I note another banning controversy has erupted at Daily Kos. This time, it is over a mostly thoughtful diary by longtime user TocqueDeville (UserID: 8353) who must have signed up around the same I did many years ago. TocqueDeville made the mistake of discussing the possibility that Bush administration officials essentially let 9/11 happen on purpose. In banning him, Kos acknowledged that the subject might be a legitimate one for debate, yet he added, “I’ve made clear that it’s not allowed on Daily Kos.”
Now…why might that be the policy? And why might that policy be legitimate?
I want to stipulate up front that I don’t agree with the banning of ToqueDeville. He discussed 9/11 and suggested that there are legitimate questions about what happened. In itself, this isn’t even controversial. Many members of the 9/11 Commission and their investigators have said the same thing, and recent revelations that much of the Commission’s source material was obtained during torture makes this a hot topic worthy of debate on any discussion board worth its salt. Moreover, ToqueDeville’s diary didn’t even make a conspiratorial case. Ironically, he even suggested that he supported the very rule that was used to ban him.
Personally, I somewhat support the ban on CTs [conspiracy theories] at this site. But only because I have no interest in anyone’s theory about anything. I want facts.
But the greatest failure of Democrats and the progressive left in the last 8 years has been to allow the delusional ravings of a few to inoculate the Bush junta on 911. Just because some think that space beams destroyed the Twin Towers is no reason to believe the depiction of 911 presented by Bush/Cheney or the fraud that is the 911 Commission. There’s nothing realistic about believing the Bush administration has lied about everything except 911.
So, no, I don’t think he should have been banned. I don’t think he really violated the rules against promulgating conspiracy theories because he didn’t advance one. But the larger point I want to discuss is whether it is legitimate to ban people who do promulgate conspiracy theories. And there is a justification for a site like Daily Kos. The reason is their size and influence. Daily Kos exists mainly to help elect Democrats. It has a preference for Democrats on the left-side of the party, but it mainly is concerned with keeping Democrats in power and Republicans out of power. All the other great stuff that happens there is secondary to their core mission. And all of it can and should be sacrificed if it threatens to undermine the core mission. And you can do a simple test to determine whether a topic is undermining the mission. Just ask yourself if what is being discussed can be cut and pasted into a 30-second ad to damage any Democratic candidate that has written there or accepted donations from the site.
Kos banned conspiracy theories and Israel-Palestine discussion because they can make the site toxic and worthless to the cause it is designed to advance.
I don’t have that problem. I did have one ad run against a candidate (Martin Heinrich of New Mexico) for a response he gave to me in an interview last year. But, so far, that’s been an isolated event. I am not influential enough and I don’t raise enough money for Democrats to make me have to think twice about what I write…or what you write. And I don’t want to be influential in quite that way because I don’t want to subsume my own ideas beneath any practical concern. I’ll write about what is practical, but I won’t not write because it isn’t practical. I’d rather not conduct interviews with politicians than tone down the site to make it a safer place for them to do interviews.
So, this is a better forum than Daily Kos for discussing things that the Democratic Party finds embarrassing or taboo. But that doesn’t make Kos a tyrannical dictator. It just means that he is a bigger fish with bigger goals and different responsibilities. Having said that, I still don’t think ToqueDeville deserved to get the boot.
