Belligerence has become the order of the day

Welcome to the era of invective

Are we becoming a society of nasty Internet trolls, piling on because it’s trendy and fun? Has political correctness been replaced by widespread nastiness?

In a column recently, I wrote something less than complimentary about a hypothetical politician. I said his idea was “dumb,” “stupid” and that he was an “idiot.’’

Again, it was not a real person, but I stumbled over my own words. I wondered if they were appropriate. When I read the column in print, they bothered me.

The words of my mother, who died recently at 95, echoed in my head: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

And it got me wondering if my mom’s world is well and truly gone, and whether I had been co-opted into the modern media world.

Media criticism and political nastiness have always been a part of the public discourse, but it has reached a new crescendo in a digital society.

Pettiness and jealousy reign on reality TV. Online bullying and shaming are serious concerns. Internet trolls are a sorry fact of life.

General belligerence seems to be the order of the day.

You need look no further than the online comments on (probably) this very column, or others like it. Such is the nastiness peddled on such forums that many newspapers (including, last week, the Toronto Star) have simply stopped allowing them.

When we shut down hateful, hurtful, racist, sexist or downright libellous online comments on some stories here at The Spectator, we are accused — crudely — of censorship.

Meanwhile, many on social media are looking to create a reputation for themselves, and meanness seems to be one way of generating it.

It’s true many in the media are not much better, but good journalists restrict themselves to constructive criticism.

Today, anyone can be a “journalist” and anyone can distribute invective. Even those who already have a megaphone seem enthralled by social media.

Take Donald Trump, whose Twitter account is a quagmire of invective and pugnacity.

It is one thing to attack journalists (“a total failure,” “a dummy,” “unattractive”) and opponents ( Jeb Bush is “dumb as a rock”), but Trump attacks women (“fat pigs” and “slobs”) and war heroes (“I like people who weren’t captured,” he said famously of John McCain).

And then there is Rupert Murdoch. He owns and directs news organizations worldwide that do dishonour to the profession, and have a bigger reach and influence than many people are comfortable with, but he insists on tweeting his own nasty, ill-informed and off-the-cuff thoughts on Twitter.

It begs the question: do these men and their ilk legitimize such behaviour?

Do regular folk feel they can attack Muslims or Mexicans because the likes of billionaires such as Trump and Murdoch do?

Are we becoming a society of nasty Internet trolls, piling on because it’s trendy and fun?

Has political correctness been replaced by widespread nastiness? Whatever criticisms you might legitimately have of the former, the ramifications of the latter are too frightening to contemplate.

Kindness, like maliciousness, is contagious. Malevolence will not make the world a better place.