An Open Letter to Katie Hopkins

TROLLING, Aryan dictatorship, "just saying what everyone is thinking"... call it what you will. The formula is child's play really, say something audacious to revel in sensationalism, get on the telly box, become infamous regardless of the acerbic venom being spat out.
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TROLLING, Aryan dictatorship, "just saying what everyone is thinking"... call it what you will.

The formula is child's play really, say something audacious to revel in sensationalism, get on the telly box, become infamous regardless of the acerbic venom being spat out.

Hardly the brains you speak of during a recent debate with Katie Waissel in which you argue: "If you want to attract attention, do it through having a lexicon that you can call on that's really fantastic.

"Do it by having a brilliant scientific brain."

I should really start by saying sorry... Sorry to readers for indulging you with column inches you don't deserve. Sorry to devote breath to an opinion so vitriolic you would forbid your children socialising with playmates based solely on a first name. And sorry to give the circus of your bigoted radicalism any merit by fighting against it.

I am deeply saddened by the wickedness of your modern day Salem witch-hunt; your paranoia and injustice of judging a child (and parent) on the few letters they have been attributed with. If you truly believe the malice that you spew is your right in a PC-gone-mad world, you are tragically mistaken - or perhaps just senseless.

Deflecting your prejudice with self-deprecating wit, calling yourself "Horseface" or saying you look 50 when you are 38, does not then give you a free pass to project your discrimination onto others. Your poisonous rants celebrate class division, spite, and ignorance.

The playground is a breeding palace for bullying. It takes just one child to hear your atrocity about "ginger babies being hard to love" before taking that contempt to school with them. The vulnerable are picked on for having the wrong shoes, wrong skin colour, wrong accent, wrong address - are you really going to exacerbate the freakshow of growing-up with your Jurassic beliefs by targeting hair colour too?

And don't be so crude to believe that your comments are not powerful enough to infect the naïve. The media is a powerful tool, and viewers witnessing your outspoken tactlessness to get attention will calculate that their ticket to fame is to mirror this code of conduct.

By your own admission, "people want to be a celebrity these days... they try and copy, and emulate their idols. They think that the route to celebrity is doing things that celebrities do."

If anything, it is your hypocrisy that is quite marvelling. In one breath, you scapegoat tattooed or overweight people as abhorrent role models for your children - isn't it your job to make them strong individuals who don't need to mimic others to be happy? - yet you sit on national TV with views so extreme, your impressionable fans are bound to copycat you.

To perpetuate your amoral preaching as "I'm just saying what everyone is thinking" is frankly offensive. If you genuinely believe phrasing your words in that semantics-cocktail is any different from trolling, you are sadly mistaken.

Firstly, please don't be so arrogant as to presume others follow the same beliefs as you that we should wish for you to verbalise what we are thinking. My thoughts do not mirror yours, nor do I imagine the rest of the nation practice your petulant doctrine.

In fact, if everyone did think the same as you, wouldn't we all be naming our children with identical monikers, and hating on hair colour, and hailing snobbery, then be a perfect match for you and your little darlings to be friends with - making your entire reasoning void.

And with your Twitter bio boasting your "telling it like it is" mantra, this is no more crass than the insulting turn of phrase "just sayin" or "I'm not being rude, but... " before a barrage of abuse is unleashed.

Throwing your hands in the air to say "it's free speech" is one thing, but Katie, at least change your job description from "social commentator" to attention-seeker; professional and proven.