U.S. Tennis Star Slams Media After Alt-Right Tweets Discovered: ‘You’re Hastening The Hell You Wish to Avoid’
Breakout American tennis star Tennys Sandgren slammed the media during a press conference at the Australian Open on Wednesday over coverage of his past tweets flirting with the alt-right.
As 26-year-old Sandgren made his way to the quarter finals of the Australian Open, old tweets of his were unearthed which “showed him debating Pizzagate, arguing that the media was not covering Hillary Clinton engaging in Satanic rituals, and interacting with alt-right media members, one of whom attended the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia,” according to Business Insider.
After getting knocked out in the quarter finals, Sandgren went after the media for the negative coverage in a prepared statement he read off his phone during the post-match presser:
You seek to put people in these little boxes so that you can order the world in your already assumed preconceived ideas. You strip away any individuality for the sake of demonizing by way of the collective.
With a handful of follows and some likes on Twitter, my fate has been sealed in your minds. To write an edgy story, to create sensationalist coverage, there are a few lengths you wouldn’t go to to mark me as the man you desperately want me to be.
You would rather perpetuate propaganda machines instead of researching information from a host of angles and perspectives while being willing to learn, change, and grow. You dehumanize with pen and paper and turn neighbor against neighbor. In so doing, you may actually find you’re hastening the hell you wish to avoid, the hell we all wish to avoid.
Sandgren — who denied that he supported the alt-right when he was asked about the topic on Monday — did not respond to questions about his statements. But despite his denials, his tweets (many of which are now deleted) are a pretty wild alt-ride.
He interacted frequently with #AmericaFirst Twitter personalities, from Pizzagate enthusiast Mike Cernovich to someone who goes by “@MAGAjoe69,” to Nick Fuentes, a marcher at the Charleston white supremacist march that ended in terror.
Sandgren has also received criticism for his comments about Serena Williams. After he responded to an article on the tennis great cursing during a match by calling it “disgusting,” Williams shot back in a tweet of her own:
@TennysSandgren I don’t need or want one. But there is a entire group of people that deserves an apology. I cant look at my daughter and tell her I sat back and was quiet. No! she will know how to stand up for herself and others- through my example. ✊? pic.twitter.com/im2NhoMdN4
— Serena Williams (@serenawilliams) January 24, 2018
You can watch his statement blasting the media above, via The Guardian.
[image via screengrab]
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