Intellectual Dishonesty

I’m sure that if someone did step in to try to take the issue seriously that it would have gotten very quiet all of a sudden.

dp

Of course I'd love to but having already made a complete Fabergé dog's egg of myself on this subject when I was not so well informed, there's a relatively high chance of that I might 'become the new object of ridicule, and called out for being anti-feminist.' I certainly have been rabidly anti- 'radical feminist' in the past, in reaction to the sustained mistreatment I received from demented rad fems I was once close to, which led me to tar the whole spectrum with the same brush. But through persistent reading and questioning I've managed to climb out of that ignorant hole and move on.

There are plenty of people on here with much more important things to say on this than me. Where are they?

Some subjects don't get a very fair response when we cover up our own ignorance or confusion about things for the sake of maintaining a 'revolutionary' front with our comrades. On the particular point Noah's friend raises I think that the section about construction workers in 'The Housing Monster' pamphlet handles it honestly and well but there is not much written in that vein within our milieu. See here:
http://libcom.org/library/housing-monster-proleinfo

more the shifting and shuffling people do when discussing politics to fit in, sound good, justify themselves, cover their tracks or whatever.

Sometimes it's a fine line between solidarity and the insecure, huddling groupthink in which the world is no longer experienced as a field of rational, objective relationships but is only a consequence of self-oriented 'experiences' containing sacred cows upon which 'yes, we completely agree with ourselves, don't we' and where all heretics are persecuted. But given the nature of the social questions being debated, deciding exactly where that shift occurs in any given discussion is often as difficult as locating the boundary between the wavy quantum world and the world of objective events, and unless, as in the example above, you can see where a false move has obviously been made, it's more a case of hive mind versus heretic running through every assertion and lurking behind every item of 'evidence', and you're often left with only a vague feeling that gang-wank has somehow kicked off somewhere and that there's really no point in going on, which is presumably what passes for a victory in the minds of those engaging in it.

Men don't die in the workplace because they are discriminated against, they die in the workplace because it's cheaper to have a few workers die than have proper safety protocols.

As these are traditionally jobs women have been excluded from this is not due to anti-male discrimination. Raising it as a discrimination issue is at best stunningly misguided and most frequently absolutely dishonest.

I just read an article on #KeepIrisBlack and I wanted to say something about that, it seems so pointless until you see the stunningly rabid reactions, a bit like Donald Glover as Spiderman.

Yeah I agree with Jeff. The trades are overwhelmingly male not because of discriminating against men for dangerous jobs but the instead discrimination against women. Where I'm from the first woman union carpenter didn't happen until the early 1980s.

Indeed but the title and theme of the OP as well as Noah's post 6 would suggest that this was not the substance of his argument. I made the same mistake initially.

Lots of us have done stuff around workplace deaths and injuries, including in male dominated trades such as construction. If you came on the site and said 'hey I'm trying to organise around health and safety in construction and I need some support' you would probably get lots of people responding and giving advice. I think framing the issue as discrimination against men specifically is what people are uneasy about.

And Jeff and Juan are right about exclusion of women from construction skilled trades.

Look, sorry mate but it's not digression, the original post is about men disproportionately suffering workplace accidents and people on the left not taking that issue seriously, and I was talking about that.

I'm a trade union shop steward and I can talk to you about organising against workplace accidents if you want. I'm not going to discuss about the way that people behaved on a facebook thread that I haven't read. I don't really have a general theory about the way that people behave in arguments in general as I think that's so massively varied so I can't talk to you about that either.

Surely the person who started the thread is in the best position to pronounce on his intentions in doing so? And he has. So what's going on?

I don’t feel qualified to contribute much to this thread.

From what I’ve read, it appears that ‘radicals’ are no guiltier of ‘directing a conversation or use ridicule or bullying to suit their agenda’, than many other people - online and off.

Individuals differ, though I’d suspect our (anti)social conditioning plays a part. Psychology books discuss social influence, including conformity to social roles. On libcom, few folk I suspect can totally resist playing their internalised role of being a class warrior.

The ruling class though appearing very clubbable, if provoked, can be as savage as hungry wolves. The mass media, manufacturing consent, and consistently misrepresenting dissent is one example. Look at how the Hillsborough disaster was covered over the years. Talk about ‘directing a conversation’.

