I looked up a Twitter account, apparently of an Asian man who lives in my neighborhood who absolutely hates the supervisor who just got hate messages, because ‘all Asians do’; he claimed to own a gun AND live in my neighborhood and.. it’s probably a bot, but these folks are scary

When will these shadowy folks stop using Asian people’s faces and struggles to provide cover for their right wing BS? https://t.co/lAoFOETIgv

I generally try to avoid these accounts, but they claimed to live in my neighborhood and have an automatic weapon (not legal), and to have witnessed two murders in the area, so I mean I had to.. see what was happening. What a mess.

They all follow the same playbook. If a non Asian person doesn’t support them, they call them a racist. If an Asian person opposes them, they call you self hating. They try to goad you into responding, to spread the lie that Black people are behind anti-Asian hate crimes

Sadly it’s very effective because I see a lot of the messaging about Asian hate crimes retweeted by folks in Asia, without the nuance of this horrible SF local politics, and people just believing this BS as well because well that’s how misinfo works

Folks in Asia are not surprised by American racism. Whatever story the reactionaries are selling through the message of Asian hate crimes (Black people are doing it, Americans don’t care, US cities are scary, America is basically crumbling).. it’s getting retweeted like wildfire

I’m just tired of people who are probably bots using my identity and my neighborhood’s problems to push for more carceral punishment, which has obviously worked in the country with the most ridiculous prison industrial complex that yet somehow still has all of these problems.

There is more I want to say about witnessing this strange moment in time as an Asian person from Asia who is now seeing how reactionaries are weaponizing Asian American struggles, to create narratives about here that have gone back to Asia as well. It’s disturbing.