April 5 2007

Over 13 days it threatened to escalate into all out war. Hour by hour, minute by minute the language became more belligerent, more confrontational. At times it spilled over into an all-out us-and-them nationalistic furore.

Diplomatic efforts were made, perhaps the right word in the right place could bring it to a conclusion but, with the world watching, all seemed in vain.
I refer, of course, to the web chatter on thisisplymouth and other sites (yes there are other sites out there) following the capture of our sailors and Royal Marines by Iran.
For every comment posted on our site in response to a story, or on our bulletin board, offering support and messages of hope for the captives and their families here in Plymouth and elsewhere, there were two raging against the British war machine and the 'loonie Muslims'.
Thankfully those 'loonie Muslim' comments were few and far between on our site, but if you check out 'Batch's' page on bebo you will come across a few comments that would have Jim Davidson and Bernard Manning dialling the Racial Equality Council. Yes, okay, they got the geography wrong. And the spelling, the grammar, the history and the politics. But they were offensive none the less.
There was the odd comment on thisisplymouth which may, or may not, have been racist. In an age of political correctness gone mad, and an age when people can post their every thought with minimum effort or consideration, it falls to us to decide whether a comment is or could be perceived as being racist.
For example, one post refered to Mr Ahmadinejad as Mr Ahmedinnerjacket.
Is that racist? Possibly, probably. The writer almost certainly never meant it to be racist, simply ridiculing of a man who had ridiculed our service personnel. Certainly it has enough potential to be perceived as being racist that we decided to remove it.
But then again, Tony Blair is only ever refered to by our posters as Tony Bliar. Tudor Evans is only ever refered to as Toady. The Lib Dems are only ever the Limp Dims. Offensive certainly, but not racist.
Then again, as for comments on thisisplymouth raging against the war, you could hardly move for them.
In fact, when Mr Ahmadinejad started speaking about the folly of Western troops being in Iraq, and the evils of putting a woman and mother on the front line, I thought he was reading from the user comment section on thisisplymouth. No, seriously.
Few things get our online correspondents more riled than war. Being a naval city with a proud history of sending its sons to give a sound kicking to anyone who may have deserved it, or perhaps just looked at us a bit funny, there are many in Plymouth who treasure our military might and will happily expound the value of war for hours on end.
At the other end of the scale, we have have posting on our site some of the most aggressive pacificists that you could ever wish to meet. Trident, the Middle East, military budgets will all have them calling for the dismantling of the New World Order. "OR ELSE!!". Any excuse will find them posting an anti-war comment on a story.
Say, for example, we posted an online version of the Our Father. It wouldn't be long before we got a comment saying something like "Our Father, in old English that's Vaeter Unsere. Vaeter sounds a bit like Phaeton. Phaeton was a 38-gun-frigate which captured the Dutch in Nagasaki in 1808 and fired upon Japanese and Chinese vessels. YOU MUST DISARM NUCLEAR MISSILES NOW."
One post leads to another, soon it gets personal, and people say things online they would never say face to face, not just for fear of being punched but because the Internet grants us an assumed anonymity and also makes the person we are attacking anonymous.
Even the Falklands War commemoration section of the thisisplymouth bulletin board has attracted anti-war posts. People who would never in a million years think of vandalising a war memorial will happily 'vandalise' a virtual memorial by posting comments that veterans and relatives of the fallen will find offensive.
As more and more of us have access to the Internet and find new ways to express our views, it looks like we will have to learn all over again the rules of polite society, learning to respect the opinions and feelings of others not through fear but through compassion and understanding. While the Herald will continue to police all comments posted on any section of its site, as all responsible website owners do, there must come a time soon when we as users learn again to police ourselves.
If we want the Internet to remain a place free of censorship, we must learn to censor our own dark and hurtful thoughts rather than posting them 'in the wild' where they could do more damage than we could imagine, and certainly more than we would wish.