They’ve already been quoted in this thread, but, seriously:
This is a poster who has for years (decades, really) by his own admission held the majority of the board in open contempt and readily admits that some of the vitriol in his replies are a half step removed from trolling. And has been repeatedly crossed the line attacking posters or groups based on their ethnicity.
I know some people want to be “fair” or “see things from both sides” but as far as I’m concerned, that’s just another way of asserting a lazy form of moral superiority by simplistically assuming there must be a just and fair middle ground than doing the work to see that one ‘side’ may actually just be not only wrong but a once and continuing asshole.
I don’t necessarily think it’s that his views were way out of the mainstream, it’s that he tone policed people who had nasty things to say about absolutely horrible acts of mass abuse and murder. And then acted like everyone else was going off the rails for calling him on it.
I don’t traffic in false equivalence. I’m aware that Martin doesn’t like most of the posters here, but so what? Plenty of the arguments he makes are reasonable and ordinary. By way of comparison, Sam Stone has a superior skillset to Martin, but Sam’s point of reference is something like the National Review, while Martin’s is… ordinary American. So oddly Martin posts more useful material now. It was different a decade or so ago.
As an example, if you want to cover the topic of genocide, there’s nothing wrong with saying that Pol Pot’s policies of murder are far worse than the still horrifying sterilization policies practiced over the past century towards certain groups. Both are bad, but only a depraved person would draw an equivalence.
I’d have to dig deeper into the discussions to evaluate this. What I was seeing was poorly sourced claims that Martin was minimizing genocide when in fact that was an unfair characterization, substituting repetition for substantiation. I daresay most people would perceive such attacks as cheap shots.
There’s a not insignificant number of old school posters who, in an attempt to be or at least appear impartial, will give a greater benefit of the doubt to viewpoints or posters they don’t personally agree with. The intention may be noble - to avoid unconscious bias from coloring one’s judgment. But the effect is quite often the opposite.
It’s something I’ve certainly been guilty of but bias is bias whether or not the intent is to avoid it. And it’s something the board culture has been dealing with. Many of the board’s conservatives have not flounced because it is unfriendly, despite their claims, but because they were not as often been accorded that thumb on the scales.
Certainly, MH has claimed people are drawing a false equivalence. And in some cases in this thread and in the associated threads, that’s happened. But it’s certainly not been the general rule and reading false equivalence into it smacks of that sort of false impartiality.
It’s ironic that, in the 15 years since he posted those quotes, the Overton window has shifted such that, from the point of view of his own party’s leadership, HE is now part of the “unwashed masses of extreme leftism” by virtue of holding positions like “racism exists” and “democracy is good”. One more reason it must suck to be him.
If you think genocide is important, and it is, then it’s also important to engage with people who have ordinary median American sentiments, if only to familiarize yourself with what people know, what they don’t know, and what they believe. Right-wing gimmickry matters comparatively less. So Martin’s POV is useful; shouting it down as genocide minimization is unhelpful and counterproductive.
Then again, I wasn’t rushing into this conversation (armed with my couple of books on the subject) so I can’t claim sainthood.
Simulpost!
ETA: Thing.Fish: Yes, agreed.
Great_Antibob: I plead innocent, but your point about false impartiality is worth making. I’m not buying the, “Lazy form of moral superiority” angle, since denouncing the unjust carries its own pleasures, and furthermore I’d say that leaning against your own ideas is a good thing. That said… my thinking over the past year or so has been shaped by Stuart Steven’s It Was All A Lie, and frankly I have a much dimmer view the liberal/conservative divide here than I used to. Which is why I’m carving out a space for Ordinary American POVs, as opposed to American movement conservatism, which has been shown to be shot through with disingenuous commentary. I thought I was having an actual conversation with conservatives for the past 10-30 years: I was wrong.
Personally, I found that he is a self admitted troll in this thread, as well as his casual disbelief in the experiences of the other posters infuriating.
Whether he actually does so or not, that’s troll-thought right there.
He also attacked people for misrepresenting what he was saying; while seriously misrepresenting what they were saying, and refusing to address it when that was pointed out to him.
I don’t think it was an unfair characterization, though backing up the accuracy of that pattern would involve quoting a whole lot of posts, any one of which taken individually might have been innocuous.
