You’re probably familiar with the Daily Mail’s historic support for fascism. Two headlines in particular stand out:
Youth Triumphant!
An editorial in 1933 that praised Hitler’s regime and was subsequently asdopted by the Nazis as part of their own propaganda.
and
Hurrah for the Blackshirts!
The Mail’s ringing endorsement in 1934 of Oswald Mosley’s British fascists.
With some prescience, the Spectator at the time not only condemned the Mail’s Nazi sympathies, but made a special point of seeing an especially close connection between the Mail and its readers:
_ “…the Blackshirts, like the Daily Mail, appeal to people unaccustomed to thinking. The average Daily Mail reader is a potential Blackshirt ready-made.”_
So what do you think happened when anonymous researchers posted Nazi propaganda under present-day Daily Mail articles? The sentences were lifted word for word from Hitler’s speeches, Mein Kampf and other Nazi niceties. All that was changed was the word ‘Jews’ for ‘migrants’.
I am not surprised at all. A little ashamed, but not surprised. I think we’ve only ourselves to blame. The media has stoked up Islamophobia to a huge extent, which has allowed all kinds of racists to crawl out of the woodwork and claim some legitimacy because they’re in step with official rhetoric. The EDL did precisely this; saying that they were all about protecting Britain from the evils of Islamic extremism, despite having to shop around the world to find examples of it.
This is what happens when fear is in the political arsenal, exacerbated by external factors such as recessions, lack of money, etc. The article doesn’t mention too many of those, or the parallels with the Weimar Republic. We may not be paying back war reparations, but whack that banker’s bill up, and the effect is much the same; a lot of the money we’re earning is going straight to someone else. You’ve got the likes of UKIP getting millions of votes. People are looking for someone to blame for the problems that their governments have caused, yet seem incapable of looking at government itself. We’re in our fourteenth consecutive year of “Fear of the Other” politics, made shitloads worse by the fact that we happen to have millions of Muslims living in this country. Combine that with the embers of traditional racism, and no, I am not really surprised that these people exist, or that they express or condone such views.
Of course, the thing that’s really going to fuck with your head is how many of those upvotes originated from people intimately familiar with the source material.
I’m not even sure the Daily Mail troglodytes are the worst. Here’s a trick: whenever the Telegraph publishes a story about London - espiecally if it’s about leaving the city or deciding against - have a look at the comments below. The majority will be fulminating about a hatred of anyone black or Asian. I mean real, I’d-kill-then-if-I-could hatred. They’re not really complaining about the city - they loathe the very idea of non-white faces. And this, keep in mind, is on a moderated site. Here’s an example from just yesterday.
What goes on below articles can seem very Orwellian. The Guardian, which is quite heavily moderated, is fighting a losing battle against an endless tide of spam from Russian and Syrian (pro-)government sources which floods the comments columns whenever stories about either country is run in the paper.
Comments sections have become such targets that the Guardian, if judged by the comments under the articles, can sometimes seem barely distinguishable from the Telegraph. There’s a war going on below these articles, and it’s amazing and frightening how seriously it’s taken.
Heh. If you look at the Guardian’s comment section now, the main war is the one going on between the pro-Cooper paper and its pro-Corbyn leadership.
The battle you speak of is far from restricted to comments sections. Why would it be?
There are constant battles on all forms of social media. Facebook. Twitter. Reddit. Comments sections. Internet forums. Anyone doing cyber is doing it properly, and certainly not constraining themselves to one particular service.
You’re probably being sarky, but just as insurance I’m not making some great demand for anything really, I’m merely observing.
By contrast to attitudes in the Mail, Telegraph, etc., take a look at the readers’ comments in this article about transgender people making a fuss of the national flag. The article is from today’s Dawn, a Pakistani newspaper founded by Jinnah.
Im not sure what your point is. Are you saying that Pakistan is a more tolerant country that the UK? That they don’t abuse freedom of speech like we do here?
The comments in the story are lovely, but I doubt very much they are reflective of Pakistani society. What they may indicate is:
The readership of the Dawn is liberal
The non liberal folk couldn’t give a fuck about the the Dawn
Access to the Internet is limited so not every Tom, Dick and Harry can post whatever they wish on the comments sections of papers
The Pakistanis who read English papers have a different mindset to those who read papers in Urdu.
the list of possibilities is endless…can you clarify your point please. I’ve drunk a bottle of wine and had my mind numbed by Villa vs Man Utd.
Just like this unmoderated board is full of reasonable people who don’t abuse the freedom of (fucking) speech. However, we aren’t true reflections of saints fans.
Why should we be? I’m not making any great societal point here: you can’t ‘read off’ a country from such a narrow sample of views. I’m making nothing more than observations about the kindness of strangers, or lack of it. The Nazi experiment drew certain responses which I found shocking, but maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.
I saw a comedian called Tony Jameson today, one of the best bits from his set was his description of Daily Mail readers as (to paraphrase) - “People who are racist, but also enjoy reading about celebrities that have got fat”. Leaf through a copy of the DM and you’ll be surprised about how little of the content is actual “news” and how much of it plays to the little-Englander mindset. It’s brainwashing in its purest form.
Funnily enough I saw this article on their website the other day - they decided to have a pop at 2 off duty police officers for…wait for it…SWIMMING! And not even when they were on duty! HOW DARE THEY SWIM IN THEIR SPARE TIME!!!11