Not long ago I remarked to a colleague that I had not run into much trouble while moderating reader comments on Thought Leader.
Apart from the occasional personal insult or such, readers were mostly contributing well-reasoned and interesting comments, putting forward their views without attacking Thought Leader bloggers or other readers unfairly.
Sadly, in the past two weeks this state of affairs has been turned upside down. I cannot help but agree with Steven Friedman when he says that the election of Jacob Zuma and Eskom’s power failures have brought out the “racial demons buried just beneath the surface of the minds of many white South Africans”.
Especially Eskom’s failure to keep our lights on (and its use of black engineers, dismissal of white experts post-1994 and so forth) seems to have torn open a festering sore of racism among some individuals.
On Friedman’s Eskom post, linked above, Ryland Fisher’s “Eish! Our divided country” and “Call a racist a racist“, and Sandile Memela’s “We have no black thought leaders“, comment moderation has become exceedingly difficult.
The comments that have been allowed on these posts, as readers will know, already show some extreme views regarding race — often severely criticising black expertise, government, leadership, knowledge or skills, and posted by white readers if their names and email addresses are anything to go by.
In comparison, very few extreme comments by black readers on whites have been received.
Our comment guidelines state: “Comments that contain racist, sexist or homophobic remarks — or that may be interpreted as such — won’t make it on to Thought Leader.”
This is a difficult rule to enforce. One person’s racism — or sexism — is another person’s fair comment, obviously. Most comments have been allowed; some had an offending sentence or phrase removed. However, a disconcertingly large number have been plainly too racist to allow on the site. A few even qualified as fully fledged hate speech.
Perhaps these readers don’t bother to read our guidelines; perhaps they just don’t care, as almost all these posts reek of anger and frustration. Perhaps just writing such an offensive comment, even knowing it won’t appear on the website, makes them feel better.
It seems to me that their anger renders these readers unable to argue their point without resorting to tired old racist remarks. There’s little original thought there, frankly. Surely it can’t be that hard to debate or motivate even extreme views without resorting to endless paragraphs full of hate and terrible grammar?
So, it seems to me that Friedman hit the nail on the head. But how does this racist “surge” on Thought Leader relate to real life? Is there any correlation, or has Thought Leader just strolled through the wrong neighbourhood and stared at the wrong crowd? I certainly hope it’s not pervasive.
@Riaan
There is for me a clear difference between a blog headed, say, ‘Vindication for the racists’ and one headed ‘Eskom: where the mistakes were made’. Content and slant can likewise vary either way.
There may be then (‘may’ underlined) a difference in type of response. It is entirely a question of what kind of debate you wish to achieve, or as a blogger/reader participate in, on TL. Probably a mix of both, I guess.
Personally I do not like censorship in any form, preferring to believe that I am up to sorting out the value and intention of stuff for myself.
This is probably a minority view open to many lines of attack by those who think an elite should decide what is safe and best for everyone.
Ach shame, poor little Riaan, are the kids not playing with you? Well we South Africans, we’re just not as clever as you are. We don’t know what’s politically best for us, but you… you can snip-snip here and stick a star there. You feel better now?
@Eagle
Don’t worry. They give us the gift of invisibility as well. They delete posts that are in defence of whites.
Defending whites seems to be as unpopular to liberals as trying to mount a defence of pedophilia
@Roland.
Well done. Don’t you know there are rules on how to play? The liberals can beat you with a stick, with columns such as Mr Memela’s, but you cannot strike back. You can only jump around and say ‘Sorry Baas, I am guilty of all this’.
If you try and show and explain the fallacy of the charges then you are guilty of calling the Baas a liar. After all, they know better. We are all just dumb uneducated racists. Everyone must agree that whites oppressed Blacks during the entire 6000 year African Holocaust. Don’t you know that the earth is flat? Everyone agrees. Those that don’t are just deleted as uneducated racists. Therefore the earth is flat.
