The gutless cowards of cyberspace

As the mob were attacking the police in Bristol last night, I found myself getting engaged on twitter. I condemned the anarchists and thugs who shamed our great city and waited for the backlash from the twittersphere and boy did it come! Here are some examples:

“That’s right the cops are dicks”

“Maybe shouldn’t have kettled the protestors with dogs and horses if they didn’t want any kind of retaliation. Just a thought”

“Makes a change to several people being seriously Injured by thug police officers”

“Nick, if I wanted to hear from an arse hole I’d just rip a really big fart” (a reply to TV presenter Nick Knowles who condemned the rioters)

“The poor angelic police force”

“I bet the women attending last weekends candlelight vigil are gutted” (referring to injuries suffered by police officers)

“Jick Rohansensensen” (I have no idea what this means)

“Well they do until the protestors fight back and set fire to their station yeah” (a reply to this – “In other words let the thugs do whatever the hell they want” – referring to police officers as thugs.)

Now this is just the stuff that appeared on my own timeline, so imagine what else has been said on twitter. Sometimes, twitter can be a joyous place. Last night, it was a cesspit of hate.

Before you say, “Why bother to even be on twitter if it’s that hateful?” then I ask you not to concern yourselves with my well-being. The abuse and, just occasionally and not this time, the threats are water off a duck’s back to me. Much of a lifetime spent in the Labour and Trade Union movement has, to a large extent, toughened me up to the self-styled hard men, it’s usually men, in cyberspace. I picture them in my mind as skinny, spotty, privately educated anarcho-syndicalist, ex students who can’t get a girlfriend and wouldn’t say Boo! to a goose, mind a police officer. I engage when I want to, when it suits me, on my terms, never theirs.

Few of them reveal their true identities on twitter, a practice which in my opinion should be banned, and many of them profess to be – surprise! surprise! – supporters of Jeremy Corbyn. (Kids: ask your parents who he was. If they don’t know, he was a cranky old nobody who presided over hate and intolerance while apparently promising a “kinder, more gentle” country. ) And I know who they are, albeit not individually, because I have seen their like on marches and protests over the years. They are the anti-Israelis who march against Jews on a Friday night in Bristol and the rape-friendly middle class comrades from the Socialist Workers Party.

Above all with twitter, I don’t want them to “win” and so drive others away, which would obviously be their preferred aim. Yes, I know it doesn’t really matter because what is said on social networks one day is forgotten the next but as long as it doesn’t bother me, or cause me to lose one second’s sleep, I’ll engage the cowardly hot-heads on my terms.

If twitter is anything to go by, the vast majority of the public is in favour of the violent attacks on the police last night. I very much doubt that to be the case, but that’s another reason for carrying on. There’s so much hate out there, we can’t let it win. Saying nothing is not an option.