Jesse Farrar's "Drown Conservatives" Tweet Controversy

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Part of a series on Turning Point USA. [View Related Entries]

Overview

Jesse Farrar's "Drown Conservatives" Tweet Controversy refers to a tweet by Vice and Deadspin writer Jesse Farrar to Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA in which he said college professors should "hold the conservative students' heads underwater until they stop breathing." While many saw the tweet as sarcastic, Kirk and other conservatives took the tweet seriously, leading to articles from conservative publications about the tweet and a television segment on the tweet on Fox and Friends.

Background

On February 7th, 2018, Charlie Kirk tweeted about how he had received letters from conservative college students saying their grades were lowered because of their views.^[1] Farrar responded saying that professors should instead hold conservative students' heads underwater until they drowned. The tweet has since been deleted (screenshot shown below). Kirk then said he was sure Farrar was joking,^[2] to which Farrar responded he wasn't (shown below, right).^[3]^[4]

Developments

Because of Farrar's affiliation with Weird Twitter and leftist politics, his followers and people he commonly interacted with on Twitter appeared to agree Farrar was trolling Kirk. Farrar appeared to further troll Kirk and others who took him seriously by saying he was already on the "FBI watchlist: Female Body Inspector."

The same day, conservative blog Independent Journal Review^[3] published a piece on the exchange as though Farrar were being serious. They received comment from Kirk, who stated, "I legitimately thought he was joking, but I guess he wasn’t. If a conservative said that about liberal students there would be an angry mob demanding we resign and leave our current positions." They also received comment from Barry Petchesky, an editor at Deadspin, who called Farrar's tweet a troll and an "obvious joke," appeared to join in on the trolling by stating:

While Farrar no longer writes regularly for Deadspin, we as an organization do support his stance of trolling white supremacist-supported and -associated organizations like Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA. And while I would not personally advocate the method mentioned in Farrar's obvious joke Tweet you seem to be using to try to snitch on him to his employers, I can't argue that it wouldn't make the world a better place.

Conservative news outlets continued covering the story. Campus Reform^[5] covered the tweet the following day. Kirk appeared on Fox and Friends to discuss the tweet (video shown below).

[This video has been removed]

On the 9th, Paste Magazine^[6] ran an explainer for the controversy from the point of view that Farrar was trolling. Meanwhile, online, most Twitter users joked about the controversy by tacitly supporting Farrar. Twitter user @fart tweeted a video of a portly gentleman doing knife tricks with the caption "when i hear em coming for jesse farrar," gaining over 40 retweets (shown below).

Twitter user @Bro_Pair tweeted a parody of a Fox News segment about Farrar that gained over 20 retweets and 360 likes in less than an hour (shown below, left). Twitter user @papaishu tweeted he was "pro jesse farrar and anti huge pedantic snitch," gaining over 350 likes (shown below, right).