Hi Cool Down,
Long time no hear. Does this mean then that you classify yourself as a PC Liberal? What a waste of a good mind. Anyway, if we are going to debate then give me something to debate about.
At the moment, I can only agree with your post. Never in the 300 odd years that whites have been in SA have blacks ever been one homogenous group. Tribalism, or should I call it, black on black racism, have seen to that. Just like today.
For the many thousands of years, before whites arrived here and up unto the late 1800s, that’s now discounting the people who were neck laced in the townships on the pretext that they were informers, blacks were occupied predominantly with warring, murdering and enslaving other tribes e.g. Chaka Zulu who murdered enslaved and displaced more than 3 million black people during his 10 reign of terror.
So in formulating baseline agreements, shall we agree that it is unfair for whites today to be punished and forced to compensate black layabouts and opportunists for the actions of a handful of white people 40 odd years ago, when most white income earners today were toddlers or not even born yet. Why are the descendents of the Zulus or other tribes who murdered, enslaved and displaced black people in greater numbers and for many more years, not punished and made to pay compensation?
Hi Consulting Engineer. Even pedophile priests are defended by their churches, sick as that might be.
Disgruntled whites who question the status quo laid down by brownnosing PC Liberals some 14 years ago when they (the PC Liberals) prostrated themselves in white guilt on behalf of all of us, without any mandate to do so, are just hankering-back-to-the-past racists i.e. FAIR GAME.
It’s amazing how quiet Riaan has suddenly become. What happened to the ranting, finger wagging and pounding the rostrum against us dirty racists?
Eagle
Now you see how easily it is to be distracted.
No I am not a liberal on the contrary I was once
the secretary of a study group with extreme views
on how the new South Africa would look like after
apartheid, if I did it today I could easily find myself the the subject of secret police investigations!!
Most of our scenarios were spot on and if people
had listened to us then,well if you were white
you would still be in the army.
Speaking about armies yours truly got stripped
of rank on a full miitary parade for disobeying
a legal order under war conditions. Don’t ask any
questions,I have put this all behind me.
As democrats we have to accept the result of elections whether they came as a result of good spin doctors twisted half truths or not.
DO you remember and don’t I remember all the assurances how ‘checks and balances’ somehow
were designed to protect us all.
Now,if our dear President de Klerk appeared on
TV and said.’Now listen up you whities.I want your
vote,it is time to set Mandela free, but you
have to brace yourselves for AA, BEE numerous attacks on your property,you will be labelled racist if you dare to say so, no more of your
own selfish white neighbourhoods. Start investing
in high tech security systems,barbed wire fences
private security companies,because your houses
will broken into, you’ll be shot at,your wives
and daughters raped and hijacked,just as the
people you are about to liberate are!!
On top of it all many of you will once you have voted ‘yes’ and ‘no’will leave the place of their birth in droves and leave parents and family behind to face the consequences.
You’ll suffer from power outages,named load shedding and don’t that upset you the people
you’re about set free had for donkey years no power
at all.
Who on God’s earth in his right mind would have
said ‘Yes’ good idea,bring it on.
You see white in general dont grab their weapons
and chop one another to pieces if we do not agree
with election results. Yes we might occasionally
drive a truck through the doors of covention
halls,if we dont agree with what the negotiators
are saying on our behalf.That’s all.
Sometimes whites go on the rampage blow up a
piece of railway track.threaten to overthrow
the government,sit for years in prison waiting
for legal teams to get their fees structures in
order.Treason my foot,let them out I say they
have been in goal long enough.
Now this blog is called ‘and then the racist came’.
It should have labelled ‘and then the Spin doctors
came.’
Now spin doctors arrive in all shapes, sizes and
colours. Those with television sets saw them
in the nineties and again today defending Escom.
Spin doctors taught the world ‘apartheid was a
crime against humanity’ because a white minority
denied 9 other minorities their basic rights.
Now that sounds wrong dont say 9 other minorities,
some in independant homelands,that is not going
to sell. Best for that purpose to group them
all together.
