I note, by your reproduction of my intemperate message of 4 August 2020, that you presume to discern my possible motivation for my post of last night, as a reaction to your ‘wrist slap’. It was not, and your impugning of my motivation, is an express breach of Mr Murray’s rules:
“Do not impugn the motives of others, including me.”
As you don’t provide the context of my August 2020 post, and the site doesn’t permit me to search for my posts in order for me to set out the context, I’ll provide a truncated version from memory. I don’t recall the actual topic concerned but a short comment on the topic had resulted in a series of posts all essentially ad hominem attacks on the poster. The failure of moderators to address this led to my engagement with one of the attackers. I accept that my response was rude and I took no issue with the moderation. Indeed, I am happy to apologise for it.
My post in reaction to _N’s situation was motivated by the response to several posters whose posts on N_’s comment included the following:
“You never discussed anything anyway. All you did was lay down spiteful, condescending (and more often than not flat out wrong) posts. We can probably struggle on without them.
Adios, fake Marxist.”
“I’m jolly glad you are leaving. Your summaries are inaccurate to the point of being outright deceptive.”
“you trickster”
“With all N_’s hate speech”
“the apparently fatally wounded ego”
“This would all be very confusing if it wasn’t for the recurrent themes that unify these jokers; conspiracy theory and anti-Semitism.”
So the responders to N_’s post conclude that N_
Never discussed anything (manifestly untrue if you trouble to read N_’ posts
He was spiteful condescending
He was a “fake Marxist” whatever that is
That he was deceptive and a trickster
That his ego had been fatally wounded
That he engaged in hate speak
That he espoused conspiracy theories thereby making him a conspiracy theorist
That the themes that unify some people, clearly including N_, is conspiracy theory and anti-Semitism.
All these comments without any discussion, evidence or argument, by posters who remain unmoderated. Contrast those posts with that of ET timed at 01:23. He disagrees with N_ but he has the decency to argue his case and not rely on invective.
Incidentally, my literary allusion to “the shining path of truth” is taken from Jorges Semprun’s ‘What a Beautiful Sunday’ a novel dealing, inter alia, with his expulsion from the Spanish Communist Party for not blindly following Stalin’s policy. He later ended up in Buchenwald. I commend the book to you.
N_ doesn’t need me or anybody else to defend him; he’s intelligent and articulate enough to speak for himself. What is bemusing however is how the examples given above appear not to have attracted moderation despite the moderator posting:
“For your information N_, in recent days the moderators have deleted some rather robust complaints about your monologues, in case they might lower the tone of debate.”
The moderator clearly didn’t find any of the comments, as set out above, to be lowering the tone of the debate or as personal attacks.
I have no desire to fall out with the moderators, posters or anyone else. Neither do I wish to spend any further of my limited time in arguing the toss. I know how difficult it is to be a forum moderator. I have moderated a forum and know both that this is a voluntary, unpaid, time consuming and emotionally draining exercise. However, like policing, it must be done with consent. For that consent to be forthcoming, the policed and moderated must see, not just read about, policies being fair, equally applied, no guilt by association and nothing that creates the impression of a self-interested clique.
I imagine that, with Mr Murray’s trial commencing this coming week, he’s not and rightly so the least bit interested in these blog issues. I will remain a subscriber to the blog, I will continue to donate to any further appeal for funds and, it goes without saying, that I wish Mr Murray good luck.
In the meantime, I shall continue to read his posts, but not trouble to comment and look forward, with interest, to reading about the ethical framework to be applied on this site. A welcome development.
Warm regards
Ingwe.