Does the right to say what we think still apply when we do it anonymously?

Oh dear. It seems I’ve let the side down.

A number of people, on this blog and elsewhere, appeared to like what I wrote about the Molesworth St protesters challenging the woke Left’s long-standing stranglehold on what these days is called public discourse.

But then they got to the footnote in which I said I neither whole-heartedly supported nor opposed the protesters, and at that point I lost them. It seems that if you’re not 100 percent behind Camp Freedom, you’re part of the conspiracy against them. How sad (and I don’t mean that ironically, as in It Ain’t Half Hot Mum).

Of course this is nothing new. It’s a familiar, if perverse, quirk of human nature.

I get along fine with old friends with whom I’m almost totally at odds politically. The people whose friendship is sometimes less dependable are those who, because we share the same opinions on most issues, develop the irrational expectation that we’ll agree all the time, and who behave as if it’s an act of betrayal when I don’t fall into line with their thinking.  To put it another way, their approval is conditional on me agreeing with them on just about everything.

The urge to pick fights with people who are basically on the same side is well documented. If reports are to be believed, it has happened – quite literally – at the Molesworth St encampment.

Countless political organisations have fallen apart because people who were passionately committed to the same causes fell out bitterly over what often seemed like relatively minor ideological sticking points. That’s the principal reason the far Left in New Zealand has historically been so ineffectual (that is, until the 2020 election, when they sneaked under the radar). They were so busy disembowelling each other that they lost sight of the common enemy. The deep schism that split New Zealand communists into pro-China and pro-Soviet camps was a case in point.

G K Chesterton called it the Irish disease. According to Chesterton, “This consists of the ability to find yourself 99 per cent in agreement with someone and then focus with ferocious, unforgiving intensity on the other one per cent.”

But of course it’s not confined to the Irish. I don’t believe the people having a whack at me all have Gaelic surnames.

The peevish tone of some comments in recent weeks (not all of them published) illustrates a wider phenomenon. The tone of public debate, as many commentators have noted, has become volatile and intolerant. The mood of the country is brittle and feverish. People are splitting into tribal camps. A woman I know who works in a local retail business told me yesterday of confrontations with aggressive men making irrational demands. This is not normal.

Some of this unpleasantness can be blamed on social tensions created, or at least brought to the surface, by Covid-19.  But it can also be attributed to government policies that are driving a wedge through what has historically been, at least by international standards, an admirably harmonious society. Some days New Zealand feels more like the Balkans.

Some of the comments rebuking me for not taking an emphatic position in support of the Molesworth St protest were polite and considered. Others were snarly and sneering. Some commenters write as if I have some sort of obligation always to faithfully reflect their views, and when I don’t I’ve somehow failed them. But if people expect me to confine myself to opinions that they happen to share, they’re reading the wrong blog. Whatever happened to the notion that a pluralistic, liberal democracy allows us to express honestly held opinions, regardless of whether others agree? When did we split into absolutist camps, intolerant of any deviation?

Now, another thing. A good friend and regular reader of this blog – one who certainly doesn’t share all my views – asked me recently why I permit anonymous opinions. I’m starting to wonder the same thing.

I admit one reason I'm having second thoughts is that it irritates me when people snipe at me from the cover of anonymity. They know who I am; my identity is out there for anyone to see. Why should they be able to have a whack at me, on my blog, without identifying themselves?

But there are other good reasons for reconsidering my tolerance of anonymity. For one thing, I’ve always believed that if a view is worth expressing, it’s worth putting your name to. There are occasions when people have valid reasons for withholding their identity (for example, when disclosing sensitive personal information), but they’re rare.

For another, it’s important that people on the conservative side of politics should have enough confidence in their convictions to declare themselves boldly. I sometimes wonder whether they’re intimidated by the overwhelming weight of left-wing opinion out there in the public arena, and particularly in the mainstream media. But the Left wins the moral battle by default when they are prepared to stand up in public and the Right isn’t.  It’s like a rugby match where the opposing side hasn’t shown up. We live in a free society and we should take full advantage of it.

