The Dangers of Anonymity
How masks allow us to be our worst selves
Another American has been murdered by ICE. The spin machine will deny this and claim that this newest victim was actually a dangerous domestic terrorist, but no one is buying that nonsense anymore. I doubt anyone ever did.
As I watch the coverage of the events in Minneapolis, and as I watched the shocking video of the cruelty our government is willing to unleash on our streets, I kept thinking, oddly enough, about one of my favorite hobbies – video games. This happened just after I watched a video posted online in which federal agents were taking turns firing tear gas into the crowd of protesters that formed just after the murder was committed. One of the agents looked at another and said, “It’s just like Call of Duty.” My guess is that he was smiling when he said it, but his mask hid his expression and his identity at the same time.
In modern video games, players rarely if ever play using their real names, nor do they share their locations. And this anonymity encourages players to push boundaries, which is not always a bad thing. It frees people to explore their identities and differences, but it also allows us to say and do things we would never say and do in real life. We can be our worst selves because nothing and no one is going to stop us. And while this does not in any way describe all gamers, I believe all gamers would agree that gaming culture has a massive problem with toxicity and hate. And that hate is inextricably linked to the anonymity attached to our online personas. As it turns out, when we are anonymous and operating in a consequence-free environment, we are capable of incredible cruelty.
And for those unfamiliar with video game culture, know that the anonymity dynamic is the same on social media, where people from all walks of life intentionally create anonymous online accounts for the sole purpose of operating without accountability. And to a lesser degree, being behind the wheel of a car offers the same kind of anonymity buffer, which is why the term “road rage” exists, and why conflict tends to escalate so quickly in these situations.
But this is not an argument about road rage or social media, or even video games. This is an argument about masks and immunity and how both are being used to maximize the violence perpetrated by federal agents against the very people they are supposed to protect. When opposing forces meet, but one side is both armed, anonymous, and entirely unaccountable, violence is inevitable, and that violence always lands hardest on the innocent. Alex Pretti, a working-class nurse with a family, is dead because ICE is not only operating outside the law, but outside the confines of humanity itself. His murder is one of the most un-American things I have ever witnessed. It is more than murder. It is treason.
And if his murderers had badge numbers, or body cameras, or even if they had to operate in full view of the public without their masks, it’s quite possible that the first shot would never have been fired.
Brett Pransky is a writer, a teacher, a father, and a husband, but rarely in that order. He spends his days amplifying the voices of freedom and democracy as an Editor right here at The Political Voices Network, and he spends his nights trying to fix the world one clever sentence at a time.
Thank you for this perspective. It echoes the question,”Who are you when nobody is looking?”
If they were doing respectable work to go after criminal migrants? They're would be no reasons to be masked up