The online pile-on which Carla Lockhart has been subjected to for years, has now spread to the streets. It is not about political vindication, but personal vilification. The vitriol vat been so cooked up, it both steams and stinks. Stieg Larsson could have found in her experience inspiration for the title of one of his Lisbeth Salander novels.
I am not in any way enamoured to the politics of Carla Lockhart. One quick glance at the barricade and she will be positioned on the wrong side of it, shoulder to shoulder with obscurantism and holding the line against empathy. Her appearance alongside masked men - always at the ready to tear the veil from Muslim women as a signal of their virtuous opposition to mask wearing - at the Scarva genocide rally was unpardonable. Her role as chief cheerleader for the Drumcree dinosaurs not much better. Her views on abortion, immigration, the Irish language, religion, gay rights, and just about everything else run counter to my own. DUP to her oxters, there is little about the woman to warm to, politically. She deserves every salvo of polemical and political flak fired her way.
What she does not deserve is the chemical weapon of poisonous personal abuse online or off. That toxicity should be out of bounds, off limits. And despite hard hitting calls from Michelle O'Neill last year for the "disgraceful and unacceptable" abuse to cease, it has re-emerged with venom in recent days. Whatever about Drumcree, or a phalanx of masked men supporting Israel's continued breach of international law, the pernicious personal abuse directed against Ms Lockhart is hateful, the desire to trample over her face as objectionable as the determination to trample over Garvaghy Road.
What propels a female public representative to stand with masked supporters of genocide might be perplexing. Not so opaque is the type of hurt that propels the same woman to stand before the media to explain her situation in the face of a barrage of abuse not about what she thinks or says but about how the abusers scream she looks.
I see the online keyboard warriors have been dusting off their dictionaries and thesauruses to abuse me online, based solely on how they think I look.
It takes quite some courage for any woman to stand in front of a camera and be descriptively candid about the abuse she is taking in the sure knowledge that she has to open up about what hurts, exposing the wound to hyenas salivating at the prospect of another bite.
No woman should be subject to toxic abuse for how others claim she looks. It is not free speech being sought after here but a licence to bully. And bullying is always designed to smother free speech by recourse to intimidating people out of the public square. Bullying is never banter. It is the call sign of the malignant.
Carla Lockhart can be justly criticised for who she appears alongside, not for how she appears. To her son she is a beautiful mother, to her parents a beautiful daughter, to her husband a beautiful wife, to her siblings a beautiful sister. They are the people who count in this, no one else.
She has the courage to stand up and argue her case, unlike many who hide behind fake names to abuse her. It might be a case we find repugnant. If so, focus on her case, not her face. We have no business going there.
As for the way she looks, I wish I looked as slim. I would be much healthier for it.
It is entirely legitimate to have a go at Carla Lockhart, but with political intellect, not personal insult. Get off her back. Leave her alone.
Well said, Anthony. Dislike of the other's politics is no excuse for loss of basic decency and humanity.
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