From the Archives: Candace Owens meets Gamergate — and things get weird

Gijoel,

So Milo and Alex Jones have been busy.

Yes, Jones’ latest schtick us AI Robots, whom he says are the Deep State leakers in the WH. Because of course he does.

Weird Eddie,

Schossberg’s racism goes deeper than that…

https://twitter.com/Ike_Saul/status/867825736857636865?s=19

@ wwth;

The igno-right conspiracy fantasies have always been a cross between a grade-school campout ghost story and a Marvel comic. Jones is still spouting his BS because he’s protected from the bad guys by the hoary hosts of Hoggoth. Or because he’s too popular and too well-known… or because a group that’s channeling the wealth and power of the Knights Templar, and can make people’s airplanes fall from the sky, and tracks you down with mind-planted obsessions to go buy a copy of “Catcher in the Rye”, and kidnaps you from invisible helicopters in the middle of the day, in the middle of the city…. just can’t get TO good-ol’ Alex!!!

We never went to the moon, 9/11 was an inside job, Sandy Hook was a fake, climate change is a hoax, the gummint, the deep stayt… and on, and on, all based on “proof” no more in-depth than “how else do you explain the shadow in this photo??”, or “a friend of a friend saw a CraigsList ad!!”

The Earth is flat, now, Antarctica is an ice wall surrounding the disc… and you can’t prove otherwise, because all the evidence contradicting it is FAKED!!!

You can take all the ignollectuals’ arguments, mix ’em in a bowl, pour ’em out and assign each of ’em to a random conspiracy and they’d all fit just fine. You could throw in Reptilian Aliens at random and no one would even NOTICE.

It all sounds like a five-year-old lying to their parent about how the window in the front room got broken.

Wait, so Alex Jones himself is a false flag?

Moggie, it’s false flags all the way down.

I’ve seen things online that indicate a great distrust of Alex Jones (and others) as being a stalking horse for unseen manipulators of True Believers, or otherwise a tool of Them. It’s as if hot-eyed suspicion was a jug of bad whiskey they just can’t keep nipping at until they’re shooting at shadows.

Regarding identity politics, has anyone else noticed that the people who are most exercised about it are also emphatic about the plight of white, working class Christian men who live in small towns?

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/05/federal-judge-accused-ice-of-making-up-evidence-to-prove-that-dreamer-was-gang-affiliated.html

But the courts, it seems, are starting to catch wise: Trump’s immigration forces, much like Trump himself, simply cannot be trusted

Say it ain’t so!!!

@wwth

Because white, cishet, Christian and male aren’t identities. They’re the default setting. Everyone else is a deviation from the norm, therefore they have identities and white cishet Christian men don’t. So advocating for white cishet Christian men is not identity politics.,

Exactly. I see this a lot in fandom when fanboys get upset at someone trying to make a franchise “political” when it always has been, it’s just that the new direction doesn’t agree with their politics.

Take Star Wars, for example. I have seen people seriously argue that a franchise about a civil war between a totalitarian empire and a rebellion seeking to restore democracy was “never political” until Disney decided to focus on characters other than white men.

I’ve even seen people claim that Star Trek, STAR TREK, “used to be apolitical” before being “taken over by SJWs.”

It becomes pretty clear that when these guys say “apolitical,” they mean “supports the idea that white cishet Christian men are the center of the universe” and “political” means “anything that challenges that idea.”

@Robert

I’ve seen things online that indicate a great distrust of Alex Jones (and others) as being a stalking horse for unseen manipulators of True Believers, or otherwise a tool of Them. It’s as if hot-eyed suspicion was a jug of bad whiskey they just can’t keep nipping at until they’re shooting at shadows.

In that, the conspiracy dolts are not being over suspicious. Pick any despotism in history and you’ll find a certain amount of overt and covert dissent is not only tolerated but promoted, as both a safety valve and bait for the actual dangerous ones.

Of course, the shill doesn’t usually know they’re a shill – that defeats the whole purpose of the exercise.

Omg, this is *wonderful*.

https://twitter.com/ALT_uscis/status/996953778371858432?s=19

@Katamount
I’m going to try to respond to your points about dealing with the lies pre-packaged for easy consumption. There are ways of framing this that might help to think about it, and I have some techniques that I’ll try to articulate (alot of what I do is implicit and reactive, instinctual responses that I struggle to objectivity describe). I’ve been pretty burned out lately but I’ll do what I can. I am restating some of what you said because I thought it might be useful coming from someone with a naturally socially aggressive/dominant personality. I hope this is useful.

Note that there are two conditions here, the person is knowingly or unknowingly spreading lies. This is an important distinction worth thinking about for effectiveness because eventually best methods need to take both into account in a process of responding to lies (my parents spread lies without meaning to).

1) The person lying is vulnerable because they are taking an action that can be confronted or otherwise responded to. That risk always remains for them. (If you get multiple people responding after the confrontation only responding to the one person can be made effective. Role-modeling one good response chain is valuable. Alternatively one can practice multiple confrontations but secondary respondents have strategic differences.)

2) Responding risks “don’t feed the trolls”, a reaction I’m trying to accommodate as what I do can look like taking awful things seriously. (General request: I’ll take tips here as I want to respect the experience of the person tired of seeing such). This is where how I do what I do can be modified (rhetorical approach vs. content). What I do ultimately involves showing how awful a person’s beliefs, ways of thinking, and actions are as much as it involves putting the burden of proof on them for the explicit or implicit lies they are spreading. It’s the inquisitor instinct. Because they are lies you know that going through the motions of taking them seriously will have a certain end-game. They can’t or won’t back their shit up and they will twist and turn in lots of ways to avoid so redirecting to their original assertions will have to be done. We are all the referees, the media just supposedly explicitly has that job.

