by Nosemonkey
At the dispatch box Michael Howard rises and says to Tony Blair, “Would the Rt. Hon. gentleman agree that the latest MRSA figures are a disaster and a shocking indictment of his government’s failed NHS strategy?”. Blair gets up to respond, but instead turns round to his backbenchers and says “Did you hear that? He said he’s got poopy pants! ha ha ha! Poopy-pants Howard!” The Labour backbenches roar with laughter, applaud, cheer, and then shout down Howard every time he tries to say anything with chants of “poopy-pants” until he gets so fed up he leaves the chamber in disgust.
Welcome to the blogosphere.
When we started setting up The Sharpener, one of the prime concerns was to try and foster civilised discussion among people with often vastly different political opinions. Rather than childish name-calling and hissy-fits we hoped for rationality, and rather than straw-man distortions of others’ points of view, we aimed to have genuine debate. Time will tell if it continues to work, but thus far it seems to be going OK - even with the addition of our resident belligerent, the silver-tongued John B…
Elsewhere in the UK blogosphere, however, things are not so calm and civilised. At my own place, thanks to the pro-EU tone, I often find myself attracting ranting nationalist extremists (and still have BNP supporters posting comments to a post I made back in January, accusing me of being everthing under the sun simply for not liking fascists). That is natural - every website which allows feedback will attract a troll or two every now and again, and they can usually be dismissed with a quick put-down or, like wasps, merely calmly ignoring them. It’s usually only when you try to swat them that they start stinging by, for example, trying to track down your real-world identity/address and making an abstract political discussion into something personal.
What I don’t get, however, are those places which deliberately pander to the delusions and predilictions of a specific, usually slightly deranged, group and where any dissenting voices - which are specifically courted for this purpose - are immediately drowned in invective or ridicule, no matter how reasonable the objections may be. Places where the merest suggestion that the general political assumptions, or even specific opinions, of the blog may be misplaced are instantly shouted down, no matter how politely they are phrased.
This place and this place are prime examples from the UK blog world, but it seems to be endemic on the interweb and the American blogland in particular. It’s also mind-numbingly tedious, and it would be lovely if we could, in the still nascent UK blogosphere, avoid such a development.
I mean, who wants to be a clone, and where is the appeal in attending the same lecture about the same subject over and over again, which is all - with a few minor variations - these places really seem to do? How many times do you really need to hear how the EU is destroying our national identity, or how the BBC news must be biased against the Iraq war because it keeps showing footage of violence on the news?
And now, a side-track with an overly-long case-study
It has already been noted by Robin and Tim (amongst others) that a certain leading UK blogger seemed to have lost it a tad by advocating the private funding of squads of mercenaries to roam Iraq dishing out lethal vigilante justice on those suspected of involvement in the insurgency.
Not ever really bothering to read Harry’s Place (thanks to finding the main topic of discussion there, Iraq, rather tedious, as I tried to explain as politely as I could in this comments thread) I have no idea if this is a new development, but having flicked through I now realise that I simply do not understand the way some people’s brains work. I mean, where in the name of all that is not ape-shit mental did this come from (in the comments):
“The current league table of expendability (as published by the middle-class British left) goes something like this:1) Americans of all kinds
2) Jews of all kinds
3) (Working-class) Brits
4) Iraqis who do not behave how people from Hampstead expect them to.”
Now, being from Hampstead (if not originally), I can state for the record that I have no expectations at all of typical Iraqi behaviour, as the only time I see the buggers is when we’re in the process of invading or occupying their country, which is hardly representative. But never mind…
I can get the assumption that “the middle-class British left” hates America (as I stated not long ago - although dear Ronnie in the comments box, as if trying to underline the point that Americans do themselves no favours by being all defensive, rather seemed to miss what I thought was a generally concilatory tone), although I think it is generally a case of mistaking rhetoric for actual belief.
