Leading to: What can I say about politicians?

Reflections

Last night, I ended up drinking hot chocolate in a Wetherspoons in Bexhill at umph oclock in the morning and found myself flipping through a magazine – gosh look, Spoons have their own magazine! It said that Spoons inform themselves about what people think by listening to their bar staff. It said that too many people are so terrified of being lambasted on TwitX that they never say anything they fear might be controversial, and that being lambasted on TwitX is usually followed by being lambasted in the mainstream press.

Crikey – I never thought of going to Spoons for social analysis. When the local train company finally managed to make a partial recovery from a traffic cone being dropped on the tracks miles away and hours ago, I finally got on a train that – oh, should have taken me all the way home but actually was planning to drop me a town away, because my town still hadn’t recovered from the traffic cone (which was also miles away from my town) so I settled down to read a book that someone had lent me, which, as it happens, was the one by Graham Linehan about being shafted by a world that’s scared of controversy. He says when people ask “how do you stand the abuse?” he replies, “I don’t see it.”

That, really, is the key. The thing about social media in particular and the internet in general is that you can switch it off and turn away any time you like and when you do, a whole world appears in front of you. It’s known on the internet as “IRL” and it’s always there with its never-failing invitation to come and join in, which is why I got on a train to London yesterday, and attended a book event I will be writing about shortly.

It’s been an interesting week for this blogger. It started by some twit misidentifying me as someone the Met were looking for, and “helpfully” adding a link to my blog, thus snarling up my comms for several days but as twit world gradually worked out their error, someone out there “helpfully” pointed out where that person actually lived, but also where I actually live.

Twitter mobs

I have a friend who’s active in the Jewish Socialist movement, and she and I have often compared how being visible in the women’s rights movement compares with being visible in the anti-Zionist movement. This week, I discovered the cross-over effect, as Twits who are only interested in chasing down any socialists they think are still in the Labour Party dropped out of the spamming of my systems and “trans- rights” activist Twits closed their eyes to the identification of placard-woman and attempted to double down on slandering me.

(Just in case any Twits are reading this, I assure you screenshots, sources and timings are being gathered in, and I’m keeping the police updated).

I have to say the level of detective work on Twitter is abysmal. I don’t know why the original poster decided it was me, but when someone suggested this woman was from Eastbourne, the twitter detectives considered that as proof it was me because I once wrote a blog article about Eastbourne Labour Women’s Forum. I don’t know how they decided I was a councillor. Maybe they found an article with the word “councillor” in it, too.

Judging by the hits that this 4-year-old post is still getting since the weekend, the slower moving Twits haven’t worked out yet that something’s gone wrong with their story. All in all, the Twits have scored zero out of ten as detectives and way below zero as responsible citizens.

Cops

Activists tend not to have a very high opinion of the police, with good reason sometimes but it’s worth mentioning something I learned recently – the police you see managing potentially controversial activism volunteer for that job. They do get a lot of options. The police you see carefully guiding a lost soul to safety in the midst of a mental health crisis have volunteered for that kind of job. The police who turn up with guns at stand offs have volunteered to do that, and so on. They are very, very different kinds of people.

In this particular situation, my local police force get ten out of ten for being attentive, concerned about my welfare and keeping up with what was going on.

Not sure about the Met, who when it comes down to it, started all this by putting “wanted” posters of people with placards they didn’t like out for the brainless Twit mob to play with but I suppose that’s the sort of thing short-staffed services have to do. The Met get the benefit of the doubt and five out of ten.

Sisterhood

In the meantime, in reply to the “are you okay?” and “how can I help?” messages from dozens of women and a few men, thank you, I tried to answer them all but as I probably missed some in the Twit-storm so: I’m doing okay although I would like to point out that large numbers of activists, mostly women, in particular Black and working class people who are nearer the edge anyway, have lost work and other things due to Twit-mobs and they really, really do need more help.

I’m no stranger to the problems Twit-mobs cause. I’ve been on the campaign for some years now, and have had problems like this before, and have helped to support others it has happened to. It’s never really hurt personally. The accusations are too far from the truth to hit home but it does add to the difficulties of life generally. It would be a whole lot worse if not for the shining brilliance of the nationwide network of women we have created. Before I had even noticed I was being spammed to bits, messages had come in from women at the helm of several women’s organizations saying “what do you need?” I had screenshots from fellow activists who had already followed the retweet lines and identified the source of the nonsense, solidarity threads to read in several online women’s groups and blog donations from women who thought I might need an extra coffee/wine/chocolate allowance this week.

Thank you, sisters! Where would we be without us? Sisterhood gets twenty out of ten. But there’s one more point I would really like to get on record.

Politicians

First, a quick word on the far right. One of the many points where I laughed out loud was that just when most Twits were working out their story had gone wrong, it was picked up and re-transmitted by a couple of Sun journalists and a couple of fascist organizations so there you are – the far-right media and politicians are similar to the others, but slower on the uptake.

As for the rest of them I really do not know what we’re going to do. By coincidence, I was at a gathering where a lot of fellow women’s rights activists had a chance to compare notes, and was reminded again of those politicians who, when the whole gender-ideology thing first raised its head, understood what was going wrong, showed a good understanding of how dangerous the “sex does not exist” line was for both women and children, and had seen the amount of bullying women were getting over the issue. Every single one dropped out of the debate and left it to us to take the flak when they realized it was going to be difficult.

To go back to the comparison I mentioned at the start, the women’s rights campaign and the Free Palestine campaign: as suitable leaders of our country and managers of our essential services, every single MP has now disqualified themselves in my eyes, either because they threw women’s legal rights and safeguarding for children under a bus in full knowledge of what was going down or else now, with the Palestine situation horrifying and distressing just about everyone, they are failing to recognize racism and colonialism leading to genocide in Gaza or – and this is worse – recognizing it and failing to see that it’s a primary duty of all politicians to drop what they’re doing, stand together and stand up for a ceasefire – in Gaza yes, but also in all the other global situations (there have been plenty) where power-mongers have set off, funded and supplied military actions that killed large numbers of civilians, including children and babies.

Is it too much to say we should hold out for politicians who will use their positions to stand up to bullies, defend the legal rights of the vulnerable and recognize that deliberately killing kids is wrong?

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