See response below...
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-----Original Message-----
From: Shane Mage [mailto:shmage at pipeline.com]
Sent: Tue 10/14/2003 10:37 PM
Cc:
Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] Re: recall, camejo vote
Chip Berlet wrote:
"So, I conclude from your statement that it does not matter to you if
a claim is backed by facts or not, as long as it supports your
position?"
You claim that the election fraud article is not backed by facts?
Your evidence? When I challenged you on that this afternoon you
didn't make any effort to reply. So I repeat my post:
Chip Berlet wrote:
>I did not say that and I do not think that. What I said was that
>particular article was a lot of hot air with little evidence and
>lots of conspiracist speculation. What I am asking for is less
>credulity and more evidence.
Are you claiming that the author of this article is *wrong*
about the Nebraska, Florida, and Georgia elections? Are
you claiming an innocent motivation for the refusal to
provide an audit trail for touch-screen votes? If so,
what is *your* evidence?
Shane Mage
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Hi,
Shane, I did not mean to insult you by not replying, I was conserving my post limit to stay in another conversation. As it was, I was one message over for yesterday.
There is little point in our having a discussion since we have two distinct and mutually exclusive worldviews. We have already established this in previous discussions.
What I find most telling is that you and others I call conspiracist seem to be unaware or unimpressed by the fallacies of logic which are, to me, the bedrock of investigative journalism. I teach an investigative research and reporting workshop at the Z Magazine Media Institute most summers, usually with Holly Sklar or Abby Scher or another journalist/scholar.
We always include a segment on the fallacies of logic. So I am not being patronizing when I argue that if you refuse to see that the fallacies of logic are important in investigative journalism, then there is no point in having another discussion.
But since you want a response, here it is.
When a set of facts are grouped together and used as the basis for a set of conclusions that are not justified by those facts, or which violate one or more of the rules of logic, then the text is not investigative journalism but gossip. This gossip is often in the form of apocalyptic conspiracism in which the author claims some special knowledge or analysis that "the people" need to know in order to "expose" the secret plot by the elite parasites who run everything.
When I point out that a particular article is, in fact, full of unsupported assertion, it does not mean that I claim that there are no individual facts in the article, or even that I disagree with the core premise of the conclusion. What I am arguing in this specific case, is that there are many articles that treat this subject of voting machine problems and potential manipulation in a serious way and do NOT violate the rules of logic and are NOT filled with conspiracist assertion; and that therefore these other articles are more appropriate and useful to circulate as a way to mobile people into action.
Here is the catch. It is, in fact, the hyperbolic conspiracist assertion of a vast plot that attracts people who ignore the fallacies of logic and embrace a particular text because through a toxic confluence of credulity and cynicism they want to believe EVERY claim that portrays a sinister government and a subversive plot by parasitic elites.
This is not a class analysis, or an analysis based on any kind of structural, institutional, or systemic analysis. Anti-elite populist conspiracism creates a frame of a handful of wicked bad guys wrecking the country and the solution is not changing society in any fundamental way but "the people" rising up and casting off the corrupt elites. This is an anti-progressive frame. This is a frame that, often inadvertently, helps build right-wing mass movements--this was the frame used by the victor in the recent California election.
By combining research, logic, and an analytical frame based on some sort of structural, institutional, or systemic analysis, we all can help build a progressive movement. It doesn't matter if the analytical model you use is class, race, gender, queer studies, critical race feminism, opposing ableism--what matters is that the analytical model looks at how power and privilege are actually used to create supremacy and oppression in the society.
Anti-elite populist conspiracism misdirects activists away from an understanding of power and privilege.
It is not up to "the people" to "connect the dots," it is up to the reporter to connect the dots. If the reporter cannot connect the dots, then the article is probably not worth publishing. If a reporter has connected most of the dots, some speculation--identified as such--is appropriate.
In one of his books, G. William Domhoff devotes a chapter to explaining the difference between power structure research into elite power and conspiracy theory. Domhoff and I get together about one a year at sociology conferences and talk about this as problem that hinders progressive work. Domhoff, C. Wright Mills, Holly Sklar, Joe Conason, Abby Ferber, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Abby Scher, Martin A. Lee--these are writers who do serious power structure research. There are plenty of other reporters and writers whose work is substantial and follows the rules of logic.
Why, then, defend work that is substandard? How does this advance progressive work? Are we to be known as the social movement that doesn't care about the quality of our arguments? What kind of democracy gets built on the basis of misinformed consent? If we complain that elites try to manipulate us through propagandistic claims and frames, then why would we be ethical if we used equally propagandistic claims and frames to criticize them?
But if none of this seems important to you, let me try a different way to explain the problem as I see it. Consider this:
You want to drive to California from New York in a car that has giant posters on the outside calling for free universal health care, and you want to arrive at a rally in California in two weeks for the car to be in a motorcade.
A friend has two cars. Both have the posters. One is a one-year-old car with a high rating from the Consumer Reports auto guide to reliable used cars. The other is a ten-year-old car with a low rating from the Consumer Reports auto guide to reliable used cars. In fact, this older car has bald tires and an intermittent problem with the gas line.
"It doesn't matter to me," you exclaim, "they both have the posters!"
To me the issue is getting to the rally. I'll take the reliable car.
Chip Berlet
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