Now humanity we are taught from a young age are’all the people living in the world’ and not
just the people in South Africa.
Anyway ‘apartheid was classified’ as a crime
against humanity and nothing is going to change
that.
Along came the the grusome murder of 800 000( some say 900 000) people in April 1994 (same time as
we had our elections) in Rwanda. This time the
spin doctors told us it is ‘genocide’ the murder of a large number of people of a particular race.
From this you can see where this agrument is going.
If whites oppress (not kill 800 000) 9 minority
groups it is called a ‘crime against humantity’.
If people of the same race kill 800 000 of the same
race it is called genocide,which almost leads
one to the conclusion that those 800 000 poor souls
were not part of humanity.
So what is happening in Kenya can not as yet
be labelled as genocide,a couple of say hundred
thousand still have lose their lives,before that
term applies, nor can it be labelled a’crime against humanity’ not that they are not part of
the human race, simply because whites as a group or
a different race are not involved.
You see Eagle spin doctors can make you believe
anything and the less educated the masses are the easier the spin.
I think I would not have made a bad spin doctor
myself. Any vacancies,’ ek kan ook doen met ‘n miljoen’ or is this just reserved for BEE and AA??
@ Cool down
That is really an excellent post and how I feel as well, and having seen much of Africa and europe and america in the 80s, I was one of those racist NO voters. Now we can watch the predictions come true, for whatever reason. With hindsight, maybe extended military service may have been better, with a more gradual relenquishing of rights.
Now we have to sit and watch the children get raped and killed as the price of our folly. It is the price for pay for listening to the lies of that traitor De Klerk. Betrayal of his leader and people wasn’t enough. he then had to betray his wife.
While so many of those that listened to him emigrated, the rest of us must now accept this mess and somehow make it better.
As a loyal South African it is hard to watch our country being destroyed by incompetent thugs. Things would have been different if we had taken 14 words to heart and had acted accordingly:
We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.
A great man once said:
What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the creator of the universe. Every thought and every idea, every doctrine and all knowledge, must serve this purpose. And everything must be examined from this point of view and used or rejected according to its utility.
Good posts cool down and consulting engineer.
I voted NO as well. Actually wrote NO, N.A.F. on my ballot paper. A blind man could have foretold the outcome but cool down is right, our friend Effie de Klerk spun a nice yarn.
Some say that Effie received in the region of R 300 million to do it and there are others who say he was a communist mole planted here already many years ago. Be it as it may, not for him to face the results of his actions, he fled overseas some time ago.
You will remember that we were told that protection of the white minority would be guaranteed through the Constitution, amongst other things. Of course the ANC set about corruption the Constitution as soon as they had a chance so that, today, it is not worth the paper it is written on and the South African pale face is now one of the most persecuted human being on the planet while everything that he created is tumbling down around him with nothing to replace it.
Hence my anger at these liberals who, not satisfied with the mayhem they helped to create, still try to creep up the butt of the crocodile by kicking the dog from behind the safety of their computer screens – or don’t they know the croc is in the room? Well, they’ll learn.
Why is Riaan suddenly so quiet?
@Eagle
I heard FW is safely hidden in the Western Cape with his mistress and much security. He doesnt go to town. Guess he can’t face white wrath and Blacks laughing at him.
He managed to convince liberals – modern hanskhakis- and the unsure to put up their hands. He did what Dingaan, the Xhosa chiefs, and later the MK, the PAC and the Armed Struggle could not do: force a capitulation.
Well in a way, the liberals and their ANC Baases are doing something: creating unity of discontent. The collapse they are bringing on will cause a ground swell of anger amongst Black and White. The next time it won’t be them leading protests: they will be the object of them and face angry Black and White mobs.
Do I hate DE Klerk
No I don’t. I pity him for having been the one
that opened Pandora’s box (Pandora opened a box
containing toubles and let the troubles come into
the world)
It is a indeed a sorry state of affairs that his
personal problems led to the speedy capitulation
of his once mighty party.
