A BBC investigation has found that more than 3,000 offensive tweets are directed at UK politicians every day. The beeb analysed three million tweets aimed at MP’s over a six week period.
More than 130,000 could be defined as toxic. Labour MP Jess Phillips said that the abuse has resulted in politicians becoming scared to speak out on certain issues. She described it as an “unsustainable culture.”
According to The BBC:
Our investigation found more than 130,000 tweets mentioning MPs were considered likely to be toxic and 20,000 severely toxic.
All 20 of the MPs to receive the highest proportion of toxic comments were not members of the cabinet or shadow cabinet
Ms Phillips, the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, said politicians accepted robust criticism was part of their job, but she said a line was crossed when the language used was sexist, racist, or over-sexualised.
“Sadly, women politicians suffer huge amounts of thinly-veiled or completely direct rape and sexual violence threats,” she said.
“When it becomes not about a subject but about the way you look and about your children and family that’s when it crosses the line.”
Ms Phillips said she knew of colleagues who had even voted against their principles on a range of matters including Brexit and military intervention in Syria in order to avoid a backlash on social media.
Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson received the largest number of tweets considered toxic at 19,000, around 4% of the total he received.
Other MPs to receive the highest number of offensive tweets included former culture secretary Nadine Dorries (9,000), Rishi Sunak (9,000), who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer (8,000).
I do not believe Phillips’ claim that her colleagues voted against their principles to avoid a backlash on social media. It’s pretty irresponsible of the BBC to publish that in the absence of any evidence.
The beeb could have asked Phillips to introduce her to one of these colleagues for clarification, with a guarantee that they would remain anonymous.
But, hey-ho. Journalism, what is that again?
Phillips and her 649 mates in Westminster are the glove-puppets of a totalitarian agenda that seeks to transform the world into an open-air prison, where everything you do, everywhere you go and everything you say will be monitored and controlled by the state.
Of course, threatening to rape or kill a woman or anyone else on social media is completely unacceptable. But that’s the extreme end of the spectrum.
The majority of those who take to Twitter to rant at their local MP’s do not resort to death threats.
As far as I can tell, most of the criticism aimed at politicians like Phillips is coming from people who are apoplectic that their elected officials trampled all over their human rights in 2020, destroyed their businesses, damaged their children’s mental health and bullied them into taking dangerous experimental medicines.
Social Media is the only place left where people can tell elected officials what they think of these agendas.
This is why they want to regulate it.
