“What was in you that you just couldn’t do this? They all did — all the other tables. You were literally the only one of 20 other people. So there was something in you that was different from all the other people.”

Said Chuck Modiano, who "identified himself as a citizen journalist who writes for @Deadspin," quoted in "Protesters target D.C. diners, triggering backlash after heckling woman/Lauren Victor refused to go along with raising her fist — although she supports the movement" (WaPo). He was speaking to Lauren B. Victor, the woman in this viral video:

1) In a scene that played out several times Monday, a Black Lives Matter protest that began in Columbia Heights confronted White diners outside D.C. restaurants, chanting “White silence is violence!” and demanding White diners show their solidarity. #DCProtests pic.twitter.com/fJbPM76vb0

— Fredrick Kunkle WaPo (@KunkleFredrick) August 25, 2020

"What was in you?" — he asked, and it feels like an accusation of racism. You just couldn't even give us this. But what was in her — I hope — was humanity and personal integrity:

“In the moment, it didn’t feel right,” Victor said... “I felt I was under attack,” Victor, an urban planner, said, adding that she felt there was something wrong about being coerced to show support.... “It just felt overwhelming to have all of those people come at you. To have a crowd — with all that energy — demand that you do this thing. In the moment it didn’t feel right,” Victor said....

She also said, "I’m very much with them. I’ve been marching with them for weeks and weeks and weeks." She probably felt secure that she was not a bad person — she supported the movement and had shown her support. She agreed on the merits but had a procedural objection. Agreed with the end but not the means.

Good for her. But why was she — as Modiano put it — "literally the only one of 20 other people"? What was the "something in you that was different from all the other people."

The other people were afraid! They were cowed. They were followers. But no one gets in their face and yells at them — What was in you that you just did this? That one woman, she was literally the only one in 20. The rest of you are all the same. Cowering in the shadows!

ADDED: This situation reminds me of something that I experienced half a century ago, blogged about here:

It was Friday, February 2, 1969, at the Fillmore East, and in the middle of the show Zappa — I believe he was wearing red velvet/satin pants — divided up the audience into parts — maybe 4 sections — each assigned to sing out when pointed at. I didn't sing when pointed at, but I was interested in the sound he got flowing through the big audience as he escalated to more and more elaborate pointing patterns. He kept going until the crowd — struggling to respond to his showy conducting — could not keep up and it became cacophony. At that point, as I remember it, Zappa gave the crowd a gesture — perhaps a contemptuous 2-handed get-outta-here — and said something to the effect of, You people were idiots to have followed me in the first place. But I had not followed him, and so my resistance to the ecstasy of crowd merger — which I'd worried was stand-offish and putting me at risk of a joyless future — was vindicated.