The Big Read: Spare me the atrocity porn

I haven't seen the decapitated Palestinian child, though quite a few others have. But I have seen countless other corpses; mostly infants. And the man having his throat slit by an Islamic State fighter.

Social media - in this context, the most inappropriate of phrases - has a new craze. Atrocity porn.

"Craze" probably isn't the right word. It carries connotations of pleasure. In fairness, most of those taking to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to post graphic images of the recent bout of barbarity taking place around the globe find little pleasure in what they are circulating.

I am not talking about the jihadists who post footage of their own atrocities to galvanise their warped fellow travellers. I am talking about the campaigners, protesters and ordinary observers who have, over the last couple of months, started sending out these images to unsuspecting friends and followers.

Some are trying to inform. Others shock. The majority are attempting to mobilise support for a cause.

"This is the brutal reality of what is happening in Gaza/Iraq/ Syria/Ukraine right now. This is why you have to act to help stop the horror."

Iif you are one of the people who has taken to distributing these images, (images that appear entirely unfiltered), I have news for you. You are not informing people. Or shocking them into action. You are sickening them. And engaging in a practice that, however well-meaning, is dehumanising. For you.

The justifications put forward by the Atrocity Pornographers are many and varied. Too varied, actually. A hint of desperation attends them, as if they are secretly aware they have crossed a line. The first is that the world has to know the truth. That the dead of Gaza and Iraq are not merely statistics. They are human beings. Or were.

Thank you. But we know. The people to whom you are disseminating your images are not machines. We are fathers, mothers, sons, daughters. I do not need to see the child without a head to recognise the unspeakable, black, infinite horror of losing a child. And the fact that you do - or think I do - does not draw me closer to you and your cause. It repels me.

But you think your cause is bigger than me. This is the second great justification, or self-justification.

"You may be repelled. But that's tough. People are dying. You may not want to look at these images. But I'm going to force you to."

Fine. But in that case, take your cause and your images elsewhere.

If you are so righteous that you choose to engage me solely on your own terms, then you do not need me at all. You already occupy a much higher moral plane. You are the world's conscience. So by definition, you are already my conscience. You need waste no more of your precious time on me.

Of course, there are some people who genuinely are seeking to engage. And persuade.

"I'm sorry. I really am," they say, "But if we don't circulate these images, then people will simply walk on by."

Okay. But you have to understand this. People will walk by, not because they are shocked by the image, but because they are shocked by the person sending them.

You are seeking to make a moral connection. But you are a stranger to me. All I know about you is that you hold images of dead children in your hand, and are in the habit of pushing them in front of strangers. That is not the way to make a moral connection. Or any other form of connection.

"But how do we connect?" the Atrocity Pornographers plead. "Words are not enough. They aren't powerful. Only images like this have the power to truly move and influence people."

Allow me a moment of self-indulgence. I earn my living through words. Words can matter. Words do have the power to move.

When I was 19 I read William L Shearer's The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich. I only read it once. In fact, until I started writing this piece I do not think my copy's been taken off the shelf or opened since the day I finished it. But there's a passage that has remained with me for quarter of a century. It's on page 961 of my edition, and it contains an eyewitness description of a group of Nazi Einsatz commandos exterminating the 5000-strong Jewish population of a town called Dubno in Ukraine.

The setting is a series of giant pits, already filled with hundreds of naked bodies: "An old woman with snow white hair was holding a one-year-old child in her arms and singing to it and tickling it. The child was cooing with delight. The parents were looking on with tears in their eyes. The father was holding hands with a boy of 10 years old and speaking to him softly; the boy was fighting his tears. The father pointed to the sky, stroked his head and seemed to explain something to him." And then they died.

I do not use that example to make a particular political point. I've received as many graphic images from those demanding intervention in Iraq as demanding an end to intervention in Gaza.

The point I'm making is this: if you want to persuade me of your cause, persuade me. But do not try to shame me, or shock me, or bully me onto your side.

If you do try to persuade me, do it with your arguments. Do not do it with the broken, lifeless body of someone else's child.

Most importantly, make your arguments with your words. Because if you cannot find sufficient words to convey at least part of the horror of what's happening in our benighted, crumbling, morally bankrupt world, then it is not me that needs to take a look at myself, it is you.