Call for investigation of Left HATEKeepers (and Right HATEKeepers, too)
Probably most people who have studied unofficial 911 literature are familiar with the idea of a left gatekeeper. If you don't, remember that Google is your friend.
However, I see recurring evidence of what amounts to HATEKeeping. By this I mean, smear type of rhetoric, broadly applied to an entire group, that paints them as hateful. The net effect of this is that it serves to divide the public, by encouraging primitive, emotional, tribablistic 'thinking' about the evil other. It thus inhibit real communication, which could lead to united political action (say, e.g., against the clear and present danger of plutocracy).
I'm sorry that I don't have the time to develop this idea, more. I will make a few more points, and hope that I inspire somebody to look more carefully into this.
Points:
1) Imputing hatred to others is just one way to generate hatred for the others. There's also speaking of the others in a contemptuous tone of voice. This is certainly done a great deal on the radio, by right-wing gasbags such as Rush Limbaugh, and a misanthrope I've heard in the NYC area called Bob Grant.
2) I take imputing racism to be essentially the same as imputing hatred. Again, I am talkig about imputing racism to an entire group, not specific individuals within that group.
3) What's got me wondering about deliberate attempts at HATEKeeping is
a) my observation that left leaning web sites and blog seem utterly fixated on the Tea Party, freely calling them racists (as well as "affluent", an easily refuted lie.) Lefty websites have also regularly accused Tea Partiers of being Republican bots, though survey data show a clear tendency to favor a new 3rd party, compared to an average American. While there's no question that the Tea Parties (after the Ron Paul phase) have benefited from injections of cash, including from billionaires like the Koch brothers, and common sense tells you that Republican-leaning fatcats would love to coopt the Tea Parties, evidence proving cooption at the local level of Tea Parties is rarely mentioned; in fact, I don't recall anything said about the governance of local Tea Parties, ever, in the lefty smear-job treatments of the Tea Party. (You can, of course, try to coopt locally governed groups, but it's much, much harder. That is one reason, I believe, that WeArechange has pushed for local governance.)
Another annoying aspect of the smearing of Tea Partiers as bots is that the lefty web sites that make these charges seem incapable, or unable, to apply a similar standard to lefty groups such as MoveOn. While MoveOn has made a few moves in the direction of opening up their governance to member input, they're still not there, and furthermore have been exposed as members of the group of coopted Lefty groups known as the Veal Pen.
b) exposure of the "JournOList" suggests a willingness to mis-apply charges of racism, for purely political reasons
c) with rare exception, (Medea Benjamin of Code Pink being the key one), prominent lefty figures don't bother trying to interview large numbers of Tea Partiers, to see if any of their complaints are legitimate, whether there's room to work with them, etc. (Benjamin found about 30% of Tea Partiers were anti-war, and, while originally intending to go into Tea Party territory to mock them, her encounters forced a moderation of her views.)
The net/net is that readers of lefty blogs and shows like Keith Olbermann's are being conditioned to hate Tea Partiers.
4) Oh, yeah. Here's another conspiracy theory angle to this.
If you look at the voting records for a) the dismantling of Glass-Steagall during the Clinton Administration and b) the law which capped liability for offshore drilling at $75 million, you will see near unanimous, final approval by BOTH Dems AND Repubs.
Well, the former made the financial blowout virtually inevitable, and the latter greatly increased the odds of the BP oil disaster in the gulf.
So, Americans should be FURIOUS at both the Dems and Repubs, not a one of whom, AFAIK, have apologized for the above-mentioned votes, offered to resign, etc. But instead, Americans' attention was diverted by vehement Tea Partiers and their vehement detractors.
Cui bono?
I think most people participating in broad-brush, irrational hate-imputing or hate-inspiring rhetoric, on both the left and right, are useful idiots or (in the case of paid media figures) opportunists. However, I can't help but wonder if this process isn't helped along by COINTELPRO operatives.
I think that if I was an evil genius COINTELPRO type of puppeteer, I'd be laughing my head off at the dupes of the left, right, and center vis-a-vis HATEKeeping.
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Finally, I'd like to give a shout-out to the ProgressiveRadioNetwork.com, which allows political commentary from a wide cross-section of political thought, and yet doesn't encourage smearing of political opponents. My favorite radio program on that internet station is that of founder Gary Null, who has covered 911. You can also hear Carol Brouillet, and others, discussing 911 Truth topics.
