What If #AhmedIsaFake?

What do Mark Zuckerberg, Google, Twitter, MIT, NASA, and President Barack Obama have in common? They’re all dupes. Fools. Tools of a liberal narrative that casts average white Americans in the role of racists and Islamophobes. No doubt you’ve heard of #IStandWithAhmed, the social-media movement organized to adulate Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old alleged “clockmaker” who was arrested and suspended from his Irving, Texas, high school for bringing a homemade hoax bomb to English class.

As soon as Ahmed’s arrest hit the news, social media lit up with apoplectic rage. As the story goes, an innovative Sudanese-American kid had built his own clock out of scraps of metal and coil. He brought his innovation to school to show off to his engineering teacher and was subsequently the victim of a smack down by racist, Islamophobic Texas educators. Talking heads launched slings and arrows as news consumers scratched their heads and wondered how educators could be such narrow-minded bigots.

This is what’s wrong with our country, they said. Creativity, ambition, and innovation are quashed, especially when it comes from blacks and Muslims. The smell of injustice was in the air. Soon after the story broke, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg posted, “You’ve probably seen the story about Ahmed, the 14 year old student in Texas who built a clock and was arrested when he took it to school. Having the skill and ambition to build something cool should lead to applause, not arrest. The future belongs to people like Ahmed. Ahmed, if you ever want to come by Facebook, I’d love to meet you. Keep building.”

Zuckerberg, often portrayed as a great American genius, was acting like a reactionary brainwashed dolt, jumping on a bandwagon and blowing a second-hand trumpet from his techno-bully-pulpit.