(Written before I saw the post just above)

Regarding loads of people queueing up to say how stupid or bad someone else is to show how clever or good they are, I think that's not a good thing to do. However 1. I don't think the radical left do that more than other people 2. Lots of people might be disagreeing with something all at the same time just because they are angry and disagree with it, not as a performance of being right.

I was a bit annoyed with the original post. I have got a permanent workplace injury (ok I know it was talking about deaths not injuries. But I was still annoyed anyway.) I also do the best I can supporting people and agitating round workplace related sickness and I just felt a bit, I can't express myself very clearly, I felt a bit annoyed. How would it be better if I specifically addressed this as a men's issue? Workplace death and sickness is an issue that a lot of people agitate around. If people were annoyed with this being framed as a men's issue, well, I do kind of agree that it shouldn't be framed like that, it should be framed as a worker's issue and fought everywhere it occurs.

This article touches upon a similiar point, I think.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/06/why-it-is-a-bad-thing-that-orange-is-the-new-black-leaves-men-out/373682/

Unsurprisingly, several other writers juumped on it and attacked it in ways that were, at best, distortion.

I think this phenomenon is what you are trying to talk about, Noah. Maybe this will help illustrate it further.

I don't understand the reticence of people in engaging in the intended subject which I think now at least is absolutely clear.

I've read this thread, but can't say that I understand what the intended subject is. I have my inkling and the title of the thread suggests what Noah had in.mind, but perhaps it is best that Noah just spells it out.

Noah, no hard feelings.

Regarding the issue of people using ridicule or bullying, without knowing loads and loads about the background I just couldn't form an opinion on whether people were doing that or just expressing anger or disagreement with the position being put forward.

I think that using an example from an MRA to discuss intellectual dishonesty and then saying it's irrelevant that it's an MRA is in itself a bit disengenuous. As in, some topics and people lend themselves more to intellectual dishonesty than others.

Intellectual dishonesty requires that one is aware of being "wrong" or at least inconsistent. I think it's quite easy to be blind to inconsistencies when thinking about oneself or friends.

I'm also not sure it's more frequent amongst radicals. But if it is I can imagine a reason being that quite complex things are being discussed and common sense well superceded. Stampeding along with the herd can bring some comfort. Perhaps I'm wrong but it seems ideas develop quite quickly in radical circles compared to others.

the example is a distraction because a lot of us view MRA's as no different than white supremacists. I think I get your point though, and I generally agree that one should approach stuff with thought out reasonable explanations rather than elitist ridicule. I know devrim, a poster on this site, has said stuff like this and I generall agree with him and try to follow his example.

Worldwide, males are two-thirds of those who die from work-related causes (both accidents and illness), according to the ILO. In developed countries the disparity is worse. Men are 93% of those who die from on the job accidents in the U.S. and 96% in the U.K, according to government reports.

On this, ILO figures are much more accurate, as they include total deaths caused by work.

UK and US government statistics (in the UK by the HSE) are basically crap because they omit the vast majority of workplace deaths. So in the UK 20,000 people a year are killed by the work, but the HSE figures show about 150 who die in individual accidents (and this excludes about 1500 who are killed in motor vehicle accidents in work vehicles).

So people killed in these types of accidents are normally drivers and workers in construction, manual labour, farm work, fishing etc, which are disproportionately male.

Whereas when you look at workplace deaths overall it becomes less disproportionate. Including deaths from occupational cancers, for example.

With the global ILO figures, these are disproportionate as women globally are excluded from much paid work, and much work done by women is unpaid and not considered "work" and so won't be counted in industrial injury statistics.

Anyway I know Noah said he didn't really want to talk about this example in particular, but I thought it was interesting and so wanted to comment. On the subject more generally about intellectual dishonesty, I don't really have anything to say, other than people from across the political spectrum do it. And in this instance it may not have been deliberate dishonesty, but more in their mind they were thinking the discussion was primarily about workplace injuries, so that was the figure they dug up. I'm sure I have probably done things like this before by accident.

Noah, you bowled a googly and libcom bat-folk are used to a normal leg break spin.

Hey, don't knock it comrade jerkula. After all it all helps in the ongoing accumulation of those choice and succulent down votes from the people that keep the circle round the A. 'Organisation' indeed, Freud would spit his cigar out.

