If you put the words ‘homosexual’ and ‘Africa’ into the same blog title, there is every chance that you’ll get a load of right-wing sad sacks with too much time on their hands leaving comments that vary from ‘gay is a disease and we are the cure’ to ‘the bloody Africans should be grateful to us for giving them Christianity’. And so it is with this blog from Tim Stanley, which on the face of things, seems reasonable enough. Here’s a snippet.
The snub to the outside world is important. Some African politicians argue that homosexuality is a Western import and gay rights a form of neo-colonialism – a way of exerting Western cultural influence on innocent, “God-fearing” countries. The argument goes that African societies have always been historically 100 per cent straight. An explosion in gays and lesbians is a recent thing, encouraged by foreign powers.
Doc Stanley’s efforts are like a red rag to the proverbial bull. The number of ignorant and offensive remarks left on the comments thread are too numerous to mention and I found it difficult to choose one in particular. Needless to say, there was the inevitable traipse into victimhood with, “Oh, so it’s all whitey’s fault”. Some commenters even tell the Doc to leave this country and go and live in Africa. Yes, this is the level of intelligence we’re dealing with here. I’ve heard Telegraph blogs being likened to a bear-pit. Frankly I think a bear-pit is a much kinder place.
This week’s comment was left by “molly black”, who saw an opportunity to launch into an attack on her favourite obsession: Muslims.
You can always tell what kind of person is making the comment by the way they use outdated words and terminology. Here, the word “Moslem” is used. “Yes, Moslems practice sodomy – we know that” says molly authoritatively. Nothing like a good old fashioned smear from the Middle Ages, eh? But who is “we”? I suspect “molly slackwit” is referring to the BNP or similar, in which case her use of the pronoun “we” is being used selectively to imply a consensus. Then there’s the much loved phraseological style of the typical right-winger: cram all your hatred into a single sentence by using as many clichés as possible, thus “molly” produces, “professional placard-carrying, mincing queen”. The beauty of this phrase is that you can replace “mincing queen” with “dirty layabout” or “soap-dodger” and voila, you’ve got a handy phrase for expressing your hatred of student protesters. Try it at home with whatever minority group takes your fancy. It’s so easy!
The comment beneath “molly” also interested me. Mainly because the commenter uses the name “indigenousbrit” in an ahistorical manner that not only evidences a lack of self-consciousness and erudition, but also because they crown it off by displaying Enoch Powell as their avatar. No prizes for guessing how this person feels about ethnic minorities.
There’s more white male heterosexual victimhood on this comments thread than you can shake a stick at. Welcome to the sewer.
Telegraph Comment of the Week (#28)
On Monday, Dan ‘Tribal Loyalty’ Hodges, the Telegraph’s Blairite-in-residence, attempted to write something objective about the BBC. But as anyone will tell you: the right – especially those who leave comments on Telegraph blogs – hates the BBC, because of its imagined ‘left-wing’ bias. Hodges’s blog: “The BBC isn’t anti-Tory. It’s anti-government” sounds like it should be anti-authority, maybe even counter-cultural, but rather predictably, it is anything but.
He kicks off with,
Groovy. So what is this really about?
The thing is, Dan, that apparent ‘drop’ in the numbers of unemployed is entirely concocted. You’re forgetting the numbers of people who’ve been sanctioned, forced into workfare, working ‘self-employed’ and all those other people who are on zero hours contracts. Then there are all the part-time workers who want to work full-time but can’t because the jobs aren’t there. You’re not exactly playing with a full deck. Are you, Dan?
Two paragraphs down and we get to the real point of the blog.
Oh dear. Yes friends, the Today programme hasn’t done what it was supposed to do: suck up to the government, which it does every day without fail.
But hang on, what’s this?
Dan, if this is your idea of trying to persuade your headbanging readers to accept the BBC is anything other than ‘left-wing’ you’re wasting your time. Oh and god damn those liberals! Yeah. That’s a sentiment that even this week’s commenter, CassandraKing, can agree with.
“CassandraKing” then claims that the BBC turned into “North Korean TV” in their coverage of the death of Nelson Mandela. I hate to tell you this, Cass, but Mandela was a better politician than Thatcher. In fact, Mandela fought a struggle against oppression. Thatcher fought on behalf of the oppressors. She hated unions, unless they happened to be in Poland and she defended apartheid.
Tony Benn is next for the Cassandra treatment. She whines “The BBC will allow no demonstrators or critics airtime”. First, let me ask “what demonstrators”? Right doesn’t do demonstrations because it doesn’t need to. I mean, just look at the Rally Against Debt a few years ago. The right couldn’t even muster two hundred supporters for an issue about which it was apparently passionate. Not even Toby Young could be arsed to turn up. No doubt about it, “Cassandra”, like many right-whingers is playing the victim here.
“CassandraKing” closes with the standard “the BBC is the mouthpiece of extremist left/green axis”. The “left/green axis”, eh? The BBC? Yeah, right. Only in DelingpoleWorld.
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Filed under Media, Telegraph Comment of the Week, Tory press
Tagged as BBC, Dan Hodges, Margaret Thatcher, Nelson Mandela, right-wing allegations of left-wing bias, Telegraph blogs, Tony Benn