Wishing death on Trump is not progressive

The social-media response to Trump getting Covid has been ghoulish.

spiked

Topics Covid-19 Politics USA

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As soon as Donald Trump tested positive for Covid-19, the ghouls started celebrating.

Actor Dominic West, famous for his roles in The Wire and Game of Thrones, told ITV’s Good Morning Britain that he ‘leap[ed] in the air with joy’ when he heard the news. He added, ‘what goes around comes around’, implying Trump deserves his illness.

The hacking group Anonymous gracefully tweeted, ‘Zero sympathy and zero f*uck for Trump. He is murderer of 200k+ people’ (sic).

Meanwhile, Zara Rahim, a former national spokesperson for the Hillary Clinton campaign, said in a since-deleted tweet, ‘I hope he dies’.

No social-media hate fest would be complete without a contribution from Carole Cadwalladr. The Observer’s chief conspiracy theorist warned Trump would use his illness as an excuse to ‘tear up key functions of the state’.

These responses are perverse, but not surprising. Trump is constantly talked about as a uniquely evil man – supposedly far worse than any politician in living memory – and so the normal rules of human civility apparently do not apply to him. Trump is seen not as a political opponent to be defeated at the ballot box, but as an enemy to be snuffed out. This is not healthy in a democracy.

Picture by: Getty.

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