Is it a good thing to give a platform to racists?

Interesting article about Twitter on the BBC website today by pundit and former striker Mark Bright providing a platform for racists.

The article has been inspired by high profile investigations into allegations of racism made against England captain John Terry and Liverpool striker Lois Suarez and offensive yet completely unsurprising comments by Sepp Blatter who suggested that racism should be dealt with by a handshake and then forgotten about.

It's a strong article written from a position of knowledge and experience and makes a compelling read.

Mark Bright is 100 per cent correct that social media in being used as a platform for racists. It's not just Twitter, the worst by a long way is YouTube - I have stopped looking at the comments section of the video sharing site because of the vile racist nature of many of them.

Liberal society in general has for a long time held on to a 'no platform' policy in relation to racism. The basic theory is don't let racists have a voice as that voice is oxygen which will fuel the fire of their hatred and perhaps ignite it in others.

But now, as Bright has identified, that fire is far from extinguished. In this country many have believed it has been and we have been full of criticism of other countries which we perceive to have lower standards than us.

Incidents of racism in UK football grounds have been identified as a one-off. But that is as true as the News International's claim that phone hacking was perpetrated by a 'rogue reporter'.

Social media is open source. There are legal constraints of course but the judiciary has not yet come to terms with how to implement the law to a platform with millions of characters of information being uploads every day.

So 'no platform' is not working in social media - it promotes freedom of speech and those opposed to 'no platform' have long said that breaching the principle of freedom of speech is a price not worth paying.

Racists were ignored for so long that many thought they had gone away or at least that their number has diminished to an insignificant level. Yet social media is showing the pure folly of that thinking - just read some of the abuse that Bright has received during his time on Twitter.

"When James Vaughan joined Norwich from Everton, I tweeted to say, 'Good luck to James Vaughan with his move to Norwich'. Someone replied to say, 'I don't want any more blacks at Norwich. We've got enough, if you want to watch blacks and foreigners, go to see Arsenal'."

That's a horrible thing for him to have to read yet as a result of a simple retweet, the perpetrator was banned for life from Norwich City Football Club.

The issue is back out in the open and can be dealt with rather than denied.

Perhaps we have to accept that 'no platform' is unworkable now that social media is coming to the fore and embrace that element as an opportunity to more accurately assess society.