Reply To: Responding to the Attack Thread On Me and This Community at Cakewalk Forums

[peter]

This is a private — members only — post. I realize that some people may be here that share things. I’m going to share some things. I had seen terrible, hateful racist, racist xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic posts advocating violence against liberal posts from Larry in the past. As I shared, when I told him that I was from a part Jewish family and liberal, he immediately responded by calling me a god-hating, baby murdering, Marxist. It was so hate-filled and unexpected. And yeah,  years later I still invited him here, because I thought that he could control that. He clearly coudln’t. It came out in a post where he called me a stupid, useful liberal idiot. I never wanted people to publicly know my political leanings. I’m not aligned with a political party. I’m not even a fan of politicians. And America is so politically divided right now. I don’t make any posts in public social media that give away my political leanings, because you can be attacked for that these days. Larry spends hours each day doing Facebook rants.

So, as I wrote, and I don’t think I shared this, but I had been emailing Larry  nearly monthly urging him to have a call. I thought, in a phone call, he might see my humanity and not stereotype me. So I had been sending him these emails until a few months ago. Within the same week, Larry made one post with the video of the leader of the neo-Nazi Proud Boys. and shortly thereafter, he made a post that he was doing crowd control against the “demon crats” at a protest. Now, that’s not something police use. He was boasting about being part of an extremist group. Then, I saw a couple of posts away from that, he had a chart he reposted from a white nationalist, that had photos of US government officials identifying each person by name and a star of David that mimicked the star of David sewn on the uniforms of Jews in the  Nazi concentration camps.

So, a few months ago, after sending him an email telling him how I was incredibly disappointed to see him posting those three things, I stated that he was never welcome at the site again. So that was fairly recent. My son was home from college at the time. I showed all of that to him and he said, “Come on, dad,  are you really surprised? You knew what this guy was all about.” Yes and no. I knew he was bigoted and hateful, but I didn’t realize until the stars of David how deep that hate went. At that point, I also questioned if I had betrayed my Jewish family by allowing him here in the first place. Candidly, I thought about my grandfather, who is long gone, more than my aunt and cousins. Did I allow this hateful man into this community out of convenience and persuade myself that there was hope for impacting his views? I had thought because he confided so many personal things to me — but yes, I suppose that mostly stopped after I shared that my family was part Jewish and that I am liberal.

Anyhow, yeah, I go on too long. When they mock me for that they’re not wrong.  But I created this place to combat hateful environments. I could handle the stupidity of superficial arguments people have over things that don’t matter. But I invested myself in Larry. I talked to my kids about him. And yes, I shared that he was immersed in bigotry, but I shared his humanity too. In the end, he didn’t see my humanity or have any regard for truth or decency. Is posting about the toxicity going to alienate a good deal of people. Absolutely. But this site is a passion project. It’s my heart. It isn’t a money maker. It isn’t anything but a passion project, so I’m going to be real with everyone.

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

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