Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District

Orgy of online nastiness marks Prince’s death

- Robert Barman The KM Group columnist with his own look at the world By Robert Barman rbarman@thekmgroup.co.uk

Swimming in the sewer that is social media, the aftermath of the Duke of Edinburgh’s death was never going to be an appealing spectacle. Within minutes of the announceme­nt, the usual hard left ‘radicals’ who variously describe themselves as ‘caring’ or ‘humanitari­an’ were scrambling to outdo each other for rank unpleasant­ness. After all, what’s more humanitari­an and caring than rejoicing at the death of a 99-yearold man, or expressing disappoint­ment that he had died peacefully, as one so-called journalist felt moved to write.

Yeah, power to the people, comrade. Among many low points in this orgy of nastiness was the abuse directed at Barack Obama after his rather lovely tribute to Prince

Philip, with some even accusing the former US president of ‘racism’, thereby managing the spectacula­r feat of devaluing the word even more than they have already.

The Duke of

Edinburgh has long been a soft target for our easily outraged moral guardians and

Obama was apparently guilty of ‘enabling’ him

(as far as it’s possible to

‘enable’ someone just after they’ve died).

Just so we’re clear, a man who fought actual Nazis in the

Second World War, and the first black president of the US, are the problem here, not the white, middle class ‘intellectu­als’ and self-righteous keyboard warriors, whose own contributi­on to race relations and ‘activism’ amounts to a petty argument on Twitter, played out to a peak audience of 12 equally bored people?

Some of the dull-witted offerings ‘celebratin­g’ the Duke of Edinburgh’s death almost made you wish they could have met him face to face to see who came off best. Not in a fist fight, more in a verbal exchange of views, although I’m sure he’d have been sorely tempted to resort to the former and add to the long list of ‘inappropri­ate’ behaviour that some are using as an excuse for their own warped prejudices.

‘Just so we’re clear, a man who fought actual Nazis, and the first black president of the US, are the problem here, not the white, middle class intellectu­als?’

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