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DailyKos as a Left HATEKeeper
Here is a current diary at dailykos, called The crucial difference between us and them
I left a rather pointed comment to this diary, which I ended with:
I.e., the diary wasn't as absurd if the above 3 lines were equalities, rather than inequalities.
You are right. Unfortunately saying "left-Gatekeepers"
pushes the very same divisiveness which you are saying you don't like the dems and repubs doing. You are totally right about how the right and the left are both made politically impotent after they spend all their time "hating" on the other side. So, when it comes to 9/11 truth, I encourage the same standard you suggest above for the Dems and Repubs. This means that since terms like "left-gatekeeper" or any kind of names like that are conducive to alienating and insulting (to the point where some might refer to the terms as "hating"), 9/11 Truth must eliminate them from our presentation.
My personal experience with name calling:
I used to be very fond of dropping the term "left-gatekeeper." This term was pushed into my vocabulary heavily by webster tarpley and barrie zwicker at the time. What those two men did in particular was take the cynical energy building inside me and push me to use it against the 9/11 truth movement. Their cynicism was so very seductive for it not only spoke to my anger and growing frustrations with activism but also my laziness (ie. no need to go out and try talking to the anti-war left, they are all just gatekeeping anyway. Wow thats a lot of work off my back!). Getting jaded and beginning to assume that most on the "left" were "controlled" or "co-opted by funding" was a huge mistake on my part. Lots of friends who started to open up about 9/11 immediately shut off to me when I began calling people like Amy Goodman a "gatekeeper" I stopped reaching out to the anti-war left for a time as well which is actually THE group of people that 9/11 truth overall has the most in common with. Not only that but the anti-war left are a far more mainstream and powerful force which have a lot more money. We share a strong willed sense open-mindedness and justice. These parallels go on and on of course! It is also obvious that if one were to have committed the crimes of 9/11, one would most certainly benefit from keeping those pushing for 9/11 truth and the anti-war left from working together and respecting each other. Referring to someone who reads the alt. media or works for them "left-gatekeeper" is just as false as calling someone who asks questions about 9/11 a "conspiracy theorist." It lumps a huge group of people who do not at all share the same views together in a way that is not only bias, but also illogical and derogatory . We as 9/11 truthers do not want such generalizations made about us and are very quick to point out how false these generalizations (ie calling us theorists, cooks, nuts) are. This is exactly why we must not succumb to the seduction of apathetic cynicism by broad brush name calling. We are the anti-war left and the anti-war movement. Time to show the alt. media and the left that we are both trying to build the same bridge.
Hmm, that's an interesting take
I've gotten very annoyed at people who want to dismiss Noam Chomsky or Amy Goodman, due to left gatekeeping concerns. It's annoying because it seems unfair - how can you ignore the body of their work and dismiss that, no matter how strongly you feel about 911? It's also annoying because they may not consciously be gatekeeping, or not doing so because of willful collusion with the broader forces that push for this.
So, I think it's important to distinguish between the phenomenology of left gatekeeping, and making unprovable allegations about somebody's intentions.
Having said that, it seem to me to be too important a concept not to spread widely. I suppose the take-away from your comment is to be sensitive to your audience, especially if they're left-leaning, and make an effort not to be unfair or presumptuous about somebody's motives.
BTW, I assume that calling attention to left hatekeeping will also result in strong pushback. However, I don't know how to side-step the anger, much, except not to be too shrill or sarcastic. In one diary I responded to, where I countered the notion of Tea Partiers as being complete dupes of the Koch brothers, with data showing their greater-than-average desire for a new third party, I was called "hysterical". Truth be told, I was very sarcastic - I'm afraid that the cumulative effect of reading seemingly endless smears of Tea Partiers was talking.
Well, I'll have to keep an eye on my tendency to be sarcastic.
you say "Phenomenology of Gatekeeping"
This is not phenomenal to 9/11 truth or any subject. Spreading it widely as a new and important concept as you suggest unfortunately will always make one sound presumptuous and audacious. Just saying that people are "gatekeeping" implies so much about a a person's specific intention, and generalizes their views so much, that it is almost ALWAYS going to sound like:
'i know something you don't know,' oh yea and those who are skeptical of me and about ('the thing i know, that you don't yet cause you listen to these gatekeepers') are "----wing gatekeepers!" Gatekeepers have no value and are wasting your time, holding back YOUR knowledge cause they won't tell you about this thing that 'I' know about!
