I’ve been a regular contributor on social media for 17 years plus years. I’ve witnessed plenty of political arguments, disagreements, insults & pile-ons. But the vitriol, hatred, aggression & downright moronic accusations have gone too far.
Yesterday on X was one of the worst days I’ve ever experienced on the platform.
And before anyone starts pointing fingers at the left, STOP. It wasn’t the left. It was the RIGHT side of the political divide.
And that makes what I’m about to say all the more important.
Because what I experienced yesterday, unpleasant as it was, is merely a symptom of something far more disturbing. A political culture in which hostility is increasingly normalised, personal attacks are treated as legitimate debate & hatred is too often mistaken for conviction.
And we are now witnessing where that culture can lead.
An allegedly deliberate attack on independent MP Helen Haines comes against an alarming escalation in threats against Australian politicians.
As reported by The Australian, the AFP investigated 1,067 threats against elected officials in 2025–26, more than 100 above the previous year. The govt has committed an additional $150 million to protecting MPs.
The newspaper also reported that a 2025 survey found 85% of federal MPs & their staff had experienced violent, threatening or volatile behaviour, with almost half reporting incidents more than once a month.
ASIO’s Mike Burgess warned some time ago that the risk of politically motivated violence was already “flashing red”.
We’ve seen where this can lead overseas. Politicians murdered in Britain & the United States. Threats escalating into actual violence.
And yet, even as Helen Haines lies critically injured in hospital, people on X cannot put aside their political hatred long enough to demonstrate some basic human decency.
Even expressions of solidarity between political opponents are met with attacks.
Think about that for a moment.
A politician is fighting for her life, & some people’s immediate response is not concern for another human being, but an opportunity to continue their political warfare.
When did political disagreement become permission to abandon our humanity?
You don’t have to like a politician. You don’t have to agree with their policies. You can question their competence, challenge their decisions & hold them accountable. Indeed, we should.
But somewhere along the way, legitimate political scrutiny has become entangled with something altogether uglier.
Contempt for the individual.
And frankly, why would anyone want to step forward to serve this country knowing the sort of treatment that is now becoming par for the course?
When hatred becomes normalised, when cruelty is applauded & when people are treated as legitimate targets simply because of their politics, we are heading somewhere very dangerous.
And don’t tell me it’s only the other side doing it. Yesterday demonstrated otherwise.
This isn’t about left versus right. It never was. But unfortunately, that is exactly what people in this country have turned it into.
You only have to read some of the political declarations in social media biographies to see how thoroughly political allegiance has become entwined with personal identity.
And it’s not simply declarations of political loyalty. Some openly proclaim their hatred of those on the other side.
Hatred has become something to advertise. Almost a badge of honour.
Well, now we’re confronting what happens when that hatred is allowed to flourish, when hostility becomes normalised & the boundaries between political disagreement and personal animosity disappear.
And it’s ugly. It’s frightening. And we should be deeply concerned about where it might lead.
I don’t doubt that some of the hostility online is amplified by anonymous accounts, coordinated activity & bots. But we cannot conveniently blame everything on unseen manipulators.
Far too much of it comes from real people, making conscious decisions about what they say, what they share & how they treat others.
People who would presumably expect compassion, understanding & basic decency if tragedy struck their own families.
Yet somehow those same considerations disappear when the person suffering happens to hold different political views.
And that is what I find so profoundly disturbing.
We seem increasingly incapable of separating what someone believes politically from their fundamental worth as a human being.
This is no longer simply about political disagreement. It’s about the erosion of respect, compassion & the moral boundaries that should define a civilised society.
And we have lost sight of those boundaries.
Worse still, too many no longer seem to recognise why they mattered in the first place.
Because when we can look at another humanbeing lying critically injured in a hospital bed & see a political label before we see a person, we haven’t just lost the ability to disagree respectfully.
We’ve lost sight of our own humanity.
