The #strongerthanhate is a subject that is dear to my heart because it represents my values on how to treat your neighbour. I believe strongly in that people should treat others in the way they would like to be treated even if they have conflicting opinions. However, opinions are words and can effortlessly gravitate from being just a post on social media to actions that damage those who are innocent.
Now, you might be wondering who is the face behind the hashtag? I thought it must be a Jew. It was Tim Hindes,  who happened to hear the blasting of sirens when he got home Saturday morning on October 27, 2018, a Christian man with strong beliefs in equality and against anti-Semitism. After learning about the Tree of Life massacre that happened on the Jewish Sabbath. He sat down at his computer and designed the âStronger Than Hateâ logo and since then it has been popping up everywhere we go. Hindes posted it privately on his Facebook account and it only took minutes of the request from his friends to share it. It proves to show how spaces online allow for ordinary people like Hindes to create things that are close to his heart, without the intention for his message to spread across the nation, but here we are now, I donât even know this wonderful man and I am spreading his original message in that we are #strongerhtanhate. His creation turned from his message to our message, and here are just a few examples of how that happened: (1) support the #strongerthanhate by purchasing your own shirt (but not thru Amazon because some people are just selling them to become wealthy when you can donate make your donations to the cause) , (2) Universal Manufacturing Corp in Zelienople, PA has always  put up a Christmas tree during the holiday season, but this year they decided to do something different (click it). (3) Also, the hashtag is making some people reconstruct their identities by tattooing it on their bodies. Our online communities allow for us to spread our message even if we donât intend for people to see it, but what most of us donât realize is that every post we make, every picture we share, every post we like can develop and shape who we are, our communities and most importantly, gives our world some clarity in helping shape the future for our children. Hindes, just helped us get started on what to do about hate in our country (thank you @thindes) which is to take care of it by speaking up even if it is hard.
Why would a man spend his Saturday morning shooting up the Tree of Life synagogue (temple)? A question most of us are wondering. It all started when Robert Bowers (46 years old) published hate-speech comments toward Jewish and Muslim people on GAB- a social media platform that defends freedom of speech and mostly consists of neo-Nazis, where he could interact with other people who also were anti-semitic. Bowerâs profile bibliography stated, âJews are the children of Satanâ (Andy Campbell). However, he was not racists only towards Jews, but also Muslims, since Jews helped âevilâ Muslim immigrants into our country (Christopher Mathias). The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a non-profit in which seeks to protect refugees and welcome them into the United States is what motivated Bowers in seeking to kill Jews, which he confessed to the police. A few hours before the shooting he stated âI canât sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics. Iâm going inâ, and has he raged into the synagogue he yelled, âall Jews must die!â(Andy Campbell). Bowers posted anti-semitic comments at least 68 times within 19 days before the mass-shooting that he was planning, so clearly there were suspicions signs before the horrific event. I think you get the point that he was just a terrible human being. However, in my opinion, hateful human beings like Bowers (all mass shooters) are not born hateful, they are shaped this way since the day they were born. Â
Bowers owned 21 guns and lived only 25 minutes away from the Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, a very dense Jewish population. He also chose Saturday because he knew it was the busiest time of the week for Jews to come together because of the Sabbath. However, a neighbour mentioned that âshe could not remember seeing him speak to anyone, not in the two years sheâd lived thereâ (Turkewitz, Roose).  He viewed trump as a âpuppet of Jewish interestâ (Lord,  Huffaker, Navratil) and that he was a ââŠglobalist, not a nationalistâŠâ(Turkewitz, Roose), so clearly it has nothing to do with Presidents Trump influence like some of us thought, but more so has to do with his family history. In Bowers online family tree it reveals that his father was Randall G. Bowers who was charged in 1979 (age 27) with rape and then committed suicide six months later (Turkewitz, Roose), and there was no mention about his mother.
Our biggest issue with online platforms like GAB is that it was intentionally created for people to practice freedom of speech, so in the eyes Bowers, he wasnât doing anything wrong when he was sharing his opinion about how he felt about Jews and Muslims. He also did not have a normal childhood which may explain his mental issues and reason for hate because he never was shown, unconditional love. However, even though GAB is totally against violence and terrorism they also donât realize that their platform strongly impacts society and individualâs identities because they make a safe place for these kinds of people to bond through hate which creates an avalanche of hateful comments because once a person sees other people doing, everyone might think itâs ok to spread hate. Hence, it turns individuals on to hate speech which may lead to acts of terrorism and making surveillance of posts more difficult for GAB to monitor no matter how much they are against it.
Now, I would like to mention all the eleven innocent lives: (Joyce Fienberg, 75, of Oakland, City of Pittsburgh; Richard Gottfried, 65, of Ross Township, Rose Mallinger, 97, of Squirrel Hill, City of Pittsburgh; Jerry Rabinowitz, 66, of Edgewood Borough; Cecil Rosenthal, 59, of Squirrel Hill; David Rosenthal, 54, of Squirrel Hill; Cecil and David Rosenthal are brothers; Bernice Simon, 84, of Wilkinsburg; Sylvan Simon, 86, of Wilkinsburg; Bernice and Sylvan Simon (husband and wife); Daniel Stein, 71, of Squirrel Hill; Melvin Wax, 88, of Squirrel Hill; Irving Younger, 69, of Mt. Washington, City of Pittsburgh (Laramie Cowan)) that were taken from their communities/families and to show how since then we have come together not just a Jewish community, but a blur of all communities to help comfort one another in this tragic time. I would also like to point out how mainly twitter and other social media platforms helped bring all communities throughout our country to bring awareness and provided a space in which we all can grieve together and remember all those people that were stolen from us. Today, we move forward and work to resolve the hate-crime in America, and encourage the act of love to our neighbours, no matter what they believe, or where they might come from, which will make us better individuals, communities and stronger than hate. Â Â