Noah, rather than complaining about being misunderstood and blaming everyone else why not try looking at what you have explained. You talk about an email but you've not marked what part of your text is quotation and what is actually your question.

As has been said, intellectual dishonesty is bad and is used to win arguments, I'm not sure what else there is to say about it.

Ok I'll give it another go.

I appreciate there's a problem with this behaviour, but there could be a lot of other things going on.

Many people are at work all day listening to their workmates talking reactionary shit all day and might be venting their feelings by joining in rather than just congratulating themselves on being right.

A lot of people might join in to back up someone who was hurt by a reactionary post, also not just about being right but being supportive. I've done this when friends post on facebook being upset by things, it makes that person feel they are not alone.

Yes, people also do join in just to be right.

Noah Fence

There's a whole load of intellectual dishonesty that goes on around here and there's a beautiful irony that the matador style sidestepping of the topic in this thread exemplifies it perfectly.

I was really sincere with you man

so it looks like noa posted something and then got upset that people responded to what he posted rather than what he wanted them to responded to, which he didn't post. And this proves everyone is "intellectuality dishonest" or something?

Well that's a lot clearer for me anyway.

Ok, well, going out in public and saying you are not sure and asking questions is something that makes a lot of people feel vulnerable. A lot of people who would discuss like that don't post, because it's not the prevailing culture on the boards.

Noah my thoughts are:
I see this site as propagating libcom politics and history. It is a window into which anyone can look, therefore I generally try to write coherently and present thoughts in a way that will not needlessly offend. I strive to be politically consistent with my posts. That is why, if we were having a private discussion over a beer, I could express sympathy for certain points of view that publicly on this site, I feel should be argued against. Or to put it another way, face to face I’ll try and find some common ground, though on a web site with numerous eyes and participants you are open to all sorts of crap. Recently someone openly changed their position during a discussion but was given no quarter. To be fair, it was a sharp discussion all round.

There are certain points of view expressed on libcom, which I disagree with - so what? I’m not always right, just as I’ve met enough anarchists to know that many of them are obnoxious and argumentative. You really don’t have to eat everything on the menu.

Libcom party line echo chamber

Noah, this is a bit silly, man.

Libcom is nothing if not contentious - and that includes disagreements between regular posters.

Anyway, just to respond to your OP, when people believe they're participating in or advocating revolutionary politics, I think things take on an added significance. I mean, how often do we see debate about strategy end up getting people accused of not keeping in line with anarchist principles? And, sometimes this is justified. Other times, I think people get really het up when they see people doing things in the name of their ideology that they don't think fits in with what they view as its core tenets.

jef costello wrote:

Noah, rather than complaining about being misunderstood and blaming everyone else why not try looking at what you have explained. You talk about an email but you've not marked what part of your text is quotation and what is actually your question.

As has been said, intellectual dishonesty is bad and is used to win arguments, I'm not sure what else there is to say about it.

It was perfectly obvious where the quotation started and finished, as I think you know.

radical graffiti wrote:

so it looks like noa posted something and then got upset that people responded to what he posted rather than what he wanted them to responded to, which he didn't post. And this proves everyone is "intellectuality dishonest" or something?

If this is really what you think perhaps you should get into the habit of reading everything more than once.

fingers malone wrote:

Ok, well, going out in public and saying you are not sure and asking questions is something that makes a lot of people feel vulnerable. A lot of people who would discuss like that don't post, because it's not the prevailing culture on the boards.

I absolutely agree with this, and it's the reason Noah is trying to raise the matter, to address a sorry state of fear which is being allowed to stifle genuine discussion.

so how do you think we should change things then?

Noah Fence

I've no idea really. I guess the first thing is self reflection but how you encourage that I don't know. Chemtrails perhaps?

Noah, I like you and you know that, but this feels pretty passive-aggressive.

Is the implication of this statement that regular libcom posters are being intentionally intellectually dishonest? While I do think a decent amount of strawmanning happens from time to time, intellectually dishonesty is a pretty severe charge - especially given that, if I'm correctly guessing the threads you're alluding to, you've been just as much involved in the fray as anyone else.

fingers malone

so how do you think we should change things then?

