I have removed [email protected] from the Marxism list as well
as other subscribers, beginning with Max Power, for a specific type of
trolling. All were determined to interject Intellectual Dark Web themes
into Marxmail in order to sidetrack us from more relevant topics.
Since some (or many) of you are not familiar with the Intellectual Dark
Web, Wikipedia is a good place to start:
“The intellectual dark web (IDW) is a loosely defined informal group of
commentators who oppose what they believe to be the dominance of
identity politics, political correctness, partisan politics, and cancel
culture in higher education and the news media.”
The flagship of the IDW is Quillette, a magazine that featured articles
by the Canadian Jordan Peterson who embarrassed himself in a debate over
Marxism with Slavoj Zizek, which is pretty hard to do.
Today, [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
posted a link to a British version of Quillette, something called
Unherd. James Bloodworth, who is a regular contributor to Unherd, tried
to distinguish the magazine from Quillette
(https://unherd.com/2020/07/the-emptiness-of-the-intellectual-dark-web/
<https://unherd.com/2020/07/the-emptiness-of-the-intellectual-dark-web/>)
but I don’t see much difference. Bloodworth, who hates Cuba and
Venezuela, wrote an article praising Roger Scruton's book /Fools, Frauds
and Firebrands/ as “an impressively lucid take down of some of the most
fashionable left-wing thinkers of the past 50 years”. Scruton is a
rightwing philosopher who took money from tobacco companies in exchange
for writing Spiked Online type material defending the right to smoke in
public places, as I pointed out long ago
(http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/fascism_and_war/EricPosner.htm
<http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/fascism_and_war/EricPosner.htm>).
The Bellows (https://www.thebellows.org/ <https://www.thebellows.org/>)
is a self-styled Marxist IDW outlet that these trolls have also cited.
Right now, Bellows is featuring an article titled “We Need a Nuclear New
Deal, Not a Green New Deal”. So, you get the idea. These are contrarians
trying to get us tangled up in exchanges around outlier positions that
drain bandwidth and energy better devoted to more important questions
such as how to build a revolutionary movement.
All of these trolls (or maybe one, with multiple sock puppets) have the
same footprint. They don’t use a recognizable email account like
Verizon.net or gmail.com. Instead, they use a domain such as
photographer.net that are generally used by businesses to distinguish
themselves from ordinary accounts. If you own a bakery called “Bessie’s
Donut Shop”, you might create a domain called bessiesdonuts.com to email
your customers. However, domains are being used by these trolls to cloak
their identity, not sell donuts.
Additionally, in each and every instance they are using a proxy server
as an additional cloak. In countries where there is the threat of jail,
torture or death for criticizing a government, a proxy server is a
necessary tool. But on a Marxism list, it serves instead to hide a
troll’s identity.
Ironically, I would be happy to engage with these shadowy figures if
they dropped the disguises and simply articulated their own ideas.
Apparently, they lack the intellectual depth to do so and use the crutch
of a forwarded link. Pathetic.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group.
View/Reply Online (#2089): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/2089
Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/77217703/21656
-=-=-
POSTING RULES & NOTES
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
-=-=-
Group Owner: [email protected]
Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy
[[email protected]]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
