To be a bit shocked that, actually, my socialist acquaintance might be being persecuted?

[BrittaPerry]

I have a Facebook acquaintance who I have never met. He lives locally and I enjoy talking about politics with him. I am Labour party leftie, he is further left.

He has an annoying habit f turning things to old style lefty politics (eg, I will post that the bus was late tha morning, he will sa that it is just the oppression of the proletariat that makes buses late, after the revolution working class solidarity will prevail, or whatever) so yes he can be irritating. He makes reference to haing been chucked out of the swp because they are too much under the ontrol of the ruling elite. he is annoying, but I think he does genuinely have good intentions - he thinks everyone is good underneath the capitalist ideology.

Recently he started posting about how people just hate him because of false consciousness and that h will keep telling th truth despite the death threats.

I just presumed that somebody had objected to him ranting on and he was looking for n excuse to feel important. He does have a tendancy to be paranoid.

But then people started posing links on his wall or him o see, an there are Facebook groups, thread on local message boards an even a blog, all dedicated to ridiculing everything he says, calling him a psychopath, and the Facebook group included things like his phone number, the registration number of his taxi, his kids names and ages, videos of him from the 1990s and so on. It is genuinely quite scary.

I don't think he is going to the police, as his views mean that, while the police themselves are working class, he thinks they are under the control of the oppressor. Which s, IMO, bollocks, but he is unlikely to trust the police as it just feeds his paranoia.

Aibu to want to somehow help him, even though I hardly know him and he doesn't thnk anybody can help? I'm actually worried for his safety.

Is it possible he is mentally ill? That was not meant to be a joke or sarcastic.

I think he could be, tbh. He has previously said that mental illness is just a capitalist construct (which annoyed me no end)

What you have said reminds me of my brothers behaviour, he has scizophrenia (sp). Has had it many years and is irrational, makes ridiculous statements but overall is able to get on with life.

It is possible that he is suffering from some sort of mental health problem. Nothing you can do unfortunately, he will not be able to see that for himself and he will say it is other people that have a problem, not him.

That is what I thought up to now, but even (or especially) if tha is the case, these threats and o on worry me on his behalf.

Just to add I am not saying that being left wing makes you make 'ridiculous statements' before anyone jumps on me. I was describing my brother.

Do you know anything about the actual threats - could he have posted them himself? Or, given what you say about his politics, could he have fallen foul of his local EDL branch? There are, unfortunately, quite a few online thuggish arseholes who would behave like this.

What is also unfortunate is that people who have MH problems of this sort are often a magnet for bullies; the bullies distress the victim, but because of the victim's MH issues, the threat and distress become so exaggerated that no one believes the victim.

I have a friend like this. .

I know that he oes challenge racism when he sees it. (one of the reasons I think he is basically a good person). He is a taxi driver in quite a rough white working class town, and posts a lot about how he raises the consciousness of his passengers. So it is more than likely that he has tried to do this to the wron people.

He may well have mental health issues, but that's irrelevant with regard what these others are doing, sounds like Internet bullying at it's absolute worst. I doubt you'll get much joy from the police route if he isn't interested in pursuing them but you could atleast report the groups to Facebook. What they are doing sounds at least potentially criminal.