Tory Alice Terry has been trending because of Twitter abuse, supposedly from Labour members.
Ms Terry has posted screenshots of abusive messages she has received – and Tory party chair Brandon Lewis has chipped in predictably:
So, also predictably, has Labour MP Jess Phillips:
The apology, however, appears over-hasty. All is not as it seems.
Ms Terry has helpfully provided screenshots of the abusive messages she has received. They appear to consist of direct messages, rather than tweets – and the accounts sending them smell more than a little… fishy.
Many have mysteriously and more or less simultaneously disappeared from Twitter after remaining long enough to send abusive messages:
Others seemed to share an odd telepathy, sending almost identical messages in spite of them being ‘DMs’ (private messages):
Those that appear to represent actual people show more signs of being obsessed with football, UKIP and, in some cases, Twitter-banned racists – and don’t seem to mention Jeremy Corbyn in their timeline:
In spite of the ease of identifying these right-wing affiliations, curiously the Tories have attributed the abuse to ‘Corbyn supporters’.
Any genuinely abusive message is, of course, abhorrent. But – and Ms Terry may not, of course, have known – many of the messages look far more like a propaganda campaign by opportunistically created-then-removed ‘sockpuppet‘ accounts than any ‘abuse by Corbyn-supporters’.
Even the accounts that appear real often seem to have little or no connection to Corbyn or the Labour Party – while having clear UKIP connections.
It must also be mentioned that, according to one respondent to her Twitter lament, Ms Terry is perhaps not entirely a shrinking violet or naive innocent:
Her Twitter feed also contains provocative tweets about the supposed immaturity or stupidity of socialists, so Ms Terry seems unafraid of some robust give-and-take.
The story of her ‘abuse’ has appeared in the right-wing press and was the topic of a parliamentary contribution by Home Secretary Amber Rudd – a fact that she seemed delighted about.
So it’s safe to say that, whatever the nature and provenance of the ‘abusive’ messages, the Tory party is certainly taking full advantage.
It may never be possible to say with certainty whether the Tories orchestrated the ‘abuse’ in order to feed in – happily-timed – into the manufactured narrative of the ‘abusive left’.
But is that mackerel cooking..?
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MPs need to wise up and realise anyone can make as many Twitter accounts as they want by making multiple gmail accounts, pretend to be a Labour voter/member and post abuse to make the party look bad. This is a way to exploit social media. Several have been exposed already now. One was very obviously fake, but people still fell for it. It was retweeted by the Tory communications officer. I could make a fake Tory one right now but I won’t sink to their level, and I really cannot face pretending to be a Tory and retweeting their stuff for any amount of time. Really disappointing that MPs are so naive or unaware of this, and that it makes its way into the papers and into parliamentary records is unforgivable and an embarrassment to those institutions. Also Twitter is by far full of hate, prejudice and abuse from the right wing but this is conveniently ignored. It’s ridiculous. Also disappointing that MPs and Journalists don’t care about waiting for facts or reporting facts, as we saw with the Rees Mogg uni incident. Which Labour MPs immediately blamed on their own voters and accused them of attacking Mogg, which was the story pushed by Tories, ukip and Media, ignoring people who were actually there and which turned out to be completely wrong. Those guys at the back said they did not support Labour or Momentum, were antifa,. And nobody attacked Mogg. His supporter in the white shirt attacked a student and a scuffle happened, Mogg tried to split them up. I don’t recall the media or others correcting their misinformation.
Good stuff Dam and I just keep thinking of a John Lennon early classic when he first went solo “Just Give Me the Truth” very relevant indeed!
Can’t help thinking that ever since we got the vote in 1918 democracy has been manipulated by the media.
Talk about jump to conclusions where’s the proof this was “the left” absolutely no evidence whatsoever as usual with these Tories.
Considering all the vile things they’ve done why would it be the left doing this? It could be anyone given
1. Taking FSM away from poor families despite MPs earning 11x that amount yet getting £400 per month food allowance as well as subsidised food & drink
2. Taking 75,000 vehicles away from disabled people
3. Condemned by the UN at least 5 times for human rights abuses against disabled people
4. Cutting £30 a week from ESA
5. Cutting local council spending by 67% causing a crisis at local gov level
6. Cutting tens of thousands of police officers
7. Cutting housing benefit for young adults (admittedly now reversed)
8. Denying young adults a voice both in a critical referendum and at other elections.
That is just 3 minutes of thought I expect there’s a LOT more. Time these ivory Tower morons woke up to the number if VERY angry people that are out there!
It sounds like Aleesha needs our support. Good on her for calling out Jess Phillips and Alice Terry but the focus on prejudice against the Jewish community in the LP is not just obscuring Tory policies but also the vile islamaphobia from the Right.
(Jess Phillips really does seem more at home with her Conservative friends.)
Corbyn bashers now sending messages to themselves.
She’s a real nowhere woman.
Living in a nowhere land.
Making all her nowhere plans.
For Nobody.
She’s as blind as she could be.
SEES JUST WHAT SHE JUST WANTS TO SEE.
Isn’t she just a typical Tory?
(An adaption from the late, great John Lennon).
Cui bono?
The Tories.
