Elron
Thanks for the comment. I can’t agree with you.
If it’s not possible to say things that might be misunderstood (especially by someone who doesn’t share your specific knowledge of the context), it’s probably not possible to communicate at all.

As a hypothetical example, we’ve probably all thought, or said, at least once in a fit of anger “I’d like to beat the crap out of that person” or even “I’m going to kill them!!!” While we know when we say it that we aren’t “serious” there’s little way to distinguish between a serious and non-serious utterance in those cases … to an outsider looking in, one death threat sounds a lot like the next. Further, I think while we might excuse an outburst about “killing” someone, there are other possible crimes that we’d never excuse. Would it ever be acceptable “banter” for example, if we were angry at a woman, to suggest we might “rape” her? Of course, the answer is a resounding NO … you simply don’t joke about committing a crime of sexual violence against someone else, at least not unless you are willing to face the consequences of it.

Which brings me back to the comment about bombing the Tory convention. Is that really EVER an appropriate thing to say, even in jest? Whether it’s in jest or not, it still amounts to a death threat. Like Al Murray, I do stand-up comedy (though probably not at the level he does lol), and I’m a strong proponent of free speech and the right to use even inflammatory language to make a joke or a point. But at the same time, I recognize there are limits to what is acceptable as “banter” or “joke” and we go past limits at our own peril. For example, if I joke about raping people, I should expect there to be consequences and I expect people to get rightfully upset about it. And frankly, I think joking about killing people, or bombing people because of their political views should be treated in much the same way … joking about criminal assault on others is a path to tread very lightly.

That’s all especially true, IMO, in this specific case. It wasn’t THAT many years ago that the IRA was, in fact, trying to bomb politicians in the UK for real. Suggesting they might start that action again against people we disagree with politically is BOUND to push some buttons. Seems to me it was a pretty reckless thing to say, and a pretty reckless thing to “Like.” Suggesting criminal assault isn’t really EVER a joke, and it’s even less of a joke when it involves the IRA bombing politicians, because for many, many years, that wasn’t a joke … it was a real threat to people’s lives. That’s always going to be a “joke” that falls flat to some ears, and for very good reason.