A happy-zone forum

What a load of codswallop. Firstly, it was abundantly not clear from the OP what the thread was about, judging from the fact that all the initial respondents, including FV, responded with answers relating to MRAs. Personally, I skimmed the OP and saw a post whining about people not taking MRAs seriously and lost interest. fwiw, if someone posts a MRA document to what is presumably a radical facebook page, then they deserve to be treated with derision, as would any other hate group. The idea of actually engaging with MRAs is at the very least naive, and I used to be that naive and all I got in return was hate posts, death threats, rape threats, harassment and being spammed with porn and gore. Fuck their delicate little feelings, they’re not worth any time.


Intellectual honesty is not allowing your personal beliefs to get in the way of the pursuit of the truth. Intellectual dishonesty is to advocate a position which you know to be false. How is this applied to a discussion on an internet forum where people are expressing their personal opinions? Who has the monopoly on the truth and how it is expressed?

There have been a number of threads on this site in which certain posters have been adamant in their own personal beliefs and have become vehemently angry and at times abusive, sometimes flouncing off in a sulk because they haven’t convinced other people of their position. Presumably if a charge of intellectual dishonesty is going to be levied it’s because those posters think that they are the absolute holders of that truth. Is it that the people being accused being the villains are actually lying about their opinions? Because that’s what intellectual dishonesty is, promoting an opinion which a person knows to be false. That’s just stupid. If you come from a position that you are absolutely right and everyone else is wrong, then you’re not discussing in good faith. If you’re accusing people of intellectual dishonestly, you’re accusing other posters of knowingly lying, presumably just to wind you up. That’s just refusing to accept that other people think differently to you. It’s not intellectually dishonest to disagree with someone.

If you are arguing from a minority position and you fail to convince the majority of your opinion then either your argument is not very compelling or the other people have equally strongly held opinions.

To suggest that people are deliberately picking on you to cover up their own insecurities is a massive case of projection, especially seeing that this is an internet forum and with the exception of some relationships and friendships which occur offline, pretty much none of us know each other or have the faintest idea what we are like. It’s a huge reach to think you can psychoanalyze people from their postings in the forum. And it’s bloody ridiculous to diagnose some kind of psychological flaw from disagreements in personal opinions. You think you know people from a few stupid arguments on a website? No you don’t.

For god’s sake, this is just an internet forum and it’s not that important. Whether it’s here, other forums, twitter, facebook, reddit, whatever, it’s just a place for expressing opinions, often to total strangers. It really doesn’t matter that much and it’s certainly not worth fulminating and holding grudges over. Everyone else has moved on.

factvalue

jef costello wrote:

Noah, rather than complaining about being misunderstood and blaming everyone else why not try looking at what you have explained. You talk about an email but you've not marked what part of your text is quotation and what is actually your question.

As has been said, intellectual dishonesty is bad and is used to win arguments, I'm not sure what else there is to say about it.

It was perfectly obvious where the quotation started and finished, as I think you know.

.

No I didn't, otherwise I wouldn't have said it.
I'm not a liar so don't imply it. I'm not wasting any more time on you or your little crew.

We were told to go Google it. I mean, WTF?

You were told to google because you were insisting that other posters explained to you some very (I don't know what the opposite of vanilla is but it was certainly unusual in aspect) sexual practices to you and I'm pretty sure most people would feel very uncomfortable about doing just that on an public forum. It doesn't take a lot of nous to understand that you were demanding that other people do something which would take them waaaaayyy out of their comfort zone. Have a little diplomacy. And what debate was there supposed to be in that thread anyway? It was just an announcement for a social gathering, which was taken down in response to posters, yourself and others, posting up some very judgemental and unfriendly opinions on a subject you clearly knew nothing about. Hence, the go and google it. They weren't respectful questions. The other poster intimated that the OP had some kind of mental illness.
Nobody owes anyone else an education in response to being demanded to tell them something. Doing at least a bit of the legwork yourself is at least good manners.

For god's sake Noah, let it go. How long ago were these threads? Who cares? Everyone else has moved on. If you can't deal with disagreements, radical politics is probably not the right place for you because we argue all the fucking time. What you see as preposterous nonsense is other people's deeply held opinions and vice versa. Arguments on an internet forum are about as ephemeral as you can get. I have no idea why you are putting so much stock in them being meaningful and important. In the great scheme of life, what the fuck difference does it make anyway?

