RRTAA!
I’ve received several thousand comments on my blog over the last few years (10,585 to be precise — including my own). A number of these could be classified as containing racist, fascist, xenophobic, or otherwise objectionable sentiment: homophobia, sexism, support for Carlton football club, and so on. Some comments have been made by openly fascist or neo-Nazi individuals; a number of these, quite frankly, suggest that the person responsible suffers from borderline psychosis.
Remarkable, I know.
Others express a more casual, otherwise unremarkable bigotry of the sort that underpins much of contemporary debate, especially — but not only — in the blogosphere.
At present, all comments are moderated, meaning that I am able to approve or refuse their publication. I adopted this policy in order to prevent my blog from being flooded with neo-Nazi trolls.
Of all the comments that have been submitted thus far, I’ve published the great majority. On a number of occasions, however, I’ve refused some comments publication: generally speaking, when they emanate from the same handful of trolls. In addition, a handful of formerly regular commentators — including one especially pathological anti-Semite — I no longer publish, partly because they write the same thing: over, and over, and over again. At other times — because they’ve been so delightfully batshit — I’ve published them (if only for my own amusement — the rabid anti-Semite in question reads like a deeply-disturbed neo-Nazi version of US feminist Mary Daly).
Some bloggers, including avowed anti-racists, allow open publishing, thus allowing for the expression of (often extremely vulgar) racist sentiment. Others allow no commentary. Most bloggers, however, situate themselves somewhere in-between these two poles, and allow for the expression of disagreement — sometimes profound disagreement — provided that this is couched in whichever terms the blogger in question believes appropriate to the conduct of ‘reasonable’ (political) discourse.
Recently, I received the following comment on my blog (one which, incidentally, follows closely upon several comments from an individual obsessively pre-occupied with the rather bizarre idea that the Nazi regime and the (Roman) Catholic Church are one and the same thing):
well the aboriginals have every thing. the whites work and the blacks steel. near my home the house had abos in it and this is the second time in 12 months they have destroyed the house. the GOV have been working on it for 4 months even putting new concrete floor in it replace everything and there not prosecuted. if it was me i wo[u]ld be in goal now. they steel mail broke my windows and the government is just saying nothing. its like the sudanese the government in my town have bought a lot of houses to house the sudanese families. as u know they are continuously pregnant get baby payments and go out prostituting. while there husband are dealing drugs. the aussies they have been WAITING FOR HOUSING HOMES for years have just been put back another 8 years because of these scumbags. they are givin $20,000 each when they come in each new cloths everything and r even sent to universities when us aussies cant afford to do this. the afg[h]anis jus[t] blow there boat up and rudd brings them straight in he is nothing except a low dog. when he [f]i[r]st come in he gave people stimulus money that was to make us think he was good but he never told us he was bringing in millions of immigrants in yes millions in the next few years, so i dont give a fuck no more i am a disabled pensioner and i i cant even get medical treatment so come on aussies have some GUTS AND DO SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING RIP THE GOVERNMENT OFF SPEAK OUT. WE DONT WANT THIS COUNTRY FULL OF SCUM MY SONS foreman WAS A SUDANESE AND TREATED LIKE SHIT AND WAS THRE[A]TENED WITH A BROKEN BOTTLE AT WORK AND HOW WAS THIS THE SUDANESE BOSS WAS A ILLEGAL POMMIE SO FUCK THEM TO COME ON RUDD HELP US WE NEED A REVOLUTION. COME ON U GUTLESS AUSSIES BEFORE ITS TO LATE. NO MORE IMMIGRANT FUCK THEM WAKE UP AUSTRALIA BY THE TIME THEY BRING THERE FAMILIES AND BEEN PREGNANT ALL THE TIME WE WILL BE LIVING IN BOXES AND THEY WILL BE IN HOUSES. RUDD IS A LOW LIFE LYING CUNT SO COME ON AUSSIES DONT FORGET WE HAVE BEEN BOUGHT OUT WE OWN NOTHING. CONTACT EVERYONE U CAN PUT FLYERS IN MAIL BOXES CONTACT MPS BUT DONT SIT ON YOUR HANDS. THIS WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED IF PAULINE HANDSONE WAS IN. hey dont forget the fucken indians and chinese that are flooding in australia is full so fuck off ALL U FUCKEN WOGS.
The point being, I’m growing increasingly tired of such commentary. At first, I decided to allow such rank ignorance and stoopid because a number of similarly ignorant yuppies maintained that ‘racism’ was a simply a dark shadow of Australia’s past and, moreover, distracted from its gloriously un-racist future.
