That's certainly the way people seem to be thinking. The whole movement in general gives me an unshakable vibe that reminds me of when I read The Crucible back in highschool
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"Is the accuser always holy now? Were they born this morning as clean as God’s fingers? I’ll tell you what’s walking Salem - vengeance is walking Salem. We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law! This warrant is vengeance! I’ll not give my wife to vengeance!" -from The Crucible
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It also reminds me of McCarthyism and of the 1980s/1990's satanic panic witch trials (the McMartin case the Wee Care case, etc)
Nah. Times have changed, and information goes further. So does misinformation, it’s true, and ultimately none of us here actually know if Zak Smith is guilty of abuse or if Mandy and the others are guilty of slander.
But this is different because this is not a case of the government accusing anyone of wrong doing. What’s actually happening here is between individual parties. There’s no risk of jail time or the like.
People are free to side with whichever party they believe. They are free to judge the parties involved for themselves, and then act accordingly.
Will some of these people be wrong? Sure. But we’ll never actually know. None of us was there, none of us has all the necessary information to render a perfect decision.
And that’s part of the issue. This isn’t a criminal case. There will never be the “guilty” verdict that so many are crying for. In fact, in this case, it’s Mandy that’s being accused of wrong doing, not Zak. Whatever the ruling on this case is, it will not bring some universal sense of closure to the masses.
You may as well say “I’ll believe Zak was guilty when the moon floats down from orbit and serves me tea” because it’s just as likely to happen.
So in the absence of that, I think we can all go ahead and feel about him however we’d like. My personal take is that he’s being judged just as much for general awfulness and being a real jagoff to too many people. And I say that as someone who quite liked his work.