trump supporters ≠ Big Money Trump Donors

False premise right from the start. Very few people are saying post the names of random Joe Magahead online so people can brigade them, or fire them or whatever. Only lunatics are making that argument. And nobody is really even doing that.

What people are doing —like journalists, etc — is searching the publicly available database of big donors and letting people know who donates to which candidate.

So. As of other have pointed out ANYONE CAN FIND The NAMES OF POLITICAL DONORS, you dipshit!

This entire fallacious argument is a stalking horse to further shield the corrupting influence of money in politics by making a case to keep donations anonymous.

Just fuck off already, Herzog. Your fifteen minutes of attention is two years over ripe.

@14

Yes. AntiFa is JUST like the 110 years of lynching, rape, terrorism, and torture committed by the Klan.

"There a reason antifa wears masks."

HAHAHAHA. Is that why you post under a hundred fake sock puppets a day? Because you're scared of mean 'ol AntiFa's anonymity? Ohes nose! They com'n to get you feebs!

Refreshingly honest of you to offer that robust defense of the Klan, though.

@9 What a stupid argument.

People merely existing as Trans, or gay, or any other traditionally oppressed community, are not existing as monetary support (or even explicit endorsement) of any given political agenda that effects you.

Say, if your black maybe you should know if your boss gave money to an openly Klan member of congress. Or say if your gay maybe you should know if the company you work for gave money to a candidate that supported rolling back human rights for gays.

How publishing a list of trans people is remotely like this is.. well... it's really the product of some distorted thinking.

I think Whoopie and Katie are confused here about more than one part of the issue.

Sorry in advance for running on, but I see a lot of confusion lately about freedom of speech and what the First Ammendment is protecting.

If the government were to draw up lists of donors to its political opponents, and then, using its authority, compel the public to shun and ostracize these citizens, or worse, to simply round them up, then we'd have an abuse of power and a violation of the right to freedom of speech.

Public shaming, on the other hand, is true democracy in action—power to the people, who are free to vote with their pocketbooks or to shun others for their views, be they personal or political.

The difference between a boycott and the Blacklist is that the Blacklist was the work of the government abusing it's power against its political enemies. Federal investigations were held, digging up dirt, forcing innuendo and planting evidence. The HUAC then listed and prosecuted people for no other reason than suspicion of their associations or their constitutionally protected right to free speech, assembly and opinion. It was wrong then as now.

A boycott is private individuals organizing to publicly shame and shun others, as is their right. One's right to free speech (which now includes political donations) and opinion is only protected from government prosecution, abuse and discrimination. The public is fully within their rights to shame you and create organized boycotts to shun you or to shut you down.

Your vote is your own, and is private. But your political donations are public and for which you should be prepared to defend yourself. If you don't want to risk being ostracised for your views, then keep them to yourself; your vote being your opportunity to privately express your views with no fear of recriminations.

If right wing extremists want to compile lists of their political or racial enemies and organize boycotts, then that is perfectly within their rights. But once they step beyond voicing their opinions and exercising their rights of association—shunning and shaming—should they escalate to threats, intimidation or worse, then they are engaging in possible illegal acts. Also wrong.

Is it intolerant to boycott, shame and shun your political enemies? In principle, sure, I guess. But we mustn't tolerate intolerance, which is what these particular political enemies are are advocating and directly supporting.

Finally, Katie: It's a "furore" they're tweets caused, not a "fervor".

I think, while I was writing the above overlong comment, Urgutha Forka @5 already summed it up much more concisely.

https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/09/05/41289002/should-we-name-and-shame-trump-supporters/comments/5

@15: Maybe if you get even angrier and whinier, Katie Herzog will stop existing.

Give it a shot!

Or, perhaps you could just stop giving her posts clicks, attention, and multiple comments. But you can't help yourself, can you?

The problem with the argument against this is, it presumes that the other side (The GOP) will play by the same rules we do.

They won’t. They haven’t, again and again. We kept the filibuster, the got rid of it. We approved appointees, thy blocked them. It’s Charlie Brown trying to kick Lucy’s football.

They’re not going to fight fair. And if you insist on being fair to them, you’re an idiot. They’re not playing by the rules. Neither should you.

So, publish the names. If you don’t, because you don’t want them to publish the names of supporters of progressive candidates, you’re an idiot, because they are absolutely going to publish those names even if you don’t. So it’s in your best interest to fight just as dirty as they do.

And if you don’t, you will continue to get your ass kicked.

Please disregard angry comments Katie. You do a great job in presenting multifaceted issues with articles that are well written. Keep up the good work.

@20 Hahahah. My god, your lack of self awareness is almost adorable. Maybe take your own advice, you loser dumbfuck.

Agree with 21. The GOP changed the rules. I think ostracizing and shaming and basically cutting them out of our society is the best approach. The game and the rules have been changed and we need to adapt or be governed (and I use that word loosely) an angry, ignorant minority group.

@23

I find it unironically disconcerting that instead of professing history, you spend what unfortunately appears to be the vast majority of your time being angry on a low-traffic local arts and entertainment blog.

Are you ok? Everything alright at home? People are worried.

Of course we should name and shame them. Republicans are horrible people.

I don't get it. If you're not ashamed of your support for a politician, why would you object to being named as a supporter of that politician?

Yes.

Wow, so if you're on Debra Messing's blacklist you're pretty much done in Hollywood, right?