The point is, you're accusing people of being liars just because they stand their ground on their opinions and you haven't changed their minds with your arguments. That's fucking ridiculous. Either that, or you don't really understand what intellectual honesty/dishonesty is. fwiw, I don't think it's a concept which can be particularly applied to internet discussions relation to political opinions, as it os a problem solving mechanism, not a means of discussing people's personal, subjective opinions on a given subject.

It is, however become a catchphrase which has been used a lot recently in relation to the US election, so I should imagine I'm going to be hearing it bandied about a lot more now.

jef costello wrote:

I'm not a liar so don't imply it.

I wasn't implying anything.

Fleur wrote:

Intellectual honesty is not allowing your personal beliefs to get in the way of the pursuit of the truth. Intellectual dishonesty is to advocate a position which you know to be false. How is this applied to a discussion on an internet forum where people are expressing their personal opinions? Who has the monopoly on the truth and how it is expressed?

Presumably if a charge of intellectual dishonesty is going to be levied it’s because those posters think that they are the absolute holders of that truth. Is it that the people being accused being the villains are actually lying about their opinions? Because that’s what intellectual dishonesty is, promoting an opinion which a person knows to be false. That’s just stupid. If you come from a position that you are absolutely right and everyone else is wrong, then you’re not discussing in good faith. If you’re accusing people of intellectual dishonestly, you’re accusing other posters of knowingly lying, presumably just to wind you up.

This doesn't make any sense. How can anyone lie, knowingly or otherwise, if the truth doesn't exist?

Noah:

Oh for god's sake grow up and stop nursing grudges about useless shit.
If you want to go out and change internet behaviour, go ahead and try, I doubt if you'll get anywhere. This is such a limited form of communication.

Factvalue

This doesn't make any sense. How can anyone lie, knowingly or otherwise, if the truth doesn't exist?

Fucking exactly. How exactly can charges of intellectual dishonesty ie lying about something to prove a point, can be levied at people just expressing their opinion? Accusing posters of lying to win an argument based on opinion is just bloody stupid. You may have an opinion on what you think is the truth but accusing people of lying about what their opinion is just to get one over on you is a bit far fetched and a tad paranoid, just like accusing Jef of lying when he said he didn't find the OP very clear.

I think jef waslying to score points because Noah called him on getting 9 circular 'ups' for changing the subject, and I think the truth was that jef knew exactly where the quotations started and finished. Is that controversial or something? Is jef some sort of saintly figure, I wasn't aware? And I think your position vacillates between a correspondence theory and relativism and for that reason doesn't add up to much simply because sometimes opinions can be objectively horseshit.

Projectingagain.com

You're assuming that people are not backing down from their position because they're too embarrassed to concede that you have superior opinions. Sometimes people just don't fucking agree with you and there's nothing you can do about it. Why do you think that you're the only one capable of self-reflection? Sometimes people re-evaluate their own opinions and come to the same conclusions. Not everybody has Damascene conversions while wasting a bit of time on the net. But it's fucking tedious being pulled up for our moral dereliction all the time. I honestly don't give a flying fuck about the opinions of others about me on this site or any other, as far as I'm concerned you're all pretty much a bunch of anonymous strangers. Why you think I should care about accruing any stigma, I really don't know.

And back to the thread where you were so offended at being told to google something & find out information for your self (self-education, one of those anarchist principles) - respectful my ass. Within a few short posts the OP was accused of harbouring Nazis, being pedophiles and being in some way fucked in the head, by people who didn't have the faintest idea what it was about. And then you were shocked and frustrated that no-one wanted to answer your questions.

You're assuming that people are not backing down from their position because they're too embarrassed to concede that you have superior opinions. Sometimes people just don't fucking agree with you and there's nothing you can do about it.

All I'm really saying is that you seem to have a hard time with the notion that something can just be true or false, rather than superior or inferior.

Why do you think that you're the only one capable of self-reflection? Sometimes people re-evaluate their own opinions and come to the same conclusions. Not everybody has Damascene conversions while wasting a bit of time on the net. But it's fucking tedious being pulled up for our moral dereliction all the time. I honestly don't give a flying fuck about the opinions of others about me on this site or any other, as far as I'm concerned you're all pretty much a bunch of anonymous strangers. Why you think I should care about accruing any stigma, I really don't know.

