Online extremism: Cyber world a vehicle for hate and fear

IF the misogyny, the bigotry, the homophobia, the racism, the bullying, the hatred, the dangerous ignorance, the xenophobic nationalism and irrational hostility that make up far too much of today’s online commentary were expressed in the columns of this or any other newspaper lawyers would demand and get the kind of damages that would put the survival of any traditional media platform in jeopardy.

As the playwright and editor Katherine Viner warned last week: “Our digital town squares have become mobbed with bullies, misogynists, and racists, who have brought a new kind of hysteria to public debate.”

Last weekend’s announcement by Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams provoked perfect examples. Online, he was either seen as the saviour of Irish nationalism or as an Irish Ratko Mladic — The Butcher of Bosnia — who is expected to be sentenced in the Hague today after a trial lasting 22 years. Of course Adams, for all his complexity and evasions, is neither of those characters but that did not prevent him being so described. It was as if one extreme view fed off the other and left no room for the kind of measured thought that underpins progress. Extremism again silenced moderation.