Can you still subtweet if you deleted your Twitter account? If you’re New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, then the answer is yes.
Earlier this week, Stephens had a very public meltdown after David Karpf, an associate professor at George Washington University, compared him to a bedbug on Twitter. Stephens sent an email to both the professor and the university provost in an attempt to get the professor in trouble, which promptly went viral. Stephens deleted his Twitter account amid the ensuing backlash.
That could have been the end of the whole saga. But alas.
On Friday, Stephens used his weekly column to issue a warning about the modern dangers of hateful comments disseminated through mass communications, drawing a line from Hitler’s radio addresses to the power of social media today.
In the ultimate subtweet move, Stephens didn’t even reference what had happened on Twitter - rather, the column casually dropped a quote about bedbugs in relation to the burning of Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto.
My jaw is on the floor pic.twitter.com/repnmcL2Ud
— David Klion🔥 (@DavidKlion) August 30, 2019
David Karpf, the author of the tweet that started the saga, told the Guardian he was “surprised and disappointed” that Stephens escalated what should have been “a silly argument”. “Bret Stephens does not appear to have the humility to admit that he was having a bad night, overreacted and was wrong,” Karpf said.
In his column, Stephens decries the “rhetoric of infestation” , arguing that it’s back today. He points at Donald Trump using it to describe Latin American immigrants and Jaroslaw Kaczyński, the chairman of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party, saying that migrants carried “all sorts of parasites and protozoa”.
“Stephens states in his op-ed that eliminationist rhetoric is particularly prominent from the left. That isn’t the least bit true, and the Times ought to hire a factchecker to challenge him on these assertions,” Karpf continued. “He also says that the most reviled people in American politics are the moderate Republicans ... again, this is embarrassingly self-centered and obviously untrue.”
WHY DOES HE WANT THIS ARGUMENT TO KEEP GOING?????#bretbug
— davekarpf (@davekarpf) August 30, 2019
Meanwhile, internet sleuths were quick to tactfully decompose Stephens’ argument.
Following the link that Stephens left in his column suggests that he searched “Jews as bedbugs” on Google books to find the quote in question – “The bedbugs are on fire. The Germans are doing a great job”.
Despite Stephens’ obvious arduous researching endeavor, the quote may not actually be in reference to Jews. “Professor Jerzy Tomaszewski” – a historian who taught at the University of Warsaw – “believes that ‘the bedbugs are burning’ should be taken literally: there was an infestation of bedbugs in Warsaw at the time which was generally believed to have originated in the ghetto,” the book reads.
I just followed Bret’s own link. What are we doing here? https://t.co/vUoxKZFYDI pic.twitter.com/iyd2UvNcqp
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) August 30, 2019
If you’re going to use a google books link, it’s generally a good idea to remember to clear the search.
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) August 30, 2019
(And maybe be a little wary if your only hit is an repurposed dissertation no one has bothered to review and that only equivocally supports your hypothesis.) pic.twitter.com/QC4hJ0KJfo
Twitter users were also quick to point out that it wasn’t that long ago when Stephens referred to Palestinians as mosquitos in a Wall Street Journal column in 2013.
Bret Stephens likened Palestinians to mosquitoes in his WSJ column in 2013, so he should probably contemplate more about his role in bringing back "rhetoric of infestation" pic.twitter.com/iZsMCnEhK9
— saeen (@saeen90_) August 30, 2019
The Guardian’s own senior tech reporter Julia Carrie Wong noted that Stephens’ comparison of Twitter to the radio in the 1930s as a “a channel that could concentrate political fury” was flawed; radio was the dominant medium of its time, while today many outlets for hate speech exist.
the tell is that no one who knows anything about social media would suggest that twitter, with its ~300m monthly average users, is the most important analogue to the mass media of the 1930s, when facebook exists
— Julia Carrie Wong (@juliacarriew) August 30, 2019
Just as Stephens did in his email to Karpf’s boss, people are now writing Stephens’ boss.
OK fine pic.twitter.com/04pkN6WkMU
— Tom Scocca (@tomscocca) August 31, 2019
Okay, look, I have two things to say right now.
— davekarpf (@davekarpf) August 30, 2019
(1) this just stopped being funny. The New York Times is the paper of record. The entire internet knows who Bret Stephens just subtweeted with his column. He should know better. He doesn’t. That’s not okay anymore.
I think according to the Bret Stephens protocol that is established, you must now email him, cc-ing James Bennet and Dean Baquet (not that that'll help) and insist that he come to your house, meet your family, and call you a Nazi to your face.
— Eric Atcheson, parent-butler to a tiny boss (@RevEricAtcheson) August 30, 2019
I didn't make the rules, Bret did.
