There's a lot to unpack here, so let me just drop my two cents on the matter. I'm a little sick and tired of modern day social media culture, so bear with me.
So, as we all know, Kicking Mustang's videos are clickbait. Do I have a problem with this? Of course I do. I hate clickbait and I generally dislike the content of his videos, as it paints the hobby in a bad light and we really don't need to give politicians any reason to stamp on our hobby; "banning firearms" is an easy vote winner because people don't know anything about airsoft or actual firearms in general, so it's an easy sell. Let's not forget all the instances in America of people wanting to ban all fully-semi-automatic assault weapons! However, can I see why he does it? I can. I worked as a journalist for a time and we were all essentially instructed to write the most clickbait articles and it's a major reason why I didn't continue in that career. The world has a problem at the moment in that everything is so tribal, so partisan, and the way the media works these days rewards fear-mongering, clickbait hate content. Positivity and hope doesn't sell, it doesn't get you clicks which in turn means it doesn't make you any money. Usually I'd say "don't hate the player, hate the game" and I believe there is an element of that. I can't hate Kicking Mustang for posting clickbait content. However, I won't be saying that in its entirety as his actions could have wider implications for our hobby. Usually, clickbait content can't be weaponised as easily by politicians looking to gain votes. Kicking Mustang's content could be easily weaponised by a politician looking to gain support from the public and in Parliament; if I, someone with no experience being a politician, could do it, you can bet that an actual politician could.
Now onto the second part of the situation. Firstly, he has always kept his politics separate from his airsoft persona. Also, I've been online long enough to know not to believe everything I read. Do I think some of the tweets made by Kicking Mustang on his other account are wrong? Yes. Even if you're against things like Islamic extremism or the BLM riots (openly Marxist organisation) that had cities burning for months amidst their mostly peaceful protests, you shouldn't make inflammatory statements, or racial slurs to put your points across as I observed in some of his tweets. However, and this is a big however, I do believe that the tweets could have been taken out of context and weaponised against him. Do I think this earns him a pass? No. If he is actually a racist (and I mean that not by today's standards where you're a racist xenophobe sexist if you're traditionally conservative), then I believe he's an abhorrent individual. Though, what I will say is I've seen this happen before. I've seen it happen to so many people before where content is taken waaaaaaay out of context to suit a particular narrative or agenda. This is another reason I left journalism, as we were essentially encouraged to sensationalise everything. It's super easy to take quotes and spin a story in a particular way, as nuance is lost in print and language is easy to manipulate. For a recent, larger, real-world example, and some of you might disagree with me here so please try to be civil, we have the situation with Gina Carano and LucasFilm. She made a post referencing 1930s Germany and the Twitter mob who hated her and have been trying to get her fired for years caught onto this, calling her out for being anti-semetic under the #FireGinaCarano hashtag, which did actually get her fired. Was she actually anti-semetic? No. Not at all. The tweet was taken out of context and weaponised against her. The Kicking Mustang hate groups are definitely psychotic enough to do this. I've seen their rabid fanaticism that just makes them look like some sort of "Kicking Mustang is Satan" cult. I can definitely believe they have taken stuff out of context.
In conclusion / TL
R, Kicking Mustang is a dick who makes clickbait content that is potentially harmful to the hobby. It also turns out that Kicking Mustang is at least a bit of a racist too, though to what extent I will reserve judgement on as I firmly don't believe everything I see on the internet and definitely think there is some exaggeration in how it has been framed, but to his credit he has always kept his political leanings separate from his airsoft persona. These people going after a completely unrelated political commentary Twitter account he has is only going to further harm the hobby. Now, politicians don't have to say "we're cracking down on firearms!" as they can now spin it like "we're cracking down on alt-right militia training groups AND their firearms!" which is an absurd statement.
This is why I pine for the "good old days" of airsoft like some sort of old person, and I'm not even 30 yet. Back when I first started in 2006ish, I never saw any drama or had any major problems with the hobby. We were just a bunch of guys who met up at our local airsoft site every other Sunday and played toy gun fights in the woods. People didn't run hot guns, there were never any issues with headshots and we all just had a good time.