Points 2 and 3 I will admit aren’t especially new to me, but I still can’t get them (especially 3, in fact, as I’ve never seen any evidence for this at all). A friend of mine, active in the Labour party but on the old Labour side (who also lives relatively close to Hampstead and teaches a Humanities subject at an old university, thus probably making him the epitome of this nebulous group which has become such a focus of hatred for the “pro-war left”), was accused of being anti-Semitic by a couple of self-righteous morons in a pub one time, largely for suggesting that the then-recent killing of a Palestinian child by Israeli soldiers was a little bit off. Another friend of ours was with him. An Israeli friend. Who proceeded to give the two twats a rather obscene piece of her mind in excessively rude-sounding Yiddish. The self-same old Labour friend recently quit the University teachers’ union (or whatever it’s called) in protest at the called-for boycott of Israeli lecturers.
Once again, as is endemic in the American blogosphere, there seems to be difficulty in differentiating between not supporting a specific government’s policies (Bush’s, Blair’s, Sharon’s, Saddam’s, Mugabe’s) and not supporting the people or the country. From a single tiny criticism, the most extreme extrapolation is automatically made and then repeated ad nauseam until the person who made the initial statement gets so exhasperated they bugger off.
Thusly, that comments box included me rhetorically accusing troops in Iraq of the “shooting [of] some random Iraqi” (note - no suggestion of “innocent Iraqi”, and in context I thought it would be obvious that I was referring to the difficulty in television coverage of distinguishing between insurgents/terrorists and the average man in the street).
But no - in the space of less than ten minutes this became re-interpreted as (and I quote) “Coalition troops have a policy of murdering civilians at every opportunity”. This distortion appeared by the comment-writer (not, I will stress, Harry himself, who seemed fairly civilised throughout) to be taken as some kind of victory.
(Overly-long case-study ends)
Where is the triumph in listening to what someone says and then attributing different words to them to suit your argument? Where is the intellectual honesty in fitting the facts around your preconceived notions (be this that the EU is evil/good, the Iraq war was legal/illegal or the BBC is biased/fair), and in shouting down, refusing to accept or ignoring anything (the Lancet report, the Downing Street Memo, the appointment of a former Chairman of the Young Conservatives to the post of BBC Political Editor) which contradicts your unswerving faith in your opinions?
As Rafael Behr noted on The Observer blog the other day,
“British culture… is traditionally hostile to zealotry, wary of dogma and inclined to prick earnest polemic with humour. Which means that the conversation between and on British blogs could evolve in different direction. One that is, for want of a better word, more polite.”
This was one of the aims of The Sharpener, so if you ever see it descend to mindless name-calling and deliberate misrepresentation of other people’s opinions, let us know. And if you see me doing it, slap me.
Without open debate and intellectual honesty, without the acceptance that our own opinions and preconceptions may be flawed, we can never hope to come up with genuine, rational analysis. And if you don’t want to be rational then you don’t care about finding practical solutions - and so politics really isn’t your thing.
It’s hard not to respond in kind when you get some nutter spouting a load of incoherent, unsubstantiated and personally offensive rubbish in response to a post or comment.
Self-control is a useful attribute for any blogger.
I only ever posted one comment on HP. In a post on Iraq, I linked to Iraq Body Count. The very next comment accused me of anti-Americanism.
Enough said.
The site’s popularity and appeal has always puzzled me. But then, as a blogger, I “rarely get more then ten comments a post” and would say that, wouldn’t I?
Um, I just got to the second comment on that thread. That is “fairly civilised”? (Or is it just someone pretending to be Harry?) So what does the rest look like?
Before I entered my short-lived “I will not blog about politics in any way, shape or form” phase, I would occasionally visit American political sites with extensive comment discussion, to try to prevent my, admittedly poor, debating skills from atrophying any further. When I visited conservative chat blogs and played the moderate, I was referred to as the “Godless-pinko-commie-Jew-hating-EUnuch-faggot”. If I took exactly the same position in left-wing chat blogs I was a “Fanatical Christian/Zionist Imperialist/capitalist militaristic crypto-fascist”.
