It doesn't have to. One comment refuting a contention with clear references to support the refutation is enough to make one's point. There is no stronger position than the truth, as one understands it. And if one is wrong after all, because they misunderstand the facts or they are missing some facts, it's not a loss, but a win, to find out through a, ahem, Frank Exchange of Views.
yea I tried that. I posted links to all my sources as well as opinions from credible human rights organizations. they just play the game of being obtuse to the very end and then gaslight you about needing to backup my opinions as if there weren't at least 2-3 inks for every assertion I make.
one side of this debate is very much NOT acting in good faith because they rely on the status quo being maintained to continue what they are doing
I think that's in part because the sources that were once credible, i.e. NGOs, universities, media, and other cultural institutions, have taken a hit to their own reputation as a result of their institutional capture over the years.
For every article you can find in support of one camp, one could find a counter piece from other credible sources as well (i.e. NYT vs The Economist and The Atlantic). For every NGO one can quote, someone else can quote from someone who've resigned, or once run/founded the very NGO that they're now criticizing (i.e. Danielle Haas, Ira Glasser, Nadine Strossen, Bob Bernstein). You can even pitch the NGOs against one another, such as HRW and Amnesty against the ADL.
Ultimately, bad faith actors are indeed the root cause of the problem. However, I think the bigger problem here is the inability of these bad faith actors to recognize that belong to the very group they're criticizing. If facts were all that mattered, I would expect to see more people expressing more nuanced takes, or express more uncertainty. After all, it would be rather surprising for a consumer of news to hold their view with that much confidence when even the mainstream sources they are relying on is in dispute with one another.
> Ultimately, bad faith actors are indeed the root cause of the problem. However, I think the bigger problem here is the inability of these bad faith actors to recognize that belong to the very group they're criticizing. If facts were all that mattered, I would expect to see more people expressing more nuanced takes, or express more uncertainty.
I don't think it is due to "bad faith actors" at all. I think it is better explained by (1) Israel/Palestine is a really hard problem, one where both sides have done wrong, and the "side" one is on often comes down with which wrong angers you more (which is more a question of subjective emotions than objective reasons), (2) the increasing tribalism and political polarisation of Western (and especially US) society, which gets overlaid on the Israel/Palestine conflict, however roughly (right-leaning people nowadays skew pro-Israel and left-leaning pro-Palestine, although there are an ever-shrinking number of exceptions to both generalisations)
The "bad faith actors" explanation is attractive precisely because it paints the problem as simpler and less intractable than it actually is
>> I think that's in part because the sources that were once credible, i.e. NGOs, universities, media, and other cultural institutions, have taken a hit to their own reputation as a result of their institutional capture over the years.
The part about "institutional capture" is obviously right, but the International Humanitarian Law (IHL) NGOs exist exactly in order to support and promote IHL. And it's a standard that when an IHL NGO speaks out against Israel's actions, Israel's or its supporters' response is to say that the NGOs are Hamas. That's where the main "hit" to those NGOs' reputation has come from.
You can see this tactic also in the defense Israel mounted to South Africa's case at the ICJ, where they basically accused South Africa of being in cahoots with Hamas [1]. In the most extreme form of this "defense", everyone is Hamas. I was watching this interview with Alan Dershowitz [2] where he says Doctors Without Borders have been recruited by Hamas, Unicef and Unesco have become voices for Hamas, and even the climate movement and Greta Thunberg is a mouthpiece for Hamas:
And you know who is not Hamas, and therefore has credibility, according to Alan Dershowitz in the same video? The US State Dept., the UK, "some" of the other European countries, and Germany, and an academic who's a friend of Alan Dershowitz (although he disagrees with him). So, everyone who agrees with Israel's positions has credibility, everyone who disagrees is Hamas.
That is not NGOs lacking credibility because they adopt, say, a left-learning position, it's Israel and Israel's supporters doing their damnedest best to claim that those organisations have no credibility because they speak out against violations of IHL, which is what they exist to do, when it's Israel that violates those.
Well, the same NGOs have no hesitation to condemn Hamas' atrocities and violations of IHL, or the violations of IHL of any other nation-state or non nation-state actor [4]. That's what they constantly do. To quote Andrew Stroehlein, of Human Rights Watch, "If you only care about war crimes when your enemies commit them, then you don't really care about war crimes." [5]
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[1] Ask me if you need a reference to that, I don't have one at hand.
[2] The interviewer in that clip is also extremely partisan, no question about that. Also, it's a vile smear to identify Dershowitz as "Ex-Trump and Epstein lawyer", as if that's all he is.
I wish this was true. It usually leads to those super long reply-battles dang was referring to.
