A Toast to Banned and Disappeared Posters

[Jeff]

Though I haven't seen him in 7 years - which seem like nothing to me, I'm still stuck in 2003 at the latest - Mac is a great guy in person and one of this board's best and funniest, and I certainly hope he is neither banished nor disinclined to return.

Mac's and Nordic's accounts have been reactivated, so it's up to them if they want to return, and how.

[chiggerbit]

Mac's and Nordic's accounts have been reactivated, so it's up to them if they want to return, and how.

Welcome back Mac, smiths. Norton Ash and username. This statement is clear enough for me, and I'm now done posting, which I'm sure you'll be thrilled to hear. I quit modding because of the flaming, and with this now I quit posting. Have fun, cuda.

[barracuda]

Crikey.

[Cosmic Cowbell]

Mac's and Nordic's accounts have been reactivated, so it's up to them if they want to return, and how.

Welcome back Mac, smiths. Norton Ash and username. This statement is clear enough for me, and I'm now done posting, which I'm sure you'll be thrilled to hear. I quit modding because of the flaming, and with this now I quit posting. Have fun, cuda.

It's the "and how" that I'm willing to give the Admin the latitude to judge. I sincerely hope you'll reconsider. If nothing else, if and when a certain poster -does- return (and we know it will), it would please me to no end to watch you take said member down one last time on your way out. It's soooo easy.....LOL.



Pleeeeeeezzzzzzzze!

[barracuda]

Wait a minute, norton ash left too? Nobody told me that. Confirmation, please?

[Jeff]

Mac's and Nordic's accounts have been reactivated, so it's up to them if they want to return, and how.

Welcome back Mac, smiths. Norton Ash and username. This statement is clear enough for me, and I'm now done posting, which I'm sure you'll be thrilled to hear. I quit modding because of the flaming, and with this now I quit posting. Have fun, cuda.

It's the "and how" that I'm willing to give the Admin the latitude to judge.

Thanks for noticing that. Chig, take note. It was a limited amnesty that could give myself and the mods more potential headache. You've just gone and added heartache.

Norton Ash hasn't gone anywhere, and username scares me too much to return.

[American Dream]

Yes- it's a very difficult situation because if it weren't for the culture of flaming, there's a lot of us who would want to be present here more, working together on things and having more fruitful discussions...

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Mac and Nordic got BANNED?! Seriously? Literally? Even for a week?

Shit.

I thought that was all a joke. If you've posted drunk, or made an arse of yourself, it's simply good politick to disappear for a week. It's not good for the week's absence to be enforced as a policy, though, is it? I thought most of the disagreements and flame wars here were at least half-joking, and conducted between friends who respected each other's positions - there is absolutely no possibility that Chig does not respect the opions of Mac, for example, and vice versa.

When the disagreements are not between freinds, they are pretty clear instances of malicious harassment, which is a whole different thing, and should defintely be valid grounds for permanent irrevocable banning.

But this:

- Macruiskeen
- Nordic
- chump
- smiths
- Username
- Percival
- 17breezes

There are people I like a great deal on that list, and others I don't much care for, all things considered: but there are none who's posts I would automatically skip on a message board because I knew where they would be coming from right from the start. People are surprising.

Ah. It was the agent-baiting rule, wasn't it? That makes sense. And rules must be enforced, regardless of who breaks them. Still, it's a shitey list, and I vote to reinstate them all.

Is Mac not around so much now because he actually got BANNED? If so, to me, that changes things. And why ban Nordic, of all people? FFS. Maybe I've been missing threads full of disgraceful statements by these two miscreants. I'll have to check back.

And wtf are chump, smiths, and Username ever supposed to have done? Username, are you still the same Username who's thread about torture - and not letting your boys grow up to be cowboys - I spoke to (on here) two or more years ago? 'Cos you seemed alright to me then, and I would bet that you remain alright now. I feel that there is some rank stupidity afoot here.

EDIT: I don't mean this is stupidity on the part of the moderation, btw. It's not a J'accuse. But why the hell is Chiggerbit leaving, and what will I read if she does? All this is stupid because it makes no sense, and benefits no one.

[Jeff]

If you've posted drunk, or made an arse of yourself, it's simply good politick to disappear for a week.

This is true. Or at least overnight, so long as you edit your posts the next morning with the wisdom of your big hurting head.

- Macruiskeen
- Nordic

It wasn't agent-baiting, so much as incorrigible, vulgar thuggery. I don't care on which side of an argument it's found, it's disruption. Their accounts are currently active, and probationary.

- chump

The Hitler was a Zionist posts were the end of my patience.

- smiths

smiths is here.

- Username

I still don't know what happened there.

- Percival

"Percival" was found to be engaged in a long-term game of deception and wedge-driving.

