EILIS O’HANLON
Those who call for a kinder, more respectful form of political dialogue should start with themselves, writes Eilis O’Hanlon
NATURE abhors a vacuum. Tragedy hates one even more. Within moments of the attack on British Labour MP Jo Cox, social media was full of people not only seeking more information on the shooting of this young woman, but commenting on possible motives. It was only a matter of time before the conspiracy theorists flocked to fill the information gap.
Within hours, reacting to reports that the murder had been carried out by a man shouting “Britain first”, some fringe commentators concluded that this must have been a so-called “false flag” attack carried out by forces in the British establishment who were panicked by the rise in support for a “Brexit” from the European Union in Thursday’s vote.
Such conspiracy theories proliferate in the aftermath of a tragedy like toadstools in a damp cellar. They’re easily identifiable as deranged, and a firewall of common sense stops them spreading too far — but what if the idiocy isn’t quite so obvious?
In the immediate aftermath of Ms Cox’s death, there was a rush to interpret the event as an inevitable consequence of the divisive debate in Britain between those who want to remain in the EU and those who want to leave. This quickly led in turn to a belief that those who’ve warned about the dangers of unrestrained immigration had heightened tensions to such an extent that they had effectively encouraged a lone wolf racist into murdering pro-EU campaigners such as the MP for Batley and Spen.
It was a shameless attempt to make capital out of a tragic incident which had been condemned by politicians of all persuasions, every one of whom is as vulnerable to the same terrifying violence when doing their jobs.
When Donald Trump used last weekend’s massacre at an Orlando gay club to “prove” that he was “right”, he was immediately accused by his opponents of being a crass, self-serving, insensitive ghoul. But really, what was the difference between his opportunism and theirs?
Soon the demand went out that those who want Britain to leave the EU or reduce immigration should moderate their language to avoid inspiring potential extremists — and this was coming from people who, with a total dearth of self-awareness, were simultaneously comparing Nigel Farage and others in the Leave camp to Nazis.
Drawing a direct moral equivalence between the Leave campaign and the savage murder of a young MP is akin to pouring fuel on a fire whilst condemning those alleged to have lit it.
Is that not problematic language too? Or is it only those on the other side who have to bite their tongues when criticising their opponents?
Those on the self-styled progressive Left always talk as if it’s the other side which uses extremist, dehumanising language, but social media is rife with users shrieking about the Tories as if they were barely human in the recognised sense. This isn’t a fringe activity of the few, but a thread that has run throughout the Left since the days of Margaret Thatcher, an individual whose dementia and death they openly celebrated, to the extent of starting a campaign to get Ding, Dong, The Witch Is Dead from The Wizard Of Oz to Number One in the charts in the week of her funeral.
In Ireland, Fianna Fail were vilified in the same way after the crash; and when Fine Gael and Labour continued the pro-austerity policies of their predecessors, they got it too. Former Labour leader Joan Burton has been subjected to equally horrendous treatment, while there are many prominent Irish tweeters with angelic reputations for politically correct virtue who have no compunction about tossing words such as “racist”, “sexist, “misogynist” and “homophobe” at anyone with the audacity to disagree with them. It’s invariably framed as a response to the purported extremism of the people that they’re denigrating, but to routinely call someone a misogynist or homophobe is to dehumanise them too.
Is this not also encouraging the toxification of public debate?
What can be done about it? Not much. It may even be unhealthy to democracy to try and stop it. People have a right to be angry, and free and open expression of ideas, even if it sometimes goes too far, is always better than the alternative.
The worst possible response would be to outlaw certain ideas uncomfortable to the establishment as too dangerous to even be expressed. Joan Burton even talked last week about “putting an end to the abuse women politicians are subjected to on social media”.
Women in public life do sometimes receive rape or death threats online when they speak out on certain issues, but threatening to rape or murder someone is already a criminal offence, whatever the medium of communication. As such, enforcement of the law is needed, not new rules.
Burton asks what sort of society we want. Well, not one which polices free speech in order to eradicate insults and invective as well as actual threats. There’s a huge danger that legislation to put manners on the internet, as proposed in recent times by former Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte and former Senator Lorraine Higgins, could easily be misused by politicians to stamp down on uppity oiks who dare to say boo to the political goose. Words are not the problem.
Burton may be right to say that “politics in Ireland is rapidly becoming tarnished by poisonous political rhetoric”, but who gets to decide which statements are “poisonous rhetoric” and which are simply part of the cut and thrust of healthy debate? When Sinn Fein’s Mary Lou McDonald, speaking in the Dail, complained about “chaos and failure” in the health service and said the then Tanaiste’s support for Government policy was “obscene”, Burton’s over-thetop response was to accuse her fellow deputy of unleashing a “tsunami of hatred and invective against me”. It was no such thing, but, in saying it was, Burton was encouraging her sympathisers to see McDonald as malign rather than just combative.
Likewise, when Burton referenced “very well-off schools, fee paying schools” in the Dail, before turning to Mary Lou and saying “you’d be familiar with those”, why was that not encouraging a climate of personalised insults too? The SF deputy leader can hardly be held responsible for the school to which her parents sent her as a child.
Politicians’ right to take the odd cheap shot at their opponents should be vigorously defended — Mary Lou can give as good as she gets — but it highlights again how everyone is inclined only to think of themselves as the victim of personalised invective, never the perpetrator. Labour has plenty of online keyboard warriors being equally venomous to its enemies as those enemies are to Joan Burton. Those who call for a kinder, gentler politics should begin with themselves.
A good start would be not to leap on that poor woman’s death in England in order to further one’s own political agenda.
‘Free and open expression of ideas is always better than the alternative’