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1459260cookie-checkMedia Attacks William Shatner For Criticizing SJWs, Calls Him Alt-Right 2017
Angry Assault
2017/08

Media Attacks William Shatner For Criticizing SJWs, Calls Him Alt-Right 2017

Actor William Shatner, famous for playing James T. Kirk on Star Trek, has come under fire from the media and Social Justice Warriors after he criticized them online.

Daily Mail chronicled the event, where it started after someone accused the actor of using the acronym “SJW” (which stands for Social Justice Warriors) as a slur. He responded by questioning why SJWs attempt to align themselves with the social reform activists from the 1960s Civil Rights movements.

As noted by the Daily Mail, this did not go down well with the Twitter Social Justice Inquisition. Some of Shatner’s more Liberal-minded followers reproached him for his language, while media took things a step further.

NeoGaf was quick to lambast Shartner, liking to an article from Gizmodo who posted up a piece entitled “William Shatner Attacks Snowflakes, Social Justice Warriors, and Misandrists”

Gizmodo wasn’t alone in taking the Twitter drama and metastasizing it into a bite sized morsel of tabloid outrage for outrage consumers to devour. The Mary Sue had a piece as well, entitled “Kirk Got Redpilled”: William Shatner Lashes out At “SJWs” And “Snowflakes” in Twitter Attacks”

It was Salon, however, who took things a step further, questioning if Shatner’s legacy was being erased from criticizing SJWs, and that he was using “alt right” nomenclature.

It didn’t end there, though. Advocate.com penned a piece a day after the initial big blogs rolled out the news by tweaking the headline and going all-in by claiming that the use of the words “SJW” and “Misandry” hoisted Shatner into the category of using “Alt-Right language”. Their headline literally reads “William Shatner Uses Alt-Right Language in Twitter Fight With Outlander Fans”.

Despite the headlines assailing Shatner for calling people “SJWs” and “snowflakes”, one thing that NeoGaf did pick up that others seemed to miss is that it may not necessarily be the actual William Shatner of Star Trek and Boston Legal fame sending out the tweets.

According to tweets published on July 31st, 2017, a certain Tristan Cooper, an editor at Dorkly, noted that Shatner isn’t always the one tweeting from his account, but Paul Camuso is.

It’s true that Camuso does work with William Shatner on “The Shatner Project”, a digital internet project. He’s also an avid fan of Outlander and regularly argues with fandom shippers on Twitter.

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The tweets that are supposedly from Shatner spawned from an argument with Outlander fans.

Either Shatner is also a huge fan of Outlander, or Camuso may have been using Shatner’s Twitter account to make the comments.

However, given that it’s been a week and the tweets from Shatner are still up, it’s possible that maybe the real William Shatner actually endorses what’s being posted.

Regardless of who made the tweets, the media has been vehemently attacking Shatner for using “SJW” and “Snowflake”, attempting to label him as adopting Alt-Right terminology and behavior, despite the fact that Shatner is Jewish. Daily Mail also notes that William Shatner has been an advocate and activist in fighting for equal rights for years.

The media, however, has been using its platform to silence, and direct mob attacks against people who don’t toe a specific political party line, which is what happened when they organized a smear campaign against former Oculus founder, Palmer Luckey, claiming that he was part of the Alt-Right and a Donald Trump supporter, despite the fact that Luckey was a supporter of Libertarian Gary Johnson. The smear ended up forcing Luckey out of his role at Oculus.

Despite all the media hoopla, it faded out pretty quickly for Shatner and he’s now back to joking and having fun with his followers on Twitter.

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