In todays news...

[JackyJoll]

Isn’t the MP’s murder more of an Islamic extremist thing, rather than the work of online haters?

[JackyJoll]

Back to the big story.

[DefTrap]

You think that posting hate on the internet reduces the chances of people going out stabbing? That's an interesting theory.

I'm saying it's possible. Group appreciation is a wonderful thing innit.
I'll go out on a limb and suggest there aren't any stabbers on here, they're pretty rare, and it's hard to make someone a stabber no matter how hard you try. You can wind them up but you're not radicalising them.

However social media does a very good job of highlighting potential victims when the genuine stabbers are sitting at home with nobody to stab.

[Asian Boss]

Isn’t the MP’s murder more of an Islamic extremist thing, rather than the work of online haters?

I thought that. Has online hating ever really resulted in anything significant?

[Count Steer]

Looks like I'm the only one that's getting the ripe smell of hypocrisy from the media (print, online and social) that has done more than anyone to create the adversarial Punch and Judy show that is modern life and politics. Some of the eulogies are also coming from people that have leveraged it and prospered from it. Hypocrites who will all be back to business as usual next week.

[cheb]

Time for the NTOCN clip?

[slowsider]

I don’t know how easy it is to take your average bloke and turn him into a murderer, but show me a moaner who thinks the world is out to get them and I’ll be willing to bet that their parents were somewhere on the same spectrum.

We’re all conditioned by what we see and hear every day.

I think you have to be genuinely crackers to go out in cold blood and shank someone but those people are out there and a bit of confirmation off the haterz might be all it needs to mobilise them to action.

I'm sure you know more than most what it takes to turn your average bloke into a murderer, given your time in uniform. Killing for 'a cause' is the same whether the cause is 'defence of the realm' or propagating the caliphate. Dave Grossman* wrote about how the military have adopted training methods from online gaming to improve performance in combat. Combine that with a bit of social media agitation, group psychology.... .

* https://books.google.ie/books?id=BewqAwAAQBAJ&pg

[Asian Boss]

I'm not sure we can blame 'the media' for everything, no matter how convenient and popular that might be. Perhaps the problem lies closer to home?

And I'm also unsure to what extent expressing an opinion can be labelled moaning which leads to hate and the strength of the link from that to committing violent crimes.


I think people should be able to express their opinions.

Iccy, I know you live in a country without a free press and where freedom of expression and opinion are severely repressed; and say you enjoy that. But it's not for everyone.

[DefTrap]

Plenty of evidence that people can be trained to kill.
Not a lot of evidence that folk wittering on Facebook actually ends up with a stabbing. Not unless that person was already a nutcase.

If you just said "I wish people would be nicer" that would make more sense and be lovely. But decreasing stabbing? No

[slowsider]

I'm sure you know more than most what it takes to turn your average bloke into a murderer, given your time in uniform.

Even with a ribbon on and rolled in glitter that's still the most appalling bait I've ever seen on here.

However, in principle I agree that you can condition or teach most people to do most things, but I was a professional "murderer", taught to do so under certain circumstances. Human beings are strange creatures and sometimes it goes awry in isolated pockets, but professional soldiers (in all armed forces, even the Taliban who in my experience were very professional despite western propaganda) are entirely different to a crazed stabber, or people that in cold blood choose to blow up women and children in shopping centres.

I'm also a 'professional' electrician, which means that I can fix lights, but I don't go around breaking into shopping centres and fixing lights in a froth believing that I'm fighting a cause.

Genuinely wasn't bait. It was a reference to the methods used (of which you have experience) to turn the average bloke into a trained killer. There's no reason to suppose they can't be used by insurgents.
Or this Amess stabber may just be crazed.

[Mussels]

Genuinely wasn't bait. It was a reference to the methods used (of which you have experience) to turn the average bloke into a trained killer. There's no reason to suppose they can't be used by insurgents.
Or this Amess stabber may just be crazed.

Fair enough

There is a difference between a professional killer and a nutcase though.

Soldiers are trained to use weapon systems to achieve an aim, of course, there is methodology and psychology to desensitise them to killing - and to be fair lines can get blurred, which is why the last thing you want is a group of soldiers turning up at the civvie pub after a deployment - but there is an attempt to get them to control the violence, you can't have soldiers wandering around butchering people just because they've been trained to kill.

Whereas some nutter who goes postal with whatever he has to hand is just a nutter - triggered by goodness knows what, but quite possibly these days from online influence.

I think the difference for a soldier is they expect to be going into a fight with someone willing to kill them, killing a 70 year old bloke in a church hall is more like asking soldiers to kill random unarmed people in a village, there will be some soldiers who would but most would have a WTF moment.

[DefTrap]

On a similar "people do what they are trained to do, automatically" note, I used to hang out with a group who all happened to be psych nurses on wards with some fairly nasty bastards. On a trip one weekend, I think it was a bike event overnighter, some other geezers started swing at each other after a few too many newcastle browns. Even though they were pissed, and it was nothing to do with them, you could feel the psych nurses tense up, ready to leap in and sort it out.

[Count Steer]

I bet there are people out there smiling about a Conservative MP being killed, just like people cheered when Mrs Thatcher died.

As per when Jo Cox was murdered. Let's not get one-eyed about only one side has nasty people on it.

[Count Steer]

As per when Jo Cox was murdered. Let's not get one-eyed about only one side has nasty people on it.

I posted a link where a Labour MP had been sent death threats, so it's not once sided, unless that's what you purposely look for.

You did indeed:

'An MP said exactly that but apparently got a death threat for it '


How very, very

[JackyJoll]

Has online hating ever really resulted in anything significant?

Yes. Yorick put me on ignore.

[slowsider]

I don’t know how easy it is to take your average bloke and turn him into a murderer, but show me a moaner who thinks the world is out to get them and I’ll be willing to bet that their parents were somewhere on the same spectrum.

We’re all conditioned by what we see and hear every day.

"The father of the suspect in the inquiry into David Amess’s killing, was a committed anti-extremist who risked his own life trying to thwart hate groups, his friends and colleagues have said...
Harbi Ali Kullane, a former director of media and communications for a former prime minister of Somalia, is said to be in shock after the arrest of his son over the attack that shocked Westminster "

[gremlin]

Bloody kids. Always doing the opposite of what you tell 'em.

[Taipan]

I think the difference for a soldier is they expect to be going into a fight with someone willing to kill them, killing a 70 year old bloke in a church hall is more like asking soldiers to kill random unarmed people in a village, there will be some soldiers who would but most would have a WTF moment.

That brings us very neatly around to the point.

You can influence/brainwash/whatever people into doing almost anything, soldiers wipe out a village of civvies, Hutu killing Tutsi, Nazis killing Jews, etc. It starts fairly steadily, a bit of propaganda and ends in killing.

Constantly posting political propaganda calling people filth or traitors or whatever silly names people come up with is simply the first few steps on that path. I spoke with Rwandans and they said it started with jokes and insults about Tutsis some years before the actual genocide.

I bet there are people out there smiling about a Conservative MP being killed, just like people cheered when Mrs Thatcher died.

Yes, quite a few...

[wheelnut]

I thought that. Has online hating ever really resulted in anything significant?

Yes. It’s managed to make our society a lot more polarised and generally a poorer place to live.

[Horse]

I thought that. Has online hating ever really resulted in anything significant?

Yes. It’s managed to make our society a lot more polarised and generally a poorer place to live.

We had a civil war 350 years ago. That's about as polarised as it gets.