I don't know what the rest of this is about. If you don't give a fuck, why is it tedious? I think you're here because you like a good argument, like quite a few of the rest of us. But I think we've got a lot of common ground, as well as obvious differences of opinion, and that it would be easier to get rel discussions going if people get real and stop shitting themselves over fuck all.

Noah Fence

Radicalgraffiti said

Duh

I guess you missed this from the OP

regardless of the issues involved. It’s a huge fucking enabler of the shitty injustices in this world and huge fucking barrier to us overcoming these things and getting our shit together.

tbh the op was massive amounts of tldr but that bit you quoted doesn't explain anything by itself

Noah Fence

What you fail to get is that I don't get upset about what you guys think. Being upset is indicated by emotional Anarcho gang banging that I've seen you take part in fairly freely.

i'm sure you have no emotions at all

Noah Fence

BTW, this was not supposed to be about Libcom but more a general point but it certainly exists in Libcom. I'm not pointing a finger at anyone really just wanting to discuss something that I see as a problem as pointed out in my comrades email which I quoted to RG in my response to him. I'll take this opportunity to point out that personal resentments between posters also results in some pretty shitty posting, as per RG commenting in the style of a fucking dickhead in response to anything I post as he didn't like getting his arse spanked for being a disingenuous twat on a thread some time ago. I bare him no resentment as such but it's a bit of a bore to only have someone post negatively in response to me and never positively. I mean, we must agree on something ffs, I'd kind of like to think that most of us are on the same side here.

this is definitely the way someone whos not pissed off acts

incidentally if that thread where you "spanked my arse" is the one i think your referring to then i remember you being a dishonest cunt and refusing to engage with any point i made instead strutting about claiming to have won

Noah Fence

Ok then, there has been many times on Libcom when a question or concerns are shut down before they are reasonably addressed..

who decides whats reasonable here?

factvalue:

You seem to be gifted to be able to reach into the ether and examine Jef's soul to see if he's lying or not, which is a really spectacular skill. On the other hand, you would have to ask Jef for his opinion on this but I don't care about the amount of up votes or down votes I get, so it's hard to imagine anyone else caring about this. But that's just me not giving a stuff about the opinions of anonymous strangers.

I haven't the faintest idea about what correspondence theory, relativism or whatever is about, I find theory massively dull and I have no wish to explore either thing. Sometimes opinions are horseshit, and god knows there's a lot of horseshit posted here, but that doesn't mean that the person postulating this horseshit doesn't believe strongly in said horseshit. However, to accuse people of deliberately lying when they spout this horseshit just to get one over on someone is at best disingenuous. That's what Noah is alluding to. Someone doesn't agree with him, he thinks that opinion is horseshit, therefore said person is being intellectually dishonest. Or, which is worse and the epitome of arrogance, they are being dishonest with themselves because if they really examined their opinions they would change them because his brand of horsehit is naturally superior to someone else's. Most of the arguments here are between grown adults, who have spent a long time consolidating their opinions and accruing experience to back them up, and to be told to go away and think about it and come back with a different opinion, like they were in kindergarten and pissed off the teacher, is what I find tedious.

Neither of the posts you quoted were directed at you and no, I don't give a fuck about the opinions of others on this site, mostly because I don't give much of a fuck about much of the crap which goes on in these forums. I used to but I had a serious breakdown with my depression last year and I have come out of it thinking that there are few things more pointless than nitpicking stupid arguments on the internet about politics. Quite frankly I would rather do something more entertaining. That said, being regularly hectored, lectured and sniped at about things that went on here some time ago is pretty bloody tedious. The thread in which I told him to google the sexual fetishes being discussed must have happened a couple of years ago. Seriously man, move on. In that particular thread the OP was bullied into deleting their posts. I really think he should get over feeling persecuted by me telling him to google something. It's the height of bad manners on the internet to insist on someone finding information for you when you can do it yourself anyway.

I genuinely didn't understand what the OP was about. I just glanced at it, saw MRAs referenced a lot and dismissed it because I didn't want to talk about these people. Maybe the person has had no real experience with dealing with MRAs, otherwise they would understand why ridicule is the default mechanism for dealing with them. Anyone who has actually tangled with these utter shitheads are aware that they are abusive, vicious and vile and that engaging with them brings nothing good. At a personal level, I've had one guy harass me, set up sockpuppet accounts to continue doing so, threaten to kill me and send me photos of murdered women just to drive the point home. And I didn't engage with him, he found me. So it may be incredibly tender-hearted to think you can reason with them but short of kicking them off a cliff, I think that laughing at them is the best reaction you can have to them. Laughing at them while kicking them off a cliff would be better.

