Cybernats

Cybernat

It is probably one of the No Campaign's more successful ploys – the invention of the Cybernat. It combines so many smears and threatening images in one little insult - an organised group of rabid nationalists crouching at their PCs ready to pounce on anyone who disagrees with them and legions of No voters who want to make the positive case for the union but are afraid that they will be set upon. Just the word Cybernat, containing as it does the pejorative “Nat” and the menacing “Cyber” has a scary ring to it...

It's such an easy target that it has been largely ignored by the Yes campaign up until now  – mostly because they think it is just too stupid to bother with but newspaper articles from papers like The Mail and The Times (not a lot of difference these days) are still trying to get some mileage out of this piece of monumental stupidity. They imply – in some cases infer – that there is a group of trained online nationalist activists who are controlled by Alex Salmond – who is, for them, the political equivalent of Darth Vader.

Curiously enough though they are not very forthcoming when it comes to quoting examples of Cybernattery. I could do a lot better, quoting aggressive, ignorant remarks from the No camp without looking too hard. For example, there is a Facebook Page called Nationalist Say The Stupidest Things which has been on the go since very near the beginning of the campaign. It does exactly what it says on the tin. The contributors vie with each other to see how they fervently they can express their hatred and contempt for those who have the temerity to disagree with them. Just looking at the Better Together page shows much the same picture. The real hatred that shines through is really quite alarming. And Twitter... well take a look at these tweets made after the recent Olympic Games.

But the real point is this. Look at the “social media” , Facebook, Twitter and so on, you will find people who are rude, ignorant, threatening, intolerant and abusive on every subject under the sun. Foul abuse, physical threats, inappropriate sexual comments are hurled around in this brave new world , often by people who would not dare to raise their voice in a face to face debate. This is sad but true. It has nothing to do with the independence debate – except that, if you look for it in this area – on both sides – you will find it, just as you will find it in debates about gender, religion, football, sexuality, climate change and every area where controversy is possible. Ignoramuses, I'm afraid, are every bit as commonplace now as they ever were.

As with so many issues in this debate, it seems hardly worth bothering about because, as I said earlier it is so obviously false. The reason I am bothering to spend any time on it is that there are people – Alastair Darling to name but one who are still trying to gain capital from this. In some cases, people may read The Daily Mail and actually believe this kind of thing because they tend to believe what is written in the papers. But Alastair Darling doesn't have that excuse. He knows it is a complete fiction ( like a lot of other things he pretends to believe) but he goes along with it because he thinks it will help his case. But vilifying a large section of the population because he doesn't like losing an argument and doesn't want to lose his day job ( though he has plenty of homers on the go by all accounts) is not an acceptable campaign strategy.

There are huge numbers of ordinary people in Scotland,  SNP voters,  Green voters, some, like myself, former Labour voters,  Scottish Socialist voters and some who haven't voted up until now, who are committed to voting Yes. To invent an insulting name for us and dismiss us all as pawns of Alex Salmond is as stupid as it is offensive.