Until just under 300 years ago, witch hunting was a popular past time in the UK. Armed with circumstantial, obscure and often decades-old evidence, townspeople would round up particularly abnormal women, denounce them for witchcraft before torturing or murdering them in often brutal, barbaric ways.

300 years on, and while, thankfully, the pressures on women to be submissive and conformist have loosened, the innate desire amongst our populous to tie up and judge individuals on the proverbial stake remains. Instead of wives' tales, however, today we draw our evidence from the endlessly supplying fountain that is twitter.

Tennys Sandgren is, unsurprisingly, a tennis player. He's quite an average tennis player, but one who has just hit a career highlight in reaching the quarter finals of the Aussie Open.

However, instead of revelling in a tale of personal triumph, the international media have interrogated him on his links to 'alt-right' organisations, leading Tennys to issue an eloquent and reasonable response: [Link]

Now, clearly, he holds some, shall we say, questionable views, ones which I infer are on the opposite end of the spectrum to those I hold. However, I still can't help but feeling sympathetic to dear old Tennys. He is entitled to ask what, exactly, are those judging him afraid of? That people take political opinions based on those of tennis' world number 94? Or that people would judge a tennis player, called Tennys, whose probably spent a ludicrous portion of his life hitting forehands and backhands, on his racquet abilities, and not his past political allegiances?

Poor old Tennys will probably soon be thrown in to the ocean of obscurity, sink like a stone, and the twitterati will forget about the fact he ever even existed, until one day they end up in an argument online which requires knowledge of the 2018 Australian Open. As they scan through the Wikipedia page, their eyes will momentarily rest on the image of Tennys Sandgren, arms aloft, with the smile of a lifetime on his face. 'Who was that again?' they'll wonder. Oh yeah, the f*cking racist scumbag. I remember judging him.

Edited by serial thriller (24 Jan 2018 6.34pm)

If punk ever happened I'd be preaching the law, instead of listenin to Lydon lecture BBC4

Phil Neville made some old and unfunny misogynistic jokes on twitter 6 years ago about women being too busy doing housework and 'battering his wife or some' rubbish and some want him disciplined.

COYP

In the future people will look back at this period and say that this was the beginning of when society self destructed by allowing commercial considerations to sway people's reason on a new scale.
Digging up what people tweeted years in the past or similar to assert their identity politics or other selfish agendas by attempting to shame them or threaten the organisations that make money from them or for them.

Is this the utopia some hoped for?

Be warned. Someone has to make a stand soon. I await the backlash.

Blimey, they would of had a field day with Buster Mottram !!

Pro USA & Israel

I'd argue that it doesn't restrict freedom of speech as you only really have to take extra caution if you're famous but a) employers are checking out potential and current employees and b) you don't know whether you could be more in the public eye in future. Not that celebrities should be subject to scrutiny and Tweets taking out of context for the sake of a Daily Mail story either. It's an absolute joke that that passes for journalism even in broadsheets.

Put him in the Shake & Vac advert.