It's a pity that some people don't feel confident enough in their opinions to express them but as Fingers Malone asked, how do you think we should change that? Really, what do you suppose should be done, except don't get into heated discussions? Of all of the places on the internet I go, these boards are probably the best moderated. Sometimes shit gets overlooked but you can't expect the admin to be able to watch everything all of the time, I'm sure they have busy lives like the rest of us. However, this is a political website and by that nature feelings run deep and arguments get heated. If you can't cope with that, walk away, have a cup of tea, knit something, whatever. Constantly dredging up arguments from the past, sniping about whatever slight you felt from a couple of years back, banging on about other people's need for self-reflection or humility is just annoying. We have quite enough pressure on us IRL to think, speak, behave in a certain way, to be lectured on how crappy we are as human beings and what we should say or do here is not cool.

Anyway, I'm out. I can't be bothered with any more of this. I would suggest that obsessing about things which happened in the past never did anyone any good and tone policing people and telling people how they should behave isn't a good look. You work out how you should behave and let other people moderate their own behaviour.

Oh fuck off. Stop being such a fucking martyr. It's as boring as fuck. I know you think you're funny but you're not. Most of the time you're just a mouthy git, interspersed with moments of telling us just how wonderful you are, while bitching and whining about other people. You're obnoxious and crass. Grow up, it's tiresome.

This is just trolling at this point, and with what has got to be one of the weirdest red herrings of an initial post ever in terms of what the apparent point was--might as well have posted this story with the role of the MRA group played by white supremacists and complained that folks got too fixated on that aspect!

After watching this thread for a couple days I feel as though I need to make a couple comments.

I thought the original post was quite clear. I posted an article and references to responses to that article to illustrate the point that I thought Noah was making.

I myself post very seldom because the level of discussion on libcom has become more restricted over the years as I've visited the site. I think my views fall well within the norm of the average common poster, and I appreciate there being fewer Wingnuts and psychos posting insane conspiracy theories overall. That said, I miss the days when there was a more spirited discussion and a multiplicity of viewpoints because it allowed me to evaluate my arguments and their weaknesses.

For a reference, look at the article I posted earlier about the prison industrial complex, gender, media, and the discussion around that in wider Society.

Finally, it seems to me that Noah has a strange habit of having there threads hijacked to become a discussion about Noah's intentions as opposed to the subject at hand. I don't really understand the impetus behind that. I've been a member of this forum longer than Noah, and I've always welcomed their openness, humor, and intellectual curiosity. Though the puns can be bad, is there something fundamental i am missing that demands that their concerns be minimized?

I'm not looking for a fight, just trying to soothe my conscience as I watch a thread that I am interested in go off the rails.

It’s been an interesting thread as it contains the contradictions and circular disputes that Noah first raised.
It demonstrates the limitations of expressing opinions on the internet. It is easier to address a political problem used as an example rather than the abstract notion behind the OP (personally I don’t mind a digression). It is easy to assume an element of bad faith on those who do not agree with you. The way we express our opinions contain contradictory elements and opponents often pick on these apparent contradictions rather than the substance of the post. A poster condemning certain attitudes will demonstrate the same behavior several posts later.
Anyway, too much talk of honesty makes me want to count my spoons.

So I feel like any chance for much serious discussion in this thread has pretty much gone to shit, but I did want to respond Noah.

As for passive aggressive, I don't really know what that means

For me, anyway, it was pretty clear from your OP that while ostensibly you were talking about this FB conversation, you had libcom in mind - and your subsequent posts seems to bear that out. The fact the OP referenced a conversation about MRAs, so the inevitable comparison was going to be between MRAs and Libcom, it was never going to end well.

Anyway, that, for me, feels a bit passive aggressive. If you want to talk about what you perceive as intellectual dishonesty on libcom, just say it.

So like this:

I am suggesting precisely that [libcom posters are intentionally intellectually dishonest]

then this

I don't know what threads you mean

Feels a bit disingenuous. I mean, clearly you do have some threads and posters in mind in relation to the topic.

makes me want to count my spoons

Auld, I learn so many down-home, folksy idioms when you're around! But what does this one mean?!?

