Evan Peters slammed for video condoning violence against looter, fans say racist 'AHS' role was too convincing
Actor Evan Peter, who is most famous for playing multiple roles on the FX anthology series ‘American Horror Story’, and for playing Quicksilver in ‘X-Men’ films, has gotten into trouble on Twitter. The 33-year-old-actor, who has almost 730,000 followers on the social media website, retweeted a tweet that many have found distasteful in the wake of the death of George Floyd, and the protests that have sprung up since.
Karim Vasquez, whose Twitter handle is RimHammer, tweeted on Monday, June 1, a recording of a police pursuit being aired on KTLA. Vasquez provided running commentary as policemen chased what looked like a protester. Vasquez, in the video, kept shouting, “come on, get him”, “don’t let him get away”, and similar comments. The video ends with a policeman tackling the person. Vasquez’s final comment in the video was, “Get those goddamned looters.”
He shared the video on Twitter with the caption, “I can watch these piece of s*** looters get tackled all day!”
Evan Peters retweeted this video. And later un-retweeted it. Following that, he also tweeted a “black square”, as part of Blackout Tuesday, a social media campaign from music industry leaders to express solidarity with victims of police brutality, who are often African-Americans and other persons of color.
But in the time between these acts, many noticed it and fans of Peters shared angry tweets, asking if he endorsed the idea of protesters getting tackled by policemen. “Evan Peters RTing this promotion [of] violence against protestors and then posting a half a**ed black screen, except there's a white line at the top. He can't even do that right,” wrote a Twitter user.
Many users made comments about Peters’ character Kai Anderson, a Donald Trump-supporting, mentally-deranged racist, in the FX show ‘American Horror Story: Cult’. They noted that Peters was able to play the character of a racist all too convincingly.
Aside from calling Peters racist, many also commented on the futility of the exercise of tweeting black squares to express solidarity. “Evan Peters retweeting a post about enjoying watching ‘piece of s*** looters get tackled’ all day and then posting a black square as damage control after being silent on BLM this entire time is exactly why people say the black square doesn't do s*** for awareness or support.”
A common argument against the black squares is that the avalanche of these tweets has been drowning out information, resources, safety tips, and more that would otherwise be important for protesters.
Peters apologized for the retweet on his Twitter account. He wrote, “I don’t condone the guy watching the news at all in the video which I have deleted. I unknowingly retweeted it. I’m deeply upset it got on my newsfeed. I sincerely apologize if anyone was offended. I support Black Lives Matter wholeheartedly.”
But Vasquez, whose original tweet was at the root of the issue, also commented on the controversy. He said, “Seems pretty obvious but for the people that like to twist things: I was out there protesting in Longbeach Sunday. I am pro-BLM! The looters then came out and destroyed my city. Looters are bad protesters are good. I’m sure @Evan_Peters was supporting the taking down of looters.”