For those who were watching from the outside do
not think the ANC came unprepared to the negotiating table, on the contrary their were well prepared, because that was all that was on their
plate.
In mitigation one must understand,that the Government had to keep on as usual, also on Provincial and Municipal level.The wheels of
Government had to keep on turning,water, electricty
and all other essential services had to keep on
running.
Ngotiation became an additional burden for officials who had to find time to meet sometimes
at short notice more and demanding civics.
They,the civics, were ably supported by,yes white legal experts.
This is an extract from their plan:
At the very first meeting the civics must take the
lead. It must to this by insisting that negotiations deal with issues they put on the agenda.!!
Now this is something like customers walking into the
shop and determining the price. This attitude
still carries on today. They simply don’t care
what others have say.
Agreements must meet their short and long term demands.
So this is the strategy.
Obtain agreements,by arguing that short-term problems such as arrears, wilful non-
payment,(liberation before education) are linked
to underlying structural problems such as the cost
of Apartheid.
Some Tips.
The opposing party always appoints a biased chair.
Take over the meeting and appoint your own unbiased
chair.
The fact that you are using white facilities established and maintained by white Tax payer’s
money did not count. Fuck the Whites anyway ‘We are
the bosses in waiting and might as well take possesion before these white bastards run away with
it all’.
It was reported that one to enlightened Civic
resorted to a show of contempt by removing his
shoes and socks and started clipping his toe nails.
I got this from a reliable high ranking inside source.Whatever was tabled by the the authorities
was out of principle rejected,nothing but nothing
than total surrender could satisfy the hungry ‘beast’, otherwise strikes,protests damaging of
municipal property,trashing of cities took place.
At that stage the security forces were growling
like caged animals but those who held the keys
were afraid and subjected to ridicule by Mandela
on National Television by saying ‘ well you’re
in power, control the third force causing all the
unrest.’
Now that the ANC is in power,the unruly still burn
train coaches,destroy education and municipal facilities.
And the Civic leaders who demanded so much on behalf of the poor. Today they sit in the former
White offices,voting generous allowances ,salaries
and perks for themselves. Spend collectively with
other previously disadvantaged managers in State
Provincial and Municipal R700million to celebrate
the approval of their budgets, run our national assets
into the ground,destroy our health service,giving
rise to an profit orientated private health care
system which now in turn exploit patients who
are now faced with increases in medical contributions far exceeding inflation.
Our education system is in such a crisis that I know of teachers who dont even bother to read the latest circulars amending the one hundred previous circulars, they carry with what they know works
and are simply too tired to conduct all the fancy
ideas of an incompetent regime.
Is there anyone around still wondering why we are
such a mess on all levels of government??
@cool down
Broer, you are really an outstanding man, and your perception is always clear. I enjoy your posts. It is too bad such wit and clarity was not in the right posts before 1994.
The title and comment of many of the blogs have been designed to incite those views. The thought leaders are inciting those views — just see how many blogs have attacked white people, discredited their integrity and profilerated the view that whites are racists — why would any blacks respond racialistically, they have nothing to defend here!
Spot-on Brandon.
This lot remind me of the times of mass hysteria when the German Nation was swept up by Hitler to kill millions of jews and the Chinese youth were swept up by Chairman Mao to kill millions of Chinese civilians. Today people say, “how could it have happened” but yet, here they are today, doing it again in South Africa”
It boggles the mind that people can stand by and persecute a small minority of white people under the ridiculous auspices that these whites are responsible for deeds committed 350 years ago by a group of Dutch colonials and deeds committed 35 years ago by a handful of cabinet ministers. This then gives the 55 million majority the right to steal from the whites and to rape and murder them.
To a degree one can expect that some blacks will support it, it is in their nature. But to have whites condemning and supporting crime and genocide against their own kind and then to slate them on blogs like these when they try to defend themselves, is absolutely beyond me.