Babble Culture

NS - I couldn't disagree with you more completely. If what you said were true, I would not frequent this board. My perception is that self-important name-calling sectarians, of any ilk, are called down. And yeah, some babblers, by being polite and reasonable, get away with shit like supporting Canada's participation in the aggression against Libya. Trouble is, so do the NDP and the Bloc, and it makes their uncritical supporters very uncomfortable. So I'm ok with the balance struck here, though not always.

As for the boycott election stuff, I haven't weighed in - not once - on the substance. But I have certainly noticed some posters who have been here for (almost) 24 or 48 hours acting like their excrement is fragrant, condemning "rabble" as a whole, and namecalling babblers. I personally think they should fuck off out of here, [b]IRRESPECTIVE[/b] of the eternal correctness or not of their point of view.

I have not seen one single left-of-NDP viewpoint banned here or even condemned for its own sake (except by individuals - but what's wrong with that??). But you can take the finest idea in the world, left or right, and piss off everyone enough to get yourself disliked.

Northern Shoveler wrote:

If you read the past threads about the Black Bloc you will find the prevailing wisdom of the social democrats is that all anarchists are either naive fools or agent provocateurs.  

I only saw a bit of these discussions, but here is where I think you have gratuitously overstated.

It isnt just social democrats who are pretty offended by the Black Bloc.

Because people make over the top statements does not mean they think all anarchists are fools and/or agent procvacateurs. If we are going to weed out people that make over the top criticisms, you will be gone too.

KenS wrote:

Northern Shoveler wrote:

If you read the past threads about the Black Bloc you will find the prevailing wisdom of the social democrats is that all anarchists are either naive fools or agent provocateurs.  

I only saw a bit of these discussions, but here is where I think you have gratuitously overstated.

Yeah, Northern Shoveler, please stick to the facts. I, for one, have continuously described the Royal Bank arsonists and the the window-smashers and car-torchers of the G20 events as being [b]assholes[/b] and [b]saboteurs[/b] or [b]police provocateurs[/b] or all three.

As for anarchists, I work with them in every movement I have had the honour to be involved in. If someone here has said anything against anarchists, it's gotta be one or two individuals once or twice a year - rare enough that you'll have to refer me to the citations.

If, on the other hand, you're saying (and I know you're not) that the actions of the aforementioned assholes represent the theory and practice of the anarchist movement, well, I wouldn't believe you. If I did, I'd unhappily but consistently call them names I usually reserve for assholes or provocateurs.

So please, as Ken has requested above, be more careful with the facts.

ETA: Um, same goes for you, Slumberjack. You think anarchists and anarchism are being stifled by the moderators here? Or by anyone for that matter? [i]Show me.[/i] I thought they were made of sterner stuff.

It shouldn't surprise us that there is sometimes difficulty in discerning consistancy here.  People comment on fluid events, based on what they read (sometimes) and what life has taught them to that moment.  It would be disturbing if there was consistancy.

Unless that consistancy was based on the adoption of what I espouse.   Then, that would be cool.

Slumberjack wrote:

There were different opinions floating around that were set upon with name calling.  I thought the comebacks were relatively mild, not anything really that should cause you to use shit and fuck in the same paragraph.

I actually thought Tobold demonstrated remarkable restraint given the viciousness of some of the personal attacks and the persistent twisting of his words. I've experienced some of that on this board and it's really shitty.

You can be left or right here...just not too far either way.  Someone will complain, and get things shut down.

Northern Shoveler wrote:

I believe that this is a board that restricts only the views of people to the left of the mainstream and accepts imperialism as the norm despite the supposed inclusion of that as a guiding principal.   You can cheerlead for imperialism but don't anyone dare be anarchist on this site.  Of course libertarians like Snert are allowed to dismiss everything left of the NDP as illegitimate.  Libertarian believes can be fully explored and Snert is not called a troll but Tobold is derisively called an anarchist as an insult by a poster whining about insults. I am astounded at how well the social democrats are on this board think they are at of discerning exactly who is a right wing troll. 

Well, to be fair, the tag on the Canadian Politics forum is "Layton-Lovers to Harper-Harpies," so you shouldn't expect a very wide spectrum of discussion here.

I kinda knew you'd quote that, SJ. Because there's nothing else to quote. You interpret that as meaning that discussion of election boycotts is now banned on babble?

The only thing worse than having one's rights taken away is being passionately (but erroneously) convinced that one's rights have been taken away.

Slumberjack wrote:

And Unionist, it's quite heartwarming when you take up for Rabble like that, but I really do believe that they're made of sterner stuff, and can handle a few boos from the gallery from time to time.

Yes, I agree. But the person who attacked "rabble" hadn't even been here 48 hours. S/he meant "babble". And like a certain mercifully small class of newbies, their ideas (and their rude supercilious arrogance) gets challenged by one or two posters, and they conclude that "rabble" is a gang of counter-revolutionary social democrats not worth their precious time.

So yeah, rabble won't be mortally wounded by such mosquito bites. But otherwise important discussions (like the role of voting) will turn into "humour" about release of bowels.

Two hundred University of Waterloo students, wearing red hats and shirts - one wearing her red longjohns - ran shouting "vote"  "vote" across the campus the other day, a "vote mob" organized through Facebook and to be shown on YouTube.  Similar  videos have been made, inspired partly, said organizers, by the challenge to young voters from CBC's Rick Mercer. A sampling of their reasons for their intention to vote..."to free the internet", "for democracy", "money for prevention, not detention" read the stickies pasted across their mouths at one point in the filming.

Now, if they can turn out in numbers to overcome the dead weight of their grandparents, and the philosophically dead...

Okay, that makes sense. Thanks, Goerge.