And what I was also seeing was Martin Hyde clearly saying, in more than one post, that while he thought the specific techniques used in the particular schools were awful he thought the underlying aim of cultural genocide was just fine.
which could by itself be taken to mean he thought those things could be grafted on to the First Nations cultures without harming them, which if done in an entirely different fashion and voluntarily might have been a point (if one ignores the implication that those cultures had no education of their own), but then there’s this exchange (sorry for the length of quote, but I think the context’s necessary to make the point):
Your solution to community destruction is to finish breaking up the communities?
– to which I got crickets.
Now it’s possible Martin_Hyde just doesn’t understand that getting as many tribe members as possible to leave tribal lands (which, as was pointed out elsewhere in the thread, in many cases are ancestral lands; and in at least some of the other cases have been held as communities for multiple generations) and instead scatter as individuals into the country as a whole would be an act of cultural destruction. But that is most definitely what he’s recommending. He just wants the culture to be destroyed by financial means, instead of by kidnapping and torture.
And then, when people objected to this, he claimed they were calling him a Nazi.
He wasn’t factually disagreeing with anything, he just thought that people were “screeching” too much about genocide.
This I agree with in general, and I don’t think debates on forums like this accomplish a whole lot when it comes to raising awareness about genocide one way or another. The only thing I think is really productive is personal stories. Genocide and genocide minimization are both only possible because people are capable of dehumanizing “different” groups of people.
I think it’s also unhelpful and counterproductive to let POV’s to go unchallenged. If Martin’s allowed to explain his – and I agree that he should be – why should others not be allowed to explain where and why they differ, including pointing out when something reads like minimization, or like agreement with the goal of a crime if not with its methods?
People rarely change their minds in the middle of discussions, on messageboards or elsewhere (though it has happened); and of course aren’t guaranteed to change them thinking about it later on in the middle of the night, or over the course of years, though that happens a lot more often. But people whose points of view are never challenged are highly unlikely to change them at all.
Nope, I just said controversial posts. I liked seeing both sides of controversial issues, not necessarily political issues. I didn’t read that many of Shodan’s political posts at the time since I wasn’t much into politics at the time.
But all of those people must have thought his posts had value, and most of those posters post on political views more than I did at that time.
I don’t agree with them on much else says that I don’t agree with the politics of the people,
I’ll have to say that it’s a weird feeling to be reading a thread and have your name pop up out of context.
I don’t consider that tone policing. I agree with Martin that History by screech (or litany) is a thing. That section of his post was general and generally speaking unexceptional. I don’t consider it to be genocide minimizing, as he was accused of.
Well, we’re here to fight ignorance. All that is great. Except that part where someone calls Martin a genocide mininimizer, smearing him by association with genocide deniers. It’s a cheap shot. (It’s also true that Martin punches below the belt, which undermines his points.) Indeed, I’d argue that Martin makes a better foil than some of the other more ideological movement conservative posters. Because he traffics in fairly typical Americana perspectives.
Generally speaking, nothing is settled in GD. But the better threads lay out the main lines of argument, which can be useful.
It’s not about raising awareness. It’s about understanding ordinary points of view so that you can figure out a way to address them, without unnecessary rancor. You know, effectively. Hey, I’m all for pitting Nazis. I just think smears are counterproductive.
If that was your intent, then I would say it was a lousy one. You accused me of ignoring one of my underlying principles. I saw that as an attack on my character.
I’ve been told this before, that someone was just trying to inspire me to be better. So I’ll give similar advice: if that’s you’re intent, say that from the outset. And then don’t take an antagonistic position. Offer advice in how to actually shore up the argument.
I still say that saying you’re here to “slap sheep” is an admission of trolling. It’s saying you’re here to hurt people, rather than debate. Following that with the utterly inexcusable use of a mental illness to attack people only reinforces that.
I’m very much hoping the new rules will include not being able to call someone “mentally ill” as an insult. It’s not quite the same as finding a specific illness you know the person has, but it’s the same sort of thing.
Mental illness is not an attack, any more than it would be to call someone gay or black or whatever. It’s horribly wrong to say that shit.
And someone who won’t apologize even after being told that doesn’t deserve my sympathy. It actually angers me that people are still trying to defend him after this. Again, he told us he was a bad person. We shouldn’t keep acting like he’s just misunderstood.
Perhaps that is the problem. I would say that accusing people of “history by screech” is in fact minimizing whatever it is they are discussing. You can’t bring up that concept “generally”—something in the thread had to be the reason that was brought up.
I can’t agree that arguing something is “genocide minimization” must be off the table, either. That’s a factual claim. It’s like saying that you can’t tell someone that something they said is racist, because they might interpret that as you calling them a racist.
