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QuickTake:
An anonymous poster on Reddit claimed to have seen Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents drinking coffee at a downtown Eugene coffee shop. The online name-calling and alleged threats to employees that followed reflects some of the worst traits of our current state of discourse.
You may have missed it, but apparently fascists were drinking coffee in downtown Eugene last week.
Well, maybe not literal fascists, but agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Well, maybe they weren’t ICE, but they were definitely federal agents, and they definitely supported ICE. And the coffee shop’s refusal to deny them service definitely made the shop’s employees complicit in the kidnapping of local immigrants.
Or so went the logic on Eugene’s Reddit forum.
For those who don’t know, Reddit is perhaps the world’s most popular social media platform for discussing news and sharing opinions on a virtually limitless number of topics. “Subreddits” are pages within Reddit dedicated to a specific subject or geographic area, overseen by moderators who ensure the conversations adhere to Reddit’s rules.
At its best, the Eugene Subreddit’s 90,000-plus members might raise awareness of a local cause or new business to support, recommend a good mechanic or help reunite a lost pet with its owner. Need season one of “Doctor Who” on DVD? It might be the best place to look.
But Reddit is also a place for baseless speculation, knee-jerk reactions and, occasionally, threats.
When a user last week claimed in the Eugene Subreddit to have seen ICE agents drinking coffee downtown at Provisions Market Hall, comments poured in by the hundreds. The general vibe:
“Either fascism is welcome in your business or not.”
“We should ask (Provisions) to put out a sign that says ‘no ICE or DHS welcome.’”
“There’s no need to be polite about this.”
Within a few hours, a moderator of the Eugene forum removed the post, claiming Provisions employees were receiving threats. The reaction to that move was just as furious.
“Maybe they shouldn’t have welcomed wannabe Nazis.”
“If they weren’t serving ICE, they wouldn’t get death threats.”
“Restaurant workers that serve ICE are class traitors.”
That no immigrant families were helped by any of the 700-plus comments — and that some of those commenters were pointing out the digital crusade’s futility — is beside the point. What’s noteworthy is how the incident managed to encapsulate two of the dominant social forces to emerge in our country over the past decade.
The first force is the speed with which social media can transform an individual’s feeling of powerlessness over current events into a group’s focused campaign of anger.
To be honest, I’m angry, too. Like the Reddit poster, I’m angry about data showing that most immigrants swept up in the Trump administration’s deportation crackdown aren’t criminals. Like them, I get angry reading about stories like the Hillsboro couple whose deportation left a 2-year-old child in the care of the man’s sister — despite neither parent having a criminal history in Oregon. Recent polling shows our anger is shared by a growing number of Americans.
What Provisions employees have to do with that is beyond me. We don’t know whether the federal agents work for ICE or are longtime federal employees. After all, the federal building across the street from Provisions houses several federal agencies under the Department of Homeland Security, including ICE and Federal Protective Service, as well as the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service. As for the federal employees themselves, how many presidential administrations have they worked under?
Boycotting is up to anyone upset with Provisions allowing federal agents in for coffee. But thrusting baristas into making decisions about whether or not to serve someone feels like a new version of demonizing people who may be collateral damage in the bigger issue.
Which brings me to the second social force: the absolute coarsening of our discourse since 2020. The pandemic united us until public health restrictions and vaccines tore us apart. Social justice movements in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder united us until they sparked backlashes to anything “woke.” Trump’s defeat in 2020 was a godsend or a hoax. His return to power was ordained or tragic. I can feel my blood pressure spiking just writing this paragraph.
In this moment, approaching an uncertain second half of the decade, can we hope for the community to take a deep breath and draw up a better societal approach to whatever lies ahead? That may be too big a question for any one person to answer.
But I’m willing to bet an ICE-free coffee shop won’t get us any closer to knowing.
