Federal Communications Commission Ajit Pai has been hounded by critics for months over the repeal of net neutrality rules —but the pressure has taken an alarming turn recently with death threats, reports say.
According to The Wall Street Journal, protesters from the far-left group Popular Resistance poured onto the Arlington, Virginia, street where Pai lives last May, placing pamphlets with his face on his neighbors' front doors.
"Have you seen this man?" the flyers ask, stating that Pai —"Age 44 / Height 6'1" / Weight 200"— is "trying to destroy net neutrality." The activist described the picketing as "Ajit-ation."
"They were there yesterday," Pai told the newspaper at the time. "I understand they'll be there today. They'll be there tomorrow and the day after. It's a hassle, especially for my wife and my two young children."
The activists, he told the outlet, "come up to our front windows and take photographs of the inside of the house. My kids are 5 and 3. It's not pleasant."
Pai called for an end to the cruel crusade in November, the Daily Signal reported.
"I cannot say in strong enough terms how much I reject this notion that people who are passionate about an issue … should go after public officials personally and their families — particularly the families," he said, the Daily Caller reported. "In my case, it's been extremely unpleasant, to say the least, to have to think about these things and worry about them."
In mid-December, the FCC finally voted to undo "net neutrality" rules that guaranteed equal access to internet — after a rancorous period of public comment and requests to delay the decision.
And in a frightening turn, Pai canceled a scheduled appearance at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week after receiving death threats, the Journal and Recode reported.
"Pai's treatment is an outrage and a disgrace," "Commentary" editor Noah Rothman wrote in the New York Post. "It would be a national scandal in the press but for the fact that so many of the country's opinion-makers and media professionals agree with the activists' cause, if not their methods."
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