Thirdly, I believe the quality of comment improves when people have to put their names to it. That was borne out when newspapers began insisting on letters to the editor being signed and accompanied by a verifiable address rather than written using a nom-de-plume. Most papers adopted that rule decades ago and it seems odd that blogs don’t do the same.

People are less likely to express extreme, petty, abusive or defamatory opinions when they have to sign them. Admittedly, I have no way of verifying that commenters are who they say they are; it would largely be on trust. Nonetheless I believe a requirement that people identify themselves would reduce the risk of the right to comment being abused.

Having said that, I don’t want to deter people from commenting and I certainly don’t intend to stifle comments critical of me. The comments section is a crucial component of this blog and I greatly value readers’ contributions, which are often thoughtful, provocative and erudite. In fact I’ll stick my neck out and say that I sometimes think there’s more value in the comments than in the blog posts that trigger them. I’m very grateful to the people who take the trouble to comment and I especially thank those who write under their own names.

In the spirit of participatory democracy, since I regard readers and commenters as having a stake in this blog, I welcome input before I make any change.

 

 

 

 

A good report spoiled

I wonder how much credibility can be attached to the 2016 News Media Ownership Report published by the Auckland University of Technology’s Centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy (JMAD). It contains a lot of useful information and generally gives the impression of being fair and non-partisan – that is, until you get to the section on blogs. Here it states:

“Some of the most well-known blogs in New Zealand include Martyn Bradbury’s The Daily Blog, Russell Brown’s Hard News, David Farrar’s Kiwiblog, The Standard and The Dim-Post. In 2016, PublicAddress.net, which is a community of New Zealand blogs including Brown’s Hard News, won the Canon Media best blog award. Other nominees for the award were Rosabel Tan’s The Pantograph Punch (culture and arts) and Lizzie Marvelly’s Villainesse which is aimed at young women.”

That’s it. Notice anything missing? Like, for example, Whale Oil?

Last time I checked, Cameron Slater’s right-wing blog was the most widely read in New Zealand. It's certainly the best-known, especially since Nicky Hager's Dirty Politics. But it seems the report’s author, Merja Myllylahti, was worried she might be contaminated by even mentioning it. 

To recycle an old metaphor, writing about New Zealand blogs without mentioning Slater is like driving up the Desert Road and pretending not to see Mt Ruapehu. It’s a shame that an otherwise worthwhile resource should be so ideologically compromised – but it’s consistent with JMAD’s (and AUT’s) pervasive left-wing world view.

Is free speech too cheap?

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, February 18.)

One of the claims made for the internet is that it has opened up public dialogue on a scale never experienced before.

And it’s true. Anyone with a computer and an internet connection – or indeed any of the myriad devices now available that enable users to communicate online – can enter cyberspace and contribute to the discussion of the day, whether it’s about sponge cake recipes, the relative merits of different dog breeds or the war in Afghanistan.

They can start a blog, as I did, or they can contribute to the comment threads (as they’re known in Net-speak) that allow people to respond to blog entries with their own opinions.

On news media websites, too, readers can submit comments responding to published opinion columns. These comments are usually moderated – in other words, vetted before publication – but the moderation is typically light-handed. Only the most outrageously defamatory or offensive language is filtered out.

Never in history has so much opinion poured forth largely unchecked in public forums. In the old days, for example, anyone wanting to take issue with a newspaper columnist had to sit down, write a letter to the editor and sign it with his or her real name and address.

There was no guarantee it would be published and even if it was, it might be abridged because of space limitations in the correspondence columns. (Human nature being what it is, the bit edited out was always the one the letter writer considered the most vital.)

You can still go through this quaint, old-fashioned routine, but there’s a much more effortless way to have your say. You can submit a comment to the paper’s website. It’s virtually instantaneous, you can say as much or as little as you like, and it doesn’t have to make sense.

