Here is a dark story, but one it’s important to know about.

In my city, Baton Rouge, there is a controversial local school board member named Connie Bernard. She is white and middle aged. She caused something of an uproar earlier this year when she opposed changing the name of Lee High School here in town; it was named for Robert E. Lee, of course. The board eventually changed the school’s name;  this story about it tells why Connie Bernard got into trouble:

They called for Lee to be stripped from the school’s name, saying it is a painful reminder of slavery and racial prejudice.

Those calls intensified in the weeks ahead of the final vote following a comment made by school board member Connie Bernard to a local TV station defending Robert E. Lee, which she later apologized for.

Bernard was further criticized after activists displayed photos of her appearing to shop for clothes [online] during a board meeting last month in which the Lee High name was being debated.

Some board members, including the board’s president, have called for Bernard to resign. Some members also backed an effort to recall Bernard from her seat.

This, from the local NBC station, is a good quick summary of the controversy. The video of a local black activist yelling at Bernard during a board meeting, lambasting her for shopping online during the meeting, went viral. TMZ picked it up too. LeBron James tweeted about it. Bernard’s name was mud from coast to coast.

As it happens, I live in Bernard’s school board district, but I don’t vote in school board elections, because my kids are not in public school. I slightly know Bernard because years ago, our sons were in the same gifted kids group. She has my phone number, and called me the other day to talk about what has been happening to her.

I don’t have any interest in getting into the whole controversy over changing the name of Lee High School, or over whether Connie Bernard has correctly comported herself as a school board member. I have not been following the issue closely enough to have an informed opinion, though I can easily understand people being angry with her for online shopping during a board meeting. But come on, how many of us have been in long meetings and have secretly checked our e-mail, read websites, or even shopped when we were supposed to be paying attention. She was wrong to have done that, but it’s a very human thing to have done, in my view. They are angry at her for defending Robert E. Lee; she apologized publicly for that, but that’s not enough for them. She also made headlines in 2018 when she showed up at a neighbor’s house where some kids were partying, and got into a confrontation with them. There were minor criminal charges because she allegedly tried to choke a teenager; she has a court date next week on that charge.

So Connie Bernard is a very controversial figure locally, especially because she’s a white woman on a board that governs a public school district in which black students outnumber white students four to one. But deep down, I’m not really interested in what Bernard does, or whether or not people are angry at her. It’s not my kids’ school system. There’s a recall petition going around, but I would not consider signing it, one way or the other. Maybe Bernard deserves to be recalled; maybe not. That’s a decision that people whose kids are in public school here should make, in my view. People absolutely have a right to try to recall her if they believe she is unfit for office. I have no objection to that at all.

I’m telling you all this to establish that I don’t have a personal interest in whether or not Connie Bernard stays on the school board.

What does interest me, though, is the hell that public officials, and public people, can be subjected to when the full force of social media is released on them. It happened to me nearly twenty years ago, before the social media age, when threats and abuse were delivered only in e-mail and over the telephone. I had to hide in my Brooklyn apartment for a week after receiving multiple death threats. The other day, Bernard forwarded me some of the e-mails she has received at her public email address in the wake of this controversy. She has given me permission to reproduce them as long as I keep the names and the e-mail addresses of her tormentors out of it. Here is a sampling of what awaits any public official who gets on the wrong side of the mob:

Another:

Look at this one below. The sender’s real name is on the original e-mail. It’s an unusual name; I searched online for it in a couple of databases, and got exactly one hit: a white woman in California, a Millennial who is involved in a very crunchy line of work. Judging by the language she uses below, she’s trying to sound black, and doesn’t have the sense to realize that her real name showed up in the From line of the e-mail. She should know that this veiled threat to burn down a school has her real name and e-mail address attached to it, and is now a part of the record. But ask yourself: why would a New Age dingdong in California trouble herself to write this kind of e-mail to a school board member in Baton Rouge:

Here’s an invitation to suicide. The author’s real name appears in the From line; I am hiding it:

Here is one sent via an email service that hides your identity:

Another one; again, the sender is stupid enough to leave his real name:

Though Bernard eventually voted with all her board colleagues to change the name of Lee High School, her enemies are still gunning for her. The recall petition was launched by a fellow school board member. Some prominent members of the white business community (for example) have demanded her resignation too. The #ByeConnie campaign this week put the following handbills in her neighborhood (this photo is from the #ByeConnie Facebook page):

They have announced this gathering near her house for Sunday night, the night before she goes to court to answer charges stemming from the confrontation she had with the teenagers who were partying:

Connie Bernard lives within easy walking distance of the Bluebonnet Library. It seems likely that they are going to march to her house. If so, that would be legal as long as they stay on the sidewalk. But morally? How would you feel if a mob that considered you racist showed up outside your house to denounce you and demand that you quit your job? I asked Bernard, who was elected three times, if she was going to resign. She said no, because she can’t let the bullies win. I admire that.

