The horrendous, deeply saddening Jo Cox murder has stirred up a lot of ugliness, some of which I wrote about yesterday.
Yesterday I found a good deal of ugliness on Twitter (no surprise) and the internet Nazi tabloid The Daily Stormer (even less of a surprise). Now the hateful failed humans who think the murder was a good thing are delivering the ugliness right to my door — specifically, to the comments section of this blog.
I didn’t let the following comments through moderation, but I thought they needed a little sunlight — sunlight being the best disinfectant, as people say.
Someone calling himself only “Steve” informed me:
I do not live in the UK (thank the Lord) but this woman was a traitor, we have shot traitors for millenia.
Apparently trying to rise above the bigotry that the British (or at least a portion of them) have too often displayed towards immigrants counts as “treason.”
I think its just dandy the tha “political class” can enjoy the sting of violence instead of the general public.
Contemplating the murder of those he disagrees with makes him smile.
Politicians are not listening to the people the guy that did this is a patriot even to you bleating lefties.
A racist murderer with connections to American Nazis and pro-apartheid South Africans is a “patriot” only to those who share not only his bigotries but also his thirst for blood.
I think the time has come where we need to split the countries we live in those left leaning need to piss off to one side and vice versa.
Might I suggest you and your friends relocate here?
We can no longer live together because the left is willing to give what myself and my family have fought for. you lefties you can live with the muslim scum should you wish but do not force your crap onto me. Where are your tears for Lee Rigby?
I was horrified by Rigby’s brutal murder. I didn’t go around declaring his killers to be “patriots.”
Shortly after “Steve” tried to post this comment, I got this stream-of-consciousness rant from another anonymous hero, which I have censored slightly:
Writer who can’t write for sh*t, for a piece of sh*t lefty blog, defending a cult of death promoter all while claiming the right are responsable when its really just left wing niave dumb f*cks who ask for death when they sell out our country to a group of people who worship a peado, treat women and anyone who doesnt follow their exact beliefs (even other muslims) like animals.
Presumably he is referring to Cox as a promoter of a “cult of death.”
Left wingers at this point are more dangerous than the jihadi f*cks in syria, seein as thier hell bent on getting them over here.
Well, no, we’ re interested in helping those who are fleeing the “jihadi f*cks.” That’s what refugees are.
More Jo coxes dead the better, perhaps a few ignorant lefty fucks in here as well.
That sounds an awful lot like a terrorist threat.
No im not rightwing im not even political but i do have half a brain to see that the left live in a dream candy land where everyone is nice (except righties, to the leftey r death worthy ofc)
None of us here are under the illusion that “everyone is nice (except righties … ).” For example, those who are celebrating the murder of Jo Cox aren’t very nice, even if they declare themselves “not rightwing … not even political.”
When I refused to let this comment through, the author returned with this followup:
Lol only letting lefty bum lickers post comments, you are pathetic, you can’t write for sh*t and you and your family will probably get raped and beheaded by the filth you so desperatly want here but yep keep believing that their whole religion isnt about control and exterminatio of everyone that isnt one of them (including you) as their “holy book” tells them this is not only ok to do but is their duty, also by any means nessecary.
That was all one sentence. At least if we define “sentence” rather loosely.
But I will offer a bet to the commenter, and anyone else who wants to take it, that I and my family will not in fact “get raped and beheaded by the filth [I] so desperatly want here.” If within, say, 20 years, I do not “get raped and beheaded” by Muslim immigrants, you will owe me $10,000. If I do get raped and beheaded, I will pay you a cool million.
When I didn’t post this second comment from our anonymous hero, he sent along a third one, directly mostly at me and the commenters here. He managed to work in three slang terms for “vagina.” I think I’ll let that one remain unpublished
I really, really cannot even. This one hit very close to home for me.
@Rabid Rabbit, if the Brexit happens and these toxic fucks get their way, can I come and live in Canada please?
The whole perception of a left/right split over brexit seems rather confusing to me. Do all these people ranting about the pro-europe “lefties” really think that Cameron and a huge chunk of the Tory party have metamorphosed into some sort of socialists overnight?
Your childishly simplified view of politics doesn’t work here. Trying to project US politics on the UK isn’t going to work either.
