Referendum Recollections

According to the unionist press the dream of independence split the nation. Is this true? In a way I suppose it could be said that it was. Some voted that Scotland should be an independent country while others voted to remain under the heel of the Westminster system. Indeed the September 18th result was obviously the focal point for the British Nationalists, as was demonstrated by the George Square Riots.

After a day of being a sovereign country, we were returned to colonial rule. This begs the question of who was really trying to divide Scotland and whether they were successful? Was it the positive and inclusive grassroots YES campaign organised by the people of Scotland? Or was it the AstroTurf Project Fear; a scare and intimidation campaign run and funded by a Westminster government who became increasingly desperate to hold onto the revenues from our nation in order to prevent the inevitable bankruptcy of the rest of the UK.

For the people of Scotland I believe the lead up to the big day was actually way more important. Far from the hatred and division portrayed in the unionist controlled main stream media the residents of this country actually experienced a reawakening of a sense of community and compassion. For perhaps the first time in their lives the voiceless had a voice and the nation was gifted with a sense of hope.

Contrary to the reports of violent division before and since September, my personal experience was, and indeed continues to be, that of a coming together of people from diverse backgrounds. It has become irrelevant which social class you come from, what race or religion you happen to belong to, which sex you are, or even which country you were born in. People came together then and continue to work for a common cause. Perhaps for the first time politics was being openly discussed in homes, workplaces, pubs and public meetings the length and breadth of the land.

New phrases, such as social justice, flooded social media sites. People who had previously been unaware of just how large the gaps between the well off and the poor had become joined forces to attempt to redress the balance. Food banks became headline news and the levels of poverty, which had been at best ignored and at worst deliberately hidden, were thrust into the spotlight. The people were coming together to help those most in need in our society and continue to do so.

Divisive? That’s a matter of opinion. I have made a lot of new friends through the YES campaign, both on social media and also locally, nationally and worldwide. People I would never have met or interacted with if not for the referendum. I am not alone in this as the sense of inclusion is repeated hundreds, if not thousands, of times over in Scotland and around the globe as many looked on and stood with us in anticipation of the triumph of hope over fear.

Alastair G Rennie (Wheelie Bins for Yes)

A troll’s a troll fur a’ that.

1 Reply

Poor wee Dougal Alexander, he was hayin a guid moan at the £100 per head Labour List Conference at Dartmouth House in Mayfair this week. That’s 15.4 hours work at the minimum wage for a half day conference. I guess they weren’t wanting any of those working class types turning up and lowering the tone. No, this event was purely for the Labour Party elite to address a compliant press and didn’t Dougal do well? He got a piece in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Drum, Huffington Post, The Spectator and Politics.co.uk.

What Dougal was moaning about was that it is “getting harder for politicians to campaign in elections because of conspiracy theories on social media.” As most people realise, what he really meant was that it is getting harder for politicians to lie during election campaigns because the collective minds of the internet users, facilitated by social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, quickly expose those lies and broadcast them around the planet at lightning speed. Of course there wouldn’t be an issue if the politicians told the truth, but lets follow Dougal’s thread.

He continued that because of social media we are confronting “a politics where people’s social media feeds can be an echo chamber for, at best, their own opinions and, at worst, their own prejudices.” So there are NO FACTS on anyones’ Twitter or Facebook (unless they’re Labour facts of course). There are only rumours, opinions and prejudices.

Let’s look at some facts then. During the independence referendum we were subjected to a relentless stream of “news”, almost all of it against the concept of independence. This stream was delivered to our living rooms by the likes of the BBC, STV and almost all newspapers. It is remarkable that anyone voted for the idea at all and the main reason for that was the 5th estate: social media, independent websites and blogs. Now that the referendum is over the fifth estate has turned its attention to the general election.

It is an amazing thing this 5th estate. It is a collective, a hive mind, ever watchful. Always scrutinising all of the output from “traditional” media. Dissecting and analysing the words and meanings of every politicians’ speech and press release. Debating politics in real-time in cyberspace. Organising and protesting, even driving the political agenda.

