Newspapers, at present much derided and bleeding red ink, have at least one useful social function. They confine the nutters, rumour mongerers, conspiracy theorists, and bigots to their dank little holes by largely starving them of publicity.
Those who warn of an international Jewish conspiracy or imminent Armageddon if women won’t dress modestly, struggle to get published in credible newspapers. Competition for space is fierce and the local loony claiming abduction and impregnation by randy extra-terrestrials is only rarely indulged.
The internet is different. Anyone can assert expertise and at negligible cost peddle their pet peeves. It has the benefit of providing true freedom of speech to those who struggled previously to get their views aired.
But fear, marginalisation, and rapid social change make for a dangerous combination. The internet also allows all kinds of vile creatures to slither into one’s email in-box.
The most recent one was a collection of farm-murder photographs round-robinned by an educated man, a dentist, who presumably believes he is performing a useful social function. If the intention was to evoke fear and anger among readers, in that he succeeds.
These are scenes of almost unbelievable violence. A sharpened broomstick is stuck up a vagina; a child is bludgeoned to death; and a young woman is disembowelled and hung by her heels from a meat hook.
The text fulminates against a media and government that deny the truth about crime. It talks of Afrikaner genocide, a political war to drive white farmers from the land, and it links to websites that are virulently anti-ANC, registered to the tiny island of Nauru in order to hide the identities of their operators.
The websites, including one lobbying against the World Cup in SA next year, have been repeatedly targeted by hackers. The assumption of many is that such cyber attacks are the work of SA government agents.
A week ago the identity of the owner of ZASucks.com was revealed for the first time when police arrested him in a dawn raid. Albert Oosthuizen’s site claims as its mission “to bring news to the outside world of the crap that has become of SA”.
Oosthuizen was held overnight and released without charge after the prosecutor reportedly refused to pursue a 1993 fraud charge against him. ZASucks is now offline, Oosthuizen appears to have disappeared, and the local media is curiously disinterested in a contretemps that goes to the very heart of freedom of expression.
At issue is what tolerance should be accorded to those who patently distort statistics and events to stir up emotions and to serve a political agenda most people find reprehensible. The answer is actually easy: every bit we can muster.
As ANC Youth Leaguer Julius Malema demonstrates, hate speech and venom are not the preserve of the right. In any case, bigotry is best fought not by suppression but with reason.
Sure, whites are cruelly murdered by psychologically sick people and in some cases this is fuelled by racial hatred and the desire to drive whites off the land. There also must be many more pictures of black people similarly tortured and cruelly murdered, and their suffering changes the story somewhat.
The other side of the story tells of tens of millions of people who don’t behave this way, despite grinding poverty and harsh conditions. That side of the story argues that the best hope for a traumatised SA lies in development that delivers better lives and the gradual normalisation of a violence-plagued society.
The World Cup will help in a small way. So, too, would clarity on the strange events surrounding Oosthuizen and his activities.
@Johan Meyer, who said
“I’d like to point out to you that the British actions and policies are generally estimated to have killed several million people in Kenya”
Estimated by whom, Johan?
You’re the one who is full of it. Care to provide credible sources for this amazing assertion?
Nthabi, if WSM’a basic premise is flawed why should we stick to his game-plan?
The simple fact of the matter is that, since 1994, the ANC from the top down has been preoccupied with racial mobilisation that has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocents under a flag of truce, that the main stream media (largely owned by ANC deployees) has been part and parcel of that racial mobilisation, and that the response of their largely unaware target has been uncoordinated, confined to blogs because of the demise of the cowardly National Party.
Can anyone offer the statistrics I asked for? WHat ethnic minority across the world does not have researchers who keep such statistics?
One simple question: Why has the ANC invested so much in the disarmament of elderly white South Africans, who have paid their taxes and never given the state reason for reproach – while the ANC sits on not only the army, the police, BUT ALL ITS pre 1994 ARMS CACHES?
For Brett Nortje
I don’t believe that there is a person denying the British Massacre in Kenya…..What the hell
I bet you going to deny the German genocide in Namibia and the death camps too-because the victims were African or because you are ignorant??????
http://blackstarjournal.blogspot.com/2006/10/british-genocide-in-kenya.html
The US commanders in Iraq are not the first to be confronted with the dilemma of whether to face up to a military atrocity, or bury the story along with the bodies. Fifty years ago, when Britain was fighting colonial wars in Malaya, Kenya and Cyprus, concealment was altogether easier. This article tells the story of an atrocity committed by British military forces in colonial Kenya, a tale that has echoes of Al-Haditha. But whereas the perpetrators of the Iraqi massacre are to face trial, the story of the shooting of twenty Kenyan civilians at Chuka in June 1953 has been hidden behind a veil of official secrecy.
