Time we woke up to terror of social media’s PC thugs
Confession time: I’m rubbish at Twitter. Friends have often asked why I have such a scrawny presence on the big T, given how punchy some of my views are. Why don’t I tweet my indignation, they ask? Crack jokes? Express opinions? The answer is simple. I’m scared. Properly terrified.
When I started out I was a rubbish tweeter largely because I wasn’t good at concision. I found it hard to be funny in 140 characters, and I blame myself for that. But now I blame the wider world for my anaemic, cautious approach. By which I mean I blame the spread of a culture fostering a vicious, seething miasma of internet-enabled ruthless bullies, whose appetite for exacting vengeance against the politically incorrect – or simply those they disagree with – knows no bounds. They seem to have no feelings (apart from anger).
Their brave new world is like a horror movie. A 24/7 vortex of denigration, destruction and punishment. Simply being caught in a Twitter crossfire means snarky put-downs and being told you’re a worthless idiot. Getting the full firing-squad treatment is a different level. That’s when the snarling scorn of thousands and a barrage of endless personal insults is polished off with professional decapitation, ostracisation, and erasure.
The big thing about the new online militias, and particularly those in its woke, Lefty platoons, is that they’re as thorough as they are ruthless in their politically correct thuggery.
It’s not just what you say or do in the present that gets you blacklisted (scary) – it’s what ar
you have said, done or written anywhere, at any time, in the past (terrifying).
It’s this that prompted journalist Toby Young to highlight “archaeologists of offence” last week. It was the perfect term for our times, describing how those driven by wokeist zealotry go after anyone they don’t like by digging into their past for “bad” things they’ve said or written.
But could the woke be waking up? Last week saw a video from YouTube channel Double Down News go viral. Called The Problem With Wokeness, it featured a young black hipster called Ayishat Akanbi, who delivered a brilliant meditation on why the movement has gone too far.
“Wokeness has robbed many a people of compassion and replaced it with moral superiority,” she noted, acutely. Indeed.