3) The person asserting something has an obligation to demonstrate it if they wish to be taken seriously. It’s not about obeying orders to demonstrate as many will pretend. It’s about how they will look when they can’t back their shit up with respect to something they supposedly feel strongly about. It’s an implicit social dominance rule. Even a joke can be interrogated as if the interrogation was done for fun just to see the effect of why it’s funny to the person.

4) Since we are dealing with social dominance rules an effective strategy is demonstrating the flaws and drawbacks associated with the other person’s behavior. An inability to demonstrate what one fears is a bad flaw in someone supposedly concerned. An inability to explain reason and logic is a flaw. An inability to look up facts behind one’s beliefs is a flaw. An inability to engage in a social conflict without appealing to other people and groups is a flaw (the need to invoke scary feminists when discussing something women or female related for example, or Democrats when confronting something Republican related). Rhetorically going on about how awful it is to have such flaws can terrify a person otherwise willing to assert things in a social conflict context (my parents have not been very political lately, I wasn’t explicit about the flaws though. I implied multiple times. There are many approaches!)

5) Reciprocity is the heart of the metaphorical social contract. This works in both positive and negative feeling ways. If they want you to demonstrate something they have to be willing to show they can if they wish to be seen as worth an exchange (redirect back to their lies here). If they are willing to be insulting and disparaging they have to put up with the same (there will be tangents into if something is “really negative feeling” which is the heart of the objections to “outrage warriors”, this is a useful tangent as the need to control what is felt as negative is a major part of a social conflict. It’s not a waste of time so expect it and prepare for it). If they want to assert that feelings and subjective content is a problem they will have to be willing to provide the objective content attached to their own feelings. If they want to pretend that public criticism is a threat to free speech they will stop what is necessarily their own public criticism. You can metaphorically strangle them in the social contract.

6) Keep abstract versus concrete in mind. If they are being abstract demand that they be able to tie the abstraction to concrete examples relevant to their claims if they wish to actually be useful in solving the problem or even demonstrating a problem exists (Richard Dawkins famously kept posing insulting philosophical questions divorced from what people were actually complaining about when challenged for doing so, this was doubling down on an original attempt to deligitimize the complaints of people about harassment and abuse). If they are hyper-focusing on concrete examples that stereotype demand they demonstrate the abstract implication has a basis in fact worth worrying about in the current situation (false rape claims) if they want to look like they are worth listening to (the examples of false claims imply the current one should not be even discussed. Here I also point out that they seem to fear the public learning to tell the difference between claims when useful).

7) Jordan Peterson is a good example of the difficulty level. He makes what look like unarguable statements of fact (there are biological differences between the sexes) but does not directly connect them to specific, concrete, human examples in a rational and logical way. He lets implication do the work. He also tries to assert that normal, natural human behavior is illigitimate when used by political opponents (claims that the movie Frozen is an illigitimate use/modification of our mythology for political purposes when such behavior is all over the political spectrum). In the end if he has the courage to say this shit in public he will have the courage to back his shit up in public if he does not wish to look like an incompetent when it comes to demonstrating a threat. That looks bad to other socially aggressive types.

Tangentally I’ve recently come up with something else related to the social contract* related to people paranoia about discussing accusations of sexual harassment and abuse or other systemic problems. As long as these problems exist the social contract is broken with respect to those issues so their fears have no power and the people trying to have the discussion have no social obligations at all. Victims don’t have to care about things like false claims for example. The social contract is broken and the paranoid person should confronting the broken social structures and related persons because that is the only place where feelings of obligation can be invoked.

*Looks like I have the instinct to take, manipulate, and use against, the language used by a group I percieve as a social threat (I’ve noted how others have done this against us). The “social contract” is a concept I’ve seen used in libertarian politics. It’s useful to be able to see where we are like our percieved enemies so we can be responsible about general human behavior.

I’m posting the link to the article I’m discussing here… (content warning for nothing of ANY possible value) The article is a discussion of a piece Lara Witt wrote for WearYourVoice online magazine (and which I read on EverydayFeminism)

https://www.thelibertyconservative.com/lara-witt-would-be-a-terrible-first-date/

This quote from the article, I think, sums up the cis-het-white-male priveliged position from which they analyze life….

… intersectionality is a phony concept that exists for one reason: it gives liberals something to bitch about. Period. It’s the idea that if you possess one or more features of an oppressed or otherwise disadvantaged group, you’re at greater risk of discrimination. It’s a crass perpetuation of the victimhood mentality that holds hostage imbeciles like Lara….

The writer first identifies “intersectionality” as the subject matter being discussed, then defines “intersectionality” as a “phoney concept. Moving on, the writer then explains “intersectionality” using a surprisingly adept definition, given that they have just dismissed it as non-existent.

the idea that if you possess one or more features of an oppressed or otherwise disadvantaged group, you’re at greater risk of discrimination

Rather than explain why this idea is not real, the writer instead confers an ad hominem attack on Witt.

Because of course.

Because cis-het-white-xian-male IS the default, anyone arguing from that position does not have to defend that position. All they need to do is point out that the idea they’re objecting to differs from default.

Additionally, since the cis-het-white-xian-male identity is intimately integrated with bullying, an ad hominem attack is considered adequate for closing the discussion.

tl:dr…
For ignollectuals, “You’re stupid” is a complete refutation….

So many atheists forget that at the very least religion is a perfectly natural feature of human behavior. Reguardless of ultimate issues or how beliefs match up with reality, there will be a correlate to religious behavior among atheists if we are correct about our disbelief or not.