Rhetoric and the art of Collaborative Discussion

[Elvis]

Fair enough, AD. But since this is the rhetoric thread, it's fair to say your seven paragraphs of non-answer was amusingly predictable. (a little good-natured kidding there)

I'll try to maintain an earnest tone, and I think my tone by and large has been earnest. I've never called you a spook or warmonger, and I acknowledge your many valuable contributions here. I do occasionally criticize pieces you post (I only read a handful, FWIW) if I think they're seriously wrong, I've been critical of overall themes in some topics, and I've occasionally been quite put off by some of the personal insinuations which I think were unfair to say the least. But I can allow for plenty of differences and in the bigger picture I think it's possible for us all to get along and show some mutual respect.

Regarding Syria, for whatever reasons, we see two very different Assads. The articles you've posted just don't persuade me to your view, and in my replies, I've explained why they don't persuade me. I don't write my replies to upset you; I always try to address the content, and sometimes quite critically, but I don't think there's anything out of turn about that in a discussion forum.



I wasn't glad to see Burnt Hill suspended, he's a solid RI'er, I take what he said to heart and I feel bad that I rubbed him the wrong way in the first place. If I need to adjust my rhetorical "style" then I'm willing, if that'll help improve discussion for those who opt to actively exchange views.

[American Dream]

It's true that you've never called me a spook or warmonger, Elvis. It's not your M..O. at all. I certainly don't hate you. In fact, I have many friends who believe things I don't believe at all, so that is not the issue, per se.

I don't particularly hate Assad as a person, indeed I barely think about him as an individual. It's more the issue of all the people who have been tortured, gassed, bombed, displaced, terrorized and what have you. Certainly this is not the exclusive province of the Baathist Regime.

I do find it horrifying though that so many in the conspiracy community have been weaponized to play a specific partisan role in the conflict. I do have feelings about this, in part because we have been used so many times before and in horrible ways. I'm painfully conscious of this.

[American Dream]

@srp

Bottom line is this: I find some of Bill Weinberg's writings interesting and useful. That doesn't mean I "believe" in him in some absolute sense. Indeed, I may not be fully decided on any given question. In a similar way, I don't feel that content from any other writer such as Louis Proyect, Andrew Coates, Wahid Azal, Oakland Socialist, A Roaming Vagabond, Bob from Brockley etc. should be considered as somehow "forbidden" as antithetical to the spirit of Rigorous Intuition, or otherwise subjected to higher standards of qualification than any other writer posted here. Likewise, to try, a priori, to exclude content because it uses terms such as "conspiracy theories" or speaks disparagingly of "Truthers", when this is in fact the everyday discourse of the vast majority is I think, to be self-limiting, to try to institutionalize a kind of self-brainwashing regime. To make official policy out of that would to me, be in fundamental contradiction to the ethos of Rigorous Intuition.

People who actively cultivate critical thinking while pursuing minority discourse, should be better than that. Indeed, we must be if we want to do anything helpful in this world at all.

[liminalOyster]

AD, I really appreciate seeing you engage discussion. I would love to see you engage more about this, which you've said a variant of many times:

so many in the conspiracy community have been weaponized to play a specific partisan role in the conflict.

Do you believe what you call "conspiracy" plays a single (or even just dominant) "partisan role" in the current political landscape? Or is the paradigm of conspiracy activated by interests all over the spectrum. And what do you mean when you say "conspiracy community?"

[MacCruiskeen]

There is no such thing as "the conspiracy community". That is spook talk, deliberate stupidification and water-muddying.

so many in the conspiracy community have been weaponized to play a specific partisan role in the conflict.

What does this even mean? "Weaponized"? Weaponized by whom, exactly? And to what end? Name names. And to whom are you referring, exactly? Who has been weaponized by these forces unnamed? Stop casting aspersions; name names.

For the record, "American Dream" has just accused Cynthia McKinney of being a crypto-fascist.

[American Dream]

"Conspiracy community" is just a quick and dirty term for describing those who pursue conspiracy-related themes. I don't consider the people it describes to be a monolithic bloc in any way.While the old days where left wing type conspiracists seemed to be a sizeable chunk, now we are the minority, near as I can tell.

