A ‘snowflake’ lost in avalanche of insults
WHEN I started writing columns – and it was so long ago The Wicked Witch was in power – you knew where you stood with insults.
Readers would send you letters and drinkers would shout across pubs words I may not have agreed with but understood: “Commie git, champagne socialist, loony leftie, tree-hugger, Trot, dirty pinko, whinging Scouser.”
And the fact that most of you are nodding and thinking “they really had him sussed back then” only proves my point.
Today, with the bulk of insulting done on social media, although I welcome all-comers, I struggle with many of the meanings. Recently I’ve been called a “lib-tard, c** kwomble, snowflake, metropolitan elitist, trans-phobe, globalist” and my favourite “a w*** puffin”.
I ran a few past my 14-year-old, and when it came to snowflake she said it could mean two things: “Someone who gets upset too easily or someone who’s too right-on.”
I asked her if she thought I was either and she said “work it out yourself, you sad lib-tard” before getting back on her phone. Which left me even more confused. But I’m not alone. Two national newspapers this week mocked students as “snowflakes” for deciding that Frankenstein’s monster was a misunderstood victim. When it was pointed out that was exactly how the author Mary Shelley wanted him to be seen, one paper ran a joke apology. We’ve become a very confused nation which is understandable when you see all the bad blood still being spilt over a referendum that happened almost two years ago. And before you scream “metropolitan elitist” at me, I’m referring to both sides. During that EU referendum so many lies were told and so few facts brought to voters’ attention, people in both camps were reduced to filling the intellectual vacuum with stereotypical insults. In the chaotic fallout, and in the absence of any real progress or few other issues outside Europe being discussed, those insults have deepened. You only have to watch Question Time, or see the hysterical headlines on certain newspapers to realise the quality of debate has been lost. Brexit has split the country into two tribes and whenever there’s a square-up both just want to throw muck at each other.
If you voted to stay, you’re seen as a bitter Remoaner, an Enemy of the People, a traitor, a saboteur or an anti-democrat who won’t accept the nation’s will. If you voted to leave you’re called a racist, a bigot, a fascist, a Little Englander, a selfish wrinklie or a thicko. And although some of those insults may have truth in them, we know in our hearts many are over-the-top caricatures. I have a mate with better educational qualifications than me and one who is more left-wing than me, who both voted Leave. So how can this Remainer label them all thickos and fascists?
Jacob Rees-Mogg and Iain Duncan Smith married into aristocracy and Nigel Farage is a public schooleducated ex-City banker yet they have the gall to label anti-Brexiteers elitist.
We’ve become a split nation defined not by what we love and want but what we hate and what we don’t want the other tribe to get. No wonder outsiders don’t recognise us right now.
Especially when International Trade Secretary Liam Fox gave a keynote speech this week in which he accused the EU of acting towards Britain like gangsters.
Get a grip, you c**kwombling snowflake.
We’re split into two tribes who want to throw muck at each other