A Palo Alto woman’s tirade against a 74-year-old man wearing a Make America Great Again hat inside a Starbucks has sparked a social media firestorm and national debate about whether her actions reflect this country’s political divide or simply epitomize out-of-bounds extremism.

Rebecca Parker Mankey berated the man Monday in a Palo Alto Starbucks on California Avenue for wearing the red MAGA cap made famous by President Donald Trump, then posted about the encounter on her Facebook page.

The post — picked up by multiple conservative accounts on social media — backfired by inciting vitriolic attacks and even death threats against Mankey and resulting in her forced resignation from her job and departure from at least one local civic group.

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Mankey, who says she was born and raised in Palo Alto, called the man a “freak” and asked her followers on Facebook to confront him when they saw him.

“You do not want to be the person who didn’t speak up as we slipped into fascism,” she wrote in her Facebook post.

Mankey yelled at the man repeatedly, saying, “It is not okay to hate brown people” and eventually chasing him out of the Starbucks, using an expletive to tell him to get “out of my town and never come back,” according to her Facebook post.

“He will never forget me and will think seriously about wearing that hat in my town ever again,” she wrote.

Her Facebook page has since been deactivated. Efforts to reach her Thursday were unsuccessful.

The man who was sporting the MAGA hat in the coffeehouse Monday told the Palo Alto Weekly he was not afraid of Mankey, who among other things called him a “Nazi scum.” He told the paper he’s in fact Jewish.

He said he visits the Starbucks daily and was surprised when the woman, who he did not know, began railing at him. He was even more surprised when no one else in the Starbucks came to his aid, he said.

Morris Fiorina, a political scientist at Stanford University, emphasized that while incidents of political extremism have received more attention since the 2016 election, they do not reflect an accurate portrayal of American voters.

In fact, about two in five Americans identified as independents in 2017, according to Gallup.

“These kinds of people (referring to extremists) — they’re the ones that make it into the paper or onto TV, but they’re such a small percentage of the people that are voting in this country,” Fiorina said Thursday.

According to Fiorina, the more involved a person is in politics, the more distorted his or her views of those on the opposing side of the political spectrum become.

“Her image of Trump voters is probably that they’re all racists, bigots and bible thumpers — all of these perceptions that can come from watching CNN and MSNBC,” he said. “The more liberal or conservative you are, the less accurate portrayal you have.”

Adding to the extremism of American politics today is the idea among those deeply invested in politics that you have to prove just how serious you are about your beliefs, he said.

“They basically do things to make sure to prove how serious they are by exaggerating their points of view and taking them to the extreme,” Fiorina said.

Mankey is a member of the North Ventura Coordinated Area Plan Working Group and co-chaired the Bayshore Progressive Democrats, a new club aimed at engaging people in politics.

On Wednesday, however, Mankey handed in her resignation as co-chair, officer and member of the Bayshore Progressive Democrats, according to the club’s Facebook page.

“Parker felt strongly that she wanted to use her privilege as a white woman to stand up for those who are living in fear because of the hateful atmosphere fostered by Trump,” the club wrote on its Facebook page. “Unfortunately the manner in which she chose to stand up against a slogan that stands for racism led to an even stronger hateful response that has endangered her and her family.”

For the last four years or so, Mankey worked as the accountant and chief financial officer for Gryphon Stringed Instruments, a company that sells, rents and repairs used and vintage musical instruments, according to co-founder Richard Johnston.

But by Tuesday, she was asked to hand in her resignation.

Johnston, who has known Mankey since before she was in kindergarten, said he was “dumbfounded and confused” when he first saw her Facebook post.

“We’ve known she was passionately liberal and progressive, but that’s different,” he said Thursday. “It was the way in which she went about attacking someone for a hat in which she found offensive that we just can’t tolerate”

The store, similar to Mankey, has faced a flood of backlash since Monday through angry phone calls and online calls for boycotts.

But Johnston said he has tried to explain that the opinions expressed and actions taken by Mankey don’t reflect those cultivated in the music store.

“Music is a force for unifying people, for them to find commonality, regardless of whether or not their political beliefs are consistent,” Johnston said. “It should be a haven from the political toxicity that we find ourselves in today.”

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Referring to Mankey as “one of our neighbors, beloved by many in our community for her progressive activism, myself included,” Lee wrote that Mankey “allowed herself to be pulled down into that muck.”

Although Lee agreed that the MAGA hat “at its best represents a distorted and inaccurate view of America, its history, and its place in the world,” he urged citizens to be “civil and vigilant.”

“That is the hardest, most courageous form of resistance — the Resistance of Ghandi, of Dr. King — a Resistance based in empathy and committed not to a duel between our lesser demons but rather a meeting of our better angels,” he wrote on Facebook.

Palo Alto Mayor Eric Filseth said Thursday that the City Council will be reviewing the matter and decide how to address it.

“Obviously this kind of intolerance isn’t consistent with our values in Palo Alto,” Filseth wrote to this news organization.