Far Right Finds New Ways to Be Awful Online; Experts Suggest Maybe We Should Do Something About It
Far right radicalism is worse than ever, social media is the accelerant, and Kim Leadbeater says we should probably do something about it before things get even more awful.
Good morning. Ten years after the murder of MP Jo Cox by a rightwing extremist just before the Brexit referendum, her sister Kim Leadbeater - now herself an MP - has issued a clear and urgent summons. In an interview on the Today in Focus podcast, she proposed that political hatred in Britain is actually worse now than at the time of her sister's killing, but insisted that "those voices who are sowing the division are in the minority." So the minority is just getting louder and more efficient, thanks to social media platforms that seem to have taken 'fostering division' as their official mission statement.
Elsewhere in the news, a Russian warship fired warning shots within a few hundred metres of a British pleasure yacht crossing the Channel, because nothing says 'heightened tensions' like menacing rich people on holiday. The Lib Dems, in a move that will surprise no one, want Andy Burnham to end Labour's "torpor and timidity" towards the EU by calling for the UK to rejoin the single market - a position they've strengthened presumably by standing more firmly on the same spot. Iran's top diplomat says a peace deal with the US would require Israel to withdraw from Lebanon, which seems like a reasonable ask, but concern grows that Israel might undermine diplomatic efforts anyway, because that's what we do now. A BBC presenter beloved for appealing to young male audiences apparently has a history of calling women "slags", "sluts", "psychos", and "bitches" - which the Guardian reveals, presumably to the shock of absolutely no one who has ever been on the internet. And Hillary Clinton has declared that Joe Biden's decision to seek a second term was "a terrible mistake" that cost Democrats the presidency and may have permanently damaged his legacy, because nothing says 'healing the party' like finger-pointing from the 2016 loser.
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