UK GUARDIAN WEBSITE: RECALCITRANT ISRAELI SETTLERS SHOULD BE “SLAUGHTERED”
http://www.robinshepherdonline.com/guardian-website-contributor-says-that-recalcitrant-israeli-settlers-should-be-slaughtered-in-latest-example-of-a-new-phenomenon-in-great-britain/#more-1966
Guardian website contributor says that recalcitrant Israeli settlers should be “slaughtered†in latest example of a new phenomenon in Great Britain
One of the new realities of the internet age for the mainstream media is that the distinction between an opinion piece and the readers’ comments which come below it is increasingly blurred. This is all the more so for interactive sites such as the Guardian’s immensely popular Comment is free (Cif) site where regular “below the line†contributors are now as much a part of the overall experience as the commentary to which they are responding. Such contributors help create the kind of interactive community which has become the new holy grail of online news and comment services.
So, when it comes to the Guardian’s notoriously vicious stance against the state of Israel it is hardly suprising that the community that has been created draws from among the foulest and most bigoted of the Jewish state’s numerous opponents. As an example, consider the following comment by regular below-the-line contributor William Bapthorpe which was brought to my attention by the invaluable media watchdog service CiF Watch. Referring to the settlers, in a thread following an article by Nicholas Blincoe, he said:
“Sadly, there’s only one way to deal with these religiously motivated maniacs who think their superstitious beliefs trump international law. 1. We ask them to leave their squats, kindly. 2. If they don’t, we force them to [leave] at gunpoint. 3. If they still refuse, they must be slaughtered, every last man woman and child.†(My italics)
If this were simply an isolated incident it would not be worth remarking on. Every website attracts its share of oddballs. But CiF Watch, which was set up last year to monitor a Guardian online community that attracts more than 30 million visits a month, provides reams of this sort of thing suggesting that at the intersection between the technological innovations of the new media and an ideological edifice which makes a fetish of demonising the most important Jewish project of our time an entirely new phenomenon has now emerged in Great Britain.
That phenomenon is nothing less than a self-confident community of anti-Semitic bigots right inside the mainstream of the British media. To be sure, the Guardian’s editorial team is aware of its legal obligations not to promote racial hatred, let alone incitement to murder. (Most contributors have cottoned on and use the familiar code words: “Zionistâ€, “lobbyistâ€, “neo-con†etc instead of “Jewâ€).
The comment referred to above was later removed though, according to CiF Watch, William Bapthorpe was not banned from further participation — a revealing stance by the editors since contributors are frequently banned merely for voicing politely worded comments which oppose the demonisation of Israel.
But the fate of one individual is of far less significance than the broader trend of which he is a part. For the dog-whistle incitement which has created this appalling community of anti-Semites comes from the relentless campaign against Israel which has been waged by the Guardian’s very own stable of writers. It is they who have set the tone with defamatory references to “apartheid†and, pace Slavoj Zizek in an article last August, even to Nazi Germany. It is they who whitewash the anti-Semitism which runs rife in Palestinian and Arab political culture. It is they who divorce all Israeli actions from the context in which they occur. It is they who deligitimise the Jewish state at every turn.
And they do all that while observing their best behaviour. That is what they feel confident about saying in public, fully trained to be aware of what the law will allow and what it will not.
But in the new age of the interactive website community what they will not say above the line now finds its vocal expression below the line from members of their very own community who feel somewhat less constrained.
The distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is of course a fine one. As I argue in my recent book, A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel, it is in any case specious to suggest that bigotry against the State of Israel is somehow acceptable, while old-fashioned anti-Semitism is not. Bigotry is bigotry regardless of what it is directed against.
And here’s the rub. The frantic and furious attempts by Guardian writers to defend themselves against charges of anti-Semitism on the grounds that their campaign of hatred is only being waged against Israel and not against Jews as such represents a fatal flaw in their claim to a rational political morality.
They legitimise and perpetuate bigotry of one sort, and then wax innocent in the presence of a related bigotry which emerges as the inevitable consequence of precisely what they themselves have legitimised and perpetuated.
In the analogue age it was possible to preserve the fiction. But no more. The digital age has revealed many things about the state of our media. The Guardian’s dirty little secret is just one of them.
To read the Cif Watch take on the Bapthorpe affair, click here:
http://cifwatch.com/2010/01/11/william-bapthorpe-unequivocally-advocates-the-murder-of-jews-on-blincoe-thread/
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