Twitter Dunks On NYT Columnist Paul Krugman For Saying America Post-9/11 Was Pretty Chill

In early 2019, @maplecocaine tweeted, "Each day on Twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it." Today, Twitter's main character was New York Times opinion columnist Paul Krugman, who felt it was time to reflect on just how famously chill and calm America was post-9/11.

"Overall, Americans took 9/11 pretty calmly," Kruman tweeted, starting a roll of simply jaw-droppingly out-of-touch claims. "Notably, there wasn't a mass outbreak of anti-Muslim sentiment and violence, which could all too easily have happened. And while GW Bush was a terrible president, to his credit he tried to calm prejudice, not feed it."

For those who were old enough to remember America post-9/11, this was an astonishingly bad tweet. America famously did not take 9/11 "pretty calmly," and there was in fact a mass outbreak of anti-Muslim sentiment and violence. Twitter posted an Events page compiling Twitter users who responded to Krugman with FBI data contradicting his claim.

With all due respect Mr. Krugman, I believe this isn't an entirely accurate take. I had the honor of training the FBI last year & we looked at reported hate crimes using their own data. The spike you see is 9/11 – 9/18/2001. The average daily incidents over that time was 20. https://t.co/w7aYzbJTym pic.twitter.com/E4XoJ1aUZ5

— Ben Jones (@DataRemixed) September 11, 2020

Anti-Muslim hate attacks in the U.S. jumped by over 1,600% in 2001.

The FBI logged 481 incidents in 2001, vs. 28 in 2000.

While numbers have fallen since then, they have never returned to pre-#September11 levels. In 2018 there were at least 188 such attacks. pic.twitter.com/oINTnrFkNA

— AJ+ (@ajplus) September 11, 2020

And here’s the FBI data on the jump in anti-Muslim hate crime right after 9/11 https://t.co/KLJ0CAhTkR pic.twitter.com/ZpWWIiRln0

— Megha Mohan (@meghamohan) September 11, 2020

Others pointed out the Bush administration's strong and arguably overzealous response to the attacks, including the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, the eventual war in Iraq, etc.

Paul Krugman and his family weren’t subjected to the illegal domestic surveillance programs secretly implemented by Bush, Cheney & their team of monstrous neocons (catch them now on MSNBC!) but it still happened.

The liberal whitewashing/revisions of the Bush years is repulsive. pic.twitter.com/tfmLDPgYJE

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 11, 2020

Reminder: in the aftermath of 9/11 Bush administration created the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Transportation Security Administration; DHS, ICE, and TSA respectively.

Paul Krugman thinks this was "calm" https://t.co/B6smd06X2c

— Cowsey Explosion (@CaseyExplosion) September 11, 2020

OMFG where the hell was Krugman after 2001? How about all those trumped up charges against people like Al-Arian and Holy Land? Or the Muslim men rounded up in NYC (never mind GTMO and elsewhere)? How about the "Death to Arabs" graffiti scrawled all over? WT actual F https://t.co/5agJ4c02fy

— Laleh Khalili (@LalehKhalili) September 11, 2020

Others were simply agog at Krugman's gumption.

credit to Paul Krugman for effectively recreating the feeling of the years following 9/11. everyone constantly saying outrageous and deranged shit and you just sitting there looking around like “man… what”

— Brandy Jensen (@BrandyLJensen) September 11, 2020

Paul Krugman celebrating 9/11 by getting up bright and early for a suicide mission

— Tom Scocca (@tomscocca) September 11, 2020

Paul Krugman has zero relationship to the truth when he enters full-on propaganda mode, which is very often. pic.twitter.com/MgPqvxIYvN

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 11, 2020

The words "Krugman" and "Islamaphobia" trended on Twitter throughout the day, as people continually found various angles with which to express disgust at Krugman's bizarre recollection of America post-9/11. Despite the mass of criticism, Krugman has yet to respond and as of now his tweets are still up. And so, to put it in @Leyawn's words:

congratulations paul krugman you are 9/11/2020’s main character

— leon (@leyawn) September 11, 2020