UPDATE: see bottom.
I am here (apparently not alone) as a refugee from DailyKos, having been a member there from November of ’04 til a few weeks ago, when I was banned for posting a diary that proposed a series questioning the official 9/11 conspiracy theory. Of course I knew that unofficial conspiracy theory (uCT) diaries were forbidden at Dkos, but I thought the time had come to employ the analytic capacity of that community to the subject.
Why did I think that time had come? Because of a widely recommended diary by thereisnospoon, that reached the following conclusion:
The lesson to learn is this: every time we think it just couldn’t get worse, it DOES. Every time we think an idea would be too out of bounds for these criminals, it isn’t. Almost every time we pooh-pooh a tin-foil hat idea on the grounds of impracticality, it turns out to be true in one way or another.
It’s time from now on to ASSUME THE WORST. It’s time to respect the tin-foil–because those brainwaves are turning out to be real every single time.
And it’s time to ask the most provocative questions possible (e.g., “well, if no WOMEN were being used for prostitution purposes at the Watergate, what about MEN?”).
Because every time we’ve tried to plumb the depths of the criminality of this administration, we find that we simply haven’t dug deep enough. So keep digging, and keep asking the scary questions–even if the answers seem outlandish, improbable, or even impossible. Because it’s probably true.
Of course it’s no stretch at all to imagine 9/11 in the scary questions category (of course, not as scary as the prospect of MALE prostitutes, but still.). And as spoon’s diary was widely recommended, I thought I’d put its concluding exhortation into practice.
But this isn’t a diary about how I – a trusted user! – was unjustly banned from Dkos (except in so far as that injustice serves to exemplify a general pattern). Nor is it a 9/11 uCT diary. Rather, I mean to draw attention to the fact that, as is likely the case regarding election fraud, the opinion of a large majority of kossacks concerning 9/11 is not only silenced, but stigmatized and effectively rendered invisible.
Those of you who frequent Dkos might have noticed that whenever a poll meant to register popular opinion of the official 9/11 narrative is posted, the results invariably show a large majority disbelieve it. These unscientific results gain some credibility in light of the recent Zogby poll showing that 42% of Americans in general, and 63% of self-identified liberals, mistrust the report produced by the 9/11 Commission. If 63% of liberals in general don’t trust the official story, I think it’s safe to regard the percentage of kossacks as significantly higher. (Based on the polls I’ve seen, I estimate skeptics of the official story to be ~75%.) Yet at Dkos, the opinion of the overwhelming majority is routinely stigmatized as the delusions of a lunatic fringe.
This stigmatization is necessary in order to reconcile the highly managed nature of the community with the pretense of Dkos as exemplar of the leaderless Netroots. Take this comment by Plutonium Page, in response to someone posting to a 9/11 uCT diary:
How’d you hear about dailyKos? Was it in the context of 9/11 “questions”, as in, “that’s a great place to discuss the 9/11 ‘questions’,”?I just wonder how the 9/11 CT folks find dailyKos.
This comment opened a door of understanding for me, in its implication that “9/11 CT folks” were a foreign element within the Dkos community, rather than the great majority of the community itself. Kos’ practice of banning users who transgress the limits he sets maintains this illusion. Those who speak out are banished, and the majority is silenced.
A similar thing happens in our culture generally, regarding so-called liberal values. Most people, for example, want some sort of universal health care system, yet the idea is treated in Washington as too radical to consider. We’re too busy, after all, fighting the war on terror. This disconnect between popular sentiment and official policy is the gate Kos means to crash.
Of course, it’s always easier to be a populist when you’re on the outside. Though ‘we,’ as a nation, seek to create liberal democracies elsewhere, within our own country liberal is a dirty word. A liberal is a person you can’t trust to be faithful to the Party line that it is mandatory to mistake for the Common Good. Liberality is destabilizing to established structures of power. And Dkos, as a power structure, is predictably Janus-faced: liberalizing toward others (crashing their gates) and internally controlling.
As the country as a whole justifies its two-faced nature by means of the threat of external enemies, so too do the dominant voices atDkos. Ok, so you don’t buy official 9/11 CT, fine. Just don’t talk about it here, because those discussions threaten the overall mission of Dkos, which is to win elections for Democrats. This line of reasoning reinforces the illusion that mistrust of the official 9/11 CT is a fringe position [UPDATE: a position, that is, fringe and hence merely divisive; rather than a popular position capable of serving as a rallying point]. As Mark Crispin Miller and others have noted, the same treatement has been given to the issue of election fraud [UPDATE: in other words, both are treated as distractions away from the business of the progressive movement, rather than the profoundly motivating issues that they actually are].
Yet, as with mistrust in the outcome of the last two Presidential elections, mistrust of the official 9/11 CT has grown to a majority position in spite of the stigmatization of such mistrust as a form of insanity.
On that note, I’m going to end this diary. Incomplete, and very far from perfect, but the best I can do at the moment.
————————
A more appeallingly written discussion of censorship on Dkos can be found here. Curmudgette writes:
Without carefully instituted policies in place to protect free speech and provide for the unfettered freedom to state minority viewpoints, human beings just run roughshod over each other.
To this I would add that what we have seen and are seeing at Dkos is not simply the stifling of minority viewpoints. Such a stifling, while not ideal, could still fit within the notion of a leaderless community establishing its own values – which we might consider, for example, along lines laid down by Mills in his essay “On Liberty”. On the issues of election fraud and 9/11 uCT, what we’ve seen at Dkos is transformation by suppression of the majority viewpoint. It is not, in other words, merely the suppression of a minority viewpoint, but the determined rendering of a majority viewpoint as the delusion of an abberant minority. By such efforts, the majority is effectively kept unconscious of itself. Mark Crispin Miller’s analysis of this as regards election fraud is the best writing I’ve seen on this subject by far.
——————
UPDATE: Thanks to everyone for reading, posting and recommending. I’d hesitated posting this diary for a while because I didn’t want to get involved in a flame war over Dkos. It’s very interesting to see the difference in tone between discussions at Dkos and discussions here.