It doesn't have to. One comment refuting a contention with clear references to support the refutation is enough to make one's point. There is no stronger position than the truth, as one understands it. And if one is wrong after all, because they misunderstand the facts or they are missing some facts, it's not a loss, but a win, to find out through a, ahem, Frank Exchange of Views.
yea I tried that. I posted links to all my sources as well as opinions from credible human rights organizations. they just play the game of being obtuse to the very end and then gaslight you about needing to backup my opinions as if there weren't at least 2-3 inks for every assertion I make.
one side of this debate is very much NOT acting in good faith because they rely on the status quo being maintained to continue what they are doing
I think that's in part because the sources that were once credible, i.e. NGOs, universities, media, and other cultural institutions, have taken a hit to their own reputation as a result of their institutional capture over the years.
For every article you can find in support of one camp, one could find a counter piece from other credible sources as well (i.e. NYT vs The Economist and The Atlantic). For every NGO one can quote, someone else can quote from someone who've resigned, or once run/founded the very NGO that they're now criticizing (i.e. Danielle Haas, Ira Glasser, Nadine Strossen, Bob Bernstein). You can even pitch the NGOs against one another, such as HRW and Amnesty against the ADL.
Ultimately, bad faith actors are indeed the root cause of the problem. However, I think the bigger problem here is the inability of these bad faith actors to recognize that belong to the very group they're criticizing. If facts were all that mattered, I would expect to see more people expressing more nuanced takes, or express more uncertainty. After all, it would be rather surprising for a consumer of news to hold their view with that much confidence when even the mainstream sources they are relying on is in dispute with one another.
> Ultimately, bad faith actors are indeed the root cause of the problem. However, I think the bigger problem here is the inability of these bad faith actors to recognize that belong to the very group they're criticizing. If facts were all that mattered, I would expect to see more people expressing more nuanced takes, or express more uncertainty.
I don't think it is due to "bad faith actors" at all. I think it is better explained by (1) Israel/Palestine is a really hard problem, one where both sides have done wrong, and the "side" one is on often comes down with which wrong angers you more (which is more a question of subjective emotions than objective reasons), (2) the increasing tribalism and political polarisation of Western (and especially US) society, which gets overlaid on the Israel/Palestine conflict, however roughly (right-leaning people nowadays skew pro-Israel and left-leaning pro-Palestine, although there are an ever-shrinking number of exceptions to both generalisations)
The "bad faith actors" explanation is attractive precisely because it paints the problem as simpler and less intractable than it actually is
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>> I think that's in part because the sources that were once credible, i.e. NGOs, universities, media, and other cultural institutions, have taken a hit to their own reputation as a result of their institutional capture over the years.
The part about "institutional capture" is obviously right, but the International Humanitarian Law (IHL) NGOs exist exactly in order to support and promote IHL. And it's a standard that when an IHL NGO speaks out against Israel's actions, Israel's or its supporters' response is to say that the NGOs are Hamas. That's where the main "hit" to those NGOs' reputation has come from.
You can see this tactic also in the defense Israel mounted to South Africa's case at the ICJ, where they basically accused South Africa of being in cahoots with Hamas [1]. In the most extreme form of this "defense", everyone is Hamas. I was watching this interview with Alan Dershowitz [2] where he says Doctors Without Borders have been recruited by Hamas, Unicef and Unesco have become voices for Hamas, and even the climate movement and Greta Thunberg is a mouthpiece for Hamas:
https://youtu.be/04ZdRUFITnw?si=T3Y4dUekvv4kfVgr [3]
And you know who is not Hamas, and therefore has credibility, according to Alan Dershowitz in the same video? The US State Dept., the UK, "some" of the other European countries, and Germany, and an academic who's a friend of Alan Dershowitz (although he disagrees with him). So, everyone who agrees with Israel's positions has credibility, everyone who disagrees is Hamas.
That is not NGOs lacking credibility because they adopt, say, a left-learning position, it's Israel and Israel's supporters doing their damnedest best to claim that those organisations have no credibility because they speak out against violations of IHL, which is what they exist to do, when it's Israel that violates those.
Well, the same NGOs have no hesitation to condemn Hamas' atrocities and violations of IHL, or the violations of IHL of any other nation-state or non nation-state actor [4]. That's what they constantly do. To quote Andrew Stroehlein, of Human Rights Watch, "If you only care about war crimes when your enemies commit them, then you don't really care about war crimes." [5]
__________________
[1] Ask me if you need a reference to that, I don't have one at hand.
[2] The interviewer in that clip is also extremely partisan, no question about that. Also, it's a vile smear to identify Dershowitz as "Ex-Trump and Epstein lawyer", as if that's all he is.
[3] Full interview: https://youtu.be/O2UJgI0P-zk?si=fU8hWVszQyu7LJU_
[4] Numerous examples; ask for refs if you need.
[5] https://twitter.com/astroehlein/status/1716111114340049389
So what? People will see your sources and see what the other person writes and they can make up their own minds.
What I have observed is that you refute that actual bullshit with facts and then they come back with some other "whatabout" and new bullshit.
6 replies →