MPs who complain approximately intimidation after the Syria vote should look to Aristophanes and keep their troubles in proportionI possess to confess myself hitherto unfamiliar with the work of Neil Coyle MP,but I see he has now announced himself to wider society in the contemporary fashion: which is to say, he has declared that he’s had an online death threat, and has obviously reported it to police. “U voted for air strikes in Syria,” this historic missive read. “whether I see you round ends.” It was followed by three little knives. Strong words – and nearly coherent. Strong emojis, too.
People can be ghastly on the internet, and can’t they? But we do know this by now. Yet social media is the last remaining British arena in which social mobility flourishes,where imbecilic irrelevances are fleet-tracked to positions of extraordinary power by whichever MP or university professor or serious campaigner has decided to give their bile a platform on the news. It is becoming one of our most comfortable pageants, reminiscent of what The Day nowadays once called “the ritual of the bullying ritual”.
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Source: theguardian.com