As has been noted, the issue of censorship there has been well covered. Still, after reading Mark Crispin Miller’s excellent and inspiring open letter to Slate, I felt again that an additional point needed to be made, concerning the way in which majority opinion is stigmatized and made invisible. Kansas ably picks up on this theme in the comments below:
This describes the state of our whole country, with the Rovians as perpetrators. From vote fraud, to 9/11 to abortion, and on down the line, the Repubs, with media help, manage to keep. . . “the majority. . .unconscious of itself.” The Dems should be waking up that majority, but too many Dem leaders seem to be still asleep, themselves, or else they have their own vested interests in keeping the majority unconscious of itself and its own potential collective power.
I regard coming to understand this dynamic as an imperative. Thanks to you all for helping me out in this regard by focusing on the point, as kansas put it, “buried” in this diary.
No offense, but there’s been any number of diaries here about control of content at dkos, most notably those relating to election fraud. Okay, we get it. So, post your stuff here, your own blog or anywhere else. But why not use this space to tell us about your 9/11 concerns instead of yet more trashing of dkos? After reading this, I know nothing more about 9/11 than before I read it. Maybe you want to revise it?
I appreciate what you’re saying b2, and I sighed upon seeing this, too, but I read his main thrust as being a lot bigger and more important than DKos or even 9/11. Working my way down to the bottom, I found this and I think it’s really well-phrased and important:
it is not merely. . .the determined rendering of a majority viewpoint as the delusion of an abberant minority. By such efforts, the majority is effectively kept unconscious of itself.
This describes the state of our whole country, with the Rovians as perpetrators. From vote fraud, to 9/11 to abortion, and on down the line, the Repubs, with media help, manage to keep. . . “the majority. . .unconscious of itself.” The Dems should be waking up that majority, but too many Dem leaders seem to be still asleep, themselves, or else they have their own vested interests in keeping the majority unconscious of itself and its own potential collective power.
And then, if “we” do the same thing to ourselves on our own blogs, we play right into the lullaby.
Thanks, Kansas. Maybe I missed something here but I would note that the title is “Fixing the Gates: Censorship and Dkos“.
Yeah, I know. But I do think something important is buried here.
I agree with your take on this, Kansas. I got totally caught up in the parallels drawn in this diary with with the big picture depiction of how the American majority is being very cleverly silenced. I wish censorship comparison used was not so prominantly displayed (Kos name in the title,) only because that is becoming a pretty distracting trigger issue here and I fear it will divert focus from some very important content.
This silencing of the majority, whether on a blog or in the whole country, is so damned weird. A huge and powerful dog is being wagged by its little bitty weak nasty tail. Apparently to the dog this feels normal! And apparently it doesn’t appreciate it when somebody points out to it that its feet are off the ground and it looks pretty damned stupid.
for fixing upon exactly the point i meant to consider.
The dog doesn’t know it’s the dog. It’s been told all its life — by the tail — that it’s the tail, the tail is the dog, and of course being wagged about is the lot of a tail. So, as it waves back and forth, the dog tells itself, “Well, this is all in order, if unpleasant from my standpoint. I must keep in mind that I am, after all, just a little tail. Oh, if only I were a dog!”
That’s my understanding, anyway.
Why am I laughing? 🙂
“If only I were a dog!”
Glad I made you laugh!
There’s got to be a version of “If I only had a brain” in here somewhere…
Just put an expansion of this thought over in the diaries, if anybody’s interested.
Agreed, kansas, agreed.
As someone who has recently engaged in what some might view as “knee-jerk whining and bitching about not attacking daily Kos,” I think there is an important difference between merely going over well-known grievances for the umpteenth time and making a new point. This diary seems to me to make a new point — or maybe more precisely, to identify something that was always sort of “there,” implicit but perhaps not noticed (or not widely so), and put it into very sharp focus.
I learned from this one and imagine others did too. That’s my test.
I totally agree, Kansas.
We should be asking people like Markos and Co, why they are censoring and banning people for just having their own opinions. They didn’t resort to ad-hominems (at least this post didn’t). They just disagreed on a point the KOS are adamant about.
I think that they are perfectly entitled to their opinions but they are claiming to represent the democratic party (and they are huge enough to be able to influence events). If there’s a chance that KOS is squelching dessenting opinion within a party that claims to be egalitarian we have an obligation to call them out on it.
KOS could have a simple blog, but he doesn’t. He has a community site that claims to be speaking for the majority of us.
Personally, I think they really want media credibility. And I’m sure people in the media have already derided them for conspiracy theories on their site.
I haven’t seen much to lead me to believe Markos has actually read and considered any pro-conspiracy arguments on any of a number of topics. So I prefer to believe he is acting from ignorance as opposed to a more selfish motive. But I’ve also seen how readily people sell out for fame (hello, Chris Matthews) and will bend over and lick the dog that bites them. I really don’t want to believe Markos falls in THAT category.
The third option – that Markos is right, is simply not an option, when one has read enough history.
Real History Lisa –
(I just ‘discovered’ you and 4-rated all of your comments on the Orange version of this diary, BTW. Very incisive. I especially enjoyed your spot-on responses to that Pui— person.)
I think if Markos is ignorant it is entirely willful on his part.
There are only two things that motivate human beings – love and fear.
Markos is motivated by fear. Fear that Uncle Karl will make fun of him, or those swiftboat meanies, or anyone else His Napoleonic Highness wants to impress.
Markos appears willing shun any topic and ban any person he thinks threatens his promising future as a Donna Brazille impersonator.
there is no Orange version of this diary.
i think you’re thinking of a diary by Steven D.
Maybe she is referring to her dailykos dairy, in a metaphorical way?
Mr. Moulitsas is spectacularly ignorant of both recent history and the history of American politics in general.
Read my comment, above, about Chomsky’s “propaganda model”–I think it explains a lot of what is going on here.
Good comment.
Personally, I think they really want media credibility. And I’m sure people in the media have already derided them for conspiracy theories on their site.
Like I said, they could have chose to have a straight forward blog, but they didn’t. They got big by catering to the Dem community. I think if they were ‘smart’ they would create a spin off blog to be a companion to their community site. They could be as ‘credible’ as they chose and let the community remain as it had been.
I wonder if they are losing popularity.. or do they have enough momentum with them now that people will read them whatever they do?
