Had I been fully back on my feet on Wednesday there is no way that this one would have passed me by. Had I actually been on Twitter more over the last few weeks I would have caught on to it even sooner. But it’s 6 April, and I’m all the way caught up.
And what a story this one was.
Another episode which heaps shame on our media.
Not that they’re feeling it or anything.
Our media literally has no shame, and Neil Cameron has less shame than most.
This is guy who frequently throws invective around like confetti and then tries to bemoan the lack of standards online. If he had standards, either personally or professionally, then some of us wouldn’t need to do what we do.
Let me go back to where this story begins; it starts, if I’m correct, with an email sent to the MSP James Dornan, on March 27, drawing his attention to a leaflet extolling the virtues of Smash A F@nian Day.
I wrote about James Dornan on this site a couple of times before; he’s one of the loudest drum-bangers for what used to be the Offensive Behaviour Act, but unlike a lot of his colleagues I get the impression he’s invested in the stated intent; i.e. he hates sectarianism and wants to see it eradicated from Scotland.
Don’t we all?
My quibble with James is that neither he nor anyone else has ever explained to me how banning certain songs at the football will do that.
Anyway, this is the leaflet.
James Dornan did what any sensible person would do when faced with that; he brought in the police.
He also tweeted the offensive mail to see which other MSP’s or elected officials might have received something similar.
This, curiously, gave some of the haters an excuse to have a pop at him … asking why he would ever have publicised such a thing in the first place.
Easy answer. He didn’t.
It was sent to him … and it was already out there.
I know that Dornan was not the first person to clap eyes on this thing; it’s been doing the rounds. In fact, it was Martin Beatty, Jay’s dad, who was the first person to draw my attention to it, but even trying to defend Dornan on this score is ridiculous anyway.
The accusation that he manufactured it himself, just for the purpose of causing trouble for “the PUL community” is a ghastly allegation which betrays just how sick some of the Peepul we are dealing with are. Here is a sample of what I’m talking about.
Regardless; this thing’s internet history could not be less important, because bear in mind that the very act of creating that and sending it out into the world was a crime.
A criminal offence, okay?
And not under the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act either.
Cameron is not saying that Dornan invented it.
He’s saying it was a bit of banter.
Frankly, I don’t know which suggestion is the more offensive.
There is no light-hearted way to look at that leaflet, and yes I know it’s a knock-off from similar ones that have been doing the rounds about Muslims for a while now. That’s kind of my point though; in England, those sort of leaflets are routinely prosecuted.
The people who produce them and share them know the stakes of the game, or they learn fast.
Dornan is the guy who brought it to a wider audience than it might otherwise have had … but since he did it has been reproduced, retweeted, re-posted and shared countless times, by people who agree with every single sentiment that’s on it.
It’s a matter of time before one of those leaflets is responsible for putting someone in a hospital or worse, on a mortuary slab.
That’s how serious they are.
And yet, predictably, Dornan’s entire timeline turned into a slew of invective against him, with, as I said, some people going as far as to accuse him of manufacturing the thing himself. One long-standing internet troll with a lot of followers and friends in the mainstream media – so many, in fact, that it’s not silly to speculate that said individual is a member of the press or at least used to be – decided to publicly accuse Dornan of “admitting” that he hadn’t been sent it.
Dornan called him a liar.
Of course.
As that’s exactly what he is.
That reply was in response to the following:
And that’s when Cameron first jumped into this, with this tweet which I presume he found funny.
Although I wonder whether Gerry Braiden did.
I wonder whether the victims of sectarian violence across Scotland did.
There’s an example, right there, of Cameron trying to make a joke out of something that’s extremely serious, and which was raised by an elected official who was sent it by email. A case could be made for saying it amounts to an actual threat of physical violence against James Dornan.
For Cameron, it was an excuse to indulge in cheap laughs.
Yet its public dissemination on various forums and by re-tweets and shares clearly constitutes incitement.
We have a sordid little history of all this stuff in Scotland, and it’s why people like James Dornan have become so determined to combat it and wash it away. I’ve long argued that our media does us no favours in this regard; they stir the pot, then they walk away when it starts to bubble up. They promote hate, and then panic when it threatens to (or sometimes does) become violence. None of them has done enough to challenge this kind of thing.
It is not weeks ago that the Union Bears marched to Ibrox in a paramilitary style parade, black clad, faces covered, making the Nazi salute. On Scottish streets. They had advertised their intent to do so days in advance and police allowed it.
The leaflet which promoted it included a vicious logo of a Celtic fan being kicked in the face.
