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* Re: [lbo-talk] 9/11 nuttery
* Re: [lbo-talk] 9/11 nuttery
* Re: [lbo-talk] 9/11 nuttery
* Re: [lbo-talk] 9/11 nuttery
=========== Message 1 =========== Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] 9/11 nuttery
At around 8/9/06 12:41 pm, mike larkin wrote:
> */ravi <gadfly at exitleft.org>/* wrote:
>
> At around 8/9/06 11:01 am, Michael Pugliese wrote:
> > On 9/8/06, mike larkin wrote:
> >
> >> it's thoroughly dejecting how many of these people you meet when
> >> you travel in left circles.
> >
> > ... absolute loony tunes.
> >
>
> It's funny, the language you guys use. Almost exactly the same words
> used by right-wingers and centrists to describe leftists. Is it any
> wonder that the general population instinctively distrusts our claims
> and goals? Someone pointed out that 36% of the population believes there
> is more to the 9/11 story. Your response is to (implicitly) call them
> nuts, equating error with idiocy (this too, Dwayne, is what I mean by
> scientism).
>
> --ravi
>
> Let me say clearly that anyone who believes the 9/11 conspiracy
> theories is a f**king wacko.
>
This from a guy who can't get his quoting right in his email?! ;-) Be that as it may, you have not defined what "9/11 conspiracy theory" is, so the fucking wackos you are referring to may be non-existent. Which may be a good thing -- calling someone a fucking wacko to their face might earn an unpleasant beating, in some parts outside Internet mailing lists!
=========== Message 2 =========== Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] 9/11 nuttery
At around 8/9/06 1:51 pm, joanna wrote:
> Fuck you Michael.
>
Methinks someone needs to! ;-) (apologies to Da Pug for humour at his expense)
=========== Message 3 =========== Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] 9/11 nuttery
At around 9/9/06 6:59 pm, Chuck wrote:
> ravi wrote:
>
>> And what is that analysis? That anyone who thinks (not JThorn or CB)
>> that the guys are dumb and hence couldn't have flown planes is motivated
>> by racism? Or is effectively racist? That is not analysis.
>
> My opinion or analysis versus your opinion or analysis.
>
I don't claim to have an analysis, at least not one that claims to understand the internal motivation of some group.
> That is a
>> claim. What analysis can you offer to back that up? On what grounds do
>> you justify this analysis?
>
> I've articulated those grounds on iterations of the 9/11 thread. If you
> want to insist on making this a personal exchange, I invite you to
> research the list archives.
What makes this a personal exchange? I am interested in your analysis. A search of the archives will also show that I have responded to every one of your relevant posts on the previous thread on this matter. It would help if you came out and repeated your thesis, especially if it is different from what I have written above (anyone who thinks that the guys are dumb .... is motivated by racism).
>
> Especially given that one black, one red, and
>> one brown guy (CB and JThorn are dealing with the issue of US Govt
>> involvement, I am extending the discussion to include the question of
>> whether these guys were capable of doing this) on this list don't find
>> these questions racist nor do they think their community will think so.
>> Perhaps we need an actual Arab to pipe in -- though note that some of
>> the hijackers were Pakistani, not Arab.
>
> This is groundbreaking news. You are arguing that only people of color
> on this list can have opinions on what racism is and what is racist
> about 9/11 conspiracy theories. That's pretty stupid. Anybody on this
> list has a right to talk about racism.
>
Stupid? And you are worried about this becoming personal?? I am not arguing that only people of colour can have opinions on what racism is. I am arguing that anyone who claims something is racism should be able to demonstrate how so. One problem they will encounter is the contradicting fact that on a list of 100s of members, it is the brown, black and red guy who don't see the racism. That alone does not make the claim of racism wrong. But since we are not working with formal logic here, it does pose a significant block.
Anybody on this list has a right (though as CB pointed out, it doesn't seem to make much sense to introduce 'rights' into this) to talk about anything that Doug wishes to humour. Whether they make sense while doing so is another matter. For instance, to say that questioning of the 9/11 story (even on the basis of the assumption that the hijackers seem dumb) is "racism" lacks sense without further reasoning being offered.