I’m not an administrator, so I’m not going to tell you what to do, but since this diary, especially the title calls out dKos for censorship, it probably should be cross posted at dKos. That’s a rule that Booman has. You can write it here, but it needs to cross posted as well. Problem is, you’re banned. So you’de need to find someone to cross post it for you.
Fwiw, I agree with you, and welcome.
Please disregard the size twelve foot hanging out of my mouth :o)
Good thing I have a big mouth though!
OK, I’ll try, super, but the visual alone made me chuckle on an pretty unfunny morning, so was much appreciated!
everybody in this thread that georgia10’s excellent essay on the chicanery of the 2004 election, especially in ohio, was roundly praised by both armando and markos.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/6/19/32418/1190
“RFK Jr. to bring lawsuits against Diebold and other e-voting vendors!”
that got you banned, it’s no wonder:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/5/13/73439/3779
that right there is a textbook example of the kind of diary markos doesn’t like – claims with no backing. the whole SusanG diary on gannon was an example of an inquiring diary done well.
i’m wondering if you are the diarist referred to as being banned along with a sockpuppet?
Hm, who was that who was condemning Simon Malthus for “inquiring” and “claims with no backing”?
Do you have any “backing” for your “claim” that Simon was banned for having a “sockpuppet” on DailyKos, or are you merely “inquiring”? Inquiring minds want to know.
hence, the ? at the end, not to mention qualifiers such as “if” or the uncertanties implied in the use of “wonder.”
as for no backing, the dkos diary’s message was, essentially, “question the government; we need to discuss these seemingly unspeakeable issues.” lots of 9/11 and election fraud mentions. it was all very metaconspiracy theory and simply a magnet for precisely the kinds of discussions that have been explicitly prohibited by kos.
feel free to explore the issues all you wish; he only asks that you compartentalize that to some other forum. he’s the host and it’s a simple request.
http://www2.boomantribune.com/story/2006/6/18/690/59549#84
Request…more like a commandment. Ah, well.
apparently you didn’t read that diary too closely, either. it did not propose to provide any proof, but rather – noting the apparent change in policy concerning CT – to initiate a series in which 9/11 issues could be raised and analyzed one at a time.
as to the sockpuppet thing: having never been banned before, i thought perhaps something was wrong with my browser, so i logged in under an old screename – one that i’d used months prior to creating Simon Malthus. using that old screename i continued the discussions i’d been involved in on that thread – after ‘outing’ myself as Simon Malthus.
Well, as I understand it, Daily Kos and its denizens are very concerned with strict adherence to the rules (except in very prominent, exceptional cases!), and I think there’s a rule against having multiple usernames–maybe even if you “out” yourself. I’m working from memory here, but although you identified yourself, what you did is still technically a violation.
Anybody with a deeper knowledge of the Kool Rules want to korrect me?
really… there’s no point in further discussion on this point. when i created the second username i’d no idea that it was against the rules to switch. in fact, i’d seen reference to the many multiple usernames of some prominent person and thought it was ok.
anyway, i’m already banned – and again, this diary wasn’t about my banning.
i basically responded to you in the comment above without even knowing it:
http://www2.boomantribune.com/story/2006/6/18/690/59549#105
yeah, i saw that.
Tell me about the banning. I read your diary, you got tips on many of your comments. I didn’t see you get any troll ratings. So what happened? One day you just couldn’t log in? Did they send you an email saying you were not welcome anymore?
For the record it is clear that Markos (an ex-military man) does make dkos a forum for electing progressive democrats. If he doesn’t want to entertain the election or 9-11 stories, so be it. 9-11 diaries and comments definitely face some hostility, but I have commented repeatedly that I think they knew, I have never been troll rated or banned.
So what happened?
thanks to everyone for posting on this diary. i’ll respond to other comments when i have a moment later today. as to my banning, it happened within the hour of posting the diary i linked to. it had nothing to do with troll ratings.
thanks for asking.
as to the title: not one i’m particularly happy with. glad to see that people seem to be getting what i take to be the important point, even if it is somewhat buried.
But I wonder, what happened when you were banned. Does anyone tell you, or does your user name just not work anymore?
ah. no one told me. i just lost the ability to post anything, or rate anything, or make any changes to my profile. i could still login, and as a trusted user i could still read hidden comments, but i couldn’t actually do anything.
I have been curious about that as well. Thanks for explaining.
try it out for yourself.
😉
When it does, I’ll let you know 😀
I wonder “who” did the banning, can only Markos ban?
i’m pretty sure that only kos can ban.
dkos wants to be a forum for electing progressive democrats, yet dkos condemns those groups who rally around one issue, such as the pro-choice people. These approaches are not complementary, to say the least, and reduces dkos’s effectiveness immensely. The place has the feel of a cult like popularity contest with the great leader, and is a turn-off to most true progressives.
there. fixed that for ya.
seriously, though, it seems to me that kos has tried to make it clear that the goal is to elect democrats regardless of whether they are progressive–the whole big tentism nonsense.
big tentism so much as an issue of pragmatics – we can hammer out the ideological details once we’re in a position to do actually something about them. a democratic majority in congress is of critical importance. look at the status quo:
but gaining a democratic majority is absolutely essential for putting the brakes on the insanity. there is no other mechanism available to put the check on shrubCo.
i also think a lot of people are missing a point made by dean at yk: the democratic party is the vehicle…
and he’s 1000% correct – it’s the best tool we have to mount a meaningful opposition to the GOPportunists squatting in our nation’s capitol. what other political entity has the infrastructure and the clout?
i’m also curious – have any of the netroots candidates not been progressive?
my post may have been a bit snarky, but the content was that: “it seems to me that kos has tried to make it clear that the goal is to elect democrats regardless of whether they are progressive” … the big tent/pragmagic debate has been done a bunch around here recently and i don’t really want to get into again.
VERY well put:
Thank you for this excellent description of the problem, not only with dKos, but the entire civic conversation in this country.
As for the knee-jerk bitching and whining about not attacking dkos here … jesus, get over it. That site is PART of the MSM now, and worse, is promoting itself as speaking for “progressives”, though it welcomes only certain kinds of progressives, and discussion of only CERTAIN issues. To forbid these discussions here removes one more “public square” where people can match their observations. It’s all well and good to post on one’s own blog, but community sites promote broader discussion, and increasingly those community sites are coming under pressure to squelch vital conversations.
