Online abuse is particularly shifty, because it channels personalised vitriol impersonally.
No chance of talking face to face, still less understanding of the other. Just a way of emptying one’s psychic bowels, as Luther would say. Politicians, journalists, feminists and immigrants seem to be the preferred targets.
Green co-leader Marama Davidson has pointed out that the abuse directed at former Green MP Golriz Ghahraman is the lot of countless female politicians, especially those of colour. And we are still reeling, or ought to be reeling, at the revelation that torrents of odious abuse and death threats poured into the offices of Jacinda Ardern and colleagues every day, and no doubt contributed to her tank running out. Whatever our politics, not a good look.
What is driving this relatively new phenomenon of online abuse? Clearly not an idle question for we have already seen on the steps of Parliament how it can slide into actual violence. In the United States it is eroding the democratic process.
Is the problem that sections of our society feel left behind, disenfranchised, stranded by the pace of change? Is the politics of envy driving the hate? Clearly some of those who lash out are trapped in a dead-end job or feel sidelined by life.
But a clash of values is also evident. Destiny Church may be a good example: true believers, but in a pre-modern universe. Shouting abuse at a world that’s gone off the rails.
I’ve been learning Scottish Gaelic. In Gaelic you don’t say "I am a parent". You say "it is a parent that is in me".
Incredibly confusing to cope with this alien syntax. Hard to get your head round. A topsy-turvy world.
I suspect that coming to terms with today’s rapidly changing society is like that for countless people. The grammar of their life has gone into spasm. The old rules that made sense of life, the old parameters, no longer hack it.
Last year my partner and I encountered a petrol attendant in a provincial town, a friendly guy, but something we unwittingly said provoked an explosive rant against Maori.
"A white man has no chance any more. This country, anyway, is run by a Nazi."
Ardern was still prime minister.
The hate just poured out of this friendly guy. A tidal surge of it.
I guess he was sick of the smart talk of the academics and politicians and TV presenters, switching from English to Maori at the drop of a hat. That in-crowd, sneering at people like him, the "losers".
It does seem that in recent decades we have created a society with a yawning abyss between winners and losers. Is it any wonder then that those who feel trashed, individually and corporately, made to feel like crap, respond with foul abuse?
Is it any wonder they look for leaders who talk their language, take them seriously (or seem to), dish it out to the smart set, promise to put everything right again? As yet we have no Donald Trump. For how long?
One thing is certain. It’s nothing new that those in society who are hurting tend to be inarticulate, and that populists of every water find rich pickings there. And it surely does not help if those who are articulate look down their noses at the "ugly people" as a neighbour of ours put it — polite society has its own hate talk.
The rhetoric of Act New Zealand, for example, points in precisely the wrong direction, driving a wedge between Remuera and the rest of us.
We are better than this. We boast an exceptionally egalitarian tradition in this country. Maybe we should be pondering how we can once again trim the sails of our societal ship in a more equitable and equable manner?
Hate talk will never disappear, but let’s get it off the headlines.
— The Rev Dr Peter Matheson is emeritus professor, Knox Theological College.
