The outrage over the heinous police killing of George Floyd has spilled over into destructive riots and a hypercharged “cancel culture,” with a professor getting ousted for refusing to postpone final exams, a soccer player fired for his wife’s tweet, a church losing its lease over a pastor “liking” supposedly insensitive tweets, and New York Times op-ed editor James Bennet stepping down amid outrage that he published an op-ed by a U.S. senator. Now even Raz Simone, the armed militant who appears to act as something like a warlord over the antifa/anarchist Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in Seattle, Wash., is treading water after old tweets of his surfaced.
It seems a key leader of CHAZ may find himself “canceled.”
“Apparently LGBT people aren’t welcome in Seattle’s [CHAZ],” Mark Dice tweeted. He shared a screenshot of one of Simone’s tweets from 2010 when the rapper used a slur to attack another rapper as “the poster boy” for the LGBT community.
Screen shot of deleted tweet. pic.twitter.com/NyspCTtK5H
— Mark Dice (@MarkDice) June 11, 2020
Dice and others shared other tweets that would lead to social ostracism and public “canceling” in many cases. Most of the tweets concerned Malcolm Finister. In one case, he described Finister as “filled with semen.”
Simone is treading water, claiming that he never posted any such tweets.
“Someone is creating fake tweets from my page somehow… fake tweets that seem like they’re from the past and they’re from my account somehow smh y’all are ridiculous,” he tweeted.
Someone is creating fake tweets from my page somehow… fake tweets that seem like they’re from the past and they’re from my account somehow smh y’all are ridiculous…
— Raz Simone (@RazSimone) June 11, 2020
Dice found another tweet, slamming Simone as a “FRAUD.”
Here's another archived tweet of yours, YOU FRAUD. https://t.co/Ek7N83bMLL
— Mark Dice (@MarkDice) June 11, 2020
Simone has also claimed that he is not a warlord, but some have reported that his “crew is self-appointed, heavily armed, has indicated their intention to police the area, and has engaged in the use of force. I am unaware of any rival street force of their stature expressing the desire to hold authority in the area.”
#SeattleAutonomousZone now has a warlord. It’s been 2 days. pic.twitter.com/9Eu5ALrINU
— RHGR (@RHGR) June 10, 2020
Simone may not have a designated office in CHAZ, but it seems his band may have been responsible for the lawless activity reported by Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best:
We have heard that there are armed people patrolling (she puts her hands into scare quotes) at 12th and Pine. Of course, this is very concerning, especially because we don’t know who these people are.
We’ve also received report that these armed people maybe demanding payment from business owners in payment for protection.
We’ve also heard that they may demanding to see identification from people who live in the area. This is not legal. And we ask anyone who may be experiencing this to come forward and file a police report so that we can investigate these crimes.
Raz Simone may or may not consider himself a warlord, but whatever position he has in CHAZ may be in serious jeopardy thanks to decade-old tweets. That’s how cancel culture operates, and if the op-ed editor of The New York Times is not immune, it seems unlikely CHAZ’s warlord would be, either.
Tyler O’Neil is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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