Via OTB, I see that Kos has decided to rid his site of the lunatic fringe:
Today I did something I’ve never done before (not even during the Fraudster mess), and wish I’d never had to do.
I made a mass banning of people perpetuating a series of bizarre, off-the-wall, unsupported and frankly embarassing conspiracy theories.
I have a high tolerance level for material I deem appropriate for this site, but one thing I REFUSE to allow is bullshit conspiracy theories. You know the ones — Bush and Blair conspired to bomb London in order to take the heat off their respective political problems. I can’t imagine what f—ing world these people live in, but it sure ain’t the Reality Based Community.
So I banned these people, and those that have been recommending diaries like it. And I will continue to do so until the purge is complete, and make no mistake — this is a purge.
The right wing of the blogosphere is agog, with the usual condemnations and/or statements “I used to read Kos, but…” I still read Kos. Every day. I even have a handle there- ‘John not Juan Cole,” for the obvious reasons. In fact, I read as many lefty sites (perhaps more) than I do righty sites, if only to keep up on what is going on on the other side of the fence.
Do I agree with Kos? On about one out of every 15 issues, he and I see eye to eye on things, and that hasn’t changed since back in the days when the Daily Kos was a wee tiny site and it was me, Tacitus, Steve Soto, Glenn Kinen (whatever happened to Glenn?), Kos, and a few others flailing away at each other mercilessly. Like James Joyner, I also wrote for Kos’s other site at the time, the Political State Report.
I stopped visiting both at some point, but went back a couple months after I went hopping mad insane at Kos for the whole “screw ’em” imbroglio. Other than the usual partisan vitriole I dished out during the election years, that was the one time I was so damned angry I thought I was going to have a heart attack.
At any rate, do I find the comments section at Kos to be a swirling fetid cesspool? Sometimes. Same goes for Little Green Footballs. And every damned forum I can think of, including here. But I don’t blame Kos or Armando or Hunter, and I don’t blame Charles Johnson. I do blame myself, because I go off the damned deep end too much.
The point of this post was not a trip down memory lane, but to just note that they are cleaning house over there. Good. One Democratic Underground, one What Really Happened (aka Jews Really Did It!), and one anti-war.com is enough. If you are a Republican, and you want to know what the other side is thinking, you should be reading the Daily Kos, and not just dismissing it as evil leftist trope.
Rick
You? The Deep End? Never noticed.
BTW, in your kook rundown, you forgot to mention Free Republic. I think it kind of gave ol’ Raimondo his pre-blogging days start in picking up an audience. OTOH, it balanced that boner with the good of launching Iowahawk’s “career.”
Cordially…
Jimmy Jazz
I’m glad they’re getting rid of the kooks. Some of that crap was pretty painful to slog through.
KC
As I mentioned yesterday, I have a friend who just recently got into the 911-was-a-government-conspiracy garbage. So, it felt good for me to see you knock that “the Jews knew it” asshole a good one, John. It feels even better to see that Kos is actually cleaning out his site. Frankly, these conspiracy nuts disgust me. Loosely alligned allegations that play upon people’s political prejudices only make matters worse when it comes to getting at the truth.
Joel
Good for Kos. I’m sure he’s going to take some heat for this from all sides, but it’s the right move. I’m a proud lefty but the undercurrent of conspiracy mongering on my side since 9/11 has been a continuous source of irritation for me. Hell I even read an article in Z Magazine decrying the prevalence of conspiracy theories amongst the left post 9/11, along with similar articles in the Nation among other prominent lefty publications. They were right and so is Kos; there should no tolerance for this bullshit. Everyone needs to read this essay at least once: The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter. It concerns itself with the conspiracy theories prevalent amongst the radical right in the 1950’s and 60’s, but is sadly relevent to segments of the left today.
bago
Polemics are entertaining for a while which is why they’re so popular. However polemics with no sense of balance become tiresome, and should be eliminated from the discourse. Especially when they start twisting reality to fit their needs.
And yes, that’s equal criticism for both the conspiracy theorists and the bush administration for changing its recruiting goals to fit its needs, or ending the terrorism report if it doesn’t show the right results.