If someone is banned, and if it is over a case like this, they should have SOMEWHERE where they can work out what happened, otherwise BMT becomes just one more place where:
Excellent diary. Highly recommended.
as a reminder, the rule about cross-posting is about restricting attacks of a personal nature, such as “Armando is a lying sack of shit” and not about restricting conversation about Daily Kos as a site, or its rules, or the positions of the issues taken by the front-pagers.
that’s cool.
I was just reacting to the several comments that just brought up that rule, without really dealing with the substance of his diary.
Didn’t you kick off donkeytale the other day for the “catch22 rule” because he made a diary about dKos.
I don’t recall his diary calling out anyone in particular over there?
I think you also said it was because he was rude to supersoling, who helped get him reinstated, but if that was the only reason, don’t you think you should have consulted with supersoling? I read the exchange and did not find it that offensive. Maybe you did consult with him, I don’t know. I just thought it was a pretty suspect banning.
Just asking.
supersoling said it was my decision. And it was not for the Catch-22, but for his comments within the thread.
Thanks for responding.
I do think you do a pretty good job with this balancing act all things considered. I’m impressed at the range of discussion that happens here. It’s very refreshing.
I just want it to be clear that I wasn’t consulted about banning DT. I have no more input on those decisions than you, or anyone else does. Booman made a comment in the thread that DT was here at my pleasure. Well, that made me uncomfortable, to say the least. So I told him it was his call, because I want no part in banning anyone. Not my decision.
The fact that I asked for DT to be reinstated last time gives me no authority in deciding whether he stayed on or not. Any consultation about DT began and ended with my request that Booman consider reinstating him back then.
this is true.
I didn’t ask super before I acted. I merely let him know that he was only here out of my respect for super and because he had spoke up for him.
What he said.
AG
as speaking for progressives? markos has stated quite emphatically that it is a democratic blog – first and foremost, it is about electing democrats. kos and most of the community prefer democrats of a progressive nature, but he has not once declared dkos the voice of progressives or whatever.
and just because i’m already in here, imo, it is rude to Booman and the pond community to keep dragging dkos drama through the pages here. my god.
simon – are you sure you didn’t get auto-banned? if you get troll rated enough, the system just kinda takes over.
oh please.
When that place started it was a “liberal” or “progressive” community. It wasn’t until the 2004 campaign heated up that that kos admitted that he was a party hack/ward boss/”consultant”, yet still when he talks to the media he emphasizes that it is a “progressive” blog.
It’s not, and he isn’t.
As for the auto-banning question, I think someone already addressed that elsewhere in the thread, pointing out that he didn’t have a history of getting troll ratings.
Synchophantic protestions about how poor kos is being attacked are sadly predictable, but the damage being done by such a high-profile new media outfit insisting on restricting vital public debate needs to be confronted.
get a grip, dude. and please show me where i stated or implied that kos was being attacked?
anyhoo, one needn’t have a history of troll ratings if one gets piled on at some point. enough of them in short enough order will do the trick.
anyhoo, one needn’t have a history of troll ratings if one gets piled on at some point. enough of them in short enough order will do the trick.
While this is factually true had you read closely you would have noticed that Simon said that he retained his TU status post banning. Perhaps you need to get a grip or at least start opening your mind to the possibility that there are some problems in DK paradise.
it’s true; i didn’t read malthus’ posting too closely. so it makes my point moot. it also makes madman’s point, to which i was responding moot. yet, somehow, i don’t see you making a stink of his ignorance on this matter.
are you always this charming?
you’re one of many who whines people should shut up when they bring up this problem. Give me another word for “synchophantic” and I’ll happily use it.
I thought it was “sycophantic”?
yer right, of course … brain fart!
did you become so bitter?
LOL …
When I read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee in fifth grade and learned that the school that I loved had been lying to me, if you really want to know.
I’ve watched the country slide further and further right my whole life, and I’ve watched oblivious Americans pat themselves on the back as they’ve raped the environment and let their owners rob them blind.
What you call bitter is just the knowledge that we could do better, if only this culture wasn’t constantly gamed by dishonest assholes like kos who talk out of both sides of their mouths, pretending to be something they aren’t.
Calling those who disagree with him ‘bitter’ is a favorite rhetorical manipulation of this guy’s mentor, the abusive bully, DhinMI. It does not mean anything. This guy isn’t here to discuss in good faith.
thanks.
He does exemplify sycophantic, even if I can’t spell it.
I thought he smelled familiar.
AG
Aw, DKos bully tactics in the frog pond? Naw, those won’t fly here. Best get on back to the Big Orange and tell DHinMi this is a Free Thought Zone.
and don’t pretend to know my mind. for the record, i am not a guy and i am a long-time member of this community. not here in good faith, my ass.
get over your damn self.
howzabout growing up a wee? rating my comments a 1 just because you don’t like me is pretty weaksauce. it’s not like their quality is any less than your musings.
until the gratuitous sniping at markos. you don’t like him; you don’t like his website. we get it.
this is just surprising, because i had always remembered having pleasant interactions with you.
I can attest that cedwyn is indeed not a man and that she is no centrist apologist for anyone.
take two at this …
I am beyond frustrated with the way that site is being used to silence a wide swath of viewpoints from the blogosphere, and especially the way it’s being used to marginalize those to the left having this one last way to influence the direction of a directionless party.
I’m tired of people rushing to defend that site like it’s some kind of sacred cow, especially since kos and his merry band of thugs feel NO compunction about criticizing and attacking others, often in profane, misogynist or bigoted ways.
It sets me off, and I apologize for jumping down your throat, but he built that site on the passions and writing of a lot of good people who were then pushed out, banned or bullied into walking away, all in order to push a DLC/NDN agenda that serves only to lock in this country’s swing to the right.
Our political system is an ADVERSARIAL system, only it’s not being allowed to work properly. An entire swath of opinions and needs get little or no public hearing, let alone representation, and now dKos is being used to further exclude those viewpoints. It’s wrong. The system doesn’t work because there is no real debate. It had seemed, when I first stumbled in there pre-scoop, that there would be a community forum where people could discuss the undiscussed, advocate for the forgotten. Little did I know it was just a business for a little Begala wannabe hoping to cash in on the corporate cash from the entrenched corporate leaders of the failed Democratic Party.
