Comment on the comments
It is interesting to contrast the reactions of various people to the comments being posted against articles about the Labour leadership election.
Many of those posting comments about how awful Tony Blair is seem to think that a few thousand comments making this point are indicative of a great show of support for the left.
By contrast people who are not on the hard left are reacting to how hard-line those comments are. I referred yesterday to the lack of civility: it reached the point that when you see how rude some of the comments allowed to stand are, you wonder what on earth the comments blocked for "violating community standards" on the websites concerned must have been like.
And then you get comments like this:
"If getting annihilated is what it takes to purge Labour of right-wing neo-liberalism, so be it. It must heal before it can grow strong."
In a former age what began with that kind of fanatical absolutism all too often went on to book-burning and finally to mass executions.
Many of those posting comments about how awful Tony Blair is seem to think that a few thousand comments making this point are indicative of a great show of support for the left.
By contrast people who are not on the hard left are reacting to how hard-line those comments are. I referred yesterday to the lack of civility: it reached the point that when you see how rude some of the comments allowed to stand are, you wonder what on earth the comments blocked for "violating community standards" on the websites concerned must have been like.
And then you get comments like this:
"If getting annihilated is what it takes to purge Labour of right-wing neo-liberalism, so be it. It must heal before it can grow strong."
In a former age what began with that kind of fanatical absolutism all too often went on to book-burning and finally to mass executions.
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