Stan Collymore, Emma West and the twitter narks
STAN Collymore, formerly of Liverpool, Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Southend United, has been receiving lots of abuse for his opinions on the Luis Suarez racism affair. Collymore has been re-tweeting racist abuse aimed at him and Manchester United’s Patrice Evra, the footballer racially abused by Suarez.
The tweets are sad, pathetic, weak and deranged. You can read a load of them over @StanCollymore.
Of course, anyone who has ever been on twitter knows that bitchiness, nastiness, vanity and threats are a big part of what twitter does. The same process that allows the right-minded tweeter to call for Emma West to be raped and murdered for behaving horribly and unusually on a London tram also allows Collymore to be called a ‘nigger’ and worse.
Collymore retweets Leon Mann, who advises:
To report racist tweets to the police see this link: http://www.report-it.org.uk/your_police_force RT and spread the word…
And to report people for incitement to murder and violence you can use the same link.
Odd it is that twitter, the place where freedom rules and laws are broken (see Ryan Giggs and his super-injunction) turns out to be a hotbed of grasses and police narks.
For his part, Collymore wants twitter to take more action against racist tweets. How? By banning people who say offensive things from tweeting?
This madness comes against the background of Suarez – banned for eight matches for racially abusing the aforesaid Patrice Evra – and John Terry, the Chelsea and England captain who is facing a criminal charge for allegedly using racist language towards QPR’s Anton Ferdinand.
Suárez and Terry both say they are innocent. Collymore says racism is a part of football that needs to be exposed. The talkSPORT pundit wants police action. Buy what can the police do?
The Association of Chief Police Officers said that a complaint had to be made to the police before an incident of abuse on the internet can be investigated. Collymore needs to complain to the police. The police then need to investigate. And they can do this for every tweet?
And racism is not rife throughout society. It is not tolerated by the masses. The video of Emma West was noticeable for how isolated she was and how well the other people on the tram listening to her vile abuse behaved. She came across as not more emblematic of mainstream thought than the woman who shouts at pigeons in the shopping precinct. She made for a rare spectacle. That is why she was newsworthy.
Thanks to hard work, an eroding of fears through familiarity and human intelligence, blacks are no called Chalky for laughs on the telly, Nazi salutes are not popular at Chelsea games a black man can play football for his country without fear of racism preventing him from realising his potential. In fact, football is one place where racism is less in evidence than say, the police force – the very thing the twitter narks turn to when they want to punish people for expressing illiberal points of view.
Posted: 23rd, December 2011 | In: Technology Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
