This blog has a notoriously liberal attitude to free speech. It is also, notoriously, not politically correct. Comments are virtually never censored. Only two commenters have ever been banned, in both cases for persistently publishing sentiments that were not anti-Zionist (OK), but anti-Jewish (not OK).
Iain Dale currently has comment moderation on. He is pre-screening comments. He has an excellent post about the corrupt New Labour Baroness Uddin.
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6214838&postID=3181377803578187025
But I am really surprised that Iain has approved these comments for publication:
“It is inevitable that these cretins will take advantage. The whole system is wrong and this “Lady” could not control her temptation which was with intent. She’s no different to a sponging immigrant.”
(My emphasis).
and
I wonder why there is a higher proportion of ethnics amongst the most corrupt and deceitful in our society? It makes you think that the so-called colonialists were only acting according to how they found them.
I think most third world ‘people’ are inherently dishonest. Once you accept that, perhaps it is possible to interact on a civilised basis. Otherwise, they’ll run rings around you.
Am I alone on finding the inverted commas in that last one particularly sinister?
Now I quite accept that Iain Dale is no racist. And I accept that a comment on a blog in no way implies that the blog author agrees with the comment. But I would have removed those two, and can’t understand why Iain approved them – or at least did not add a comment of his own to challenge these racist attitudes, as I do in publishing them here.
I tend to the view that this proves that, if you move in Tory circles, you get inured to comments that make ordinary people’s toes curl.
Craig, I’m not sure why you’re surprised by this?
I’m also not sure why people think that if the comment comes from someone with a blogger account they can say whatever they fancy.
A blog’s comments are the responsibility of the blog owner, letting racist and bigoted views stand unchallenged is a serious problem and their is a firm argument that hate speech of any sort should be deleted out of hand.
Unless, you’re a comment whore that is.
Or a believer in free speech. I don’t moderate or delete comments in anticant’s arena (except obvious spam), but I have made it clear to the occasional ranter that I’d prefer them not to bother posting irrelevant or abusive stuff. They usually go away then.
In the early days of the internet, there was something called “netiquette”. One precept – all too often ignored, alas – is not to stray too far off topic.