It’s murder for politicians
Social media death threats have become lazy political currency
Two UK members of parliament, Jo Cox and Sir David Amess, have been brutally murdered in the last 7 years. Cox was horrifically targetted as the local member of parliament (MP), stabbed and shot in the street by a man wielding a shotgun. Amess was stabbed repeatedly at his weekly surgery (when constituents make appointments to meet their local MP) by a man who had travelled to the area for the purpose.
Perhaps around 1000 people have been MPs over that time. From a statistical point of view, it isn’t strictly right to draw inferences from these figures. So let’s consider the period since (and including) the year 2000.
In that year, Nigel Jones MP (later Baron Jones of Cheltenham) was attacked in his weekly political surgery by a man wielding a samurai sword. Jones’ research assistant, Councillor Andrew Pennington, came to his rescue - with extraordinary bravery - and saved his life. Jones was seriously injured, but Pennington was killed. Pennington was postumously awarded the George Medal for conspicuous bravery.
In 2010, Stephen Timms MP was stabbed twice by a constituent, again at his weekly surgery. His internal organs were damaged but he survived. His attacker was convicted of attempted murder.
That’s four murderous attacks over the period 2000 to 2023. How many people have been MPs over that time? There are 650 MPs at any one time; there have been six general elections and quite a few by-elections; many MPs serve more than one term. Someone somewhere knows the correct figure, but it’s probably safe to assume 2000 or so, or less.
So that’s a one in 500 risk, perhaps even higher, that anyone who has been an MP since 2000 has run of being subjected to a literally murderous attack, complete with the unimaginable violence, the blood, pain, shock and horror. And of course the terrible effects on all the loved ones of the victims.
I was an MP for most of that time. Once, when I was busy explaining to the nation what a super idea the Iraq War was and how swimmingly well it was all going, I got a call from the local cops. A mad group of animal rights activists (i.e. plenty such groups are righteous) had been apprehended having set someone’s house alight in an effort to kill them. This all happened hundreds of miles from my constituency. The cops had searched the activists’ homes and found a list of people they (the activists…) wanted to kill next. My name was upon the list.
But not to worry, the local cop told me, the activists appeared to be a tight (and very strange) group of four not associated with any other group, they were all in custody and they would all get lengthy prison sentences. The cop said there wasn't any real risk to worry about but thought it best to let me know about it anyway. In passing, he told me that the cops’ theory was that while the group were all about animal rights, they’d probably seen me on telly praising the Iraq War and just decided to add my name to their list. Like that German naval officer in Dad’s Army. The cops were right, probably in all respects.
The point here is two fold. First, the risk to MPs of murderous attacks (i.e. being the victim, rather than the aggressor, which admittedly is a story for another day…) is actually a lot higher than we might normally think. And because of the preponderance of male violence against women, women in particular are right to feel threatened and to report anything they find threatening. Imagine the things you’d choose to avoid if you thought there was a one in a few hundred chance that you would be killed by it? Much is also true for people who work alongside politicians.
But those risks are really quite different in nature, meaning and scale from the jamboree of death threats being unleashed by and on social media these days; with the latter there’s mainly no serious risk at all.
Yet death threats made over social media, often when they’re looked at not really death threats at all, seem today to be literally celebrated by (some) politicians, celebrities and media outlets. Google ‘mp social media death threats’ or ‘celebrity social media death threats’ or some such: So many of these ‘death threats’ appear in stories without any comment whatever from the cops, often without any specifics at all. Why is this? It’s not that the cops ignore them (assuming the ‘death threat’ has been reported to them in the first place); it’s often that they’ve investigated and the cops correctly assess it’s just some drunk idiot mouthing off online like they otherwise might in the pub. And to the cops, there is a rightly VAST chasm between that daily bullshit and someone being prepared to carry out a real murderous attack.
There’s plenty of room to discuss all the issues around violence aimed at public figures, low level abuse to them and their staff and whatnot. But it seems particularly distasteful for politicians and celebrities to invoke so casually as they sometimes (but not always) do, the full horror of a real murderous attack in their search for a few pathetic column inches (I don’t blame the journalists, actually, becuse column inches is their job —I think this distinction is often misunderstood by the public).
I’m obviously not saying that all claims of feeling threatened are unjustified; they sometimes are. And in case of doubt; call the cops. But another thing opportunistic, essentially vexatious, claims do is play into a wider demand for ever greater constraints upon what people are ‘allowed’ to say. Perhaps the most absurd manifestation of this has be actual police officers being required to knock on people’s doors and warn them of their (the people’s) non-crime “hate” speech on social media (the UK government has, to its credit, began to tackle this nonsense).
Threats and serious violence against politicians is real, and not actually that rare. That’s why it’s so important to allow the cops to sort the wheat from the chaff in respect of reports of such threats. So the next time you see a politician claiming a ‘death threat’, or the latest list of ‘x number of death threats have been made this year’ story, look at the evidence or source. Maybe it’s meaningfully true. But is there a statement from the cops (that they’re investigating, not threatening)? If not, consider the possibility that it’s nonsense coming from someone too enthusiastic about self-publicity to worry about the trivialisation of serious real violence against MPs no longer with us; and reflect on the chilling effect of their vexatious claims.