>> It would be a good thing to get past some of the confusion in this
>> discussion. JThorn's (and perhaps also CB's) point seems to be that it
>> is valid to question if the US govt could have enabled this, without
>> making any assumption about the intelligence of these guys. It would be
>> strange to call that position racist. I mentioned that from what I had
>> read these guys do not seem bright enough to fly a sophisticated plane
>> into very specific targets. It is a huge leap to conclude that this is a
>> form of racism (i.e., a statement about a very small set of individuals
>> is a statement about the race/group they belong to. In another post I
>> called this the soft bigotry of high expectations). Finally, there are
>> probably some white people who offer the same thoughts/questions. Is
>> that racism? The burden of proving such a far-reaching claim lies on
>> those applying that label. AFAICT that burden has not been met even
>> half-way.
>
> I'm making my argument as Chuck0, not as a white person.
>
Sure, and I am interested in hearing what that argument is. The white people I am referring to above is not a reference to you. Let me try again: X says hijackers (of group A) may have been to stupid to pull this off. Y says that's racism because it assumes A are dumb. Now whether this claim (that what X says is racist or not) is true or false hinges, it seems to me, heavily on two things: (a) the status and intent of X, and (b) the validity and reasoning offered by Y.
Y has two problems:
1) X turns out (both in the concrete case here: X = ravi) to be a member of group A or related group B. Further (it is claimed) other members of groups C and D (similar to A, w.r.t issue of racism), and perhaps even A, agree with X's opinion. It is difficult therefore for Y's claim of 'racism' to be valid (for the same reasons that a black person calling another black person 'n-word' is not racism) without use of further psychoanalytical devices, such as the 'X is a self-hating A' or the 'X, as a member of suppressed group {A|B|C|D} has bought into the master narrative' arguments.
2) Y's leap from a statement about a tiny group (hijackers) to an intent/motive about an entire population (A) is ill-reasoned. After all, there are dumb people (defining dumbness in some limited sense here) in all groups. For example, in your quoted text above, you called me 'stupid'. I assume though that that does not imply that you are a racist because you consider all brown people stupid!
> I'm referring
> to criticisms that I've read in the past that addressed the UFO
> movement's racist dismissal of the agency of people who built the
> pyramids and other ancient structures. I don't think that the 9/11
> movement is racist, but there are some racist assumptions underlying
> some of their theories, especially the ones that try to argue that 19
> Arab terrorists didn't skyjack four planes and crash them into buildings.
Well, what are these racist assumptions? If the claim is that the Arabs did not hijack the planes, then the 9/11 theory being offered has nothing to do with Arabs at all (since it excludes them from the event), which makes it even more difficult to term it racist against Arabs.
=========== Message 4 =========== Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] 9/11 nuttery
At around 8/9/06 12:03 pm, Jordan Hayes wrote:
> Ravi says:
>
>> Someone pointed out that 36% of the population believes there
>> is more to the 9/11 story.
>
> Er ... let's not get carried away. Here's the quotation again:
>
>>> A Scripps-Howard poll of 1,010 adults last month found
>>> that 36% of Americans consider it "very likely" or
>>> "somewhat likely" that government officials either
>>> allowed the attacks to be carried out or carried out
>>> the attacks themselves.
>
> http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1531304,00.html
>
> There's a huge gap between "there's more to the story" and "it's
> somewhat or very likely that the US Government either allowed the
> attacks to be carried out or carried out the attacks themselves" ...
>
> A HUGE gap.
>
Yes but a gap of what kind? Your quote shows that 36% of the population believes something **stronger** than what I write! So, if 36% of the population believes [somewhat or very much] that the USG either allowed or participated in the attacks, then they surely believe that there is more to the [current] story.
For the sake of completeness I will add: IMHO, "allowed" is a stronger word than "negligent" (negligence being the most damning criticism, AFAIK, raised against the USG in the mainstream i.e., current story) i.e., "allowed" admits to intention. Whether the 36% was aware of this or not, is another argument ;-).
Do you guys just mess around with me for the fun of it?! ;-)
--ravi
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