While conspiracy motifs are rising in visibility and importance, I am sorely troubled about its increasing weaponization by the far Right and the linkages to Russian elites in that process. No matter what you may call us- "conspiracy theorists", "conspiracists", "the conspiracy community". or anything else- this seems to be the emergijng trend and I find that sad.

Do you believe what you call "conspiracy" plays a single (or even just dominant) "partisan role" in the current political landscape? Or is the paradigm of conspiracy activated by interests all over the spectrum. And what do you mean when you say "conspiracy community?"

[MacCruiskeen]

"Conspiracy community" is just a quick and dirty term for describing those who pursue conspiracy-related themes.

It is certainly dirty and quick, but you neglect to mention that it is also lazy and stupid. It does nothing but cause confusion, which is why you're so fond of it. Because spreading confusion is your métier.

I don't consider the people it describes to be a monolithic bloc in any way.While the old days where left wing type conspiracists seemed to be a sizeable chunk [this is not English], now we [sic!] are the minority, near as I can tell.

While conspiracy motifs are rising in visibility and importance, I am sorely troubled about its [sic - exactly what are you talking about???] increasing weaponization by the far Right [what is being weaponized by them, exactly? The term? Or what?] and the linkages [What "linkages"? As ever, you merely assert them.] to Russian elites in that process. No matter what you may call us [sic!]- "conspiracy theorists", "conspiracists", "the conspiracy community". [all thickwitted and pejorative terms, all used incessantly by you] or anything else- this seems to be the emergijng trend and I find that sad.

Like hell you do. You have done and are still doing everything in your power to push and promote that "emerging trend". Every single one of those terms is a disparaging and stupidifying spook term, and you use all those terms incessantly here. QED.

[Elvis]

It's true that you've never called me a spook or warmonger, Elvis. It's not your M..O. at all. I certainly don't hate you. In fact, I have many friends who believe things I don't believe at all, so that is not the issue, per se.

I don't particularly hate Assad as a person, indeed I barely think about him as an individual. It's more the issue of all the people who have been tortured, gassed, bombed, displaced, terrorized and what have you. Certainly this is not the exclusive province of the Baathist Regime.

I do find it horrifying though that so many in the conspiracy community have been weaponized to play a specific partisan role in the conflict. I do have feelings about this, in part because we have been used so many times before and in horrible ways. I'm painfully conscious of this.

Thanks, AD. I appreciate the personal note, and we can continue to differ on the chief causes of the violence in Syria, while I'm open to new information that may change my mind.

True, as others say, the word "conspiracy" is problematic and may trigger different responses. I try to avoid it unless I'm directly addressing some instance of its use.

[liminalOyster]

I like alot of what you post but I do feel you have a tendency towards 1) deciding certain theories are right wing, 2) deciding that *therefore* left-wingers subscribing to them are actually crypto-fascists (Cynthia McKinney and Caitlin Johnstone for instance) and then 3) claiming a wane of left-wingers.

[American Dream]

It is true that I have decided that certain people, publications and writings are too right wing for my taste. "Crypto-fascist" however is a term I would use more for Nazi types practicing entryism of various types. I generally don't spend much time or energy thinking about Cynthia McKinney and Caitlin Johnstone, except for when they come up here or in my other readings but if pressed I might use terms like "right-left fusion", "confusionist", maybe "third postionist" or "red-brown" but only in a broad sense as directions I see them reaching towards. When I speak of a waning of leftists, I mean that in the sense of conspiracy exponents specifically but I don't see that in an absolutist way, it's just my subjective sense of relative numbers.

Much of the confusion may be due to the fact that my thinking is repeatedly misrepresented here by others who cherry-pick quotes from articles to use as representative of what I personally think. Of course they can't know what I actually think unless I say so specifically.

I like alot of what you post but I do feel you have a tendency towards 1) deciding certain theories are right wing, 2) deciding that *therefore* left-wingers subscribing to them are actually crypto-fascists (Cynthia McKinney and Caitlin Johnstone for instance) and then 3) claiming a wane of left-wingers.

[MacCruiskeen]

@srp

Bottom line is this: I find some of Bill Weinberg's writings interesting and useful. That doesn't mean I "believe" in him in some absolute sense. Indeed, I may not be fully decided on any particular question. In a similar way, I don't feel that content from Louis Proyect, Andrew Coates, Wahid Azal, A Roaming Vagabond, Bob from Brockley or any other such writer should be considered as "forbidden" or somehow antithetical to the spirit of Rigorous Intuition.