This is the politics of the people in its rawest, purest form. It is a very powerful thing which is making the establishment scared. That is the real meaning of Dougal’s speech: Labour and the establishment is scared of the power of the 5th estate. So they will try to spread that fear and use it to their advantage and they will use the “traditional” media to do it.

Barely a week goes by without some “vile cybernat” or “troll” headlines. The normal pattern is like this:

Someone posts a derogatory, slanderous or ill-advised comment on a well-known person’s timeline
This is picked up by all of the users of the site and spread far and wide, almost instantly
The “traditional” media make political hay. Favourite adjectives are vile, disgusting and hateful

It is VERY easy to become a troll: a couple of sherberts, then typing what you think and pressing the post button without checking what you are saying first. Boom. Trollmageddon. We have been there with some ill-advised comments and the reaction is not nice. Apologies are not necessarily printed alongside the offending item.

But a far bigger problem is the damage that it does to our cause. The “traditional” media have a field day over it. They paint every independence supporter as some kind of sub-human Neanderthal and they always insinuate, rightly or wrongly, that the trolls are SNP members or supporters.

What we have to remember is that not everyone is connected to our 5th estate. There are whole generations of voters who only receive their politics from the “traditional” media. If all they receive about the independence movement are a load of “vile, disgusting cybernat” stories then that is what they will think about us.

“So what?” I hear some people say. We need these people if we are ever to achieve our dream, for in their midst there are soft unionists. People who we may be able to persuade that independence is indeed the natural state for our nation. We will never achieve that if we allow the “traditional” media to influence them with a few ill-considered comments. Let’s try not to give them any more ammunition.

The vilification of Scotland

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The dictionary defines vilification as: “To attack the reputation of (a person or thing) with strong or abusive criticism.” To my mind this is exactly what we have been seeing in the press over the last week or more.

We had Steve Bell’s racist slur cartoon in the Guardian, suggesting that all Scots are incestuous. I won’t bother showing it here. There was much derision at the Scottish outrage with “It’s just a cartoon” being the most common refrain. Yes it was a cartoon, but one carefully calculated to denigrate the Scots.

We also had Alan Massie give us a “Rivers of Blood” monologue in the Daily Heil (English Edition only). To quote him, “To borrow the Roman poet Virgil’s phrase (but intending none of the racist malice Enoch Powell so famously lent it), I don’t say the rivers Thames and Mersey will literally foam with blood – but they might well do so metaphorically.” He may not have intended the racist malice, but the whole piece leans towards it. It stokes anti Scottish hatred just because we may decide to vote for a party which he, and the rest of the Imperial Masters, does not approve of.

Then we had The Sun (English edition) giving our First Minister the Miley Cyrus makeover, portraying her on a wrecking ball wearing nought but a skimpy tartan bikini. The sexism is breathtaking. The picture harks back to the golden age of The Sun. I am reminded of when they covered the Hillsborough Disaster.

The Sun’s Front Page after Hillsborough Disaster

We also had the Tory mock-up of Ed Miliband in the breast pocket of Alex Salmond. At least this one had a point other that to stoke hatred of the Scots. I could go on, that lot is from one week after all. So what’s it all about?

FEAR, that’s what it’s all about. Setting the SNP up as the big bogeyman. Trying to to achieve a number of points:

Scaring the voters away from voting Labour on the off-chance that they may end up in some form of coalition with the SNP in the event of a hung parliament.
Manoeuvering the English electorate into accepting the reasons for EVEL.
Make the Scots appear to be a bunch of ungrateful oiks who are worthy only of derision, ergo their democratically elected representatives (who will be either SNP or Labour) will be unfit for high office.
Working up some English nationalist fervour (shhh, we’re not allowed to call it that) in an effort to counter the rise of UKIP.

The problem with these strategies is that they will inevitably create a backlash against the Scots. We had all the sweet cooing noises during the independence referendum, but now we’re getting the hot tongue and cold shoulder. I fear that it won’t be long before we see signs like these:

Racist Sign

Phoenix45

From the ashes a phoenix rises

Referendum Recollections

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