NS, you may be attributing to babble what are the opinions of a few people who have been posting lately.  This isn't a very large community, and sometimes people get a sense of babble culture from a few recently prolific posters.

A former moderator, Maysie, and a rabble blogger, Krystalline, both posted arguments defending Black Bloc tactics during the G20 discussions. The G20 discussions here on babble were some of the most lively I'd seen anywhere, encompassing a wide range of concerns and opinions.

I recall on my Facebook, a friend called a woman a "whore" for stating a timorous defence of the police (she had cops in her family).  So I brought that over here, and a few of us had a little discussion about women in activism, the sometimes problematic behaviour of male activists towards women, how does a man reconcile his activism with his paleolithic attitude towards women, etc.

The G20 were some of the best discussions we've had on babble, IMV.

Northern Shoveler, I appreciate you starting this thread.

All I'd like to add, as someone who very often is espousing minoritized ideas and thoughts on babble, is that babble is what the aggregate of all of us are, like Rebecca West said. 

Most babblers are white, so complex anti-racist conversations are limited. Most babblers are male, so discussions focussing on women and feminism are limited. I don't like that, and do what I can by contributing from perspectives that interest me when I can.

I'm sometimes attacked and pilloried for challenging the culture of babble. When I was a moderator, I tried, a little bit, to change the culture of babble, to be more open to ideas that challenge most babblers. C'est le vie.

Where the overgeneralization is really strong- more than the already irritating norm around here- is where you attribute generalized positions. They are overgenerlized enough that if I took your descriptions and went looking, I wouldnt find anything I recognized.

In other words, I think they go beyond rhetorical overstatement to be misleading.

Ya shooda seen the battles when I first brought links to the NYTimes on board - long before you found them objectionable - along with some other desiderata, Shoveler.  Had to get down and dirty just to stay afloat.  But I don't recall ever trying to make verbiage, lineage, make my case. Certainly not in such ethereal, purely ideational, schoolmen fashion.  Not when real people were in need of a better outcome.

And for what its worth, and speaking of those generalizations....

Lots of social democrats and other lefties who see voting as very important hold a view that concurrently disagrees fundamenatlly with what is being proposed, but to a degree empathizes with the reasons for it.

That would be part of the reason I didnt even look in at those threads: I can see why people think the whole thing is a scam that needs to be repudiated. [Though the bigger reason I would avoid the thread is that it would be among the very many I know will have more ridiculous over the top 'discussion' than I even want to skim. So I dont even look in at a lot of threads where I would pretty much fully agree with the predominate opinions.]

Northern Shoveler wrote:

Indeed I am mostly pissed at the hazing of newbies.  Unionist I respect your views on many things but not in this instance.  The social democrats on this board regularly attack anything on their left flank without mercy and usually using passive aggressive posts claiming to be injured by insults while calling others assholes, agent provocateur, naive, anti-democratic, etc etc.  It is exactly the same shit that liberals throw at social democrats.  

Why I started this thread is not because at babble ideas are never engaged for their content but because I see an institutionalized hazing here.  It is systemic behaviour amongst some of the senior posters.  This is their board and the rest of us have to accept that.  Unionist you are more inviting than some but both Remind and Sean (as examples from the voting haze) seem to think that their seniority here makes them the arbitrators of the legitimacy of other peoples views.  I find that less than helpful to a discussion board and wonder where the seniority rights clause is in the agreement I signed with Rabble to post here. 

 

First of all I do not find it easy to respect people who go to a thread or open an unlinked thread and discuss a person by name when they have not appeared in that thread. That is cowardly.

Second you are misrepresenting what I said and the issue I raised which had nothing to do with a point of view and everything to do with how it was presented-- the mocking of other people's words and the repeated labeling of apathy on people who care very much and would naturally be offended by that. I can't go much further because there are numerous parties to that conversation who are not a party to this thread and I don't want to reignite that discussion.However the thread is there-- go back to the first one where this happened (I think it was get out the vote May 2nd ii.)

But I am more than a little ticked that I am only learning now that I am being discussed elsewhere by name. That is also against the rules here as I understand them. It certainly is unreasonable.

I said many times that I can and will discuss civilly ideas but not when they start and continue on a foundation of attack and insult. That this came from someone new -- was a factor because they were within their first couple days here. I have never made an issue of going after people in an order of seniority but waiting a week before you attack people, twist their words and claim they are apathetic I think is fair advice for any forum. And that is how that particular argument began. From there it escalated on both sides-- you are being extremely selective with your words about me.

No Catchfire ban me if you want. Because in the same situation, I will do it again. Every time.

I stated that a particular action was cowardly. I focused on the action rather than the person and I had every right to.

That action is against babble policy and in a thread being posted to by the mods who should have seen it and dealt with it.

I did not come here to extend the debate -- I responded because of an accusation against me.

There is no excuse to criticise a person for defending themselves from an attack in a thread that they had not participated in.

You don't get to blame me for addressing it when a Mod should have earlier and did not. You don't get to slam me for defending myself.

You are out of line yourself. You ought to know better.

I think part of the problem was that at one point there was a collective admonishment to be more judicious with the 'flagging'. This was after things had already started to get pretty nasty. That, coupled with a noticeable drop in mod presence for a few days seemed to send a message that nothing that was going on was deemed to be over the line, and that babblers were being left to work things out on our own. I know moderating this board is time consuming, and thought perhaps you were experimenting with a more laissez-faire approach.

Anyways, glad you're back and were able to enjoy the anniversary festivities. I was actually half-worried about you.

Elections are no time to discuss serious issues on babble.

But seriously, I do think NS raises some important issues (and so does KenS with the intellectual gang mentality), and these are why I don't really post here that often anymore (but still do some lurking).  Especially during elections.