You are just breathtakingly dishonest, just astoundingly evasive. Weinberg, Proyect, Coates, and all those other creeps: You post their repulsive bullshit non-stop, day in day out, week in week out, year in year out -- you spam this Discussion Board with it incessantly -- and yet you still refuse to take even the slightest responsibility for any of it. "It's not me, it's them", you snivel. "You can't hold me responsible, I just posted it. I might not even agree with it. (But then again, I might.)."

Search found 17 matches: +Proyect (two full pages of Proyect's tripe, all of it posted by you.)

Search found 36 matches: +tendancecoatesy (three full pages of Coates's tripe, all of it posted by you.)

Search found 65 matches: +Weinberg (five full pages of Weinberg's tripe, all of it posted by you.)

You are their fan. Why else would you fill ten full pages of Rigorous Intuition's General Discussion Board with their copied-and-pasted scribblings?

"Indeed, I may not be fully decided on any particular question." Indeed. And indeed, you may in fact be fully decided, but simply completely unwilling to admit the truth. Indeed, you may be lying your face off in a belated efffort to save your neck. Indeed, you may be paid by the CIA for what you do here, or indeed you may not. Indeed, I too cannot be held responsible for anything I may appear to assert, because I indeed may not be fully convinced that you are indeed paid for it, or indeed I may in fact be fully convinced of that and yet simply reluctant to admit it. Who can tell? Fair's fair.

Likewise, to try a priori, to exclude content because it may use terms such as "conspiracy theories" or speaks disparagingly of "Truthers", when this is in fact the everyday discourse of the vast majority is I think, to be self-limiting, to try to institutionalize a kind of self-brainwashing regime. To make official policy out of that would, to me, be antithetical to Rigorous Intuition.

You are taking the piss. Look what you're asserting here: That it would be "antithetical to Rigorous Intuition" to question or reject "the everyday discourse of the vast majority"??? You jest, but you are far from funny. (Like all authoritarians, you are completely humourless.) You are smirking and sniggering in the face of the mods and the entire board. Worst of all, you are doing all this on Jeff Wells' dime. You are pouring scorn on this entire Discussion Board, on the whole idea behind it, on the very meanings of the words that constitute its name: Rigorous Intuition. And you have been doing this for years on end.

What you wrote there is just junk. Garbage. It debunks itself instantly. If you had your way (and by god you have tried to), then this Discussion Board would be fully indistinguishable from the Guardian, or from any other of the approved journals on your loathsome spook-ridden newsfeed: Horrible thoughts horribly expressed in horrible words by horrible, mercenary people. The same as everywhere else.

People who actively cultivate critical thinking [!!!], even while pursuing minority discourse, should be better than that[!!!!!], indeed we must be if we are to achieve much of anything.

Enough. You are simply insufferable. I have never, literally never, met any honest human being anywhere on the left who talks the way you do, who lies the way you do, who pushes poisonous bullshit the way you do, who refuses to take responsibility for his own actions the way you do, who agitates for war non-stop the way you do, who wastes honest people's time the way you do, namely: shamelessly and incessantly. It is not Cynthia McKinney who is the crypto-fascist (as you so slimily, so disgustingly, assert), nor Vanessa Beeley nor Eva Bartlett nor Robert Fisk or any of the other brave and honest people you so casually shit on in passing without ever taking responsibility for it, but you yourself: You are the cryptofascist, you timewasting mealymouthed duplicitous warmongering creep.

[MacCruiskeen]

From the memory hole: the then-moderator Wombaticus Rex to American Dream, in October 2014, calling AD a troll and explaining to him why he had been suspended. Emphases added.

Wombaticus Rex » Tue Oct 21, 2014 12:07 pm wrote:

That's a very funny question! You got suspended because of your entire online MO -- the passive aggressive snipes at people, stirring shit up and then acting like you don't see people responding, and overall, maintaining your stellar track record of being the most intelligent and subtle troll we've ever had here at Rigorous Intuition to date (with the possible exception of Jeff Wells, of course -- jury is still out on that one).