Intellectual pansies.
jmaier
I second John’s general approach to at least reviewing if not actually engaging with the other side. Recently, I signed up at redstate.org and in addition to reading I’ve had some polite, informative discussions across the aisle, er or “ditch” as it’s referred to there. I’ve found the give and take regarding judicial philosophies as we move toward the SCOTUS nominations particularly useful.
Geek, Esq.
About time. The conspiracy loons are an albatross around our necks.
I half-suspect that the ‘MIHOP’ crowd were buzzing about Klintoon killing Vince Foster during the 90’s.
Marcus Wellby
I don’t mind partisan blogs, but I like rational partisans — not batshit crazy idealogues. Kos and this blog (er, online news magazine) are the only two I can read anymore. Things can get a little crazy in the comments, more so at Kos due to the large number of readers, but the main pages are generaly very good even when I disagree.
This really is the only place where I can read comments from the entire political spectrum. Most places its the choir preaching to itself and the occasional troll who is only there to disrupt.
Beleive me, even the crazies at Kos don’t come close to the lunatics at Free Republic or the “Fuck Bush” school of rhetoric at places like Atrios.
Compuglobalhypermeganet
I used to read Kos, until I was banned for pointing out, in language you could use in church, that Clinton bombed Iraq in 1998 because of their assumed, unproven WMD threat, and that Dean said he hated Republicans. Those historical facts were apparently too much for the Kossacks to deal with, and my posting priveleges were taken away without notice.
I have no patience for a site which constantly pats itself on its fat ass for how open it is (as opposed to those closeminded, censor-happy wingnut sites), and then bans anyone who dares not toe the Far Left Party Line. Talk about an echo chamber.
Mike S
I have no patience for a site which constantly pats itself on its fat ass for how open it is (as opposed to those closeminded, censor-happy wingnut sites), and then bans anyone who dares not toe the Far Left Party Line. Talk about an echo chamber.
Hmm. And yet ultra lefty John Cole is still free to post there. As well as Dovespra from RedState and Winter Patriot, a Republican soldier serving in Iraq. One has to wonder how mush of an A**hole you were to have enough troll ratings for the system, not Markos, to ban you.
Halffasthero
I hadn’t posted for a while so I thought I would check in and make my presence known.
So Kos purged some people. It is his website. He DID walk a dangerous line doing the purges but it is his site he does what he sees fit or necessary.
I do get nervous when people are mocked or questioned for “wrong-thinking” about things. Since I do not know who he purged, though, I can’t question him on whether what he did was right. In any case, I am not sure he would care.
Judging from GWB’s actions while the G-8 leaders were gathered, I am guessing it was a difficult time for him too.
I am still wishing McCain had thumped him and every new mess convinces me he was the far better man.
Jess
This seems like a good opportunity to ask y’all what you think about the left wing-right wing dichotomy. IMO it just doesn’t work as a political road map anymore (if it ever did). It seems to me that the lunitic fringe on both ends of the spectrum have far more in common with one another than with the moderates, and in fact are absolutely dependent on each other to maintain their self-rightous identity and absolutist mind-set. It seems to me that the moderates (defined not so much by how they vote, but how they get there) need to define themselves more assertively as a third way in order to overcome the current polarization. What do you think?
Ralph Gizzip
That doesn’t leave him many commenters, does it.
CaseyL
Jess, you’re absolutely right that the tinhats at either end of the spectrum have more in common with one another than with their supposed political partisans. The only difference is who they blame for the various conspiracies they put forth. That particular type of paranoia is a personality type, not a political one.
You see the same parallels between the anti-pleasure, anti-science religious nutcases on the far-right and the anti-pleasure, anti-science eco nutcases on the far left. Both believe that being human is evil in and of itself; both see humans as scourges upon the planet; both ignore or twist science to justify their opinions. Again: it’s a personality type more than a political one.
I remember being shocked the first time I realized some of the long-haired, free-love, pot-smoking hippie freaks who dropped out of society “because of the war” had wound up as right-wing survivalist militia-loving gun freaks.
Personality and psychology determine whether one is going to be a conspiracy-mongering, humanity-hating nut. All politics does is decide their choice of targets.