What a fucking arsehole. This amazing women was murdered and this piece of shit thinks it’s great?!?! What a piece of human garbage!! And he has the nerve to threaten David’s family with rape and murder with a VERY thin veil of warning him about ‘the Muslims’! No arsehole, people are more likely to be killed by bigots like you than ‘the Muslims’. Jo’s murder is proof of that.
@Rabid Rabbit
Why the fuck not? He’ll pay their legal fees, remember? *throws stuff*
We can only hope…
I have had the wish to unlurk several times before, but every time I start typing on what I hope to be a level-headed, useful contribution to the conversation, all I can come up with is emotional drivel. And so I end up deleting my comment, just to sit back and wait for the next post.
However, today I realized that being disgusted and emotional is probably the best reaction to all the horrific stories on this blog. It is certainly not a bad thing to not be able to put yourself in the shoes of the terrible people David writes about. I cannot for the life of me understand how people can condone, or better yet: celebrate the murder of someone whose only crime it was to disagree with them. Their thought process eludes me.
Are these not the same people who are anti-immigration, not just because they are racist (as if being racist isn’t bad enough!) but because they think Islam is violent and oppressing and because it doesn’t value our freedoms? What about Jo Cox’ freedom to express herself? To say what she thinks without being afraid of being murdered in the street – not by violent, scary Muslims, but by “one of her own.”
What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that I just don’t understand it. What do these people want? Do they want to kill everyone who “opposes” them until there is nothing left but them?
At least then they won’t have to be afraid of all the immigrants and dirty lefties taking away their freedoms. They’ll have done so themselves.
Ok, I think I’m done. There are too many thoughts in my head (all trying to come out at once) to stay coherent.
Oh and btw: Hi everyone.
Especially because British politics right now is as diffuse and fragmented as I’ve ever known. I grew up with three main parties – essentially Labour/Liberal/Conservative, or left/centre/right.
But now there are six with significant representation in either the British or European Parliaments (the others being UKIP, the Scottish National Party and the Greens*), and people are constantly switching what we used to consider “sides”.
For instance, something that Labour has been trying to play down is the increasingly unignorable fact that a lot of support for the allegedly “far right” UKIP has been coming from traditional Labour supporters who feel completely alienated by current mainstream politics. But most people don’t think in such conveniently binary terms – they’ll see a Labour MP who’s been taking them for granted and a UKIP candidate who actually listens to them. (This is also how the neo-Nazi British National Party gained such alarming ground a decade ago, but thankfully they’re all but nonexistent now.)
(*Obviously I’m well aware that there are other political parties, particularly in Wales and Northern Ireland, but the SNP is now the third biggest party in the House of Commons, something utterly unimaginable even as recently as six years ago.)
I completely agree Sunnysombrera, it’s terrifying, and heartbreaking and honestly makes me furious with disappointment, everything about this situation and the whole brexit ‘debate’… It feels like something unconscionably ugly has been festering away, bubbling to the surface now. People I thought were reasonable people completely buying into racist diatribes… It feels like we’ve lost something it’ll take at least a generation to get back… The only silver lining seems to be that the youth seem mostly on the side of remaining, if they actually vote. So maybe there’s hope for the future.
@Wetherby
This is the case with the racist Sweden Democrats as well. Traditionally we’ve had a left/right divide where the Social Democrats is the large, left of center party, and the Moderates is the large, right of center party, while both are supported by a number of smaller parties.
We know from studies that the 12.9% who supported Sweden Democrats in the last election (and something like 20% in recent polls) fall into three major groups: 1) former Moderates, 2) former Social Democrats, 3) long term racists/nazis who had previously supported less successful far right extremist parties.
The third group is significantly smaller than the first two. This means that one thing most Sweden Democrat voters have in common, besides being overwhelmingly male, is that they have previously been very mainstream voters. It’s not a stretch to assume that larger parties may have more low-information voters, or voters who simply don’t pay much attention to politics and don’t really care. It is much easier for a one-issue party, such as Sweden Democrats, to attract people who have previously just been voting for some mainstream party for no particular reason.
Re British politics–we also now have this:
[was going to link to the Women’s Equality Party website, but it appears to be unsafe–people messing with it?]
@ Eleni
Hi! I love your post – you wrote many of the same things I’ve been thinking.
