Is Sarah Vine a Secret Snowflake?
So yesterday, with six years of almost daily tweeting under my belt, I received my first twelve-hour ban for ‘violating Twitter’s rules against abuse and harassment.’
What, exactly, was the nature of my “abusive harassment”? Well, there is a little ambiguity: I was responding to — and quote tweeted — a tweet from Michael Gove’s wife & Daily Mail columnist, Sarah Vine aka Sarah Vile AKA @WestminsterWag
A Daily Mail story had reported on a maskless 28-year-old man, who had been charged with criminal damage, breaching coronavirus regulations, and other public order offences, after he tore off plastic sheets from ‘non-essential’ goods in a Welsh supermarket.
Agree with his actions or not, I thought this to be a clear violation of the coronavirus rules, potentially very intimidating for the staff, and almost certainly a criminal offence, so I called him a “twat” — but I’m pretty sure this is NOT what I was suspended for.
Sarah Vine tweeted the story with one word: “Brilliant”. I thought this was an extremely irresponsible action for such a high profile public figure, especially during the beginning of the second coronavirus wave, and could well incite others to do the same.
I was also interested in Vine’s response because her husband Michael Gove has been a long-standing vocal supporter of the rule of law — well, until very recently, when he refused to rule out the Conservative Government breaking international law.
In Michael Gove’s first speech as Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor on 23 June 2015, he spoke eloquently about the meaning and importance of the rule of law: “The rule of law is the most precious asset of any civilised society. It is the rule of law which protects the weak from the assault of the strong… we are fortunate that the rule of law is embedded in our way of life”.
This sits uncomfortably with Mrs Gove’s celebration of the actions of the man charged with law-breaking.
Of course, Sarah Vine has a long history of controversy, perhaps most recently in May 2020, when she shared a picture of the Gove household’s “interesting” taste in reading:
· a book by the Holocaust denier David Irving
· a copy of The Bell Curve, which controversially claims that intelligence is highly heritable and that median IQ varies among races
· The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray, which, according to The Guardian, cites Enoch Powell and argues for protecting white Christian Europe from “outsiders”
· Beyond Human Rights: Defending Freedom by Alain de Benoist, leader of ethno-nationalist think tank GRECE
· Why We Fight: Manifesto of the European Resistance and Archeofuturism — European Visions of the Post-Catastrophic Age by Guillaume Faye — both published by European New Right Arktos Media, known for translating far-right material into English
· Leo Strauss and the American Conservative Movement by paleoconservative Paul Gottfried, who coined the term ‘Alternative Right’ (‘Alt-Right’) whilst working alongside American neo-Nazi, antisemitic conspiracy theorist and white supremacist, Richard B. Spencer.
Some of her other, many, controversies are covered here: Guardian on Vile.
I confess, it’s not the first time I’ve responded to Sarah Vine’s tweets, which seem — much like her writing — to follow the logic of so many right-wingers, including her old pal Toby Young, namely:
1 Claim that “free speech” is under threat by angry “snowflake Leftists”
2 Tweet something deliberately offensive, provocative and/or inflammatory
3 Decent people inevitably call out the offensive/provocative/inflammatory tweet
4 “Proof” that free speech is under threat and ‘victim status’ is claimed
5 Repeat ad infinitum.
Anyway, back to my suspension. I quote-tweeted Sarah Vine’s “Brilliant” tweet, calling her an “utterly vile hypocrite” (given her and her husband’s supposed ‘values’ and penchant for ‘law and order’) and a “dimwit hack” (because she feeds the increasingly antiquated and regressive Daily Mail readership with, frankly, stupid commentary), for which I received this notice from Twitter:
Now, of course I can understand why this might have caused her some offence, and seeing as it resulted in a temporary suspension of my account, I now regret it.
However, having spent virtually every day for six years wading through some of the appallingly inflammatory, incredibly insensitive, grotesquely offensive, outrageously bigoted and extremely graphic insults and threats of violence — often from people with a flag-obsession — with some aimed at myself, I know with 100% certainty that my comments about her sit firmly on the extremely mild end of what is said on Twitter every day.
Further, to think Sarah Vine might actually consider my comments “abusive” or “harassment”, after she has been such a vocal supporter of “free speech” and having made a very long and very comfortable living out of saying much worse things about people to millions of Mail readers, it does make me consider the possibility that underneath the sharp tongue and vicious exterior, she might actually be a massive ‘snowflake’, engaging in Olympic-level psychological projection.
Indeed, a very quick Twitter search reveals Mrs Gove is herself a fan of the word “vile”:
And she’s also a great user of the word “hypocrite”:
And of course, she’s not reticent about deploying a bit of “abusive harassment” on Twitter herself:
Anyway, I like to try and learn from my experiences, as I’m sure you do too. So what is the main lesson Twitter has helped to teach me from this little episode? That Sarah Vine might actually be an insecure ‘snowflake’ who doesn’t actually like ‘free-speech’ after all? No.
I think it’s that in the future — if I or anyone else is inspired or compelled to critique or respond to Sarah Vine’s tweets — my advice would be to play it safe, and stick to calling her a “hateful liar and a shit-stirrer” — because that’s obviously fine with both her and Twitter.