There are a lot of hypocrites in sports and the arts who pretend to be liberal and then vote for tax breaks for themselves. It seems reasonable for people to know whether the fruits of their labor are going to be invested into the destruction of their civil rights.

Should we?

Yes.

And then buy billboards

I dread the prospect of being forced to defend a red hat from a howling, mindless mob more than I do that of a mass shooting.

Which is pretty nice, I guess.

@27 - Maybe wanting privacy, not wanting to deal with vandals, mob, bloodshed, or just even bad manners.

16
Yeah, it's freaky, isn't it.
Both are arms of the Democrat party;
both cover their faces while engaged in their cowardly thuggary,
both benefit from a press controlled by the Democrats giving them cover.
Evidently antifa is what the young fascist Democrat thugs do these days,
just like their papas joined the Klan back in the day.

@33 Ah, so NOW we need a nanny state, eh?

I'm embarrassed for everyone who spends their days on the internet trying to get people worked up over antifa. A bunch of fragile dudes scared of some 155lb millennials in hoodies. Have a word with yourself immediately.

@36 - No, I didn’t imply that.

I say name and shame them. Whoopi is wrong.

I agree with Whoopi's take on this. If people want to look up public records to satisfy their own curiosity, that's perfectly legal and fine but blacklists and public shaming can easily be carried way too far, as we saw with the Hollywood communism blacklists and trials.

Free speech has consequences. As political donations are considered free speech then what you donate money to is fair game for non violent reprisals. These people aren’t concerned about their safety. They are concerned their political leanings are going to negatively impact their businesses.

@22 While Herzog’s prose is mechanically sufficient the conclusions are poor. She’s conflating a government sanctioned persecution of those with opposing political views (mostly using false narratives) with the free speech rights of citizenry to have transparency regarding the funding of political campaigns that is supported by publicly available facts.

Shaming and blaming? MAGA tools (Under Webster's Dictionary, see: troll) already do that to the 99.9% of us who know infinitely better than to support Mein Trumpfy / Dencey Pencey or waste time logging onto Twitter. Trump supporters should be both institutionalized and lobotomized if they still refuse to see reason. This globally disastrous insanity is glaring proof that our current mental health system is totally fucked up and is in dire need of an overhaul.

“... there's a big difference between looking it up for yourself and an elected official splashing this information all over the internet.”

No, not really. You’ve made a false equivalence as the basis for your argument, and thus your argument collapses.

However, it IS fun to watch what happens when people who get paid to stand around and read other people’s words aloud then make the huge mistake of believing we care about what they happen to think about whatever.

Finally, the mouldering corpse of R. M. Nixon could crawl out of the Tomb of HUAC, bite Whiopie Goldberg on her ass, and she wouldn’t know what happened.

@42: Perhaps so. The journalist did her job to present an issue for readers to learn about and debate. Is it really necessary to viciously and meanly insult the messenger?

Katie, every one of your columns should be titled "Know Your Place And Settle For Biden!". That is clearly your agenda-to get all progressives to abandon resistance, abandon any show of defiance or strength, concede the streets to the alt-reich, even though conceding them the streets means the win and will end up running the places where they control the streets, accept the alt-reich's argument that racism, misogyny, xenophobia and anti-LGBTQ prejudice are simple "strongly held opinions", always be "polite", always let the right control the agenda, accept that nothing to the left of post-2010 Obama can ever happen.

Those things are the only possible future that can come of following your safe, bland, passionless, defeatist, cowardly notion of watered-down liberalism. Doing things your way means letting the right rule the world, Katie. It means abandoning any hope of anything else.

Politeness always leads to defeat. And "fair play" will never be reciprocated by the right again.

We can't ever beat the oppressors following your rules, Katie. Nobody in any antioppression struggle ever did win doing it your way. We can't ever get to liberation from any of the misery of the present if we follow your advice and always give the right special deference and always limit activism to nothing but campaigning for bland centrists in elections-no one elected as a bland centrist can ever be made to move beyond bland centrism if elected-and politely handing in polite, innocuous petitions that will always be ignored by those in power, as they have always been ignored in the past.

Is there a reason why you want to impose rules on progressives that guarantee we will never be able to mount effective resistance, that guarantee we can never, ever win?

Is there a reason why you want us to be powerless and pathetic?

It's simply not possible to work against hate or for social and economic justice within the limitations you want us to impose on yourself. Your guidelines would leave no effective means of trying to work for the world we need. None.

Fascism can never be beaten through "fair play" or through bland, safe, nonconfrontational methods. It can't be beaten through electing non-progressives like Biden or Harris or Booker who always stand with the rich against the poor on economic issues.

Do you even want the fascists to be stopped, Katie?

If so, why do you always attack the antifascists and never say anything at all about the fascists, never call them out for anything, never join in active resistance against them?

Whose side, in the end, are you on?

That said, I think we should think of this as "Name Big Trump Donors". People who write big checks to Hair Fuhrer are incapable of feeling shame.

Some people here seem confused, so for the record: The Hollywood Blacklist was not a government document. It was an entirely voluntary, industry-generated agreement to deny employment to certain individuals. Neither the commitment to deny employment to suspected Communist sympathizers nor the ensuing loyalty oaths required for employment were mandated by the government.

In other words, according to modern "speech has consequences" rhetoric, the Hollywood Blacklist was neither a free speech issue, since it didn't violate the First Amendment, nor a troubling form of political coercion, since privately owned businesses are (and should be!) 100% free to dictate their employees' words, actions, and associations even when those employees are not at work.