A great way to reverse that trend would be to treat the people in this thread who are asking you questions like normal human beings, who are just as smart as you, don't have "problematic" or "questionable" motivations, and would earnestly like answers from you! Give it a shot! Could be exciting.

That was 42 months ago.

Note too the response from stillrobertpaulsen, not a mod then, just one of the politest, friendliest and most reasonable posters on this board:

[...] Too bad the intended recipient refused to [take] the advice of our esteemed mod and continues stirring shit up even after proclaiming he is "ready now to move on to more compelling things in my own life." So move the fuck on already!

It is sickening (and profoundly fucking boring) to have to go through this same old, same old, same old shit over and over and over again, as if his shtick hadn't been crystal-clear years ago. And that was before he had even started shitting on brave and honest women such as McKinney, Beeley and Bartlett, while spouting endless propagandistic corporate-media bullcrap about what he calls "conspiracy culture".

[American Dream]

You may have already guessed that I do believe in drawing lines against the far right(!) but here is a quote from Gabriel Kuhn that I found interesting:

Is any engagement by leftists with right-wing forces an indication for fascism creeping into their ranks? If that was the case, what does this mean for anarchist luminaries such as Erich Mühsam and Rudolf Rocker who, in the early 1930s, held public meetings with representatives of the National Socialists’ “left wing” (the so-called Strasser current, documented in Ross’s book)? The events were co-organized with the intention to “get to know and understand each other through sensible discussion”, as explained in Mühsam’s journal Fanal under the header “A Worthwhile Attempt”. Does this mean the anarchists were seduced by fascists? Did they have fascist sympathies? Did they believe they could bring the right-wingers over to their side? Or did they think that an open debate was important to convince working-class folks to rally around the ideals of solidarity rather than chauvinism? These are difficult questions to answer, but they indicate that antifascism is more complicated than denouncing fascists and celebrating one’s own righteousness. (No message conveyed by Ross’s book, I’m just making a general point here.) Revolutionary politics are often conducted in muddy waters, but it is the environment we are forced to move in if we want to change anything. Despite all the risks and dangers this implies, we need to figure out when and how to engage with opponents rather than to withdraw from the political terrain altogether and settle for the moral high ground. This would be fatal.
Identifying the Enemy, A review of Alexander Reid Ross's "Against the Fascist Creep".

I like alot of what you post but I do feel you have a tendency towards 1) deciding certain theories are right wing, 2) deciding that *therefore* left-wingers subscribing to them are actually crypto-fascists (Cynthia McKinney and Caitlin Johnstone for instance) and then 3) claiming a wane of left-wingers.

[Elvis]

Louis Proyect, Andrew Coates, Wahid Azal, Oakland Socialist, A Roaming Vagabond, Bob from Brockley etc.

It occurs to me that if all you're reading is Louis Proyect, Andrew Coates, Wahid Azal, Oakland Socialist, A Roaming Vagabond, Bob from Brockley, Shiraz Socialist etc., you might be caught in a self-reinforcing loop that leaves you less open to critical consideration of evidence that might contradict their positions. Just something to think about if one immerses oneself in a single viewpoint, which those sites seems to share when it comes to events Syria and attitudes about Russia.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Note too the response from stillrobertpaulsen, not a mod then, just one of the politest, friendliest and most reasonable posters on this board:

[...] Too bad the intended recipient refused to [take] the advice of our esteemed mod and continues stirring shit up even after proclaiming he is "ready now to move on to more compelling things in my own life." So move the fuck on already!

Yes, AD has pissed me off in the past. He has done things to piss me off presently and no doubt will piss me off in the future. But I will never post a vicious personal attack against him and I will not allow anyone else to do that him. For this, take the week off:

Enough. You are simply insufferable. I have never, literally never, met any honest human being anywhere on the left who talks the way you do, who lies the way you do, who pushes poisonous bullshit the way you do, who refuses to take responsibility for his own actions the way you do, who agitates for war non-stop the way you do, who wastes honest people's time the way you do, namely: shamelessly and incessantly. It is not Cynthia McKinney who is the crypto-fascist (as you so slimily, so disgustingly, assert), nor Vanessa Beeley nor Eva Bartlett nor Robert Fisk or any of the other brave and honest people you so casually shit on in passing without ever taking responsibility for it, but you yourself: You are the cryptofascist, you timewasting mealymouthed duplicitous warmongering creep.