Gaza invasion ‘unleashes’ ABC fruitcakes

Few topics get the loops tapping their keyboards in outraged frenzy more than Israel. So it is again on for young and old over at the ABC Unleashed site.

So far there have been three contributions, “Massacre of the innocents” (by acclaimed foreign policy analyst Bob Ellis), “Israel no victim” and “Questions for Hamas”. All these pieces are in the ‘op-ed’ format that is they advocate a position by refusing to acknowledge complexity or nuance and much less the (even partial) validity of the opposite view. This format actively discourages intelligent debate, including the idea that such a debate might result in the participants actually learning from each other. What all this passionate outrage does do, like radio shock jocks, is generate lots of comments.

Most of the commenters are in the anti-Israel camp and their language can be very fruity indeed. Words and phrases like ‘genocide’, ‘massacre’, ‘nazis’ (as in Israel is no different to Hitler), ‘zionists’, ‘power of the Jewish Lobby’, ‘most Israeli Prime Ministers were war criminals’, and so on are bandied about with great abandon. There is even a side debate between several participants as to whether Jews are really Jews at all in the light of the new testament (and I’m not kidding). There are also long quotes from Shakespeare, which like the Bible is a great source of material for mentally unhinged. There is a smattering of anti-arab, anti-muslim vitriol (references to muslim extremism, terrorism abound and there are descriptions like the ‘Hamas fascista regime’) but it is an overwhelmingly anti-Israel commentariat.

Despite the nastiness and absurdity of much of the commentary, several commenters still complained about alleged censorship – one can only imagine how bad this stuff had to be to stir the usually lax moderator.

One commenter (sorry ABC doesn’t provide permalinks for comments), Kris Grinsche, got it right I think:

After having read three unleashed articles in as many days on this subject, and after having read umpteen comments in response, I can only say that I have read nothing new and that as usual I am disappointed in Antony for failing to raise the level of discourse above blaming someone else. 

Blaming the other side is certainly a key aim of the pieces and many of the commenters.

Another disappointing aspect of this exercise is that none of the writers have so far deigned to enter the fray and join the ‘conversation’, it’s as if Alan Jones got someone else to take the calls his angry editorialising provoked.

When people eulogise the wonders of web 2.0 this – talk radio without the interaction with the host – can hardly be what they have in mind. This stuff just perpetuates and extends the worst aspects of our public debate.

UPDATE. Janet Albrechtsen has a column today on crazy commenters