Sunday, February 15, 2009

Comment is free-for-all

I've just read the most incredible thread on LabourList about comments at Guido's website in his latest caption competition. I will add links later as I'm writing this post on a phone and then emailing it, but if you have a chance its worth looking at.

Basically there are demands for Iain Dale and ConservativeHome to remove their links to Guido as some of the comments made in the caption competition were 'racist'. I put that in quotes because some of the examples were not, in my view racist, whilst others were.

However the whole point of online discussions, be they via bulletin boards, IRC or blog comments is surely free debate, so I don't understand why they should be removed. Challenge them at source instead.

Strangely, the demands for link removal by Labourlist has not included the mainstream medias linkage to Guido, perhaps that is being demanded privately, who knows.

It's rather sad though that such fear of ideas and thoughts, however odious one might find them, actually exists at all. Rather than tackling the problem with argument, the scream of 'racist' goes up and the words are closed down.

It's almost as if there is this view that racism or any other prejudice can only be dealt with through speech prohibition. That is more wrong than the arguments being prohibited surely? It essentially states 'we are in charge of what you are allowed to think and say'.

With that said I thought I would clarify my comment policy once more. If you wish to be racist in the comments here. If you wish to mock the disabled or the terminally sick then you are free to do so. Likewise anyone that might be offended by your comments is free to bitchslap you verbally in response. That is what debate and being adult is all about.

If a comment of these sorts is made and I don't respond to it with outrage it does not mean I condone or support the comment. Evidence that I have not taken a contrary view is not evidence that I do not hold a contrary view. It is simply evidence that I'm lazy sometimes, or I have a life and better things to do.

It's worth noting that if you start demanding I take a view on something - either in the comments or by posting on another blog - that will be the quickest way to ensure that I don't. I'm quite stubborn you see and if you order me to take a view on something I will deliberately avoid doing so just to annoy you even more.

If you link to kiddie porn, warez or torrents of copyright protected content then you'll be deleted. If I think a comment is potentially libelous then it may get deleted. Apart from that you can say what you want.

UPDATE: Something which I missed this morning is the way Guido's caption competition choice this week is being touted as having been deliberately chosen to garner racist jokes.

On the contrary, it was chosen because the kid is holding a up green blob to Gordon's nose that looks like a bogey and we all know about Gordon and his nosepicking habits. Still, never worth letting the truth get in the way of a "OMFG look at the racists!" type Interweb hysteria.

25 comments:

Barnacle Bill said...

No please don't put any links to Dolly up - you don't want to encourage the otiose tonk this early on a Sunday!

Anonymous said...

Well said. If you constrain and prohibit discussion of sensitive areas it does not make the differences go away. People internalise their opinions and feel frustrated. Others are unaware of potential offence and continue to anoy. Eventually the pressure builds up with bad consequences for all.

I wish the whole PC movement and our repressive government would understand that there will be a day of reckoning, and their efforts to hid and deny will turn soluable differences into blood on the street.

BlueTechy said...

Wasn't this a standard Labour policy? Using the racism card to threaten people to do things!

Labour has pretty much called everyone in the UK racist at one point to get them to back down or shut up. It's just the way they are. Draper was one of the PR twats who came up with it no doubt.

Oh also, he can huff and puff but I'm pretty sure that he has no idea how the internet works, I expect to read him posting about tubes at some point.

Houdini said...

I find it incredible, amusing, laughable, risible and quite extraordinary that sleazy the qualification fiddler Draper should ?demandanything from anyone. Let's be clear and concise; why does this odious little know nothing think he is?

Look at his personal blog by the way as he now claims that he never said he was a clinical psychologist but is just a psychotherapist, which is strange as I seem to have seen a number of times when he claimed exactly that. He attacks people attacking him as he says it could affect his work with vulnerable and ill people...so why is he seeing them if he is not a clinical psychologist? He doesn't even seem to understand his own alleged profession.

I think his business and blog will die as even his supporters are getting pissed off with him.

Elby the Beserk said...

Draper also states that those Labour Party members who disagree with the direction of the party should be expelled.

LabourList, a place for Labour people to come together, and make complete twats of themselves.

Huge fun tho', watching Draper tell people they MUST do this and they MUST do that. Just who the fuck does he think he is (apart from knowing the 27 most influential people in the UK, of course).

What amazes me is that no-one in the Labour Party upper echelons has pulled the fool - he's making a tit of himself AND the Labour Party, in glorious public technicolour.

Michael said...

As said by Leg-Iron a few times, if they continually call people racists, or have a huge database of everything, how will they be able to weed out the real racists and criminals/terrorists? Madness.

Ashley Pomeroy said...

As I understand it, one of the most common blog attack methods in the US is to (a) create an account on the opposing blog and then (b) post inflammatory comments on that blog, or agree with and amplify existing inflammatory comments, so that you can (c) write an outraged post about the drama that ensues. Or, if the comments are already close to the bone, it is enough for a competitor to skim through the postings until he has twenty statements that would not go down well amongst polite company. That is how the "Little Green Footballs or Late German Fascists" site worked. The ultimate goal is to position the blog in the eyes of the mainstream media as a hate site, or at the very least as an unsound resource - not so much Oswald Mosley as Ross McWhirter - to the extent that the television news would think twice about inviting the blog's owner to comment about something on television or in the sunday magazine.

