*Racist trolls are not just unique to the United States.
According to Mashable.com, a black British woman was inundated with racist comments after she was chosen to take over Ireland’s Twitter account – an honor that is given to a different person in the country each week.
Michelle Marie, a plus-size model and blogger originally from Oxford, moved to Ireland in 2013. In her first tweet, she wrote that she had settled in Ireland and “it has my heart.”
Within hours of taking over the profile, she was hit with scores of racist and “racist and body-shaming hatred as nationalism,” notes Mashable. Eventually, as with the severe racist trolling of “SNL” and “Ghostbusters” star Leslie Jones, Marie said she had to “take a break” from Twitter.
The accounts belonging to many of the trolls have been suspended, but here examples of a few that slipped through:
@ireland It is insulting for you, who genetically will never be Irish, to think you can represent Ireland. Return to your ancestral lands.
— End Cultural Marxism (@genophilia) August 22, 2016
@ireland You’re not Irish
— Flesh Bomb (@FleshBomb) August 22, 2016
@ireland I’m an American and I’m more Irish than you. You have no business running this account. Also you’re fat.
— Francisco Stalin (@FuckTheMallcops) August 22, 2016
Marie at first fired back, defending her right to be chosen for @Ireland and attempting to address the damaging effects of racial bullying and body shaming:
Being shamed for my size and weight played a big part in me developing childhood depression, and also led to developing an eating disorder
— Ireland / Michelle (@ireland) August 22, 2016
Nevermind the facts. That genetically I’m quarter white British. Or that the 3rd world home I’m meant to f*ck off back to is England.
— Ireland / Michelle (@ireland) August 22, 2016
And then finally this…
I need a break. I’m trying to get to the ppl who are tweeting good, insightful things, who I want to interact with, but there’s so much hate
— Ireland / Michelle (@ireland) August 22, 2016
She later posted a statement saying she has “experienced racism, sexism, fatphobia and homophobia to a degree I have never known”:
This is all I have left to say for today… pic.twitter.com/EYsZt4efj8
— Ireland / Michelle (@ireland) August 22, 2016
As Marie mentioned in her tweets, she also received a tremendous amount of support from Irish citizens who were shocked and embarrassed by the racial abuse.
Early this morning, Marie was able to regroup and return to the account with a fighting spirit:
But here we go. New day, new start. They may try to bring me down, but I will simply rise again, stronger than ever.
— Ireland / Michelle (@ireland) August 23, 2016
This morning, the praise that greeted her outweighed the hate:
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