31–40 of 211 posts
Can you imagine being given a drug without you knowing, like meth, which caused you to act bizarre? Everyone would understand that. And it is the same thing with these mental illnesses. But for some reason it is always our fault and we have to apologize. I think Freddie deBoer is self stigmatizing and it is unhealthy.
"In August of 2017 I made totally baseless accusations of sexual misconduct against the writer Malcolm Harris on social media. "
Can anyone provide more (specific) context
This. In a lot of circles I move there is a tendency to "total condemnation".
We can be better to each other. When we do not deserve it is when we need it the most.
Peace, love, respect foster peace, love and respect. "Total condemnation" might make the condemner have some temporary good feelings, but does no good for anybody beyond that.
It is not, in fact, "unambiguously a lie" to relate to others deBoer's grave (and admitted, and unambiguously real) misconduct without the full context of his mental illness. People are entitled to form their own opinions about deBoer's credibility, and he is not entitled to set conditions on how they do that.
Are you suggesting that he may not even be bipolar?
Makes me wonder how much of the wild conduct we see online is mental illness and if more empathy would help. Or at least calling in a mental health check up.
Some excerpts: "Crucially, despite my mental state at the time, I knew when I sent those tweets that they were untrue. I am responsible for having made those false allegations, and that makes me a liar, it makes me guilty of slander, and it makes me someone who undermined the profound seriousness of rape allegations."
". I have abandoned all social media permanently. I have stopped freelance writing. I have in general tried to permanently remove myself from online life and from the world of political writing in which Malcolm resides and I once resided. These changes are not attempts to make up for what I’ve done, really; they are just matters of self-preservation as I try to build a life where I do not cause harm to people anymore. I have fully committed to constant treatment, and I have fully committed to going away. I am so profoundly sorry"
I remember reading this at the time and feeling the pain through the screen. He seemed genuinely ashamed.
Here's Freddie's more recent explanation for why he tried to remove his apology from the internet: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/statement
He says he doesn't care if we find it on the wayback machine, but someone had to go out of their way to exclude it (https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://fredrikdeboer.com/2018...)
Here's Harris' contemporaneous reaction: https://twitter.com/bigmeaninternet/status/10471296316970475...
My feeling is that the initial apology has been undermined by a) trying to memory hole it and b) writing all these blog posts quasi-defending himself. Would be nice if Freddie and his IDW friends displayed such forbearance and grace for the college students and journalists they make their living attacking. Perhaps those people are going through some mental issues as well.
The good news is, Freddie seems to be doing better than ever. He got a fat advance from Substack and even just had an op-ed published in the liberal New York Times.
Certainly I'd like to think there's a special place in hell for those who accuse innocent people of sexual abuse; there's not much worse that one can be accused of. Mental illness or not, there's no excuse for these kinds of false accusations. It's certainly understandable given Freddie's condition. But us understanding why it happened doesn't ethically justify their actions, and it also doesn't relieve the perpetrat…
My point here is that there are many life destroying accusations. And they have been used against variety of people.
It is not, in fact, "unambiguously a lie" to relate to others deBoer's grave (and admitted, and unambiguously real) misconduct without the full context of his mental illness. People are entitled to form their own opinions about deBoer's credibility, and he is not entitled to set conditions on how they do that.
I don't know what conditions he's set, he's just asking people to include context. Context which completely changes how most people would view that incident.
Maybe "unambiguously a lie" is a too strong and you can't tell a lie by taking an action out of context, but if you can this is it.
So what did he do wrong? I couldn't tell from the article, it only hinted that he did something wrong but did not disclose what it was "In August of 2017 I made totally baseless accusations of sexual misconduct against the writer Malcolm Harris on social media. " Can anyone provide more (specific) context