A survivor of the
London bombings
writes about Lockerbie
Who is the real
Romney? We have
still to find out
Stalinism is alive
and well on the
Glasgow underground
The Cafe
Dick Mungin and the ‘cybernats’ – now it is just getting plain silly and rather obvious. Of course, behind the facade of anonymity, people can and do become incredibly rude. Some don’t even worry about having that degree of camouflage.
But this nonsense about ‘cybernats’ (or people who support independence and who do so through the likes of Twitter or by responding to online articles) being a breed apart in their unique level of vileness is simply tosh. Like others have said before me, it is easy to spot the sad trolls who populate the online world but they come at life from the whole range of extreme and unpleasant points of view.
As someone who is forced to view the Scottish field from afar, I get most of my news from the internet. And yes, I see comments emanating from nationalists that I find distasteful but I also see lots of unionists making ugly comments too. This view, that some unionist commentators want to propagate, that people of a nationalist bent who comment online are cybernats and that that label is also the mark of an unpleasant individual engaged in a disagreeable activity strikes me as a simple and transparent propaganda ploy. And frankly, as the SNP has been so successful in utilising social media for campaigning then one should expect the opposition to seek to tarnish that area of its activity. But it is so obvious a ploy.
Yep, in the world of online comment and counter jibe, you may think a nationalist using social media is a particularly loathsome person – especially if the SNP steamroller campaign has left you feeling a bit flat.
John McDonald
The Cafe
Unlike many publications SR doesn’t have an online comment facility – we prefer a more considered approach. The Cafe is our readers’ forum. If you would like to contribute to it, please email islay@scottishreview.net
Why nationalists
are entitled to call
unionists anti-Scottish
Replies to Dick Mungin
Have you been Mungined yet?
www.bobsmithart.com
I am a new subscriber and confess to being a cybernat as I spend a lot of time out of the country. However, I have always detested the extremely insulting behaviour of some cyber commentators on both sides of the argument. That is why I write to SR about Dick Mungin’s article (8 March) in which he concludes with the very worst sort of insult: ‘Far from being a fringe element within the SNP this bunch are the leadership-backed shock troops of the party in the battle for the blogosphere. Must Scotland’s tomorrow belong to them?’.
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. This is the very worst form of insult. Does he think that we never watched ‘Cabaret’!
Alan Stuart
Dick Mungin objects to Scottish nationalist attacks on unionism as anti-Scottish on the grounds that they encourage the degeneration of the independence debate into personal abuse and worse. He has ‘trawled through hundreds of cybernat comments, a dirty job’, and I’m sure he is right that there is much which is objectionable to be found there. Best not to descend into the mire which is internet comments, my very limited experience suggests, limited to avoid a psychological descent into total misanthropy. As I haven’t ventured much into those areas, I couldn’t guarantee that cybernats of British nationalist, ie unionist, persuasion, are as bad as Scottish nationalist cybernats; but I would be surprised if one did not find unacceptable anonymous postings from this side too.
But to turn to the more substantive issue, I wish to defend the right of Scottish nationalists to class unionists, at least a certain type of unionist, as anti-Scottish; it’s a key and legitimate part of the nationalist case, in my view, that this is so. The line is well-known: unionism is both the product of, and sustainer of, a centuries-old (pre-union in fact) dependency culture, an attitude that Scots are second-raters compared to the English, incapable of standing on their own two feet.
I accept that unionists who think that Scotland is a region of ‘Ukania’, somewhat as Northumberland or Mercia are, or as Lower Saxony is a region of Germany, need not be anti-Scottish in this sense. But not many unionists own up to such a view: the general view is that Scotland is a nation pretty much as are other small northern European nations including Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Like those three we are part of a family of nations, albeit in our case a family with a very big member taking up about 85% of the nest.
To the obvious question: If we are a nation like the Scandinavian nations, why can’t our relation with England be like Norway’s to Sweden?, the unionist response prior to the likes of Mike Russell and Joan McAlpine crying ‘anti-Scottish’ was almost always (if implicitly, often only just) highly denigratory: ‘we are too wee/feckless/drunken/stupid to make it on our own’.
Not so much now, to be sure, and I accept it is not just that British nationalists are more circumspect. They sincerely believe they are not anti-Scottish, just as the vain person sincerely rejects accusations of vanity as he checks his profile in the mirror for the nth time; but they are anti-Scottish all the same and their other words and deeds reveal them to be so. That is one Scottish nationalist line at any rate; it is hardly likely to be other than offensive to unionists but it need not be accompanied by personal abuse. For British nationalists to call for the silencing of this view is to call for the silencing of their opponents. (And yes, it would be very wrong to say this makes unionists ‘Nazis’.)
Alan Weir
Dick Mungin says ‘Is the future of Scotland to be debated by anonymous half-wits who would rather trade insults and threats than openly engage in intelligent argument?’ Would it not have been more concise to have said ‘politicians?’.
Paul Cochrane
Click here for Dick Mungin’s article
