What do you mean, "you people"?

So here's how epic ranter Brendan O'Neill ends his latest rant for your ABC at The Drum, rantily titled Tweet police: censorship of the Tweetmob's making.

Some commentators are now suggesting that perhaps the imprisonment of Liam Stacey is a bit over-the-top. Sorry, but it's too late for that. The jailing of a man for 56 days for the "crime" of tweeting is the logical end result of a feverishly censorious culture that you people helped to create.

You people?

Now that's as sure evidence of a befuddled brain as can be found anywhere on the intertubes.

It's a kind of generic rhetorical form of abuse much beloved by common gossips. You people don't know what you're talking about, you people are to blame for everything, you people are the Devil incarnate, you people are an evil collection of charlatans and perverts.

It doesn't mean anything of course. The pond refuses to be addressed as "you people", nor does the pond accept in any way responsibility for a Conservative government - "buy your influence and your meal ticket at the door before entering the PM's office please" - driving Britain into a period of negative growth, aided by a bunch of woolly minded Libdems who will be wiped out come next polling day.

Nor does the pond accept that it has anything to do with soccer, soccer hooligans, the rise of the fascist race and gay-baiting right in Britain, or the perceived right of complete gooses to tweet deeply offensive remarks, and wonder why some people might have taken exception ... when if they'd delivered said remarks in a pub, you people, or at least some of you people, might have punched out his lights.

But if you do want a likely cause of twitter violence, look around and what do you find? Week in, week out, Brendan O'Neill ranting, and upping the level of verbal hostility and aggro to the point where it routinely becomes a biffing matter, and always with the illiberal liberal elites as the target. Yep, come on down Brendan O'Neill, you people is you. Show us how it's done:

... in the more recent Twittermobs, against racist or homophobic tweeters, it is remarkable how much the online lynch mob fancies itself as "liberal" as it demands the punishment of un-PC deviants.

Of course O'Neill himself is a one person twittermob, a kind of Robocop up against the illiberal liberal elites.

This means the Twittermob is a very peculiar beast: it is intolerance in the service of "tolerance", illiberalism designed to preserve "liberal values". In screeching at racist or homophobic witches, and then watching with glee as these tweetcriminals get dragged before the courts, the Twitterati aim to demonstrate their moral superiority but in truth they only expose their moral depravity, and their illiberal refusal to permit the public expression of any thoughts they consider "evil".

Uh huh. Of course O'Neill - who strikes the pond as a bear of very little brain, and a prime candidate for slogans, whether they be Marxist or libertarian - has no regard himself for the deeper implications of "you people", which have even reached the Urban dictionary:

White Guy: You People Are Always Having Loud Parties
Black Guy #1: Wait What The Fuck You Mean "You People"?
Black Guy #2: Oh You Done Fucked Up Now (here).

The dictionary also cites a reference from 1992 and Ross Perot talking about the financial hardships of "your people":

"When he said 'you people' or 'your people,' it was like waving a red flag in front of a bull," he said. "It's something white folks have used when they don't want to call you nigger, but they don't want to treat you like an equal."

I'm sorry m'lud but I can't see any way around it.

Kindly offer Mr. O'Neill fifty six days in the slammer, and let him go up to a black prisoner - the pond is reliably informed that black people are jailed in England and Wales disproportionately, as they are in the US, compared to whites (here) - and let him start talking about "you people" making too much noise in the cells. Oh you done fucked up Mr. O'Neill ...

There's a deeply paranoid grain of hysteria running through the rest of O'Neill's twittermob rant, up there with the crowds with pitchforks and torches hunting Frankenstein's monster, as if it was illiberal liberals rather than conservatives who first invented the fine art of censorship.

But if you want a truly paranoid vision, you have to turn to Mike Carlton and Barnaby's big move - be very afraid:

Imagine it: Barnaby Joyce, MP, the Member for Rinehart and Acting Prime Minister of Australia whenever Abbott slips into the lycra and goes off cycling.

