[UK] Rod Liddle: The intolerance of the self-obsessed

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It’s not hate that Caitlin Moran can’t stand. It’s being disagreed with

Hell, it’s been tough, but I think I’ve pulled through. I went out this morning to buy some cigarettes and there were plenty of people about, doing stuff — so the world has not changed beyond recognition these last couple of days. Everyone else seems to have made it. I hope you made it OK, too, without the need for counselling. Here we all are, huddled together, clutching at each other for warmth in the post-apocalyptic gloom. But we’re still standing. We managed to survive Caitlin Moran’s 24-hour boycott of Twitter.

Moran is a journalist who decided to boycott Twitter because, incredible though it might seem, people keep saying nasty things on this conduit for the vapid, histrionic and self-obsessed. She is of course part of the not-terribly-bright bourgeois metro left, where an annoyance that contrivances such as Twitter and Facebook allow people other than themselves to express opinions, sometimes rather strongly worded, has taken hold. Caitlin’s little petulant foot-stamp was an attempt to punish the rest of Twitter’s users, by depriving them of the delights of Caitlin, and perhaps also send a message to its management about how people like Caitlin — and many, many others from the same neck of the woods, the well-fed London liberal absolutist left neck of the woods — won’t stand for stuff which they describe as hateful being said to them. It really is appalling, etc.

Properly hateful stuff undoubtedly has been said. Several high-profile women, including the rather admirable Labour MP Stella Creasy, have been threatened with rape via one or another internet conduit. Television’s famous Mary Beard had her appearance mocked after making an idiot of herself on the BBC’s Question Time programme. Someone has now apparently threatened to blow her up with a bomb and the police are investigating. Another bomb threat was posted to Grace Dent, a journalist from what remains of the Independent. Threatening to bomb or rape people is, of course, foul, as well as being against the law. I hope the people who made these threats are punished.