Is offering a different viewpoint “synchophantic [sic] protestations”?
yes, i’m sure i didn’t get auto-banned. i was a trusted user. i’d never had even a single troll rating.
as for this diary being rude, well, thank god someone said that.
simon – are you sure you didn’t get auto-banned?
Look, please investigate and ask these questions at DK. The fact of the matter is that the administration of the site has become increasingly ideological, arbitrary, capricious and malicious. I’m amazed you, as an old timer, haven’t noticed. Perhaps your friends were sufficiently ‘centrist’ but almost all of the hundreds of people I’ve connected with over the years on DK have been banned or left in disgust at the way they have been treated there or, because they are decent human beings, at the way others have been treated there.
I got banned yesterday, as bobblehed, for God Knows What.
Maybe they found out that bobblehed was my 2nd account. Maybe Hunter was pissed that I told him to fuck off, or that I called his “mole people” argument a strawman. Maybe I creeped him out when I told him that the guy behind him in the supermarket (in short, 50% of the people that he meets) also think that the 2004 election may have been stolen.
Maybe he was pissed that i didn’t “respect his authoritah”. Who knows.
But the fact is that I had already taken Daily Kos off of my Bookmark page because I was just so disgusted by the way things were going over there.
They talk about “crazy CTers” but are paranoid that the “crazy CTers” are actually right-wing plants.
It’s odd to watch people go nuts on the internet.
on the internet.
No.
It’s not “odd” at all.
Given essentially contradictory commands often enough, EVERYONE will go nuts if they cannot/do not get out of the situation in which they are being given those orders.
And that is EXACTLY what is happening at dKos.
Think freely.
But not about certain things.
Which are never completely defined, so the uncertainty gets you, too.
Classic disinfo work.
Oppose BushCo.
Support people whose policies are a veiled mirror of BushCo’s.
DENOUNCE others whose positions are almost a dup[licate of those you are being told to support..
Classic 1984.
This is not to say that the disinfo is necessarily on purpose.
Maybe it’s just the way the weak minded middle works naturally, and disinfo experts actually derived their methods from observation of mass behavior of this sort.
Or…maybe these people have simply been so thoroughly brainwashed by the ongoing contradictory commands of the society…
Have sex/do not touch
Be honest/get rich quick
Talk democracy/rendition and torture prisoners
Tell the truth/lie about the reasons for war
It is your duity to vote/steal elections
etc.
that they are incapable of acting any other way.
Whatever the reasons, the fact is that this what is up over at little orange/Small k kerry/TimeWarner Brothers For Presidentland.
And it needs to be told.
AG
that’s a really interesting comment. i don’t have anything really to add to it beyond that i think you’ve touched on something important.
reminds me, now that i write this, of a book written years ago by Dr. Julian Jaynes and titled, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. hmmm… and now that i write that i am reminded of Moses descent from Sinai with the Decalogue, one of which is “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” what does he go and do straight away? order a homicidal purge of thousands of calf-worshippers.
LOVED that book.
Read William S. Burroughs on contradictory brainwashing techniques. It was one of his major themes.
Read Burroughs’ extended essay/book”The Job”.
One of the most important little books of the 20th Century, I think.
Here is a little snippet of a discussion around this theme.
“Contradictory commands are two commands that contradict each other given at the same time. ‘TENSHUN!’ The soldier automatically stiffens to the command. ‘AT EASE!’ The soldier immediately relaxes. Now imagine a captain who strides into the barracks snapping ‘TENSHUN!’ from one side of his face and ‘AT EASE!’ from the other. The attempt to obey two flatly contradictory commands at once both of which have a degree of command value at the automatic level disorients the subject. He may react with rage, apathy, anxiety, even collapse.”- Burroughs, The Job, p.41
Yup.
Sound…familiar?
Google <Burroughs + “contradictory commands”> for more.
Later…
AG
Jaynes’ book is most interesting but not relevant here, Simon. Truly, it’s not. What we are witnessing here is no organic function of the human brain, but rather a familiar phenomenon.
What we see in the blogosphere now is classic psychological warfare–a disinformation campaign.
What better way to manipulate people than with half-truths and the appearance of openness?
Those who hold power in the United States–and I don’t mean the Republican Party, but those who back the Republicans and certain elements of the Democrats–fear people power. Fear it deep in their hearts. They will do anything to suppress it.
No, I am not suggesting some sinister, shadowy conspiracy. It’s really all out in the open. The media just refuse to report certain stories. The blogosphere refuses to discuss them. Both political parties pretend that certain issues don’t exist and that events we all know happened, never happened.
John le Carre theorized some years ago in an article in The Guardian that post-9/11 America suffered a national nervous breakdown, a fit of insanity–and it doesn’t appear to be recovering any time soon. The more I look about me, the more I realize that the old literary lion was right.
Hunter S. Thompson thought the same thing.
America has been going slowly insane since the Red Scare. 9/11 just finished the country off, pushing it over the edge.
In the preface to Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia, the sociologist Lewis Wirth says,
“That there is an area of dangerous thought in every society is, therefore, scarcely debatable. While we recognize that what is dangerous to think about may differ from country to country and from epoch to epoch, on the whole, the subjects marked with the danger signal are those which the society and the controlling elements in it believe to be so vital and hence so sacred that they will not tolerate their profanation by discussion. But what is not recognized is the fact that thought, even in the absence of official censorship, is disturbing, and under certain conditions, dangerous and subversive. For thought is a catalytic agent that is capable of unsettling routines, disorganizing habits, breaking up customs, undermining faiths, and generating scepticism.”
In other words, thought and the questioning it leads to are radical.
I read the book Ideology and Utopia in a third-year undergraduate course in the sociology of knowledge more than thirty years ago. It was one of those books that completely up-ended my consciousness. I used to say it raised my IQ about twenty points.
