A 37-year-old woman named Renee Nicole Good was tragically shot and killed by an immigration officer in Minneapolis. But who is truly accountable for her untimely death?

Opinions vary depending on whom you ask. Without concrete details, social media exploded with speculation. Supporters of the “Make America Great Again” movement accused her of being a Left-wing provocateur who allegedly tried to attack an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer with her vehicle.

On the other hand, critics of former President Trump portrayed her as an innocent casualty, claiming she was ruthlessly killed by what they described as the President’s authoritarian enforcers targeting peaceful, law-abiding immigrants.

This phenomenon is not new; humans have always tended to interpret events through their personal biases and preconceived notions. Historically, people have viewed the world through the prism of their own beliefs.

However, the rush to make instant judgments without full knowledge has notably amplified division and polarization, largely fueled by the rise of social media.

Welcome to the Age of Unreason.

What happened in Minneapolis is an object lesson. Ignorant armies of social media warriors reverted to their usual positions. But instead of advising caution, and suggesting that people await the outcome of an impartial investigation, politicians and senior bureaucrats flung themselves into the whirlpool.

On the one hand, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, who is in charge of ICE, asserted that officials ‘got stuck in the snow because of the adverse weather’. She added: ‘They were attempting to push out their vehicle and a woman attacked them.’ She described the incident as ‘an act of domestic terrorism’.

Renee Nicole Good was shot dead by an ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agent – but two narratives of events on the Right and Left have emerged

Protesters in Minnesota showing support for Renee. Throughout history we have interpreted the world through the lens of our own prejudices and preconceptions, writes Stephen Glover

In fact, there was little snow, and what there was seems to have played no part in subsequent events. Nor is there any evidence that Renee Nicole Good was a terrorist, domestic or otherwise. According to her distraught wife, she had been filming a protest against ICE.

On the other hand, the Democrat Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, declared in an inflammatory press conference: ‘I have a message for ICE. Get the f*** out of here.’ Hardly the kind of language liable to calm down angry demonstrators.

Meanwhile, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, also a Democrat, blamed the Trump administration’s ‘dangerous, sensationalised operations’ which are ‘designed to generate fear’. He has previously referred to ICE as the ‘modern-day Gestapo’. If he knew anything about Nazi Germany, he wouldn’t have said such a stupid thing.

In short, politicians and senior officials on both sides conformed to the abysmal standards of social media by making instantaneous judgments based on zero information, while descending to crude invective. This wouldn’t have happened 25 years ago, even in America.

Presiding over this collapse of decent standards is the combustible high priest of social media himself, Donald Trump. The American President epitomises the facile, immediate opinions of social media combined with a disregard for the truth.

On this occasion, he took to his Truth Social platform, calling Renee Nicole Good ‘very disorderly’ and someone who ‘viciously ran over the ICE Officer’. This version of events isn’t borne out by the clip, which Trump says he has watched. As usual, there was nothing remotely statesmanlike or compassionate in his post.

If only we could pretend that the destructive effects of social media were unique to the United States. They aren’t. There are many recent examples here of people rushing to judgment on the basis of videos that didn’t tell the whole truth. Ours, too, is an increasingly polarised society.

Over Gaza, two opposing and utterly irreconcilable groups lined up. One maintained that Israel was guilty of genocide and the ‘freedom fighters’ of Hamas were blameless victims. The other insisted that Israel was engaged in proportionate and justified self-defence.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said Renee attacked federal agents and described the incident as ‘an act of domestic terrorism’

 When a missile landed on al-Ahli hospital in Gaza in October 2023, reportedly killing hundreds of people, many, including the BBC, quickly pointed the finger of blame at Israel. Social media was ablaze with accusations. It seems likely that a Hamas rocket had gone astray.

It’s no defence to argue that, on other occasions, the Israeli Defence Force targeted Hamas terrorists hiding in hospitals and killed innocent civilians, including children. The point is that, in the case of al-Ahli hospital, Israel probably wasn’t responsible, though many, partly stirred up by social media, said it was.

Another time, many newspapers and TV channels carried a harrowing photograph of a starving child when there was undoubtedly malnutrition in Gaza. There was huge outrage on social media. Again, the picture seemed plausible.

However, it transpired that the child was suffering from congenital disorders and had a healthy-looking brother. The photograph, and other similar ones, had been circulated for propaganda purposes by Hamas.

Closer to home, in July 2024 a video went viral that showed policemen at Manchester airport stamping on Mohammed Fahir Amaaz. There was instant outrage on social media and a demonstration by anti-racism protesters outside a nearby police station. I admit I was taken in by what seemed to be police brutality.

But it turned out that the original video didn’t show a violent, unprovoked attack to which a policeman and two female colleagues had been subjected moments earlier. Last August, Mohammed Fahir Amaaz was found guilty of assaulting two female officers and a male passenger.

Life is almost always more complex than the warriors of social media are able or willing to comprehend. They lurch from one outrage to another, easily confirmed in their tribal prejudices, unaware that they are being manipulated by a force that is uninterested in truth, and only wants their eyeballs again and again.

Just a mile from the spot where Renee Nicole Good was shot dead this week, George Floyd, an African American, was murdered by Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, in May 2020. Chauvin pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes.

One might say that George Floyd was the first martyr of social media. His previous convictions, or the fact that he had just used a counterfeit $20 bill, or his alleged drug-induced state, do not of course mitigate the charge of murder in the slightest degree.

But can any thoughtful person honestly argue that the resulting global protests – the Black Lives Matter movement, the ‘taking of the knee’ by people such as Sir Keir Starmer, and the charges of ubiquitous white racism – represented a proportionate and reasonable response to the murder of one troubled man?

Social media and their polarising effects have taken our society by storm so quickly that we haven’t had time to adjust to their danger. Who could have dreamt 20 years ago that the President of the United States would himself be a champion of such a divisive and superficial scourge?

There may be a small ray of sunshine. According to one survey, across the developed world people aged 16 and older spent an average of two hours and 20 minutes per day on social platforms at the end of 2024, down by almost 10 per cent since 2022. The decline is most pronounced among heaviest users – teens and 20-somethings.

As for Renee Nicole Good, we can only hope that the true facts of her death are established. But in the warring, divided society that is modern America, will anyone notice or care?