Feart

Back in 2011, the Flying Rodent composed this majestic diatribe, detailing a doer's guide to Concern Trolling. The target of the Rodent's ire was a rash of reports and articles in the UK media, which represented its authors as embattled truth-tellers, "shouted down" by the PC mob and silenced by illiberal liberal elites, inimically hostile to the unsayable, plain, old-fashioned common sense which the hacks and politicians imagine they espouse. 

Nigel Farage has become a past-master of this dual strategy, assuming the mantle of both the Plain Fellow and the Victim. I marvel every time I hear an earnest right-wing gob-jobber on Question Time insisting that "we can't talk about immigration in this country," having spent half of the BBC's flagship politics show, speculating on the extent to which Romanians are lifting the colostomy bags of British grannies, or offering up distorting and racist accounts of crime statistics. 

Whatever pinko censor is responsible for keeping this stuff off the British airwaves is either grossly incompetent, or the forces of reaction's most effective third columnist. As suppression-tactics go, the liberal tyranny which rules us needs sent to Pyongyang for retraining. We seem to hear and see a remarkable quantity of the "unsayable" in the popular media, yet its free availability does nothing to diminish its proponents' sense of themselves as gallant counter-cultural warriors, embattled but determined to make the truth heard, as they see it.  

The lesson? Bullshit fantasies of victimisation have their compensations and pleasures. And the frisson of ressentiment is all the more enjoyable, if you don't actually have to suffer or forgo anything to enjoy your sense of being hard done by. Being "shouted down" is far more satisfactory, it seems, while having your views projected, unchallenged, on the front pages of the national press. Surveying a range of articles cast in these terms, the Rodent concluded:

"I notice the single common factor to each piece (I'll paraphrase, since the Times is paywalled) in that almost every one - report, leader, opinion piece - starts with the premise that the topic is taboo; that discussing it in racial/religious terms opens the speaker up to malicious attacks from the Politically Correct mob; that, in short, the Times isn't allowed to discuss this stuff in these terms. Wait a minute, I think.  You're the nation's paper of record, and you're telling your readership that you're not allowed to report on the things which you are in fact reporting on, in the specific terms in which you're reporting upon them? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense."

Roused from my slumber at dawn on Friday, I agreed to go on Kaye Adams' Morning Call programme on BBC Radio Scotland, to discuss President Obama's faltering endorsement of a "united" Britain. As it transpired, I spent much of my speaking time, responding to a couple of callers claiming that the Yes side of the argument was "shouting down" those committed to continuing Union. 

Earlier in the show, I'd suggested that Obama had lost the redemptive veneer of his first election. No JFK (and the ghastly JFK was no JFK either), the President is now a figure tarnished by the challenges and compromises of office. Not all of this is the President's fault. But whatever his views on Scottish independence, and whatever his assessment of the best outcome from the perspective of American security interests, Obama now cuts a diminished figure. I doubt very much whether his remarks will weigh with many of us on the 18th of September, as we puzzle over which way to cast our ballots, one way or the other. 

Despite the First Minister's pitch-perfect response to Obama's comments, (and my own concerted attempt to be reasonable), Kaye's No callers proved conspicuously attached to the idea that folk of my constitutional persuasion were somehow bullying or unjustly muting dissenters. Despite. You know. Their own opportunity to express their sentiments on national radio. And. Um. The fact that the President of the United States' comments appeared on just about every front page in the country. And. Er. The daily grind of independence-hostile front-pages, news content, reportage and opinion columns. Clearly, opposition to independence is the one political cause in this country which dare not speak its name for fear and trembling. We can only conclude that the pinko censor, charged with keeping immigration off-topic in the UK press, has been transferred to the Yes Scotland office.

Just this weekend, a series of articles in the press harp on the same string. The Times has a piece on unionist artists being bullied mute by thuggee nationalist sculptors and the unevidenced threats and menaces from secessionist choreographers. That notoriously thin-skinned band, stand-up comics, are apparently feart of broaching referendum controversy at this year's festival in Edinburgh.  My heart bleeds.  I suppose they'll be forced into retelling their "edgy" rape jokes instead.  You know: something less controversial. Just the latest, tragic victims of our bilious and bile-spattered referendum campaign.

Hardly a week goes by, without some new tale of a No voter having their misplaced anxieties - and I'm afraid, their cowardice - indulged by sympathetic media outfits, doing their darnedest to convince us that this poll - this model of participative democracy, this civil, invigorating campaign - is something dark and terrible, rending the country apart. In its worst excesses, this construction of the referendum betrays an unseemly relish for the wildly remote prospect of blood on the tiles. 

The underlying message of this commentary is hardly subtle: to hold a referendum represents an irresponsible, civility-curdling outrage: no reasonable soul could honourably agitate for separation. This control-freakery is fundamentally hostile to the democratic spirit in which this referendum is being conducted, sprouting from the bottom up, drafting a new generation of active citizens to crack open and blow a gust of fresh air through the dusty, reverent halls of politics as usual. 

Participative democracy is scrappy, untidy, and frequently impolite. Social media transforms anyone with a keyboard and an opinion into a publisher and commentator. You can, if the mood takes you, fire up Twitter and pour a vial of wrath over leading politicians you disagree with. It won't always be edifying or even instructive, but the opportunity to do so challenges the old stultifying deferences, separating the communicators and those communicated to, and the division of power and roles which this implies. 

Too often, we lack empathy with our opponents. It would be a better country, if more folk could see and understand where those who take a different tack on the constitution are coming from, not least because empathy is the best weapon. But let's keep a sense of proportion, and remember the value of an open society. Uncritically reporting baseless fears is innuendo, plain and simple, even if the anxieties are sincerely felt.

I know a number of folk on both sides, who have been reluctant to participate publicly in the constitutional debate for a range of reasons. Some are protecting their public standing and reputation. Others are trying to ride the two horses at once, anxious not to find themselves getting too publicly embroiled with the loser. Still more are determined in their constitutional views, but pretty lukewarm in them, and reluctant to become the face of one campaign, or the other. We each of us must make our own judgements on this score. But how we understand and construct that reticence is critically important.

"Shouting down" is becoming one of the referendum campaign's irregular verbs: I disagree with you. You shout me down. Alex Salmond behaves like Kim Jong-il. To explain to someone that you regard their case as unconvincing or wrong-headed is not shouting them down. To reject somebody's argument is not to "silence" them. Delusions of victimisation have their emotional compensations, but they disfigure our politics. To repackage disagreement as oppression is to do a fundamental disservice to the democratic process. People who disagree can be disagreeable. Argument can be uncomfortable. But if you feel tempted to regard that as the end of civilisation and the death of democracy, your democratic muscle needs serious toughening.