So, by deduction, most of these type of offensive comments are being posted by Tories or people on the right wing of the Labour Party.
Hillary Clinton surrogates also set up fake accounts and posted fake comments to build the Bernie Bros mysoginy narrative.
These people are using exactly the same tactic and people like Jess Phillips are falling for this right wing trap hook, line and sinker.
Not sure there’s any “falling for this” going on in Phillips’ case.
A purveyor rather than a victim of deceit, surely?
It all looks very amateurish.
Given its track record, anybody who runs to the S*n in a self-inflicted “tizz” deserves everything* that’s coming to them. Ignorance is no excuse.
*but not anything illegal or immoral or genuine online bullying or abuse of course. There is never any justification for that.
To remember here the aim and goal of all these ” attacks” is to destabilise Corbyn and kill the rise of the left within Labour .
Phillips ever the foul mouthed opportunist , has walked right into the Tories trap , trying to take the moral high ground with this insincere ” apology” is nothing more than another chance to trash Labour under JC.
She is well below par for the standard required for a Labour MP and the people of her constituency deserve far far better , for example the first class Laura Piddock is just one that springs to mind.
.
The massive assumption by Phillips , that all the “abuse” is from Labour and in particular the left is ,,, well laughable if it were not so damaging which is precisely the aim here.
Part of the Kamikaze Labour MPs strategy , that is to take down JC and the Left even it costs them their seats or a chance at power to help the many , stuff them it’s more important to these MPs to destroy JC no matter what the outcome.
Evidence so far appears to be pointing at UKippers sockpuppet Twitter accounts to ” set up the useful idiots in Labour ” and given the massive dangling fish , Phillips has taken it hook line and sinker .
There will be rightly many 1000’s of Labour members incensed at Phillips “tarring” of them by her utterly misjudged apology.
No doubt she will tell them the same as she told Diane Abbot and that is to Fuck Off .
What to do ???
Well as I have banged on before it is now down to individual CLPs and their left leading memberships to take the fight to those disloyal MPs who are doing so much harm to Labour and the people those MPs supposedly represent .
The Blairite rot has had 20 odd yrs to settle in and it will take time but with continuous , persistent and determined action at grass root level positive an effective change for the many can be achieved .
We must be on our guard for many more instances of this type of outrageous deceitful attacks on the left by MP’s who can command a large and unfair platform in the right-wing MSM to spread their deceit and lies .
‘Scuse my ignorance of how twitter works (never had an account – never will)…But how is it that that mouthpiece phillips is at the scene of the ‘crime’ before most?
THAT’S what I find disconcerting.
How many labour MP’s (if any) had tweeted their ‘apologies’ before the crotchety one did?
Oh, and don’t you have to ‘friend’ someone (Or ‘follow’ , is it?) before you can receive personal messages?
Meant ‘send or receive personal messages’
Strange thing. Made a mistake today trying to log on to Twitter wouldn’t allow it. Instead it took me to page told me to change my password and then gave me a brand new Twitter page!!! It’s oh so easy. I think when we see these kind of comments coming up we should first look at their time line and comments they have made and who replied to them. Of course way to get rid of these is to report them; send them to party they say they belong to; block them. Don’t get into conversation with them. That’s what they desire more than anything. I’ve seen this lady before. The tweets are unbelievably abusive. Better things to do with our time than engage with them. As for Jess Phillips, she seems somewhat unintelligent when it comes to social media and oh so easily drawn in by such people. Shows such immaturity & naivety. If anyone from any party tells her some nonsense about Corbyn she will grab at it and disseminate it. Say nothing. Do a screen shot and keep in a file. It is what I do so that if I ever get called into question I can bring these out and ask some serious questions. We all need to be as wise as serpents. As it is a very nasty world we are in now whereby the rule book has been burnt by those who hold all the keys of power.
I am obviously missing something – ie what was it that Alice Terry did/said that suddenly brought on this “torrent of abuse”?
It is of course just the latest manufactured episode to undermine JC, and no doubt there will be another one within a few days, and then another, and so on, just as there has been for the past two years or more, only NOW they are coming at a faster pace.
This is a tactic that was used commonly a few years ago by professional trolls on Youtube, Twitter and Tumblr (who pretend to be feminists for profit) – sending fake death threats to themselves, and often forgetting to sign back in to their accounts before screenshooting the abuse and crying over social media. Its so sloppy, and yet morons and people with agendas don’t care and will leap to their defence.
I’ve only ever used a made-up user name in a forum that requires it, otherwise I’ve always used my own name everywhere.
I’m the furthest thing possible from an IT expert but I think it may be important to the democratic process that adults (maybe children too?) should be legally required to use only their own names and other identifiers to open and use email accounts – and to be readily identifiable everywhere online – to keep us honest, or at least accountable.
IPs would seem best placed to enforce that and to shut down the fraud that blights the internet too.
If the Tories were genuinely concerned about online abuse of anyone other than themselves they’d jump at it but their trolls rely on anonymity.
Hopefully their lies will find them out when wrinklies like me are gone if not before – tech savvy young people will outnumber us soon enough.
I know there’s the fear that such control could be hijacked by the right but I think on balance it would favour us – better minds than mine would need to ponder it though.