If the problem you have is that what they said came off as minimizing genocide, then no discussion can happen if you can’t express that. It’s inherently a part of it. If you automatically take that to mean they’re calling you a Nazi, then the discussion can’t continue.
Discussions of things like this are inherently uncomfortable. It will involve pointing out that some types of thinking are the underlying problem.
Not to mention —- calling someone mentally ill because they sought therapy is like calling someone unhealthy because they exercise and eat an balanced diet.
Yeah, the “liberals are disconnected from regular people” thing is played out, too. I know that’s an old Dope trope but it’s pretty dumb at this point.
Me? I grew up in rural Arkansas and work in the oil and gas industry in Texas. I have been exposed and continue to be exposed the viewpoints of “ordinary” conservative Americans every day from co-workers, family, and a few friends. I daresay that’s true for many if not most posters here. Exposure to opposing viewpoints is not exactly in short supply in today’s America.
The idea that bad faith arguments and posters should be given extra tolerance or accorded some special relevance since they are not as common on the board is condescending not only to those who apparently need the additional exposure but also to the board’s conservatives, as if they are special snowflakes who need the special treatment.
As seen very clearly above in the thread, MH at least certainly doesn’t need it.
Maybe I should do that compilation of his posts doing that. But not today, this may be the only dry day in two weeks and while the fields are soggy I could at least get some mowing done.
Do you see the conflict there? I’m not playing word games: there are varieties of simplistic history, and Martin IDd two of them. You need that sort of conceptual building block if you want to have a discussion. So IDing “History by screech”, without pointing fingers is the sort of thing necessary for decent discussion.
The problem with saying Martin minimized genocide was twofold:
a) He added plenty of caveats to avoid giving that impression,
b) When he challenged people to back up their claim, they couldn’t.
Implying somebody is a Nazi is a big deal. Doing so without substantiation is a bigger deal. There are ways to say that Martin’s argument tends to dismiss the importance of cultural genocide (something which on balance I don’t agree with) while adding appropriate caveats and context.
Has Martin hit below the belt in the Pit? Yes. Have others made cheap shots on Martin before that? I believe so. Is characterizing someone’s argument as not taking cultural genocide seriously enough fair game? Sure. I’m not objecting to that.
Like I said, I’m wary of bad faith arguments made by movement conservatives. Ordinary arguments are another matter. Look, most casual and not-so-casual readers of the news are going to equate genocide with murder. Martin in fact didn’t do that: he acknowledged up front that cultural genocide was a thing, and a bad thing. He mangled his history a little, but we’re here to fight ignorance and that’s the sort of thing that deserves factual correction more than brickbats.
thorny_locust: Does Martin give sufficient weight to cultural genocide? I would guess not. But his posts are full of caveats that Native Americans have indeed been subject to mistreatment. That means that discussion is in order more than pitchforks. Furthermore, if you want to pit Martin for that that, you should acknowledge the attempts he made to qualify his arguments.
…nope. We don’t need to engage with people who have ordinary median American sentiments (AKA white people). We can tell them to fuck the fuck right off and that’s perfectly fine. And if someone like Martin is peddling outright genocide denial then “shouting it down as genocide minimization” is the very least I would expect from genuine allies.
I’m an indigenous person that isn’t even allowed to post in the thread about the death of thousands of indigenous children and you are here passionately posting in defence of the free speech of that guy?
You can fuck the fuck right off as well.
Civility is a tool of white supremacy. And Martin wields it so effectively here that you can’t even see what he has been doing. This was his first post in the original thread.
Martin posted on a subject he conceded he was deeply unfamiliar with. He talked about how the limited reporting he saw made it sound ominous but cast doubt there was substance to the allegations.
He thinks that this thing that he admits he knows nothing about sounds awful. Then proceeds to write word-after-word concocting fantasy scenarios that are at odds with all the evidence he hasn’t bothered to read.
Saying that this is being dismissive of genocide is being polite. Because after that Martin doubled down, then tripled down in thread-after-thread, and then finally took the mask off in this thread.
This isn’t Martin being ignorant of the facts. He knows exactly what he is doing. He masks it by writing lots of words and caveats and being polite. It is counter-productive to engage with Martin on his own terms. It is unhelpful for indigenous people to be told by people like you that it is “important to engage with people who have ordinary median American sentiments.” As if we haven’t been trying to do that for fucking ever.