DS:
Whoa there. This is sounding rather close to eugenics. Please don’t do this.
I know it’s tempting to think of this political climate in terms of intelligence (and IQ, whatever that is, if it’s anything). There’s certainly a lot of stupidity being aired. But the politicians stirring this hatred, the editors and writers at the major newspapers, the people who devised Farage’s vile poster… these are mostly intelligent and educated individuals.
My father, a decent man with what you would call an “awful IQ”, bred, and here I am. Sorry about that.
Hiya, Eleni. Try not to worry about letting it out on the page. Emotional drivel, often my own, is a bit of a cornerstone around here 🙂
‘Why’ is an important question. I just don’t know if there’s an answer. Do these people even know? Some people run on id, pure and undiluted. The consequences of their actions, enacted or simply fantasized, are irrelevant beyond their own self satisfaction. How many of these people are genuinely talking about how this will affect Brexit or immigration or refugee policy? Not many, and those that are use it as a thin veil for their real focus. What they care about most of all is how those they hate can be made to suffer for their own amusement. The sweet schadenfreude of imagining their leftist boogeyperson brought to heel by violence…
Or maybe I’m talking outta my ass. Distinct possibility, but that’s the best I can figure
Britain is quickly becoming a two party system like the US, with Labour and Tory blurring the lines. Despite Jeremy Corbin, most of the Labour Party is modelled after Tony Blair’s New Labour, which was post Thatcherite and did not truly represent the Left wing. Most of Labour can do best described as centre left or moderate right. It no longer can be described as a party which truly represents the workers, as it has to tread a fine line in appeasing the corporations. All of our industries were privatised during Thatcher’s reign, now this includes out schools, prisons, steel industry, manufacturing, private security and hospitals, with more and more public money going into private pockets. It would be impossible to re nationalise industries that have been sold off, as they are now valued at many billions more than when they were first privatised.
@Moggie
Seconded.
I’m pretty sure my mom has a non-measurable IQ. She genuinely can’t understand the concept of IQ-test type questions, but will just pick an answer at random.
@pie
Not all Lefties are Pro Europe.
Look up the late Tony Benn’s views on the matter.
The EU was created after all to pander to capitalist FreeTrade ideologies.
This is a false dichotomy created by the Right Wing media.
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/06/john-king-left-wing-case-leaving-eu
He sounds pleasant.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/suspect-murder-british-mp-jo-cox-tells-court-death-traitors-n594906
So – commenter defends the horrendous murder of a dedicated and public spirited woman by blaming *some other people over there* for treating women badly, while expressing a wish for women, men and children connected to people he disagrees with be raped and murdered because another religion supposedly justifies it…?
And writer who strings words together apparently without regard for grammar or spelling complains repeatedly that David can’t write.
OK, I know this last one is trivial, but it’s all of a piece, isn’t it?
The thing that really bothers me is not Trump (or Farage) in themselves: amoral millionaire conmen and dodgy borderline-racist politicos are not that unusual. It’s the fact that enough people seem to look at them and say “Hey, this is my kind of guy” to allow them to become actually seriously significant in our world. The kind of death-cult fantasies some people are attaching to Trump are really quite disturbing, for instance.
These are scary times. I feel lucky I know so many decent people.
“Cult of death” eh? I think I’ve heard that before somewhere. Although, from memory, the actual phrase was, “the death cult”.
The person that said it though is a failed Prime Minister. So I guess that the phrase should not be given much weight.
And also from memory, he never gave it in writing. So by his own words he certainly cannot be trusted.
DS
It’s pure serendipity if that moment happens just when your particular comment-argument finally connects with that particular person and you happen to be there to continue the conversation. Most of the time, we have to content ourselves with being one among the many who put points of view that don’t agree with another person’s views.
We just have to resign ourselves to being part of a “marketing” strategy. Marketing, advertising and PR people tell us that people don’t even perceive a commercial message or a sign or a slogan until they’ve seen it 20+ times. When it comes to politics-ethics-economics there’s an additional hurdle to clear. Ads for shampoo or toothpaste merely need to make themselves heard, understood and preferred among all the similar ads for other shampoos and toothpastes. There’s not much chance of a major commercial anti-hygiene ad campaign deliberately undercutting that message, telling people that greasy hair and bad breath are good things and you should never use nasty shampoos and toothpastes, No, no, no!
