Posts by HORansome
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Speaker: Why we should not dismiss…, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Where most conspiracists fall down is a response along the lines of “That’s just what ‘they’ want you to think” when faced with some compelling piece of official evidence that contradicts the theory.
Yes and no: the "that's what they want you to believe" is a perfectly acceptable response if you can actually prove the existence of a conspiracy. For example, Stalin's regime successfully conspired to get the verdicts they wanted in the Moscow Trials and the Dewey Commission proved that. However, no one believed the Dewey Commission report because of disinformation put out by Stalin and his cronies. Effectively both sides said "That's what they want you to believe!" but one side said that knowing the other side was actually conspiring to hide the truth of what happened.
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The history of the writing of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a great example of an actual conspiracy for the purposes of generating an unwarranted conspiracy theory. I don’t have many complementary things to say about David Aaronovitch’s “Voodoo Histories” but his coverage of the Protocols illustrates this point nicely.
Oh, and for people who don't know, I, HORansome, am the very same "Matthew Dentith" whose chapter excerpt you have just read.
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Indeed. Given that the region people seem to think has the most conservative support for Labour, South Auckland, seems to have no trouble giving support to marriage equality and queer MPs, I can only surmise that this is a paternalistic narrative put forward by people who claim to really know the interests of Māori and Pasifica people.
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Two related questions for the Greens (which I'm asking on behalf of a family member):
1. What is the Party's preferred party vote threshold?
2. Would the Green's support moving to STV for electorate votes?
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Paul Campbell,
Remember how Watergate went down, it wasn’t the break in that brought Nixon down, it was the cover up …… watch very carefully when Key’s lips move, what comes out and who’s pulling the strings, it’s what he does over the next few weeks that will damn him or let him go free
I've bene thinking that myself: I think people often forget that the initial reports by Woodward and Bernstein were pooh-poohed by the major newspapers and TV news networks at the time. It took time before the claim of conspiracy was vindicated and become commonly acknowledged as being the best explanation of the event.
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Hard News: Not doing justice, in reply to Sacha,
November. After the election, more's the pity.
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Is it me, or does there seem to be much more noticeable anti-semiticism this election? I remarked on the radio an election ago how pleasing it was that we didn't make much (or anything at all) about John Key's mother being Jewish and his banking background. Was I just being optimistic or have things actually got worse this time around?
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Hard News: Not doing justice, in reply to Tom Semmens,
Jesus, what world do you live in? Reality check time: not everyone is a high falutin’ dinner party intellectual like the PA crew. I would say that the name Shylock is more or less unknown to the majority of Pakeha New Zealanders, let alone the PI and Asian ones, and expecting everyone to understand his character in the context of 16th century anti-semitism or else suffer the scorn of the chattering classes smacks of intellectual snobbery. The guy is at least having a go, which is more than anyone here has achieved so give him a break.
So, let me get this straight, Tom: Gibson used an anti-semetic smear (he claims accidentally, despite the fact he used the accompanying language of anti-semiticism in his description of the PM) and we should let it be it because most people won't get the reference? Not only does that smack of the intellectualism you accuse of us expressing ("The common people won't get it!") but it's also contrary: you want to say Gibson didn't really understand what the term meant and yet the fact he used it in an environment where you claim most people don't understand what a "Shylock" is indicates Gibson did have some idea of what it meant and he thought he'd get away with it.
Here's a thing, Tom. Jewish people are voters too, and surely you want to court them into voting for your party. Which is why you should be as up in arms about this slur against them as many of the other people in your party.
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I have to agree that it seems somewhat odd to say "I can use Shylock in a sentence" without it entailing that "I know what 'Shylock' refers to." It is, after all, a quintessential anti-semetic stereotype. It's also not as if it is an everyday word used in a loosely pejorative way in the avenues and alleyways of Aotearoa. If people went around saying "Shylock this!" and "Shylock that!" in a way which indicated that they didn't know that it's a troubling slur (as some people want to claim about their use of "gay" as a loose pejorative), then maybe Gibson's response might (and I stress "might") hold water. However...
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Hard News: The crybaby philosopher, in reply to SHG,
Anyone who splutters latte onto his scarf in outrage about it is, simply, a fucking idiot.
The “You’re not reading the speech right” argument seems very popular (and certainly it’s Whyte’s contention), but if most people go “That’s an inappropriate analogy!” then the right response isn’t to say “The fools!” but rather ask “How could I have phrased that better?”
Because, it is a terrible analogy, in part because the French aristocracy had legal privilege and material privilege and because the French aristocracy got that privilege by oppressing the lower classes. Claiming that there is some similarity between the affirmative action doled out by the state to Māori and the role of the French aristocracy in the Ancien Régime is pure rhetoric: Māori are the recipients of affirmative action by the state rather than a class which has sole controls on the reins of power and care little for other people. As others have argued, if this is the standard of analogies we are meant to hold to as being “good”, then basically anything goes.
One thing I didn’t talk about in my post was Whyte’s choice of analogy: I don’t know how many people here in Aotearoa know about the Ancien Régime and thus I’m not sure whether Whyte chose it because he’s out of touch with “the common Kiwi” or precisely because we know enough to realise the good revolutionaries of Paris overthrew the régime but not enough to realise that Māori are in no way similar to the French aristocracy.