I cite this quote in relation to the behavior of the people in power rather than the people at Daily Kos, who are definitely willing to question “sacred” ideas a good deal more than our ruling elite is. However, while I realize that leaders at the Daily Kos are concerned about their legitimacy and reach (such as it us) being undermined if they are associated with the so-called conspiracy theorists, I am finding the censorship of discussions (whether overt or self-imposed) of election fraud and 9/11 rather alienating. I am finding their defence (implicit or explicit) of the claims “the 2004 election wasn’t stolen” and “9/11 happened as described, give or take a few minor discrepancies” rather credulous at this point.
for the quote, and the book recommendation. definitely one i’ll pick up.
for a couple of years i’ve owned a domain name, http://www.fokd.org, with the idea that a new national holiday was in order: Fear of Knowing Day. the website has yet to make it beyond a placeholder graphic. the quote you offer provides another useful perspective into the FoK phenomenon. i’d been thinking of it only as fear of knowing a certain thing – specifically, fear of the knowledge that burdens one with a responsibility for action (i.e. Hamlet’s dilemma). now i see that there is a fear of thought – of liberality – itself. it reminds me of this bit from DUNE: Messiah, that my seem entirely unrelated:
Paul drummed his fingers against the throne’s arms. The mentat sought data, but the question disturbed him. “I came to this position by strong decisions . . . not always out of my other . . . abilities.”
“Strong decisions,” Hayt said. “These temper a man’s life. One can take the temper from fine metal by heating it and allowing it to cool without quenching.”
You’re welcome. And I think chaos theory has its role in our dilemma as well.
I second that. Great quote.
I do wonder at KOS. I think there is eveidence enough to support at least looking into wether the election was stolen, etc. That they aren’t willing to talk about those subjects tells me that they do indeed possess sacred cows badly in need of milking.
OR that, just like the election…they have been “stolen” too.
AG
I concur with your observations, lecsmith. It’s disturbing for those two reasons. 1) Are they really so concerned about their own image that they’re willing to bury truth to protect it, or 2) are they really naive enough to buy into what they buy into? Either is a disturbing option, although I very much want to believe the latter over the former…
It wasn’t until I saw Markos and Jerome on a talk show (Tim Russert? sorry I don’t remember…) promoting their book about what’s really wrong with the Democratic Party and their special recipe for how to fix it, that I understood why Markos suppresses discussions on his website about conspiracies that perpetrated election fraud and 9/11. If there was a successful conspiracy to disenfranchise America and sell it out to the corporate supremacists, then “Crashing the Gates” would be irrelevant. It’s always interesting to look at the “desire” behind the “belief” and I try to do that in all cases, including my own.
excellent point, both generally and in specific.
How does censorship work? In the United States, at least?
I subscribe to the “propaganda model” originated by Herman and Chomsky, with its “five filters” that help “manufacture consent”.
I think that is what is going on with the blogs, as well–the blogs are “inside” and “part of” the greater socio-economic American system, after all.
Note: Since the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Chomsky has substituted anti-terrorism for anti-communist ideology as the “fifth filter”. (I wonder if anti-communist ideology goes around telling people, “I used to be the fifth propganda filter…”?)
I shall analyze, briefly, the first three filters, since those are the ones Herman and Chomsky identified as the most salient.
The first filter: Ownership.
It was my hope that the blogs could at least partly escape the “manufacture of consent” because they are not owned by large corporations. However, in the case of certain blogs like MyDD and Daily Kos, corporate ownership has been replaced by “political affiliation” or “partisanship”–the owner-operators of these blogs are partisan operatives of the Democratic Party, and therefore won’t brook any discussion that questions the legitimacy of the Democratic Party as a viable alternative to the Republicans. Sure, the party’s tactics might be criticized, but it’s assumed that the Democratic Party is a “good thing”. Substitute “Democratic Party interests” for “corporate financial interests” and you’ve got your first filter in place.
The second filter: Funding.
This is the one where blogs have mimicked the mainstream media, to their detriment. I was an OC (Original Chimpster) on the Smirking Chimp and told the site owner, Jeff Tiedrich, that when he decided to accept advertising, everything was going to change for the site–he would no longer be an insurrectionary blogger but a businessman. And sure enough, when blogging became a business, it turned away from hard-left politics and began softening its voice…to avoid scaring away the advertisers.
The third filter: Sourcing.
Again, this is a filter I hoped the blogs would partly escape, because blogs are about analysis and opinion, not breaking original stories–therefore, bloggers, freed from the need to get the “inside scoop”, wouldn’t need to get close to corporate and government sources.
But now I see bloggers cozying up to politicians to get “access” and “influence”, which puts this filter in play in the blogs, too.
Source: The Devil’s Encyclopedia aka http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model
agreed. mythmother, you totally win. great observation!
Your diary made me thing about Booman’s diary a few days ago Thoughts on the DC Culture.
I think in the broader political culture, this goes way beyond suppression of voter fraud and 9/11 conspiracies. When it comes to DC and the media, there is a “determined rendering of a majority viewpoint as the delusion of an abberant minority”. Hence the demonization of all things “liberal.”
i’ve heard Chomsky refer to it as the democracy gap: the distance between public priorities and official policy. Dkos has provided a sort of microcosm in which to see that gap created and enforced.
Ooo, this is a good comment. I’ll remember that.
I call it more simply, the reality gap – those who are willing to deal with cold, ugly facts, and those who refuse to accept them.
First, an apology. The diary does not address the actual content of WTC collapse arguments, and any statement about relevant facts is apt to trigger an off-topic discussion (if it does here, I won’t add to it).
I am arguing nothing here about the merits of dKos diary policy, nor about the overall balance of evidence regarding the WTC collapse, but merely offering observations that I think are clearly true and possibly relevant to thinking about dKos diary policy. My point will be that some of the frequently repeated arguments on one side are easily and briefly refuted, and in a way that requires no specialized knowledge to understand. The state of affairs that this indicates may have influenced decisions made regarding diary policy at dKos.
The brief statements:
—–
1.1) I have seen many repetitions of the claim that the fuel fires could not have caused collapse because they could not have been hot enough to melt steel.
1.2) It is well known that blacksmiths hammer steel heated in a fire, and it is well known that they do this because the heat softens (not melts) the steel.
—–
2.1) I have seen many repetitions of the claim that the Trade Center towers collapsed very symmetrically, with the inference that demolition charges must have been planted to make this happen.
