Sinn Féin Leader Mary Lou McDonald responds to threats made against her life, calling them “very shocking and very disturbing.”
Gardaí are currently investigating a threat made to the 55-year-old politician on the social media platform TikTok. In the video posted to the app earlier this week, a Dublin man wears a balaclava and threatens to shoot Ms McDonald as well as Garda Commissioner Drew Harris.
The video remained on the user’s account for 12 hours garnering tens of thousands of views before TikTok took it down and banned the users account.
“an open threat to my life is a matter of utmost seriousness,”
Speaking on RTE’s Six-One News, McDonald calls the threat “a real escalation of something that has been happening for about a year”.
The political leader describes having protesters show up at her house saying “I take my fair share of criticism and I take it in good stead.”
“But an open threat to my life is a matter of utmost seriousness,” she said. “I have been subjected to an orchestrated and vicious campaign that has been misogynistic and sexist.”
“As far as I’m concerned, every line has now been crossed.”
Ms McDonald said that this campaign of hatred “has been deliberately intent on damaging me and my standing particularly amongst those in working class communities that I represent”.
“As far as I’m concerned, every line has now been crossed. Once there is a direct threat made openly, brazenly broadcast on social media that a person will shoot you, that they will take your life, and that they feel comfortable saying that, broadcasting it, announcing it to the world. Clearly, that puts you in the way of greater danger. And I find that frightening.”
McDonald took time to criticise social media platforms for not acting fast enough when threatening content is posted to their site.
“There’s material in circulation, not just on TikTok, but other social media platforms and I scratch my head and wonder how, in the name of God, any platform that’s moderated in any way, becomes a vector for the level of hate and at the level of misinformation, the level of viciousness.” she said in an interview with Newstalk.
A spokesperson for TikTok admitted that they did not act fast enough in the removal of the threatening video posted earlier this week.
The site’s moderation process initially uses AI to identify threatening content, then human moderation. If videos get through that process they will be published unless flagged by other users.