And, since so much of pathological psychology seems to be about projection, it’s my guess they’re all operating out of profound self-hatred.
p.lukasiak
Does anyone know if any of these wacky conspiracy theory threads that Kos was deleted actually made it to the “Remcommended Diaries” list?
If they did, then I think Kos did the right thing…. if they didn’t well, I’d say he jumped the gun.
The problem, as many folks at Kos have already noted, is that the Bush administration is so secretive, craven, and dishonest that its difficult to say that there is no depths to which it would not descend. (I mean, seriously, can anyone imagine the whole Plame outing happening in another administration, and the people who outed her still having jobs two years later—because someone told the truth about one of the bogus WMD claims?)
albedo
I don’t know what context it was done in, but I’m glad it was done.
As someone already noted, a lot of the main page diaries on Kos are cogent and informative, but there’s always been just enough of a hysterical fringe to sour the experience. In a lot of diaries, if you dare question how likely it is that, say, there isn’t an all-powerful trilateral commission consisting of Cheney, Satan, and Robot Hitler, you get troll-rated by these jerkoffs.
Actually, that’s why I’ve started coming here. I disagree with a lot of John and the other conservatives’ political views here, but for the most part, this blog seems pretty free of doctrinaire BS on either side. It drives me nuts reading diaries on Kos that turn into backrubbing feel-good parties about how righteous everyone is. I’d rather have an honest argument with someone than a dishonest agreement.
bg
OK, first time using that, but does anyonwe know why my link appears correctly, but take you to Microsoft?
Should take you (trying again) here.
And just in case: http://redstate.org/story/2005/7/8/181848/0502
OK, funny stuff is happening and if I end up posting this twice (bringing me to three posts on the same damn thing), my apologies to all.
Jess
Thanks for your input, CaseyL. I definitely agree. Michael Shermer (occassionally a bit nutty himself, but insightful) has commented on the same phenomenon regarding Holocaust deniers becoming rabid anti-deniers and vice versa. I think it’s high time we jettison the left/right formula and perhaps replace it with a pragmatist/ideologue one (or even better, ditch the whole dichotomy thing entirely).
Compuglobalhypermeganet
The A-hole factor was zero. As I said, no one could’ve possibly been offended by my language, and I insulted no one, despite being consistently insulted myself. I just commented factually on a post, whereupon a few other posters (Kos regulars, I take it), called me a paid operative troll, and I was banned the next day.
Hey, they can have their echo chamber that they want so badly. I don’t miss their tripe. I just wish they wouldn’t self-righteously proclaim to be so openminded.
Phil Smith
Your link doesn’t work because you left in two copies of “http”.
kl
Did you see the update to that post? A true man of principle, he’s now reinstating only those members who go through a rigorous process of asking him.
Bob
Just a point on conspiracy theory:
A conspiracy theory is what a prosecutor pursues when he pursues more than one person in a crime. Almost all great crimes of organized societies are conspiracies. Anti-conspiracism is no-nothingness.
What is the origin of an theory of any criminal behavior? What facts can be brought to a conspiracy theory and what can be held up to disprove it?
For ex, to suggest that if Rove in fact intentionally leaked information about Plame to injure Wilson that George Bush was in the loop is a “conspiracy theory.” It’s based on the presumption that the President of the United States has an IQ higher than room temperature and is not being spoon-fed his breakfast.
But it’s just a theory. It will either be proven, disproven or remain just a theory. Of course, no one has to answer if no one asks the questions.
Conspiracies that proclaim that “The Jews knew this” or “The Jews did that” are transparently false, because thinking people know that’s not the way people behave. Even to say that, say, “Israeli intelligence knew this” suggests that Israeli intelligence is a monolithic creature instead of a bureaucracy filled with different people with different beliefs, different politics, different motives, etc.
Of course, sometimes in espousing a theory there will be ambiguity. Ambiguous theories which are based, for instance, on racism should be mistrusted.
I think the Nazis used the term “alarmist” for those suggesting that “this would lead to this to this” in Nazi Germany. The alarmists, in this case, were right.
I know that the term “conspiracy theory” took a lot of heat from positions of power in the wake of the JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations. After all, you’d have to be crazy to think that people in positions of power would want to use their power to eliminate those whose ideas and movements might threaten their power.
Wacky.