What I hate is the idea that a mob of any kind would go, or threaten to go, to a person’s private residence in an effort to intimidate them into doing the mob’s bidding. If the protesters only wanted to protest, why would they meet near Bernard’s home? What I hate is the disgusting attacks and threats that Bernard has received online, and the handbill campaign in her neighborhood to smear her as a racist. Again, I have no problem in principle with people calling on Bernard to resign, and working to gather signatures on a recall petition. That’s how democracy works.

But honestly, I don’t know why anybody would seek to go into public life these days, given what people have become, especially in the era of social media. What people need to understand is that what’s happening now is not really about whether or not Connie Bernard has been a good school board member, and ought to remain on the job. 

This is about something much deeper than that.

Have you watched the three-part Mike Nayna documentary about the 2017 crisis at Evergreen State, the superwoke Washington state college that was taken over by student militants, and which drove professors Bret Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying — who are leftists! — out of the school? It’s on YouTube, and believe me, it’s a must-see. Part One is here. Part Two is here. And Part Three is here.

The part I’m thinking about right now, with reference to Connie Bernard, is how the mob made Weinstein a hunted individual. Starting at the 13-minute mark of Part Three, you’ll see and hear things that are terrifying, including the collapse of the college’s authorities, who refused to defend its professors, and the unwillingness of the state’s attorney general to do so either. Toward the end of the film, Weinstein says something that is highly relevant to this Connie Bernard situation. Watch this:

He says that the whole woke militancy phenomenon isn’t really about free speech, and this isn’t really about college campuses:

This is about a breakdown in the basic logic of civilization. And it’s spreading. College campuses may be the first dramatic battle, but of course this is going to find its way into the courts. It’s already found its way into the tech sector. It’s going to find its way into the highest levels of governance if we’re not careful, and it actually does jeopardize the ability of civilization to continue to function.

Now, to be clear, the Connie Bernard situation doesn’t involve “critical theory” or any of the ideological stuff that drove Weinstein and Heying out of Evergreen, and that is destroying institutions now all over the country. The intersection, though, is with the tactics of mobs that believe anything they do in the name of fighting what they consider to be racism is justified. So a white school board member in a mid-sized Southern city who said Robert E. Lee had some good qualities, and who was photographed surfing the web at a board meeting — now she receives filthy e-mail messages, some of them threatening her physically, and drives around town seeing her face on handbills calling her a racist, and is now having to face the prospect of an angry mob descending upon her home on Sunday evening.

As far as I can tell, few if any people in Baton Rouge are saying that this is wrong, that we shouldn’t treat people like that. The basic logic of civilization, at least in the liberal democratic civilization we have had here, says that you don’t treat people that way, even those who are your opponents, or, if you prefer, your enemies. The business establishment in town has decided that Connie Bernard has to go, so they apparently don’t mind what the mob does. Maybe they are afraid that the mob will come to their houses next, or start putting up signs around town denouncing them as racists, if they don’t submit.

Look, I get it: Connie Bernard is a difficult person to defend. She has problems. She lied about whether or not she was online shopping during that school board meeting. She shouldn’t have done that, and she shouldn’t have lied about it, but you know, I would love to see the local news media do a public records request to find out what all the other school board members were doing online during that same meeting. Anyway, I totally understand why people want her to resign. I take no position on whether or not Connie Bernard should resign, but I do support the right of people who believe she should go to recall her. For me, this is about harassment and bullying, and what we tolerate. We don’t pick and choose the people who deserve defense against the mob based on whether or not they are easy to like and support. No person — man or woman, rich or poor, liberal or conservative, gay or straight, white or black or Latino or whatever — no person deserves to be made to feel unsafe in her own home like this.

Who will the mob target next with their accusations, the intimidation tactics, and their threats? We can’t live together if this is what public life is going to be from here on out. No decent person is going to be willing to put himself or herself on the line to serve in public office if this is the kind of thing that they risk, simply for being on the wrong side of the mob. Connie Bernard may be wrong in her convictions, and may be lousy at her job, but she is a human being, and she deserves to be treated like one. If she is driven to resign because she is afraid that someone will assault her or her family, or burn down her house, that will be a defeat for the entire community.

This should not be a controversial thing to say in the United States of America. But here we are.