{"id":1391145,"date":"2022-03-21T06:10:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-21T10:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1391145"},"modified":"2022-03-21T08:01:07","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T12:01:07","slug":"how-twitter-contributed-to-david-frenchs-destruction-of-his-own-character","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/how-twitter-contributed-to-david-frenchs-destruction-of-his-own-character\/","title":{"rendered":"How Twitter Contributed To David French\u2019s Destruction Of His Own Character"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fhow-twitter-contributed-to-david-frenchs-destruction-of-his-own-character%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1391145&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/image-2022-03-17T133017.759.png\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Incentives matter. We all know this, but it\u2019s curious how little serious discourse there is about what those incentives are encouraging us to do. <\/p>\n<p>We seem fine ignoring the fact that the incentive structure of Instagram trains young women to sexualize themselves for \u201clikes\u201d from strangers. Often it\u2019s effectively <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/02\/09\/style\/onlyfans-porn-stars.html\">training wheels for OnlyFans<\/a>, and many parents let tweens use it largely without question or oversight. <\/p>\n<p>Twitter reduces empathy, understanding, and nuance, while turbocharging the rewards for conflict and extremism. The obvious danger is being simply accepted with a shrug.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Each of these incentives, if aligned, can merge into an overwhelming force that pulls some or even most of us down a path that we didn\u2019t expect and perhaps should even avoid. The effect of destructive incentives dragging someone into bad behavior can be found in the increasingly unseemly (and most likely unwitting) behavior of a once-respected writer and man: David French.<\/p>\n<p>French is a lawyer who previously ran the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a campus free speech advocacy and litigation group, and served as a military lawyer in Iraq. Not long ago, he was a middle-tier Never Trump writer for National Review. But he\u2019s managed to elevate himself to much higher visibility by becoming perhaps the most extreme conservative critic of conservative evangelicals who supported Donald Trump.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>After an online feud triggered by Sohrab Ahmari\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.firstthings.com\/web-exclusives\/2019\/05\/against-david-french-ism\">Against David French-ism<\/a>\u201d piece in First Things, French ended up getting caught in a flywheel in which more extreme rhetoric gets him more attention, which then draws more attacks, which leads him in turn to even more extreme rhetoric.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"going-after-white-evangelical-trump-supporters\">Going After White Evangelical Trump Supporters<\/h2>\n<p>Today, that flywheel has taken him to the point where he attacks other people\u2019s character in the strongest possible terms, using words like <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DavidAFrench\/status\/1443944083521744900\">\u201ccruel,\u201d \u201cvicious,\u201d \u201cdeceitful,\u201d<\/a> and \u201cindefensible.\u201d A white evangelical himself, he <a href=\"https:\/\/frenchpress.thedispatch.com\/p\/a-nation-of-christians-is-not-necessarily\">recently claimed<\/a> that America has \u201cbecome more just\u201d as \u201cwhite Protestant power has waned.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>He describes evangelical Trump supporters the way he might once have talked about Islamic terrorists abroad, as potential national security threats. He <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/22188646\/trump-evangelical-christianity-david-french\">says<\/a>, \u201cThe hardcore Trump evangelical base threatens our constitutional rule of law.\u201d He <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/davidafrench\/status\/1350649923247681537?lang=en\">tweets<\/a>, \u201cThe evidence that January 6th was a Christian insurrection just grows and grows and grows. Combatting this perversion of the Gospel has to be a top priority. It\u2019s not just heresy, it\u2019s an active threat to the peace and security of the nation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not clear where he goes from here, but French has certainly profited from this so far. His name is now on many people\u2019s lips. He drives a lot of online conversation. And he\u2019s been rewarded with a recent elevation from purely conservative media to the Atlantic.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s unlikely French sat down one day and decided to reinvent himself into one of the most hysterically hostile critics of American evangelicals, or that he concocted an explicit strategy of using extreme rhetoric to boost his profile. But that\u2019s where the perverse incentives of our society carried him.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"mobilizing-victimhood\">Mobilizing Victimhood<\/h2>\n<p>Even more disturbing, with victim status as a prime currency in today\u2019s society, French has also gone down the dark path of vicarious victimhood. Owing to French\u2019s public status, one of his family members has been a target for horrific online abuse. <\/p>\n<p>After these attacks started, rather than take steps to protect this person, French repeatedly posted information about him or her over multiple years, including this person\u2019s full name (including middle name), relationship to him, even a picture and other personal info, and the specific characteristics that draw the abuse in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>The attacks on this family member have allowed French to play the victim and parlay that into hard-for-conservatives-to-get mainstream press appearances. It got him on NPR\u2019s \u201cFresh Air with Terry Gross.\u201d It helped him get a major feature article in the Atlantic. <\/p>\n<p>In these media appearances, French once again repeated all the identifying details of this family member that would draw still more abuse. In fact, it was in the Atlantic article that he even posted this family member\u2019s full name, including middle name.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Social media is by its nature somewhat ephemeral. Even if the vile tweets about French\u2019s family member somehow survived getting deleted for violating hate speech rules, they would have quickly been buried deep in the archives. But articles in major publications are something else entirely. <\/p>\n<p>French\u2019s major media writings and interviews are now permanent memorials for this family member to find later, rendering these vicious attacks indelible in a way social media never could. Imagine what this family member will find when googling his or her own name. Consider this: would anyone outside the dark corners of the internet have ever known about these tweets without French bringing them up himself?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I have no reason to believe French doesn\u2019t love this family member. But the very nature of our sick society\u2019s incentives turned French into that person\u2019s victimizer, something he has probably never stepped back from the fray long enough to recognize.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"down-the-dark-rabbit-hole\">Down the Dark Rabbit Hole<\/h2>\n<p>Too many people have already <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2022\/02\/17\/tiktok-star-ava-majury-reveals-how-father-fatally-shot-armed-stalker-at-florida-home\/\">badly harmed themselves or their loved ones<\/a> by getting sucked into the vortex by our society\u2019s sick incentives. While none of us can completely escape their effects, let us be careful lest they take us to a place we never imagined ourselves going.<\/p>\n<p>As for French, I hope he\u2019s able to detach himself from the flywheel he\u2019s stuck in. I hear privately from people who admire him and basically agree with his position on Trump that he\u2019s now going too far. If he keeps going, he may well self-destruct.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Above all, David, if you\u2019re reading this, please stop talking and writing about your family member, and tell your friends like David Brooks to stop writing about this person as well. Hate and vilify me as much as you want, but please think about what you\u2019ve been doing to someone you love so much and take a step back from the brink.<\/p>\n<p>Descent into evil is a permanent threat to everyone in a fallen world. Even the best struggle to maintain virtue and avoid temptations and the perverse incentives of modern society.\u00a0And today\u2019s social and professional incentives can push us all, not just French, in this direction if we aren\u2019t careful.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  Aaron M. Renn is the publisher of <a href=\"https:\/\/themasculinist.com\/\">The Masculinist<\/a>, a newsletter on Christianity, masculinity, and the modern world.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Incentives matter. We all know this, but it\u2019s curious how little serious discourse there is about what those incentives are encouraging us to do. We seem fine ignoring the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1391145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1391145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1391145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1391145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1391145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1391145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1391145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}