- 17breezes

Breezes is gone not on account of his beliefs, but because of his conduct.

And sincerely, I envy the member who can be surprised by the stupidity occasionally afoot here.

[norton ash]

I'm here, never went. When the ump says 'yer pushin' it' I tend to go back to the dugout scowling instead of kicking dirt around.

[Jeff]

[AhabsOtherLeg]

This is true. Or at least overnight, so long as you edit your posts the next morning with the wisdom of your big hurting head.

Hehe. I knew you weren't a real drinker. Imagine waking up the next morning!

Admittedly, I'm not here all that often anymore, and I can be plenty stupid when I am, but I wasn't aware of these shocking wrongdoings by Mac and Nordic, and am still not convinced of them.

I might be wrong, but it looks to me like some very intelligent people were having a heated argument about politics, over a protracted length of time, on the internet. No harm done.

If it drives away posters like Chiggerbit, however, it is a genuine tragedy. Chiggerbit makes threads all by herself, and I for one appreciate them.

[Nordic]

- 17breezes

Breezes is gone not on account of his beliefs, but because of his conduct.

Well if that's the case you should really get rid of that "this is not a fascist board" nonsense in your "rules".

How, pray tell, are zionist racist and genocidal warmongering fucks NOT fascists?

[Sweejak]

Actually they are more like nationalist socialists.
This was one of the better conversations about the word fascism.
Conversation fragments:

A:
Fascism was a corporatist ideology that tried a Third Way between the rule of the working class (Bolshevism) and the rule of the rule of the capitalists ("plutocracy"), in which all classes would work together harmoniously under the aegis of a Total State that subsumed everything.
It didn't just mean "right-wing."
===============
B:
Fascism is not an ideology. It's an attitude. It's a perverse kind of aesthetic.

Fascism can't be explained like Marxism. With fascism, we should start with an analysis of the feelings, symbols, and tropes of fascist rhetoric.

It's essentially subrational.
=================
A:
That's not what it meant in 1930. If you start expanding the term to include attitudes, you are redefining it. Might as well redefine socialism as an attitude and call Obama a socialist.

There is no group in the US that Mussolini would look at as an inheritor, I submit.
... I am one of those rare people who has actually read fascist literature, and I say it means what the fascists said it meant.
=================
B:
Yes, I have too, but I really think the emotions are more important than the ideas.
With Communism, first there were the carefully worked out treatises by Marx, Engels, et al, and then the propaganda and aesthetics of Lenin, Stalin, etc.

In Italy, Mussolini developed fascist motifs, slogans, aesthetics, etc before he really worked out the ideology.

The fascist equivalent of the Communist Manifesto, The Doctrine of Fascism, credited to Mussolini but ghostwritten by Giovanni Gentile, was written as late as 1937!
=================
C:
Aha! You're making the mistake!

European Communism does not start with Marx! He was working in the tradition of Fourier and St. Simon. It preceeded the CM by decades. The motifs, slogans, aesthetics, etc were worked out before Marx was born.
=================
B:
Here's the difference.

Communism did not become a seriously powerful movement until Marx and Engels gave it a "scientific' formulation. It was important, but we would barely remember it today were it not for M and K.

The equivalent to M and K are the postwar Nouvelle Droite writers and associated neofascist philosophers. But they come after Mussolini, Hitler, etc.
=================
J:
I suppose the emotions, intuition and so forth will eventually lead to ideas and dogmas. Although It could go the other way.
People have called Christ a socialist, an anarchist, a communist and a libertarian and even a fascist.

When fascism was a respectable ideology didn't it find proponents among FDR and his administration as well as many others, at least early on?
=================
C:
J, fascism found sympathizers (like Keynes) often because in the Depression they thought the fascists had the ability to push through economic changes (while avoiding communism).

As a side note, I take the unpopular position (although it was Arendt's as well) that Nazism and Fascism are really two different animals. It was only Marxist-Leninist ideology that threw them together.

random:
... John Lukacs made that same argument, that Fascism and National Socialism are two different creatures.

... while Fascism and Nazism have similarities, the latter is distinguished by its biologism.

Oh well, I thought that was interesting.

[Jeff]

- 17breezes

Breezes is gone not on account of his beliefs, but because of his conduct.

Well if that's the case you should really get rid of that "this is not a fascist board" nonsense in your "rules".

How, pray tell, are zionist racist and genocidal warmongering fucks NOT fascists?

How about "This is not a racist and genocidal warmongering fuckery board"?

I'm funny that way. Even when a member posts racist, genocidal, warmongering fuckery linking 9/11 to the Protocols of the Christ-killing Jews with the endorsement that "it sure seems to have a lot of good info," I like to think it must be an honest mistake. And eventually I get around to cleaning up my own mistakes.