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naraburns  nihil supernum  7mo ago (text post)   28927 thread views

Israel-Gaza Megathread #1

This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.

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I mean, BLM being bad was never not the only real opinion on this board.

Other than the BLM supporters? Even ignoring Darwin's absolutely embarrassing showing, there were more than a couple honest advocates.

The dark old days when we still had users who actually had different opinions.

And they're free to post here and now. Unless they feel such unbearable mental pain from seeing other posters' contrary opinions that they ragequit.

Unless they feel such unbearable mental pain from seeing other posters' contrary opinions

This is perhaps ironic on a thread where the OP is still frustrated years later by hearing a single user disagree with the dominant narrative here.

I've got a long memory on a lot of posters, and point out that he was far from the only user to have a different opinion on that topic. And, uh, the previous poster was asking about things that happened three years ago; by necessity any honest discussion will necessarily be about people saying things years ago.

My frustration with Darwin wasn't that I disagreed with him. In no small number of cases, I actually don't -- and almost all of those made it tempting to respond "stop helping me". Whether I agreed or disagreed with his object-level position, he'd argued it primarily and sometimes solely through strawmen, insults, insistence that clear facts weren't proven or unknown matters must have happened in the most convenient way, standards of behavior or evidence evolved and deployed and denied and recreated within the context of single arguments, outright falsehoods, so on and so forth. He'd call basic legal terms deceptive rhetoric, could not imagine what Jim Crow looked like, and made random claims that couldn't fit a basic timeline.

That wasn't universal, and there were rare times where he could make decent arguments and I'd point out that out well before his actual permaban. But given that one of his biggest 'contributions' ever was slamming people over not commenting on the Smollett hate crime, it's hard to comment about BLM support without mentioning him, and also not fair to the BLM supporters here to use him as the first example.

You're not the problem Gatt, you're a quality and civil contributor. But neither is this isolated - just the previous week I saw you call out someone for being the lone poster to defend Ibram Kendi's book. I genuinely don't think this kind of pubic shaming of people who dared to buck the majority even years ago is conducive to having non-echo chamber debates here.

But like I said to FC, my parent comment to yours was lighthearted, not a declaration of conflict. I don't care all that much or I would have left.

But neither is this isolated - just the previous week I saw you call out someone for being the lone poster to defend Ibram Kendi's book.

I don't think that's an accurate summary of this post, which as far as I can remember is the last time I've discussed Kendi.

((To be explicit: I don't think that gemmaem position was shameful, nor do I think she's the only one to promote Kendi before his disgrace.))

Fair, maybe I interpreted it in an overly negative way.

Reading through the thread, I have no idea which post you are attempting to reference.

The comment mine is responding to, gattsuru’s on darwin

Ah.

Unless they feel such unbearable mental pain from seeing other posters' contrary opinions

This is perhaps ironic on a thread where the OP is still frustrated years later by hearing a single user disagree with the dominant narrative here.

Darwin was quite notable both for his prodigious and sustained output and his dedication to dishonesty and bad-faith interaction at every possible opportunity. Describing him as a "single user" "disagreeing" is disingenuous in the extreme. He burned more charity alone than any ten other posters you could name.

Further, the entire point of that quote is that he wasn't the only one, which is in fact the truth. Unironic support for BLM was not rare, even when the rioting was in full swing. Even less rare was "BLM is bad, but less bad than every observed response to the rioting".

The point stands. Darwin is still free to post here, as are any of the others who think BLM is a good idea. The fact that the history of their previous positions and the observed results places them squarely in the center of a rhetorical kill-zone is their own fault.

It’s a stain on our free speech record to have banned him. Even as a skilled devil’s advocate, if we assumed he never believed anything consistently, he was valuable.

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Darwin was quite notable both for his prodigious and sustained output and his dedication to dishonesty and bad-faith interaction at every possible opportunity.

I disagree. He often made quality arguments and was willing to buck the status quo here from an underrepresented angle, something we should want more. He was no more inflammatory or bad faith than plenty of others here, but people reacted absolutely viscerally against him at a level disproportionate to his behavior.

The point stands. Darwin is still free to post here, as are any of the others who think BLM is a good idea. The fact that the history of their previous positions and the observed results places them squarely in the center of a rhetorical kill-zone is their own fault.

Imo that too easily absolves us as a community for failing to create the kind of debate space we set out to build. People get bitter and hostile in response to users who have actually tried to buck majority opinion here. I experienced this kind of thing enough from the times I tried to engage in actual culture war issues that I'm pretty unwilling to do it anymore, and I'm a very long time contributor.

Either way it doesn't matter much anymore, we are what we are here and my reply to gatt was meant to be light hearted, not a declaration of conflict or something.

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My recollection is that even the few progressives we had at that time were ambivalent at best about them.

... I've had a discussion on The Old Site where a moderator put out the challenge to find a half-dozen posters who "(a) are "regulars" here (b) leftists, and (c) have celebrated or turned a blind eye to violence", and I got either four-and-a-half or five depending on who you ask just by looking at BLM-related ones.

Support for BLM as a movement in general while either carefully ignoring the violence or at least saying it was bad was far broader, even at the Motte.

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