What’s more, you don’t have to put your name to it. You can use any enigmatic, vaguely menacing or downright silly pseudonym you choose. Only a few commenters on websites and blogs use their real names.

Some newspaper websites attract hundreds of online comments. Depressingly, the opinion columns that provoke the strongest reactions are often about sport – for example, the column by Australian sports writer Paul Sheehan criticising the All Blacks’ Kapa O Pango haka, which so infuriated New Zealanders that 868 responded. (Question: what conceit makes commenter number 868 think anyone is going to read his or her contribution?)

The best-read blogs, such as Kiwiblog and Hard News, also routinely attract hundreds of comments, whereas I consider I’m doing well if my modest effort gets five or six.

All this is held to be liberating and good for democracy – and so it is, up to a point. No one can complain any longer that newspaper editors (or talkback producers, for that matter) are the gatekeepers controlling entry to public opinion forums. Now anyone can have their say, at any time and from anywhere on the planet.

But while the sheer volume of comment on the issues of the day has increased exponentially, no one could pretend that there has been a commensurate rise in the standard of debate.

In fact, quite the contrary. Far from being the stimulating, uplifting marketplace of ideas fondly envisaged by free-speech idealists, the internet and blogosphere is a seething, toxic cesspit of jeering, name-calling, vulgarity, bile and mendacity.

Its dominant characteristics are malice, rage and ignorance – a lethal combination that extinguishes any hope of civilised, intelligent dialogue.

Anyone scanning the comments sections of media websites and blogs soon notes recurring patterns. The first is the sheer volume of personal abuse – the tool most frequently resorted to by those who disagree with other people’s views, and deployed with equal ferocity by those on both the left and right of the political spectrum. The strategy is to intimidate one’s opponent not with force of argument but with vituperation.

Often the anonymous commenter fails to see, or more likely pretends not to see, the central point of the other side’s argument, preferring to introduce extraneous issues, thereby diverting the debate from the central issue under discussion. Another tactic is to wilfully misconstrue what has been written or wildly extrapolate it so as to justify derogatory conclusions about the author.

If the tone of online debate wasn’t so deeply depressing, some aspects of it might be almost amusing. A typical pattern is for the first few comments to be reasonably lucid and relevant, then for the thread to rapidly spiral downwards into a deepening well of viciousness and rancidity that steadily becomes further removed from the subject supposedly under discussion.

By the time you get to about the 30th comment, the participants have totally forgotten what started it all and are intent only on insulting each other.

It’s tempting to draw a comparison with a sharks’ feeding frenzy. It takes only one commenter to draw blood and then it’s all on. In short order the thread is splattered with entrails and severed limbs.

Another analogy is with the troublemaker who throws a punch in a crowded, bad-tempered bar and then quietly slips out the door as the place erupts in an all-in brawl. By the time the premises have been trashed and the last bodies carried out, no one remembers or cares who or what started it.

And here’s something else I’ve noticed: the same pseudonyms crop up time and time again, denoting an abundance of angry and bitter losers who have nothing better to do than trawl the net all day looking for someone to “flame” (another internet buzzword). Often the combatants know each other well from previous encounters.

As a low-grade spectator sport, it’s like a stock car demolition derby – something of transient appeal to people of limited intellect. Not even the most ardent champion of the Internet could argue that these venomous and cowardly outpourings have elevated public debate.

I now wonder whether the choleric tone of debate on the internet has begun to contaminate wider public discourse. A friend who hosts a radio show remarked to me recently that the emails and text messages sent to his programme have become noticeably more vicious and vindictive over the past couple of years.

I don’t think it’s because his show has deteriorated (it has a large and loyal audience). It’s just that people now feel they can get away with abusive language that was once considered beyond the pale. Cowards and bitter ranters who previously fumed in private have licence to vent their bile publicly under the cloak of anonymity.

The sad conclusion is that perhaps free speech now comes too cheap.