Ibrox Fan Site Descends Further Into Madness With New Political Enemies List.

I sometimes wonder why Police Scotland doesn’t take the incredible level of hatred at Ibrox more seriously.

At a time when extremism is on the rise, and when MP’s have been threatened or attacked and a couple even murdered, our authorities allow individual parliamentarians to be targeted on forums and fan pages in the vilest way imaginable.

Before I start, I want to condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the way this latest issue has been fed and nurtured and inspired by a national newspaper, The Scottish Daily Express, which I’ve written about once on this site and which is pushing its football social media pages hard, usually with anti-Celtic content.

Earlier in the month I said that newspaper had published the worst anti-Celtic story I have ever read.

It continues to fan the flames of hatred.

The Ibrox fan media site in question – which I won’t name, but it won’t take you long to find it if you want to look – has taken its cue from the rag newspaper, which last week published a “list” of the MSP’s who had “failed to congratulate the club” on its – no laughing – “150th anniversary.”

Now that list is circulating on an Ibrox fan forum as de-facto “enemies list.”

It has to be said that a large number, although I wouldn’t say a majority, of the posters on the site have no interest in the story whatsoever. About half of those have bothered to comment on it have expressed how little they care.

But that thread remains up as a rallying card for the lunatic fringe, and a few of them are fully present on the thread.

And the thing is, the list isn’t exclusively an SNP one; a few high profile Labour figures are on there as well, including Anas Sarwar.

Obviously the whole thread is a degenerate discussion about who hates them, with a handful of sensible posters trying to argue a sane response from the rest.

But a couple of posters in particular would benefit from a knock on the door … and our political class would certainly benefit from that, as there are a lot of hyper-partisan nutters on there.

These are people with a seriously warped view of the world.

They cannot see this refusal to bow and scrape to their club as anything other than proof that these are their enemies, and as a lot of these folk self-define as militaristic and hard-core unionist and even loyalist, I would suggest that could be a real problem somewhere down the line.

Remember this well; it only takes one.

It only takes one of these psychopaths to decide that our political class represents a clear and present danger to them requiring action before a few words online becomes something far more serious.

The Scottish Daily Express clearly doesn’t give a shit about fanning those kind of flames, and those who run the forum – who should be taking this stuff down as swiftly as it goes up – don’t seem to have any sense of accountability either.

And that’s why the decision should be taken out of their hands.

I do not believe in internet censorship or attacking freedom of speech, but there is some speech which is dangerous, and there are some discussions being had which are too potentially lethal to be allowed to circulate without some level of control.

This idea that their football club and their culture risks being “eliminated” by elected officials is one that would be considered hazardous and nutty by even the most liberal defender of the right to free expression.

At a time when our politicians are facing an unprecedented level of threat, the creation of lists such as this is unpardonably dangerous.

I know if I were in charge of that forum that I’d remove that thread.

I know if was the editor of that rag of a newspaper I would never have permitted such an incendiary article, which can have no other purpose than to whip up hatred and inspire the mob, to go out into the world.

Some people really do need to get a grip and recognise that they have some modicum of responsibility for the things they allow to be published.