It's time to rein in the online hatemongers
Taoiseach Simon Harris and Minister for Justice Helen McEntee holding a media briefing at Government Buildings last week. Picture: Leah Farrell / © RollingNews.ie
I’m not a Facebook fan so I seldom get to see what goes up there. However, I hear that the column in which I adverted to my recent brush with medical fame elicited responses from a bunch of readers who wished me well and a speedy recovery. All I can say is thank you all very much. And that includes the correspondent who disagrees with my take on migrants. I have no problem with people who disagree with me. My problem is with people who take the law into their own hands to prove that they are right and no other opinion counts.
We have seen, over this past few weeks, what happens when people set out to prove they know best. Belfast has once again been set ablaze, the PSNI have been attacked, small businesses in Muslim communities have been ransacked and set on fire and, of course, just in case there might be any doubt, Coolock joined in to say 'no'.
I’m not so sure the UDA who, according to the police, are behind the riotous behaviour of recent times are all that thankful to the Coolock brigade. The UDA tend to reject any help from south of the border. If I was part of the Coolock brigade I would be slow enough to extend the hand of friendship to the UDA. The UDA has a record of dishonest and often tragic interference in events in Northern Ireland and to use the idiom that has taken hold in recent years, they haven’t gone away you know. The Coolock desperadoes would do well to remember the recent and no so recent history of the UDA.
It seems to me that we were lucky that our Olympians and especially those who struck gold or bronze created a sense of wellbeing, bonhomie and good humour this side of our blighted border and this spiked the guns of those who would create an atmosphere of sectarianism and hatred down here.
Our returning Olympians will keep the atmosphere calm and quiet for another week or so but I would not be confident that the hate mongers will be kept quiet for long. We should, I suppose, be thankful for small mercies and be thankful to our Olympians for creating the sense of calm and goodwill that has kept the rioters at bay here.
I see where the Mayor of Nagasaki has upset the Israelis by telling them they are not welcome to attend the ceremonies marking the anniversary of the dropping of the Fat Man Atom bomb on the city on August 9, 1945. The Mayor took the stand to highlight the ongoing destruction of Gaza at the hands of the Israeli people.
The bomb in Nagasaki killed 30,000 to 40,000 directly and it is estimated that another 40,000 died as a result of thermal flash burns and long-term diseases relating to the exposure of people to the blast waves generated by the bomb. The Nagasaki bomb brought Japan to its knees. The entire world reeled at the destruction wrought by the explosion. Japan surrendered and the world was left to debate the morality of using such a weapon.
As of this moment, Israel has killed 40,000 Palestinians, at least, in Gaza. Perhaps as many as 30,000 Palestinians will die from starvation or lack of medical facilities over the next year or so as Israel continues to pursue and destroy Hamas. One would have thought, on the law of averages, that the ten thousand Hamas “terrorists” should have been obliterated by the Israelis forces with their precise and surgical strikes in Gaza. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the Israelis were not too concerned about who they killed.
The death toll in Gaza has now reached Nagasaki proportions and the world stands idly by. The reaction of the G7 - Canada, US, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and (unofficially) the EU - to the Nagasaki Mayor’s decision to blackball Israel has been to blackball the ceremony in Nagasaki. What wonderful people we have in charge of looking after the world. Perhaps it is time we gave the Chinese (or whoever) responsibility for looking after world affairs. They could not make a worse fist of it than the current bunch. It is clear that Joe Biden and the big European economies have given up on Netanyahu and he is free to do as he pleases in Gaza. It is also clear that the people of Israel, or the vast majority of them, will do nothing to stop Netanyahu and the IDF.
It was good to see the ladies senior football final. It was not a great watch for Galway supporters. Their team was hit for a goal just before the break and it meant that Galway were under pressure to respond with a goal of their own. They tried hard to break down the Kerry defence seeking to secure the goal when points were available for the taking. It was a tactic that was doomed to fail.
However, despite the fact that the outcome was never in doubt and Kerry won easily, the game offered hope that football can again become a decent and enjoyable spectacle. Jack O’Connor should take note. The Kerry ladies showed how the measured kick forward can break down defences and lead to scores. It was refreshing to behold.
So, our Taoiseach, his wife and children are under threat of murder. The threat was posted online on Instagram. Despite a call by the Gardaí to have the post removed it remained available to the public for a number of days. While it has now disappeared, it is not clear if it continues to be available to those with access to a special account.
The Taoiseach says he will not be deterred from doing his job. Great. Well, it seems to me that part of his job should be to put an end to this ability of people to get up on a social media platform and threaten to kill or spew hatred and vitriol on all and sundry without, it would seem, any recourse to the law for those the subject of threat or victims of hate crimes.
I admit to minor reservations about our new Taoiseach. He is a great man to talk but increasingly the more he says the less relevant his contributions are. Of course, he won’t be deterred from doing his job but I would like to hear, and so would many more ordinary citizens like myself, what is he going to do about bringing the online media owners to task. What is he going to do to make these media outlets subject to sanction when they publish content that is glaringly defamatory in many cases and, more sinister when it involves incitement to violence and gives licence to thugs to operate without fear of the consequences?
Making the online companies accountable for their content should not be beyond the wit of government. Yet, despite much talk and an apparent willingness to rein in the online companies, nothing has happened.
Well, nothing positive has happened. If anything, the online people have become emboldened by the failure of the government to act and have, more or less, told them to get stuffed.
Don’t count the days…. make the days count.
