Robin Shepherd
robinshepherdonline.com
12 January '10
One of the new realities of the internet age for the mainstream media is that the distinction between an opinion piece and the readers’ comments which come below it is increasingly blurred. This is all the more so for interactive sites such as the Guardian’s immensely popular Comment is free (Cif) site where regular “below the line” contributors are now as much a part of the overall experience as the commentary to which they are responding. Such contributors help create the kind of interactive community which has become the new holy grail of online news and comment services.
So, when it comes to the Guardian’s notoriously vicious stance against the state of Israel it is hardly suprising that the community that has been created draws from among the foulest and most bigoted of the Jewish state’s numerous opponents. As an example, consider the following comment by regular below-the-line contributor William Bapthorpe which was brought to my attention by the invaluable media watchdog service CiF Watch. Referring to the settlers, in a thread following an article by Nicholas Blincoe, he said:
“Sadly, there’s only one way to deal with these religiously motivated maniacs who think their superstitious beliefs trump international law. 1. We ask them to leave their squats, kindly. 2. If they don’t, we force them to [leave] at gunpoint. 3. If they still refuse, they must be slaughtered, every last man woman and child.” (My italics)
If this were simply an isolated incident it would not be worth remarking on. Every website attracts its share of oddballs. But CiF Watch, which was set up last year to monitor a Guardian online community that attracts more than 30 million visits a month, provides reams of this sort of thing suggesting that at the intersection between the technological innovations of the new media and an ideological edifice which makes a fetish of demonising the most important Jewish project of our time an entirely new phenomenon has now emerged in Great Britain.
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Posts
Some day, somebody will launch a study of human nature by examination of random anonymous posts. Technology has exposed that the worst in human nature still exists and is being fed continuously through biased news and other sources of hate. And technology itself has encouraged a compassionless, pitiless culture of isolation whereby anyone can hide behind a cloak of anonymity and feel safe enough to lob the equivalent of a verbal H-bomb in any direction they choose.
ReplyDeleteWe see the direct results of this culture of anonymity by increasing incidents of road rage, assaults, murders, and acts of terror.
Perhaps it would be in humankind’s best interest to remove message boards altogether. We are far too enamored of ourselves, anyway, without further encouragement that our own emotionally-charged words will be read by thousands, if not millions, of people.