What’s so amusing here, Rob, is the example you have given was included in the thread of ludicrous examples of “pile on” accusations that I’ve quoted in my piece https://twitter.com/schmrn/status/1034875634038784000
Just to show how this has become wretched, beyond-satire-levels of crybullying, here is what I’m being denounced for. Douglas Dowell wrote an article announcing that he was leaving the Labour party because of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and the Labour left, which he was completely entitled to do. I retweeted a single post by James Butler, a respected journalist who writes from publications ranging from the London Review of Books to the New York Times, pointing out that Dowell used to be a policy advisor to Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg during the Coalition government. As anyone can see from clicking on the tweet, Butler wrote nothing abusive, didn’t copy in Dowell or even mention his twitter account. Rob claims that I retweeted “some of the nastiest comments and lies made about him” and I acted to “amplify the abuse that was coming from small twitter accounts to your 750k followers”. Yet this is the only tweet in question and everyone can see that if anyone is lying, it’s Rob. And no, Rob, don’t try and claim that this response is a pile on, though I suspect that if I even breathe you would make a case for why that qualified as a pile on.
If people write polemical articles, they get criticised. I can testify to this, and would never conflate it with the homophobia, abuse, and threats of violence and death I get on a daily basis. If Dowell wants to write a widely circulated article denouncing Labour, he is entitled to do so. If someone wants to point out that actually maybe it’s not such a huge surprise that a former advisor to Nick Clegg might want to leave Corbyn’s Labour party, then they are entitled to do so, too. That is not abuse, and it demeans actual abuse to suggest otherwise.
What Rob is demonstrating here is the use of what has become a very cynical political tactic indeed. The left are treated as fair game — they can be denounced in the most vicious way possible, and indeed are, in the press, on TV screens, and online. Yet even the mildest attempts by the left to scrutinise their opponents is treated as abuse, bullying, harassment, or worse. How you’d survive a day with my Twitter timeline — let alone far right harassment on the actual streets — is beyond me, but I doubt you even believe what you write, and this is simply part of a coordinated attempt to demonise anyone on the left with a platform with the flimsiest (in this case non-existent) evidence imaginable.