I’m not entirely sure if Rafael Behr’s comment about this sort of behaviour being anathema to British culture holds true for the blogosphere (heavens, how I dislike that word), even when one discounts the number of “impolite” Americans that can and do visit anyway. Hopefully, the broad spectrum of opinions expressed by the contributors to the Sharpener will prevent it becoming a sounding board for one homogenous political viewpoint amongst commenters too.
that comments box included me rhetorically accusing troops in Iraq of the “shooting [of] some random Iraqi†[...] in the space of less than ten minutes this became re-interpreted as (and I quote) “Coalition troops have a policy of murdering civilians at every opportunityâ€.
I noticed that - nasty little rhetorical mantrap. “Are you saying that WE are EVIL? Because that’s what it sounded like.” Posters like that just want you to cave in and acknowlege that, in fact, THEY are EVIL and WE are GOOD - in which case they don’t need to listen to you, as you’re not saying anything they don’t already know. Either that or come out and assert that, actually, THEY are GOOD and WE are EVIL - in which case they don’t need to listen to you, as you’re obviously EVIL yourself. Exactly what they get out of these exchanges I’m not sure - it certainly isn’t anything very intellectual.
Anyway, you did well to clarify what you’d said without getting sucked in. There’s a horrible pleasure in correcting a coat-trailing idiot, even when you know that they’re going to take whatever you write and use it for their own idiotic coat-trailing purposes. The ideal would probably be just to say “you know as well as I do that I didn’t say that” and leave it at that. Calm, calm, calm…
Are we being a little precious, dears?
Sticks and stones?
No, dearie - merely wondering why people who profess to be interested in politics can act so uninterested in considering more than a small spectrum of political ideas.
As I’ve changed my opinion on various issues in the light of counter-evidence or rethinking (hence my shift from Eurosceptic to pro-EU, from being a Tory to being a wishy-washy nonpartisan centrist), and am always open to reconsider my opinions on pretty much anything when presented with a coherently-argued alternative, I can’t quite understand political closed-mindedness or blind party loyalty.
I couldn’t care less about the insults - its the refusal to even for a moment consider that one might have made an error or that the other side may have a point that gets me. If you can’t coherently argue in favour of your beliefs without resorting to playground tactics, it makes your beliefs seem rather unthinking and sullies them in the process - that’s all.
fair enough. I have an American acquaintance who is a Democrat. I got her onto the subject of the Oklahoma City bombing once. She told me the bombers were fundamentalist christians. I said that I’d never heard that; what was her evidence? “Well, they must have been!” Perhaps that thinking on tram lines is just what you mean?
Just to leap to Harry’s defence for a second. Clearly his post recommending vigilante justice was utter insanity. I posted this comment in reply:
I thought you were a democrat, Harry? What chance has a fledgling democracy got if rich foreigners are hiring private armies to roam Iraq to right their (just) grievances? I can completely understand the guy himself wanting to do something like that, but for you to cheer him on, even recommend it as a strategy, is insane. Leftism (at least, in its non-Marxist form) surely requires some sort of commitment to liberal justice. I don’t think tit-for-tat killing by non-state actors qualifies.
To which he replied quite civilly and with an (at least partial) retraction of his original post.
I think the real problem is identified by Phil above: idiotic coat-tailers. The two blogs linked above (that I can’t bring myself to name, and anyway I’m banned from one) suffer badly from moronic commenters incapable of any sort of debate. But I think Harry is wrong to close comments or enforce registration. Is he to police everything? Not possible. Just look at this, further down the same HP thread:
regarding iraqis killed by the us and uk,islamics repeatedly say that they love death like we love life. so whats wrong with making them happy?
There’s also a guy defending the KKK and again with a bizarre theory about the origins of death squads in Latin America being citizen justice movements (I’m paraphrasing).