Yes, Carlton has picked up on a story, which for various reasons, has been buried over the past few days, which has seen the quisling Barners give up the tough job of tackling Tony Windsor in New England - he knew the noble tribe of Tamworthians would give him a hard time - for the easier job of picking off one of his own up in Queensland, as outlined in Barnaby Joyce plans move to Lower House.

There is of course only one reason for the move. Once Barners takes over from Warren Truss, and becomes leader of the Nats, he'd automatically become deputy prime minister, with the pick of a plum ministerial portfolio.

Having Barners a heart beat away from being PM is a bit like having Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the presidency. Sure it's fun when he's being a circus clown and a boofhead, but 2IC for the entire country?

Well it's a measure of the man that he'd prefer to roll one of his own for the sweet life, than take down that devil incarnate Tony Windsor, but let's revert to Mike Carlton for the good oil on Barners:

While Abbott's roots are sunk in the barren rocks of the nasty old Democratic Labor Party, Joyce is a pork-barrelling Queensland primitive in the Joh Bjelke-Petersen mould.

Hey Mike tell us what you really think:

... in the end they converge. Each is an unashamed right-wing populist who will say anything to get elected: stop the boats, axe the tax, climate change is crap, the prime minister is a liar. Sloganeering for the talkback and tabloid masses is so much easier than the unspectacular grind of making public policy.

By golly, quoting Carlton is easier than actually writing a piece for the pond:

Even more so than Abbott, Joyce comes with the added baggage of a touchy-feely chumminess with the mining magnates Clive Palmer and Gina Rinehart. Last year he flew in Rinehart's private jet as her guest at the sumptuous, three-day wedding of an Indian industrialist in Hyderabad, a frolic he described as ''absolutely mind-blowing''. A few weeks ago he inserted himself into the Rinehart family inheritance feud, revealing that he had written to one of the estranged daughters urging her to drop her case against Mummy.

And that's just a few examples of Joyce's small town cavortings.

Who can forget Barners attending a gay bashing rally organised by the Australian Christian Lobby, wherein he explained how same-sex marriage would affect the right of his girls to have a secure relationship with a loving husband (here - because, like, you know they'd turn dyke and rush off to become the dom in a gay marriage), or his proposal that we should get down to Antarctica and start mining it straight away (here), or his flirtation with the conspiracy theories of the CEC and Lyndon LaRouche (Barnaby Joyce voices a far Right platform), or his many, many bizarre contributions to the discussion of climate science.

Joyce's contribution to the rational discussion of science has seen charges that climate change deniers are being treated like Holocaust deniers, so he's just refusing to join in the goosestepping parade, while at the same time labelling greenies as eco-Nazis. Yes folks, in Barners world, Godwin's Law is there for the breaking ... (Barnaby Joyce blasts green fanatics as eco-Nazis).

Joyce is a sort of high class Angry Anderson troll, and his appearance at the anti-carbon tax rally was a classic of its kind:

TOM IGGULDEN: The crowd numbered in the hundreds and Senator Joyce soon had their blood boiling too.
BARNABY JOYCE, NATIONALS SENATOR: You heard what they call you. You're oddballs.
PROTESTER: We're rednecks!
BARNABY JOYCE: You're rednecks.
PROTESTER: Yeah, I'm proud!
BARNABY JOYCE: You're Dungeons and Dragon conventioners.
PROTESTER: Yes! Yeah!
TOM IGGULDEN: At least one is a professed fascist, once photographed in full Nazi regalia. (here).

Yes, the greenies are the Nazis, until you're talking to your real constituency ... people who like to dress as Nazis ...

Oh it's going to be an interesting few years ahead.

What to do? Oh heck, let's just take a leaf out of Brendan O'Neill's rant book ... the pond is certain it's you people who are to blame ...

(Below: and if you don't know the Tropic Thunder joke about you people, why you people can YouTube it here).