Let’s discuss Gregg Watson.

Little thread

Last night, and throughout today, we’ve began to see screenshots of old tweets and statuses from Gregg and his political views. Here are a handful below.

1. It appears that Gregg was pleased to hear about a Tory Brexit. Judging from his recent tweets, he has now completely shifted his opinion on it. His currently pinned tweet fairly explains this.

2. Gregg expressed sympathy with Boris Johnson, despite the fact that most of Europe had been ringing alarm bells to the UK about the severity of covid-19.
A lot of patriotic content has come from this post.

3. In late 2019, it has appeared that he had shared considerably transphobic content on his Facebook page, targeting Greta Thunberg—a huge target of the far right.

Despite knowing that this has surfaced, Gregg has not apologised to those who feel offended by this.

4. In 2015, Gregg expressed support with UKIP, and ‘wanted Labour to stay out’.

5. This tweet confirms that he had certainly expressed support for the Tories, and Johnson—even clapping for him.

It was in April/May that Gregg had began to use Twitter once again, and he began tagging himself, and cooperating in #SocialistSunday tweets.

That was a very fast switch in support.

Gregg found this successful, and has now over 15K followers.

Now, many people are claiming that “people change.”

This is absolutely true. Many people have been radicalised by the pandemic, and I feel like Gregg has seen that the Tories have handled it very poorly.

Gregg began presenting himself as a socialist—calling people comrades, asking for SS mentions, and genuinely being positive.

Originally, I first followed Gregg in June, impressed with his positive tweets and upbeat tones.

However.

Gregg recently dropped a disaster of a Tweet: criticising benefit claimants as those who have ‘benefited from this pandemic’, and saying that those who work have had no extra support.

Many benefit claimants still go to work to put food on their table.

Gregg has apologised about this tweet, but it still concerns people how he even went through that process.

People who claim to be socialists should never punch down.

Gregg apparently was critical of the BLM protests, claiming that it could lead to an increase in covid infections. This is exceptionally poor.

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Gregg seems not to be in favour of Corbyn, despite acknowledging that many Socialist Sunday users are pro-Corbyn.

Another recent Tweet tells us that he is supportive of Piers Morgan, who is a huge bigot.

I understand that people’s views can change. Mine have. I’m sure yours has too, during the pandemic.

We must be transparent on this app, though.

Using Socialist Sunday to boost followers, and then post absolutely nothing represented by socialists undermines a lot of us.

I have since blocked and unfollowed Gregg.

We must stand against lies, bigotry and racism in our corner of Twitter. Let’s hold people to fair standards.

Please be fair with Gregg, he probably has good intentions, but immediately calling him a ‘Tory’ is not really helpful.

To be quite honest, Gregg needs to apologise to those he has offended and move on.

Let’s make this place a little fairer.

I’m convinced Gregg is a good guy—he’s made some mistakes and humans do.

Let’s stop all the bickering and the shouting, and be collective and calm with this. I’m sure he means no harm.