So getting a new-different-unusual slant through on politics and other opinions or attitudes has a much higher bar to clear. People not only have to hear your message, they can only respond to it positively if they are already open to the message in the first place. Or – you’re the lucky one whose words finally tip the balance with someone who’s heard and dismissed or ignored that message dozens of times before.
People rarely, almost never, hear a view they’ve previously disagreed with and instantly change and say thank you, I never thought of it like that before. It happens, but it’s unlikely. Eloquence and persuasiveness are rare gifts and even they are unlikely to change someone’s mind at first contact with a view opposing the one they hold.
For the rest of us less gifted folks, all we can do is to add to the accumulating heap of views like our own and hope we’ve paved the way for some other person at some later time to deliver the final piece of the puzzle that finally fits.
On the flip side, a short discussion of the man who tried to save Cox:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/18/bernard-carter-kenny-jo-cox-mine-rescue-service-veteran-lofthouse
77 years old, still kicking up a fight. Expected to fully recover physically, but I can imagine he’ll be haunted by questions like what if he had zigged when he zagged, maybe he could have saved her.
@Virgin Mary
I have the impression Britain is a lot more right wing/corporatist than countries in continental Europe. Britain comes across as America’s little brother, eager to do everything America does. Both America and Britain seem to have a history of far right/ultra-capitalist politicians pushing their countries in that direction. They will complain that radical leftists and activists will want to start a class war even though they’re waging a class war right now.
I guess you’ve never heard of the no poo movement.
Edit: I haven’t heard of a no toothpaste movement and I’m afraid to look, but I’m sure the fluoride stare people probably aren’t into toothpaste.
Projection if I’ve ever seen it.
@Sunnysombrera
I shouldn’t have read the comments.
“He’s got mental issueeeeeeeeeessssss!!11!!!!”
When someone does something you liked but can give you bad PR, always say they’re crazy. Some people apparently fall for that.
The whole thing is just making me sick now! I feel everyone’s anger, but mainly for the family and anyone touched by Jo Cox.
Hating someone for showing compassion is one thing, but speaking ill of such a kind person is despicable!
Regardless of beliefs, it is disgusting!
Oh and although my political views are more complexed than most, I’m well-aware of what goes on. I just keep quiet about it.
Something else, regarding the clowns claiming “Oh we don’t hate women…we hate how Muslims treat females etc etc..”
Bollocks do any of them care!
I was attacked during college years, most likely by a Muslim but in the 90s it was rarely brought up or I didn’t consider it until recently after noticing this attitude.
Well, I don’t talk about it much now and I probably shouldn’t mention it, but you should consider this every time someone spouts that crap, as I doubt I’m the only one: it was WHITE WOMEN who treated me with contempt after it happened. Some men, but mainly white CHRISTIAN women!
Should I hate all middle-class white women?
I was also turned away by a YWCA (Young Women’s CHRISTIAN Association) over in good old South West England after being stalked by the attacker for over three years, which actually led to a series of abusive situations and relationships.
So, I have no time for their nonsense.
What DOESN’T surprise me is when those bigots actually wish rape and death on the “lefties” as they label anyone not agreeing with them. Maybe I’m a lefty/liberal or whatever just because I can’t hate people due to colour, religion, gender.
I just remember how well I was treated by different people from other cultures – yes including our own in the midlands, an area more tolerant, as opposed to the places where they detest outsiders.
Feel free to edit this out, but like I said, consider it when alt right lot try to say they care about women and gay people being attacked by Muslims.
I dread the referendum as it appears more are switching from “stay” to “leave”. I’ve even been confused myself.
I’d gladly leave to somewhere all the hate didn’t exist.
Plus, as far as I know; Lee Rigby’s family are sick of being affiliated with ‘Britain First’. I’ll check again, but last I read they didn’t want to be associated with hate.
@Rosa
Two of the newspapers most notorious for stirring up right wing rhetoric (The Sun and the Daily Heil) are doing the same thing. Because acknowledging that hateful, xenophobic discourse was behind his motivation would mean they have to accept responsibility for contributing to it. God forbid they ever do that. >:(