Good post, btw.

Chilli #78

I picked it up from my mum. She was pretty well read, and I think it’s from James Boswell’s ‘Life of Samuel Johnson’:

‘But if he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.’

It is mostly used as, ‘the louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.’

So it may be incredibly tender-hearted to think you can reason with them but short of kicking them off a cliff, I think that laughing at them is the best reaction you can have to them. Laughing at them while kicking them off a cliff would be better.

However, this is a political website and by that nature feelings run deep and arguments get heated. If you can't cope with that, walk away, have a cup of tea, knit something, whatever.

This is Classic Fleur, smart as hell and funny as fuck. I've just had a shitty day at work and this is the first time I've smiled in hours. This kind of thing is one of the main reasons I keep coming back on here. Come on now Noah, you've got to give the comrade her dues, it really is lovely stuff!

But this just made me laugh out loud:

The giant tank of Fleur comes rolling through town, it's caterpillar tracks crushing everything it's path - trees, houses, views that have the audacity to differ from hers. Everyone is enthralled by her great iron beast of destruction. But now, what is this tiny insignificant thing in her wake? Let us look closer. Ah, it's Radicalgraffiti pootling along in his plastic peddle car! Broom broom he says, look mummy, I'm Fleur! 'That's nice dear' says mother, sighing. 'Broom broom says RG again, as his tiny wheel fails to crush a grape, I am like Fleur, I am I am(sniff).'

I think Tarwater pretty much answered the passive aggressive allegation, in that it's a perfectly rational alternative to active aggression if you've had your threads repeatedly processed in the way Noah's seem to have been.

P.S. You better not be upping me Noah you slippery fucker.

You've got mail.

factvalue

P.S. You better not be upping me Noah you slippery fucker.

More slippery than an oilskin sack of greased eels!!

I thought the initial point raised by the OP was very interesting and worthy of discussion, it's a shame this thread has descended into such a farce. I didn't take it as a defence of MRAs or anything. In fact I have encountered the behaviour described by the OP many times in radical circles, although I wouldn't go as far as to call it 'intellectual dishonesty', as that implies deliberate deceit, which I don't think is the case. I think it's more a case of cognitive dissonance when encountering something that doesn't seem to fit with a radical perspective/outlook on life. People have deeply held beliefs and naturally don't like it when they encounter something that seems to contradict them. However the thing is 99% of the time these things only seem to be contradictory on a very superficial level, and can be dismissed with a bit of careful thought and theorising, rather than simply shutting down and repeating a mantra or rehearsed argument.

One last thing, it's worth remembering that the number of people who comment regularly on this site is almost certainly dwarfed by the number of lurkers who post very infrequently (like me) or not at all. Many of those will be people new to anarchism / unfamiliar with radical politics who want to know more, so asking 'why come to an radical website' is not a very helpful attitude. Nor is the tone of the debate so far very dignifying, and there are offenders on both sides of the argument here.

More slippery than an oilskin sack of greased eels!!

FS look's a lot like that twisted scallywag covered himself in KY and had a bath in coconut milk and friggin upped the bejeesus out of himself. (I upped yours btw, and then downed this one for the road).

berries, berries, berries, berries, yo lordy thou uppeth me out, o lordy thou uppeth.......[berries]

Sister Ray

I thought the initial point raised by the OP was very interesting and worthy of discussion, it's a shame this thread has descended into such a farce. I didn't take it as a defence of MRAs or anything. In fact I have encountered the behaviour described by the OP many times in radical circles, although I wouldn't go as far as to call it 'intellectual dishonesty', as that implies deliberate deceit, which I don't think is the case. I think it's more a case of cognitive dissonance when encountering something that doesn't seem to fit with a radical perspective/outlook on life. People have deeply held beliefs and naturally don't like it when they encounter something that seems to contradict them. However the thing is 99% of the time these things only seem to be contradictory on a very superficial level, and can be dismissed with a bit of careful thought and theorising, rather than simply shutting down and repeating a mantra or rehearsed argument.

Right on, Sister Ray.

We are all full of contradictions in our everyday life - I try to keep mine away from view in the written word on this site - better safe than sorry I suppose!