None were deleted, unlike several others on HP that evening. Which is the problem with deleting comments: you’re assuming responsibility for the ones you’ve left. Better to just alow free speech, no? And let the mentalists embarass themselves. After a while, properly ignored, they will get bored and go somewhere else.
Hmmm. I think the particular examples that we’re dancing around (blogs with loonies) are basically the early adopters who got onto everyone’s blogroll when new entrants started up. I have a couple of large group blogs on my own blogroll that I rarely read any more because there is an orthodoxy and a party line that is just tiring to get past. Also, those blogs tend to have three tiers of users:
i) contributors,
ii) long-time commenters, who are fully bought into the opinions of i),
iii) everyone else.
and ii) are, if anything, more dogmatic than i). Even the most measured and sensible post can be ruined by off-topic commenting about the commenter’s own favourite cause.
The best thing they could do to recover is to probably ban tier ii) from commenting, although that might wipe out a good half of the readership. This might end up being Andrew’s second law of blogging though:
2) All group blogs increase exponentially towards unreadability as time passes.
Will we buck the trend?
Neil: When I visited conservative chat blogs and played the moderate, I was referred to as the “Godless-pinko-commie-Jew-hating-EUnuch-faggotâ€. If I took exactly the same position in left-wing chat blogs I was a “Fanatical Christian/Zionist Imperialist/capitalist militaristic crypto-fascistâ€.
I’ve had similiar experiences (once, on Usenet, the same post of mine was denounced as both communist and libertarian, by differnet people).
Phil: Posters like that just want you to cave in and acknowlege that, in fact, THEY are EVIL and WE are GOOD
Yep. A large part of what passes for political debate on the net amounts to sticking labels on people and policy positions. I find that sterile and boring.
Nosemonkey: its the refusal to even for a moment consider that one might have made an error or that the other side may have a point that gets me
Ah, but if they admit, even to themsleves, that they were wrong, that’s tantamount to admitting they were stupid, something which many people have hangups about.
The problems you highlight, Andrew, are pure groupthink: this thread is also typical. It includes the following, none of which were challenged by anyone except our own Jim:
the previous 50 years during which trillions upon trillions of dollars have been poured down Africa’s giant maw.
Right now, it seems that the richest countries - does that mean the G8 - who knows? - because there are other rich countries … are sending $82bn each per year to Africa. So if there are 10 rich countries, that’s $820bn a year…Also, military spending doesn’t seem to count as aid. So that is hundreds of billions extra.
Tony Blair … is working on getting greenhouse gases banned WORLDWIDE at G8
Gosh, what is [Singapore - per capita GDP c. $28k] doing wrong not to be eligible for aid from the G8
I don’t know whether we ever made India any loans … but if we did, they have long since all been paid back [external debt of India: >$100 bn.], according to the terms.
All from one contributor who would be a (ii), and every single one hilariously inaccurate and pure idiocy — not one challenged by anyone. And it’s like that arguing at all these sites (my ban resulted from just this type of situation). Maybe the fact we have no party line will help in the long run. Though it probably hinders when it comes to getting numbers. let’s face it, a zoo’s funny.
Well, there are only so many times you can watch monkeys sling faeces at each other and the crowd before it gets tiresome…
Andrew - no. No there aren’t. Monkeys and poo NEVER stop being funny. FACT.
Sadly, however, the monkeys on display in certain parts of the web are more like hideously deformed lemurs, and as such merely disturbing.
[...] sperate need of a clever tagline The tone of blogs Nosemonkey has a brilliant post at The Sharpener. At the dispatch box Michael Howard rises and says to Tony Blair, “Would t [...]
It’s worth noting, when people start banging on about “Hampstead liberals”, “the metropolitan media elite”, etc, that these terms originally came into existence as euphemisms for Jews, when overt anti-semitism was becoming taboo. When you think about it, it’s hardly surprising; the idea that an elite clique controls a particular section of political opinion isn’t a million miles away from conspiracy theories regarding Jewish finance-capital and the like.