2.2) As the following image shows, at least one tower collapsed very asymmetrically (and in a way that I think is clearly consistent with the buckling of fire-softened steel).
—–
The above statements are, I think, clearly true, and they indicate that at least some of the arguments that have influenced opinion at dKos are clearly false, in the sense of being easily refuted using common knowledge.
Again, my apologies for going somewhat off-topic.
The issue with melted steel refers to the pools found at the foot of the tower – not the upper floors, which is all the stranger since the bottom of the towers was nowhere near the fires or point of impact.
as you’ve said that you won’t reply to any response that leads further off-topic, i’ll only say that you’ve given a good example of regarding a superficial treatment as if it were sufficient to justify exclusion of further consideration.
even if your arguments were solid – and i think they’re critically incomplete at best – they don’t provide any basis for exclusion of further consideration. faulty arguments are used by kossacks all the time, on all sorts of topics. that doesn’t lead Kos to ban those topics.
the reasoning that you’re suggesting is a variation of the myth that 9/11 uCT only appeals to a minority of people who are in some sense cognitively impaired. in this diary i’m asserting that this is clearly a myth, if for no other reason than the fact that mistrust of the official conspiracy theory is not a minority position. so, the whole pretense that Kos is protecting the majority of kossacks from the bad thinking of an impaired minority cannot possibly be true.
if Kos is protecting the community, he is protecting the community from itself. note, again, that he’s not protecting the community from its own bad thinking generally, but from its own inability to think clearly upon a couple select subjects. apparently, the mass of kossacks can be trusted to work things out for themselves in general; but whereas 9/11 is concerned they need his guidance.
GOP contributors.
Join the Liberal Democratic Party of the United States of America.
http://groups.myspace.com/liberaldemocraticpartyoftheunitedstatesofamerica
You make an excellent point here. I was a bit obtuse upthread.
thanks for sticking with it.
I say this about 9-11.
Any chance you can shrink this? It’s screwing up the page margins.
.
Thanks, you’re a pal! Nice graphic btw.
I rarely agree with the heavy hitters and major players over at dKos, but I find it to be such a tremendous megaphone.
It is rather easy to push a meme, concept or idea over there.
Dropping a few comments on the recommended list can get your thoughts pretty big exposure.
It’s a bummer you’ve been banned.
That being said, I like to post over here for comments and discussion. I think it is a much better forum for that.
Nice piece, BTW.
prior to being banned, i didn’t spend any time here. now that i have, though, i agree with your perspective.
Another refugee here: I wasn’t banned, but just grew uncomfortable over there when discussions started being “forbidden” and one too many flame wars broke out over childish disagreements. And there whole “we have arrived” thing over YearlyKos. Probably a few other reasons.
😉
I agree with other posters, this is a better place for this type of discussion. I have no problem following Boo-Man’s rule of not calling out specific posters, or even Markos himself (though I have my opinions, certainly, about him and several of the “big names”, but I mostly keep those to myself…:-). But by and large there are a lot of good, well intentioned people at DKos, but I think there are a lot of them here too!
Good diary! Recommended!
The main difficulty with debating 911 on a blog is that no one has really come up with a good way to do it yet.
In this scoop format, the same arguments keep coming up again and again and it just goes around and around and becomes really confusing.
IHMO what would be needed is a knowledgebase be the centerpiece for facts that have been scientifically examined and debunked.
For instance, so far the best thing I have read that is a very scientific analysis arguing that a Plane hit the pentagon, not a missile is Evidence That A Boeing 757 Really Did Impact the Pentagon on 9/11 from CatHerder at abovetopsecret.com which is an excellent conspiracy site by the way. Catherder provides an excellent analysis basically disproving any notions that it was a missile that hit the pentagon and not a plane. With this knowedge centralized, we can stop arguing about this and move on.
If someone wants to argue that missile did hit the pentagon, IHMO this document should be the standard
reference for all debate on the subject. If you can disprove facts shown in that article, fine. Then your facts go into the knowledgebase. If not, then STFU.
I guess what I’m saying is that a better and more organized way of debating the subject needs to happen.
That is one reason i could see a site like dKos not allowing the discussion (Though I do not believe for a second that this is the reason 911 discussion is not allowed at dKos). The discussion does always become very heated and the same arguments just keep popping up again and again. It’s just a very inefficient system for scientific debate. It never gets anywhere. It’s very tiring to keep having the same argument with thousands of different people and as a reader to have to keep sorting through all of it.
In all my reading on the subject of 911, I keep coming back to tower 7. How and why that collapsed has never been satisfactorily explained IMHO. Add that to the fact that flight 93 never reached it’s (unknown) intended target and you really start thinking things.
I have no idea if 911 was evil mixed with incompetence or something more than that. I’d like to know more though. I think not allowing people to at least discuss it is a very unAmerican thing.
why does Kos hate America?
Good points.
This comment got me banned from dKos last year:
that’s absurd.
fantastic sig, btw. perfect.
So the way I understand it your sort of left in limbo. Do you have any idea why Dkos doesn’t have a “delete account” button on the profile page?
Is it a problem with the Scoop software or just that Kos doesn’t allow disenfranchised users to delete their accounts so that he can maintain a false number of actual users to inflate his Ad revenue?
My impression of Kos is that he is very insecure in this regard and is pulling a fast one on anyone who gets caught in his little web of deceit on this this issue.
Their are a lot of unanswered questions that this subject brings up. Like he might be running a data mining operation. Given his military background it bothers me. Things are not always what they seem to be these days and I really hate this line of thought but experience has taught me to question everything.
I have a military background, too. Don’t panic, we’re not all Borg, you know. I can think for myself and so can lots of former and current military personnel.
I retired from the Army at the rank of captain. Kos was a short-timer (four years), was in the Signal Corps, and never saw combat. I wouldn’t worry about hi being connected into the Military Industrial Complex based on the military part of his c.v.
It bothers me very much that Kos was vetted for a career in the CIA and only gave it up at the last minute to blog for Howard Dean–indeed, Kos sought out the CIA, not the other way around. I was offered a position in the CIA (they recruited me, in other words) and turned it down flat–I remember the Church Committee hearings from the 1970s VERY well and want no part of the CIA, nor of the NSA. The CIA has no good reason to exist and I wish it had never been created. Not only that, but the CIA is spectacularly bad at what it is supposed to do.