The Smash A F@nian leaflet is dredged up from the same cesspool; the stinking one where anti-Catholic hate is still tolerated here in Scotland and if it comes with anti-Irish tinge all the better. They don’t call it “the last acceptable form of bigotry” for nothing.
The thing is, what happens on the internet all too often creeps off of it.
The media knows this, having played an active role in promoting hatred against Neil Lennon only to watch it morph into something infinitely worse. The morphing started online, on fan forums so filled with toxicity you need full body protection just to survey them. It deepened there until a few psychopaths were inspired into action and then it wasn’t emails getting sent to people; it was bombs. It was bullets. Lennon himself was physically attacked on the job.
But then, so was Scott Brown last year and I’m still waiting to hear what the SFA intends to do about that or the collective failure to properly steward Ibrox that day which I wrote several articles on at the time. This is all to say that this stuff isn’t a joke.
Cameron disagrees. In fact, that’s exactly what he said this stuff was.
A dark joke. A peculiarly Scottish version of humour.
Something “we sort of invented” …
I wonder who “we” are in Cameron’s disgusting claim?
I wonder if Cara Henderson, the girl who might have been Cara Scott had a sectarian bigot not cut then boyfriend Mark Scott’s throat outside of a Bridgeton dive, finds it funny. She formed the organisation Nil By Mouth; maybe they do. To the best of my knowledge they’ve not said a word to condemn Neil Cameron or The Herald Group for the reprehensible tweet with which they are now indelibly associated.
I just wonder if she, and they, appreciate the laugh out loud quality of it.
What was the slogan Nil By Mouth pioneered?
“Sectarian humour can have you in stitches.”
Yeah, Cameron.
You are hilarious.
A dark joke, eah? Who can beat it? It’s funny if you’re not the one sitting in the A&E. And you know what? It’s not even funny then. It’s twisted, both the act of producing that piece of filth and the act of defending it as a joke.
Not that Cameron is defending it, of course.
In fact, he seems to be trying to deny that’s what he meant.
The reason this double-blipped on my radar was that he got into an argument with a couple of folk on Twitter about it.
Before I go on, I have a confession to make; I absolutely love Bob Smith Walker and Matthew Leslie.
The first is a Don’s fan, a sterling social commentator, activist and publisher who speaks his mind and isn’t afraid of controversy, much like many of the people whose work he has helped get into print; this includes Phil. Bob is, of course, the head honcho at Frontline Noir, who published Downfall. Matt Leslie is a fantastic blogger on all-things Scottish football. Like myself he doesn’t limit his writing to his own club, which is Hearts.
Neither of them found Cameron’s comments either humourous or appropriate.
Bob Smith Walker called him out on them in the following tweet.
And Cameron, true to type, then got in a flap.
He claimed he’d been misquoted or misrepresented.
The exchange that follows is instructive.
No Twitter most certainly didn’t dream it, or his “I’ve booked a bus” comment either.
The following exchange should give you some insight into the kind of person Cameron is; he has publicly accused someone of lying (although they’re clearly not) and when confronted to make good on that accusation this is how he chose to defend himself:
Later on that night, he posted the following tweet.
Isn’t that pathetic? Isn’t that a pitiful response?
That sums him up to a T.
From laughing at sectarianism, and defending a criminal act as a bit of banter, to wallowing in self-pity because he was called on it … what a wretched human being.
You know what?
Scotland is full of people like Cameron.
I’m not suggesting that he’s a bigot, but here he’s treated something appalling and dangerous as if it were a giggle.
Which, as Bob Smith Walker himself pointed out, makes him a moron at the very least. I would go further though. In suggesting that this stuff was “a dark joke” and that it’s somehow woven into Scottish culture, as if something to be proud of, he’s stepped over a line.
It’s because of that I think he has questions to answer.
I think his bosses at The Herald have questions to answer.
This guy’s Twitter page has his job description down there on it.
It’s not enough for him to say “all my views” on there, as if it exonerates them.
His “views” here are repellent.
I am not asking The Herald if it’s editorial line on sectarianism in Scotland is that it’s “a dark joke” and something to be mocked.
I’m asking if they are satisfied that this contemptuous attitude towards the subject, ably demonstrated in public by one of their senior employees, helps them or hurts them whenever they have to write about the issue.
If someone at their paper scorned antisemitism as a joke, or racism as something that “the sane people” didn’t get in a flap about, this “all my views” disclaimer wouldn’t fly for one second. This is a deeply disturbing incident, made a million times worse by how he’s handled it.
The ball is entirely in their court.
A lot of us will be watching with great interest.
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