Elie Mystal cannot know someone who has a mental illness. Of course, I’m joking, as that would be an extraordinarily difficult thing to achieve, since most of us know someone who’s affected by it — or we ourselves suffer from the disease. According to Mentalhealth.net this alarming statistic was also revealed in surveys.
The longitudinal study revealed that almost half of Americans who have described mental illness with violent behaviour nearly doubled in the course of 46-years.
But Mystal is a pioneering author justice correspondentAt The NationHe took to Twitter on Friday to respond to this hilarious remark about the viral Twitter picture:
These crazy people can shoot me or my children and claim that you stand your ground. Unless a passerby takes video of me being shot for no reason they will walk away.
… so question is not “say something or let go” it’s “ignore or leave whole store.” https://t.co/T7X8Nzb15V
— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) March 18, 2022
They can also shoot my children or me. If a passerby captures them on video, I am free to walk off. … so question is not “say something or let go” it’s “ignore or leave whole store.”
Not only is this objectively untrue (there are no rampant hordes of white people, roaming our country, hunting down Black people to “[shoot]For no reason [then being allowed to] walk free,” but it’s dangerous rhetoric because there are people who will believe what he’s saying is true.
While it may seem low-hanging fruit, let me point out high-profile leftists in cause-related or inflammatory clothing. Last September, we wrote about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wearing a dress emblazoned with the words: “Tax The Rich” to attend the Met Gala. It was also written by Brad Slager, my colleague.
Martha Plimpton was also a celebrity surrogate for Hillary 2016. She wore a dress during the election cycle that visually represented how deeply she loved having had multiple abortions.
And likewise, people on the left can point to singer and outspoken Trump supporter Joy Villa and her pro-life “message dress” in the 2018 Grammys ceremony.
But there’s a difference here. RedState writers Mike Miller and others have recently written about the confirmation battle for Judge Ketanji Jackson to be confirmed as the nominee for Biden Supreme Court. This was in order to replace Stephen Breyer, a retired liberal justice.
In his piece Thursday, Mike included this tweet from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), exposing Jackson’s extremist record/judicial philosophy on sentencing for sex offenders:
As far back as her time in law school, Judge Jackson has questioned making convicts register as sex offenders – saying it leads to “stigmatization and ostracism.” She’s suggested public policy is driven by a “climate of fear, hatred & revenge” against sex offenders pic.twitter.com/2QUcPOnWPR
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) March 16, 2022
Well, on this topic, Mystal continued his brand of reckless talk on MSNBC, in an interview with host Tiffany Cross Saturday morning, about Hawley and other Republicans speaking out against Jackson’s nomination.
Mystal stated:
What Josh Hawley is doing, let’s be very clear. What Josh Hawley is doing, when he tries to do this, is he’s trying to get [Jackson] killed.
He’s trying to make violence against the nominee for Supreme Court. And we know this, because when these people go off, making their ridiculous claims about child pornography, we know that some of their people show up, violently, to do stuff — as happened to the New Hampshire pizza parlor [PizzaGate].
You can listen to the audio below.
“When they try to smear her, I need the Democrats to get up there and defend her just as vociferously as Lindsey Graham defended alleged, attempted rapist Brett Kavanaugh.” @ElieNYC on Josh Hawley’s false claims about Ketanji Brown Jackson #CrossConnection pic.twitter.com/6yh0WmWn0K
— The Cross Connection with Tiffany Cross (@CrossConnection) March 19, 2022
Now, Mystal prattles on a bit more about PizzaGate, but let’s get back to what’s really going on here — the systemic stigmatization of the people who are suffering from actual mental illness as violent criminals who are out of control.
MTV News published a piece in 2015 about the stigmatization of women. Interview a psychology professor on the very real harm that calling people “crazy” has on anyone who is actually suffering from the often debilitating illness.
“These labels can be very upsetting for people with mental illness because they are often used as shorthand for hurtful processes, mostly having to do with delineating who is one of us and who is ‘other,’” Nathaniel G. Wade, a psychology professor at Iowa State University, told MTV News.
They carry “a label and meaning that is related to being not-normal: separate, ill, different, not-like-us.”
Mystal being a progressive and having a strong trust in government makes it possible that he will listen to the National Institutes of Health’s views on the subject.
A 2016 report from the National Institutes of Health called this stigma of stereotyping the mentally ill as no better than criminals a “millennium of prejudice”:
Mental disorders face stigmatization and negative judgments more often than any other illness. Patients often have to deal with not only the devastating side effects but are also subject to social exclusions and prejudices.
Stigmatization of the mentally ill has a long tradition, and the word “stigmatization” itself indicates the negative connotations: in ancient Greece, a “stigma” was a brand to mark slaves or criminals. For many millennia society didn’t treat people with mental illness like schizophrenia, depression or autism better than criminals and slaves.
But he and the left probably won’t change, no matter what science says or the reality really is. The sad fact is that Mystal, in his attempt to dehumanize and “other” people whom he disagrees with politically, doesn’t care who is hurt in the process — and that’s shameful.
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