Evidence on these events should have been released into the Public Record Office in 1984. The file was withheld by the Ministry of Defence and marked for closure until 2038. Requests under the Freedom of Information Act secured its release in January 2006, and we can now reconstruct the disturbing story of the Chuka massacre. But not everything on this file has been revealed: and that raises tough questions about the culpability of the British Army in colonial war crimes…
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5829847/A-very-British-massacre-David.html
Ok just read up on it too don’t hid behing the article’s premise and the internet to deny such a thing… what next you gonna tell us Hitler never killed the Jews?
In reading the many arguments and diversions one thought has struck me.
On average a Loony is one who swims against the flow.
Is it not true to say that, like politics it is those who control the mainstream or the flavour of the moment who have more say on how to determine what is Looney what is not?
Remember when were told that cholesterol was bad. The media world and every health nut went crazy.
Until some bloody Loony said, “hold on there is good and bad cholesterol”. “We need this to live.” It took almost ten years before the Loony was proved right.
Create a lie, reinforce the lie with other lies and some sucker in the media will take up your cause and it will eventually, if well structured be believed by all. We need Loonies to swim against the flow.
The shooting of twenty Kenyans genocide? You’re kidding, right? Remind us quickly:
1) How many Kenyans Meyer claimed had been killed
2) How many Kenyans died in the MauMau uprising
3) How many white South Africans have been murdered since 1994
4) How many Kenyans were killed in the violence that accompanied the election and the Mugabeing of election results?
@Hugh Robinson
Much of the cholesterol myth is still around: Are you aware that LDL (often called bad cholesterol) comes in two varieties, one bad and one neutral? The neutral variety enters the blood when one eats fat, and the bad variety from carbs, in particular fructose – when one eats whole fruit, the fructose is consumed harmlessly in the gut, as the fibre prevents the fructose from hitting the liver, but with refined food, all of it hits the liver. See Sugar, the Bitter Truth.
@Brett Nortje – I’ll answer you (on the count of millions, rather than the 100 000s being discussed here) in the next three or four days – the issue being the number of dead due to famines that were made worse by the British presence (much like the Irish potato famine, during which Ireland produced twice its own caloric needs, but had to export most of it) – I’m swamped by work right now.
………. AND – Breaker Morant was an innocent scapegoat of the British Imperial Forces and should be given a full posthumous pardon as well…..
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2009/2744388.htm
Why not – everyone else is bring up the past here – so while we are all at it- why not go back and pardon Pontious the Pilate as well?
@Hugh Robinson
Using your definition of a ‘loony’(swimming against the stream) there are more than one type of loony.
There are those ‘loonys’ that question mainstream ‘wisdom’ with good reason. Whether they are right or wrong, good for them.
Then there are loonys like flat earthers, who no matter how conclusive the evidence they stick to and propagate their belief that the earth is flat.
When people question mainstream climate science it is good. When you have fundamentalist nutters like the flat earthers who spew out absolute garbage dressed as science, you are dealing with a ‘loony’ out of touch with reality. No reputable national or international scientific body has challenged the IPCC on CO2 from our industrial era contributing to climate change since 2007, only the flat earth type loony’s who throw crap at the wall and dub it scientific. Added to that, their perpetual rubbish is funded to a large part by vested interests. Is that not a warning bell? Remember smoking ‘did not cause cancer’ DDT was harmless, GM foods are as safe as water and produce higher yields, ha, ha..
Always question, always be a bit of a ‘loony’ which is what a real scientist does, but intelligent people should dismiss the loony’s who trot out propaganda on behalf of vested interests.
Why give them 50% of the space in the mainstream media to fundamentalist loonys, which according to the author of this article we are protected against by relying on main newspapers.
@Hugh Robinson
The one thing crazier than a Looney is a racist looney who claims “Africa murders more innocent people during non conflict than any other since the world war.”
Racist loonies derive their oxygen by concocting lies and deliberately spread misinformation to portray blacks, especially Africans, as subhumans prone to violence and corruption while ignoring the real perpetrators of violence and corruption for the last thousand years on our planet. Congratulations Hugh Robinson, you have finally figured out an apt self describing category.
Not bad for a bikini salesman, eh?
@cactus. Yes I agree. It is good then that we do not believe all that the government says.
@daveharris. Like you I am the perfect example of the ANC version of a SA white racist. If this was not a censored site to protect people like you. What I write would have you s***ing your pants.
Bye the bye in place of insults how about proving my finding wrong. Follow Mayers example and read even if the info you find is on the internet.
William I am very disappointed that you censor this site.
Here is one for all of you who think that we should be told what others think we must know. This is what happens when you allows others to think for you. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1230635/Scientist-climate-change-cover-storm-told-quit.html