Similarly ‘communalism’, last directed at the voters of Stepney and Mile End when it was a predominantly Jewish area which had just elected a Communist, Phil Piratin, to parliament.
I don’t, of course, think people who use this kind of terminology these days are anti-semites (though a few of them are). But it wouldn’t do them any harm to think a little harder about the way they use language.
It’s worth noting, when people start banging on about “Hampstead liberalsâ€, “the metropolitan media eliteâ€, etc, that these terms originally came into existence as euphemisms for Jews
I’m not familiar with this theory. Anything like a cite? (’Rootless cosmopolitans’ or ‘financial elite’ don’t count. Come to think of it, have Aaro and friends used the word ‘elite’?)
Similarly ‘communalism’, last directed at the voters of Stepney and Mile End when it was a predominantly Jewish area which had just elected a Communist, Phil Piratin, to parliament.
Again, this is a new one on me.
Phil Hunt, Nosemonkey: I try to be open to new ideas, I really do, which is probably how I managed to move from being the communist candidate in the school elections (if I remember correctly, the Dear Leader stood as a Conservative and my stand had a lot to do with my fraternal brothers in the lower streams not being forced to study Latin - cry equality comrades) to being largely Libertarian, but trying to be “caring” too (stares earnestly at camera, makes sympathetic facial expression, then presses fingertips together in faux prayer gesture, before running them through hair and talking Labour newspeak).
Generally: One has to ignore the “faeces-slinging monkeys/lemurs”, the people that destroy half-way sensible discourse (but are amusing). Obviously by quoting me Phil Hunt has failed on this point….
Simon: “euphemisms for Jews“, quite frankly I don’t care what religous-racial group someone belongs to, but rather what they believe in (yes, there is an obvious reply to that - maybe I should think a little harder about the way I use language…).
Simon: the same applies to ‘neocon’, too. I guess its a testimony to Jewish culture that they tend to start the best intellectual scenes… And actually, a lot of the talk about ‘faceless bankers’ and all the rest has the same issue. But as you say, it doesn’t imply anything anti-semitic.
As for the rest of it, I hope TS can avoid such a fate. Personally, I rarely read either Samizdata or HP, because I find them plain dull.
We are only human
Over at The Sharpener, Nosemonkey worries about British blogging
turning into a giant hissy-fit. A world of
Hello. New reader of this site. I would love to think that reasonable political discourse would be possible without eventually spiralling into unpleasantness. Part of the problem with blogs, it seems to me, is that the discussion does not happen to face to face. It is, apparently, easy to insult a person you can’t see and don’t know. Mildly depressing. Anyhow, I will watch this with interest.
PS I clicked on the link to Harry’s Place and, reading through the responses, could not make head nor tail of who was on what side of what, and who was right, left, middle or upside down. All I saw was entrenched positions that no one was willing to get out of. Oh dear.
“When we started setting up The Sharpener, one of the prime concerns was to try and foster civilised discussion among people with often vastly different political opinions. Rather than childish name-calling and hissy-fits we hoped for rationality, and rather than straw-man distortions of others’ points of view, we aimed to have genuine debate.”
Well, that explains why I didn’t get asked to join then.
Nosemonkey, I don’t have the link at hand, but I swear I saw you posting just a few weeks ago in the most unprovoked and deranged, foul-mouthed manner merely because some people higher up in the thread were calmly arguing against abortion.
Peter, I think you’re somewhat mistaken.
The only time I’ve ever engaged in discussion about abortion online - that I recall, at least - was over at John B’s place (where insults are almost compulsory) a few weeks back - here. I did use the word “fucking” in my first comment, but it was expressing my anger at the story itself, not at any individual person. I, in turn, got called a fuckwit for having a different opinion than one of the other people commenting. I didn’t rise to the bait.
Doubtless there are examples of me swearing and being personal online. Possibly even on blogs that aren’t my own. The point is that I tend to try and avoid it.