Dizzy Thinks seems to attract a decent mix of intelligent comments, perhaps because it is underneath the mainstream radar, but it would not take much for a determined left-wing competitor to engineer drama in the comments thread, and then selectively spin this into a story about hate sites in general. All the other man has to do is create a mental impression in the mind of a typical casual newspaper reader that the site is either openly racist, or a hotbed of racism, and the result will be that the site's owner will find himself with a limited range of media outlets with which to spread his message.

Scouse & Proud #jft96 said...

Draper is not fit to write a blog post, much less minister to those with emotional problems. I don't know what I ever took him to bed for.

I have a plan which might just upset Dolly... Details when the deed is done.

PrimeMentalist said...

It appears that the closer we get to Guido publishing more revelations about Dollys Lucky Packet qualifications - the shriller Dolly gets. His site now seems to be there solely as a platform for his bile against people who have called him names. I feel desperately sorry for his patients - not only does their therapist appear to have dodgy qualifications, but his most erudite response to criticism appears to be 'nyah nyah nyah'

Oldrightie said...

It would be great if everybody ignored Draper!

jailhouselawyer said...

"It essentially states 'we are in charge of what you are allowed to think and say'".

This is similar to the Sun trying to make a big issue out of what prisoners read in their prison libraries. And, Dominic Grieve's knee-jerk response, and Knee-jerk Jack Straw's response. Today in the Guardian/Observer, Eric Allison concludes his piece bystating that next they will be telling prisoners what to think.

Hairy Ricky said...

Just remember the most intolerant people in this country are the ones who preach 'tolerance'. Dolly is just like his sleazy hypocritical party. They can't ban the public's opinions, but they'll certainly try and ban them giving it...if it differs from their own.

Anonymous said...

I am a collossal racist, I fucking hate lazy, useless, feckless, spendaholic, one eyed, trouser wetting Scots

Anonymous said...

your dizzythinks email's not working

Andrew Zalotocky said...

It's nothing to do with any actual racism. Guido has been a constant thorn in the government's side so Labour spin doctor Draper is trying to discredit him with accusations of racism. It's not a "fear of ideas and thoughts", it's a cynical attempt to destroy an opponent through personal attacks.

Jabba the Cat said...

Racism, as defined by the PC brigade and their useful idiot fellow travellers, is alive and kicking amongst normal people and nicely stoked every time some idiot like Dolly uses the term in public, usually in an attempt to suppress free speech as demonstrated in the Guido caption nonsense last Friday.

Jabba is reminded of the communist regimes in the east bloc of Europe that similarly tried to ban and eradicate free speech and thought amongst the population, it merely put such matters underground.

Anonymous said...

Every prick screams the R word when they run out of brain.

When I hear some self righteous dork use the word now, my ears filter it out, it's called being desensitised.

OT Some creature over on Mrs Dales was calling him the r word repeatedly, and he let their posts stand and deleted my post defending him, so fuck him.

Anonymous said...

On his blog Dolly accuses Guido apologists of being 'Window Lickers'. He must know, after three years at collage(sic) in Berkeley USA, that this is a slang term for people with a mental illness. Come on Dolly fess up and admit that you are as un PC as any of Guido's posters.

Chris Paul said...

Mostly I agree Dizzy, and I'm certainly not about to remove my link and regular references to GuF's crudulous bloggings.

However, it is fair to say that Guido will have had a very good idea what sort of jottings his "window lickers" would come up with given the image.

And they didn't let him down.

Draper should apply his copious comms esp. listening training to the issue of communication and persuasion via Web 2.0. He will then calm down, regroup and possibly make more sense.

Anonymous said...

FFS, this was all about draper lying on his CV and being found out.

His "play the racism card" diversion appears to have been quite successful. Shows how dumb we are.

But all it really demonstrates is how low this sewer rat will go to protect his minor 'serious' celebrity status and the coin it brings in.

Racism, or any other serious issue for that matter, this liar does not give s**t one about. (Unless he spies an opportunity to use a serious issue as a convenient tool in his ruthless, deceitful project of self-promotion, as in the case of the Guido spat).

People need to recognise all evidence points to the fact that Draper is basically a very dishonest man.

And, consequently, we must also accept that he's the perfect champion of the "Nulab" junta in its death throes. He stands for everything they do - and are.

Don't worry, folks, they'll all be gone soon. So, chin up!

Anonymous said...

'British jobs for British workers'.

Does this pass the 'R' test?

Houdini said...

"window lickers"...

Typical Labour supporter...still whining and breast beating over Staines, and defending Draper, yet insists on continuing to resort to offensive terms like this.

Hypocrites all.

Anonymous said...

F**k'im

David Hadley said...

Why is everyone so prejudiced against racists?

Isn't it about time those on the left took up arms against this sheer callous unthinking discrimination?

Anonymous said...

Are simply Psychological binds, designed to stop people challenging the destruction of Western civilisation.
Vladimir Bukovsky warns of EU Totalitarianism