The CIA did NOT predict the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Iron Curtain. The CIA did NOT prevent 9/11 from happening (the FBI might have, if Bush had the brains to listen to the FBI agents in the field).
If the CIA was a business, it’d be declared bankrupt. The only thing it’s ever managed to do is bungle overseas operations and violate the civil liberties of the American people. I question the sanity and patriotism of anybody who’d ever want to join such an organization. And I say that as a former military officer and combat veteran!
This is the first I had heard that Kos was interested in a CIA career. Is this something he has said about himself, or is it something others have said about him?
Kos apparently “outed” himself:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/6/6/153221/1163
Listen to Mr. Moulitsas’ address to the Commonwealth Club at this link (RealAudio Player required):
http://www.commonwealthclub.org/archive/06/06-06zuniga-audio.html
That’s where Moulitsas discusses his warm, fuzzy feelings for the CIA and his 2001 application to the CIA.
Thanks for the link. Yes, he did say it himself.
Yes, apparentlty Kos was quite impressed with all the “liberals” in the CIA who are “very interested in stable governments”. That must be why they overthrew the democratically elected governments of Guatemala and Iran in the 1950s and Chile in the 1970s, just to name a few. In the interest of stability.
Big Thank You on this subject. You just filled in one more piece of a very large puzzle.
The one thing I do know is that once you apply or are trained for CIA ops you are always a CIA operator. There is no quiting, retiring or resigning for any of them. It only ends when you are dead.
This explains a number of things that I suspect about what Dkos is really all about.
Always question the fools who question nothing.
i can’t answer your question about the absence of a delete account button. it’s not something i would do if i could. as far as Kos datamining his site for intelligence purposes, i don’t suppose that he is. seems likely that someone out there is, but i doubt it’s Kos.
The problem I have with this is simple. How would they have known where the planes would hit the WTC? The planes were flown by amateurs, hitting the WTC towers in differents places. The second plane almost missed the tower entirely. How would you know if the planes would hit, and where? What if the planes didn’t make it? One didn’t. What if what happened on Flight 93 had happened on another flight?
It would have been rather difficult to plan this out, had it been an elaborate deception. Too many things could have gone wrong. I think it was what it appears to have been.
The real problem is, the opposition party is weak and feeble. I could give the world conclusive proof that the GOP drinks the blood of orphan children… and within two weeks Jane Harmon and Joe Biden would be on Meet the Press professing their undying support for the “War on Terror” and complaining that too many resources have been wasted on drinking orphan blood that would have been better spent on improving the ability of the Department of Homeland Security to defend Americans against terrorist attacks.
The Dems already have everything they need to bring Bush down. They are simply afraid to do so. These guys are losers.
I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about 9/11.
Want to know why?
Three reasons:
What matters is not how 9/11 happened, but how it did happen and how it’s being used. We can’t go back in time and undo 9/11…but we CAN stop the fascism being foisted on our country by a gang of evil sons of bitches.
What matters is not how 9/11 happened, but how it did happen and how it’s being used. We can’t go back in time and undo 9/11…but we CAN stop the fascism being foisted on our country by a gang of evil sons of bitches.
If we take this understanding of 9/11 and use it as a standard for the future then we have to admit that no, we cannot stop the fascist bastards.
They can be stopped. More and more people are alerted to the dangers…but they lack leadership and a means of communication and coordination.
we, and most of the ones there, (if they would admit it) know what the fuck Kos site, and a “boy’s club” mentality has turned into….GET OVER IT…
MOVE ON, use the Boo site, and many others like, to get our message across, and by the way, as I said in another post….”a little less talk, and a lot more action” is what it’s gonna take.
so get over the anger at Kos, and leave the “boy’s club to them”
get your ass out on the street, and convert real people….not some yakity yak setting at a keyboard,and trying to be a savior…it’s gonna take work people…remember that???
peace….it’s not a secret, just dumbed down.
I want to do two things in this comment. Suck up to Booman and offer an idea about the “censorship” on DKos.
First: sucking up. I started out in the blogosphere as someone making comments and writing pretty much unread diaries on Dkos. It was fun to read the few comments about my diaries, and to make comments on other diaries. I discovered the frog pond through DKos and so I started doing the same thing here: writing and reading diaries and comments. And then something wonderful happened, I started to see and feel an actual sense of community in the frog pond. People could still be obtuse or off-putting or out in left field (and so could I) but there was and is a sense on Booman that whatever it is that keeps us participating here is more important that the opinions we express. Booman has helped to create something precious.
Second, Dkos never had this feeling of community for me. I think it’s because while Dkos started out as a great forum, as Markos and his blog became more “famous” he came to be seen and perhaps came to see himself as some sort of broker with a base. And he needs to have his base have a more coherent “message” or he can’t deliver. This is a complete misunderstanding of the blogosphere, or at least the progressive manifestation of it. I commented somewhere else about DKos and censorship with regards to the theft of our elections and said something to the effect that Kos and Armando and perhaps others who may feel like they are herding cats over there trying to make sure the right opinions are advanced feel that way not due to “the independence of the cats but to the mistaken self-identity of the herders.”
There is a less polite way to put this: Markos has been co-opted by the glitter and glamour of politics and the notion that he might be a player in it. As a political operative on a state level several years ago, I can tell you it’s fucking addictive, especially when you win, and even if you don’t, because people see you as important, someone who must be reckoned with. Don’t get me wrong, we have to have people in the game, so to speak, that will express our views forcefully, and Markos and DKos can certainly do that. But he shouldn’t think that he has to somehow shape the opinion expressed on his site to do this.
On Booman I feel that there are at least a few people who are interested in what I think, and there are people here whose diaries and comments I look for to find out what they think. What’s so impressive here is that none of us have to be an “elite.” Booman, while he has “front pagers,” doesn’t make any of us feel that our ideas are not welcome, or that we are simply the raw material for his rise ot media or political celebrityhood.
Madman, please don’t do this. I am going to erase your comment for the very reason that you were banned from Daily Kos. Don’t use this forum to out people’s identities. It’s shitty. And you know how I feel about DH. Everyone knows. Go ahead an repost your comment without doing that.