And there’s few things I enjoy more than proving yuppies wrong.
I dunno… what do you think?
See also : Quality blog debate, Scott Bridges, August 3, 2009 | Groupthink
Bonus!
Added Bonus!
Original sauce : Ningla A-Na (1972). Produced and directed by Alessandro Cavadini.
Don’t forget some commentators implement child-speak as a form of humour and as a defensive measure to mask the blatant public slandering of people in the hopes that it never comes back to legally bite them or this blog on the arse.
For example accusing Mick Armstrong of being a traitor to the working class, a sell out dickhead jerk and a stupid wee bum poo idiot that needs a good punch on the nose.
It’s your blog. If you don’t want to provide the forum for their comments (because you disagree with them or, more likely, don’t have time or patience to wade through their gibberish), they can go and set up their own blog elsewhere. Simple.
Hey Robert,
Yeah but no but… I guess the question I’m really considering is whether or not I should publish these kind of comments as a way of demonstrating that, while there’s certainly some official recognition of the existence of ‘racism’ within Australia on the part of government and other authorities, there is also, at the same time, a constant disavowal of its extent. So, if a blog, such as mine — which is dedicated, in part, to exposing: evidence of such racism; the ways in which this racist sentiment informs much contemporary discourse, especially around issues to do with immigration and its impact upon public access to such commodities as education and housing; and the ways in which a kinda bedrock ‘White nationalism’ can provide a foundation for the (far) right — then… maybe it’s worthwhile allowing racists to further expose the ugly (or uglier) side of Australia to the tens of thousands of people who visit my blog?
I should also add that I was partly prompted to write this post after viewing Embedded with Nationalism, “a Bengali migrant’s journey into the heartland of Australian nationalism”, in which, at one point, host Samia Hossain goes to Bendigo to have a chat with a man who works at the Golden Dragon Museum. He takes her to his home, and points out a piece of graff on his fence reading ‘White Power’, accompanied by a swastika. When asked why he hasn’t removed it, the man (whose name I don’t recall) states that he left it there as evidence of the continuing inability of some to accept the presence of non-Whites (he’s of Chinese descent) in the community (or words to that effect — I can’t find a transcript, so…). I should also add, in this context, that some bonehead wrote on the MARC space in Northcote a few weeks ago ‘you’re next andy’, alongside a swastika.
But that’s another story…
Boing Boing have a good system: disemvowelling.
Either that, or you can give people the option to click-and-expand particularly misanthropic comments.
It’s your blog. If you can figure out a way for these comments to serve your own ends, then great. Being a long-time reader of Slackbastard, I still find some value in reading comments by racists and their fascist brothers. Mostly they sharpen my hatred of racists, uh, racism.
If I were to assign value to comments by the racists who have taken up residence under your bridge, it would be similar to your assessment above: it exposes their existence and their actions. The tedium of the comments occurs because the commenters are wholly tedious, but also occasionally murderous and threatening, as you’ve probably noticed. While they can be amusing, I don’t think that entertainment should be the reason to publish or not.
It seems to me you should only publish the comments when they provide some context to the original post they are attached to, even broadly. Otherwise, disemvowel them or leave them unpublished.
All good points.
The other thing I forgot to add was that I used to think — and sometimes still do… occasionally — that allowing for the expression of otherwise objectionable commentary is worthwhile in that it allows me, and every now and again some others, to demonstrate the irrationality of many of the positions, attitudes, and opinions advanced by bigots of one kind or another. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the bigots of the sort motivated enough to bother commenting on my blog are usually also of the sort who are so staggeringly stupid that such efforts generally come to naught. That said, to the extent that there remains some glimmer of honesty or intelligence on their part — or, better, those of their fellow bigots who bother to read such discussions — it may prompt some further reflection.
PS. I also enjoy taking the piss outta these muppets — something which others also seem to enjoy reading.
If this was intended to be a community forum, I would say that some form of moderation (or membership requirement) is necessary to promote some level of mutual respect and community building maintenance. I have moderated a couple of forums (non-political) which closed down due to the owner choosing not to continue running a site which was inundated with defamatory comments.
My own approach would probably be similar to the one you take – I’m not sure I would let everything through even if it does provide an insight into a world many people are blissfully unaware of and also an opportunity to engage humorously with that world’s denizens.
In the days when Geocities was the cutting edge of the web, I remember getting some classically unhinged responses to my writing but I must say you certainly are a nutter magnet.
ps. the death threats are not cool
Boo!
“Boo!” to you too!
dj: I may introduce some such system so as to allow trusted, generally non-psychotic commentators to post comments without requiring approval.