Even bigots deserve some privacy
Sometimes a story comes along which truly polarises opinion. Today’s leak of the BNP member list is one of those.
It was only a short time before it was displayed on sites, referenced on blogs, and the Google maps mashup/heat maps showed you if there was somebody on the list living in your area/street/house (no links here for reasons which will become apparent).
Cue stories of prank calls, abuse in the street, offensive emails etc. How long before we have physical attacks on people and property? Or even misguided vendettas like the famous paedophile/paediatrician case.
Now I hate what this party stands for, and I can’t understand why people would want to join it. But they have their reasons, which come from a different experience to mine, and I support their right to make that choice. The type of lynch-mob mentality which some of our media stir up is far from helpful and brings out the worst in our supposedly tolerant society.
This may make me a Guardian-reading liberal apologist to some, but sometimes we have to respect people’s views even if those views do not conform to what we deem respectful. Personally I think this is one such occasion.
Feel free to disagree. That’s kind of the point.
Digg It | Reddit | De.lic.ious
Comments (3)
November 19th, 2008 at 11:17 am Posted by Chris Lee
I agree with you. Much as I don’t like what the BNP stands for, we live in a democracy and the whole point is freedom of speech, thought and expression. If you take that away then you live in the kind of police state like the Third Reich.
Releasing information on the web of where people live is utterly irresponsible. There will be at least one case of an incident where people have gone on a witch hunt, I bet, and therefore have acted, er, rather like the BNP might…
November 20th, 2008 at 8:51 am Posted by PaulieA
Totally agree - but still alarmed to find a BNP member living a few doors up from me! No witch hunts of course but was still vaguely unsettling
November 20th, 2008 at 2:36 pm Posted by Becky McMichael
I agree, it is unsettling although I was unsurprised to see a couple in my Cornish village as there are always leaflets through the door come election time.
I saw a Tweet from someone today about how this could be any of us, given the amount of data held on all of us…this week BNP, next week another party, another religion, another belief.
Post Your Comment