It makes your blood boil. Your brain hurts with tension. Your eyes pop out. Your face goes purple. You want to shout and scream. The other person is a moron.
‘Wrong!’
‘Wrong!’
‘Wrong!’
You want to do more than throw the remote control at them. You want to tell them, in excruciating detail, all the ways in which they are wrong. When they send you a missive back, telling you, in no uncertain terms, how you do not know what you are talking about, you go mad. You contradict them. Send more facts. When that doesn’t work, you start calling them stupid and ignorant, a fascist or a Marxist depending on which side of the argument you are on.
‘Lies’
‘All Lies’
‘Liar.’
If the verbal boxing continues - which it so often does on twitter (X), the ad hominem abuse flies. ‘Stupid fxxxxx cxxx’ or ‘Shut them fxxx up.’ Sometimes it even becomes. ‘I want to rape or kill you.’
In the case of Jo Brand, she wanted to throw battery acid over Nigel Farage. Lucy Connolly advocated burning down all migrant hotels and Ricky Jones, the Labour councillor, thought it would be a good idea to cut the throats of far-right protestors.
Jo Brand, Lucy Connolly and Ricky Jones are all decent members of society - one would assume - with radically different political opinions. Jo Brand is hardly likely to go down to a local hardware store, spend hours locating Farage and then risk ten to twenty years in prison.
Most people cannot stomach free speech. You see this all the time. That is what the blocking function on twitter is about - so you do not ever have to read tweets from anyone with different views from you - and this is on a free speech platform!
People generally have two responses to things they do not like - most walk away and refuse to listen. Another smaller group gets really angry and wants a duel before dawn with their opponent. It does not matter if it is an argument about climate change or immigrants or a restaurant's food or how someone looks. Try saying, ‘You have put on weight’ to your partner or spouse. It may be true, but most people will neither say it, nor take kindly to receiving the opinion. Truth hurts. Listening to your opponents hurts.
To be a free speech society, all speech except direct and credible threats must be allowed. We might despise Holocaust deniers, but we should allow them as does the American first amendments. In Britain, ‘A woman who wrote and performed antisemitic songs mocking the Holocaust has been found guilty of posting “grossly offensive” material on YouTube. Alison Chabloz, 54, was convicted of three charges relating to three of her songs at Westminster magistrates court.’ Guardian May 2018.
Racism, rudeness and nastiness may all be uncomfortable, but they must be allowed. Offending religions and political opponents, essential.
Under American law, Lucy Connolly would not be in jail, Alison Chabloz would not be prosecuted and neither would Ricky Jones nor Brand. Indeed, out of all four cases, it is the Jo Brand case that comes nearest to being prosecuted under American law because she named a specific target - but was it credible that she would do it? No.
‘If Liberty means anything at all, it means telling people what they do not want to hear.’ (George Orwell on the BBC building.)
The BBC, the police and this government need to uphold this simple but very painful truth.
Catherine Blaiklock
UKIP Economics Spokesman.
Stood in Great Yarmouth .
Founded The Brexit Party.
More recently stood for The English Democrats.
Big supporter of Rupert Lowe MP and Ben Habib.
Interest in the economics of immigration worldwide.
Starting a Halal meat campaign for a judicial review of the Local authorities’ lack of enforcement of existing legislation.
