michael smith: <> In fact it's next to impossible to win an argument when you're right. <> Set <> against commonplace error, truth is as David to Goliath. <>
loved pollak's analysis. perfect. it's why, although hitch never mattered to me ( i never would have heard of him had I not started riding the internet), he irritated me: he was more concerned with winning. Which was kind of scary because Orwell was about exposing how rhetoric works in the hands of people primarily concerned about winning. Plus, perhaps it is a good quality for someone on our side when their object is a shared enemy. but when he turned against the left and activities antithetical to our causes, he was our enemy because he destroyed any possibility of solidarity. you want to destroy that possibility with the enemy, you don't with your allies.
as lb08325 pointed out, the cool thing about Graeber's idealistic portrayal of direct action is that it is supposedly about putting your opponent's argument in the best light possible. With Hitchen's it was always about putting it in the worst. You can't repair the damage done by that sort of "argument" - ever. It's one of those things I've described as rude: it tells your interlocutor you have zero respect for him. That's a broken way to operate among your allies. In the end, the person who puts their opponents arguments in the worst light possible is toxic waste ravaging solidarity among the left.
I think, as Carrol once said, the important thing is to be able to switch back and forth. Turn the savage and vicious concern with nothing but winning only to the enemy, turn it off when talking to your ally. If you can only ever see your allies as people deserving of the same tactics as an enemies, something has gone terribly wrong and the attachment to "the left" IINO.
As for your comment about truth, I'm starting to think you are right about that.
What to do about it? What does it mean for political activity?