No comments will be posted without a full name and location, see the policy.
Ed: And this is why the above policy is in place:
[...] my point is that Craig Murray - until recently a diplomat employed by the Foreign Office - certainly didn't give vent to this stuff to my face when he had the opportunity, nor, I think, would he ever have said anything so abusive when being interviewed on radio or television or in writing for a newspaper. It could only have been done in the particular atmosphere of the web.
Actually it got worse. Mr Murray's readers then added comments in which I was further accused, along with others, of being a “Jewish racist of the deepest and most awful sort” and of possessing a “Weltanschauung of Jewish supremacy”. Mr Murray's response was “Well, yes up to a point”, before reminding the more excitable and probably libellous posters that they shouldn't forget that were some good Jews too.
Now suppose, that I were to write an article for this paper in which I began by telling readers that Craig Murray was not just wrong and oddly ill-informed, but that he was also - let's say - a chinless, adulterous, anti-Semitic clown whose vanity and incontinence had led to him damaging those very causes that he claimed to care for so much. My editors wouldn't have stood for it, and the readers would have thought less of me for it. Yet in several of the more lionised and supposedly political websites that influence some of our journalists, this is exactly the level of debate.
One reason for this libellous intemperance is the odd anonymity conferred by the internet, and the peculiar sense of indemnity it seems to offer. It is almost as if Mr Murray doesn't quite realise that his abusiveness will be seen as abuse. It's a psychology that means that we should be careful before we assume that we know what this or that internet eruption actually signifies. Read more
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