Push this idea on someone about their favorite newscaster, or blog, or source of information and watch that someone close their mind to ANY ideas you have.
I think that left gatekeeping is too important to make a taboo
discussion topic. If somebody's hero is being discussed in conjunction with the topic, you can just make observations about how dismissive poo-pooing by Hero A resulted in the marginalization of the topic at hand, because Hero A is an opinion leader (say, in the case of Chomsky) or an information conduit (say, in the case of Amy Goodman). If you see that somebody can't handle this, then you can drop the subject.
Anyway, the main subject here is Left HATEKeeping, not Left gatekeeping. Do you have any opinion as to whether that should be further investigated?
To me, lefty hate keepers on blogs, as well as right hate keepers that have proliferated on talk radio, are extremely damaging to democracy. They need to be called out, and their lies (whether conscious or not) need to be pointed out, and this should be tied in to the concept of divide and conquer.
Agree, or disagree?
Alternet is filled with "hate keeping"
and it is as obvious as it is consistent. Many of the commenters bemoan it in the comments section, too.
All part of the partisan false left-right paradigm used to divide and control the population.
Imo, hate keeping and gate keeping should be discussed as often as necessary.
Having personally spoken to Amy Goodman more than once I have concluded that she is just plain terrified of the subject of 9/11. Whether this is due to her own ptsd from the day or some other, later external threat or her own discomfort with where chasing the 9/11 rabbit may lead, I don't know. I think the best thing to do now is just keep educating her audience and hope that eventually she follows them (us).
As for Noam Chomsky, I'm sorry but I have to conclude that he is an active gatekeeper, either because he is a mockingbird asset or because he believes that "conspiracy theories" belong to the right wing and as an eastern establishment lefty he could never endorse any kind of "conspiracy theory" without undermining his life's work and place in the political spectrum. In any case, his refusal to even look into the evidence that 9/11 was a false flag is the most absurd anti-intellectual stance this alleged intellectual could take (and I was a big fan of his for 20 years).
Once again, this does not mean that we should revile him. Instead, let's continue to educate his audience and perhaps one day he will follow them or become even more irrelevant that he already is.
Please always choose civil discourse, no matter how nasty or ignorant your adversary is.
Let the public face of the global 9/11 truth movement be one of civility and reason, always.
This is how we turn any possible negative interaction with a suspected "gatekeeper" into at least a net neutral impression with our main audience, the general public ("Man, those truthers sure are persistent, but at least they are civil").
Cheers!
The truth shall set us free. Love is the only way forward.
Amy Goodman
Pfgetty --> "Having personally spoken to Amy Goodman more than once I have concluded that she is just plain terrified of the subject of 9/11. Whether this is due to her own ptsd from the day or some other, later external threat or her own discomfort with where chasing the 9/11 rabbit may lead, I don't know. I think the best thing to do now is just keep educating her audience and hope that eventually she follows them (us)."
LeftWright personally spoke to Amy Goodman.. and there you have one possible answer: she's terrified.... Had you called her (I'm not saying it would have been successful, she might have hung up on you, who knows)... this may have been your conclusion also.
As for Noam Chomsky: 911blogger is littered with discussion about him, but I'm impressed with this comment in particular.
As hateful and deprecatory Chomsky's comments about the 9/11 truth movement are, I think the chances Chomksy is a 'mockingbird asset' are slim. Ask yourself what would become of the American empire project if Chomsky had anything to say about it. That position is so incompatible with that of the PTB, there is almost no possibility anybody would want to deliberately unleash that kind of intellectual assault on foreign policy over a period of about 50 years merely because such an academic could then be leveraged as an 'asset'. These accusations merit proof, not just suspicion.
There are plenty of blatant mockingbird assets, in fact professional hate mongers and jingoist parrots out there. One of them is Glenn Beck. Beck is an establishment disinfotainment pimp. His soul cost 50 million dollars.
Ah, speaking of the clownish Glenn Beck
I saw a fascinating video clip of him, recently (within the last 2 months), where I would have agreed with everything (or almost everything) he said, EXCEPT for the fact that, everywhere I would have used the word "plutocrat" or "bankster", he used the word "progressive". I mean, he was even talking about the Federal Reserve System, but somehow "progressives" get blamed for it!
If you took what he said, and changed the word "progressive" to "bankster", you'd be hard pressed to tell whether or not it was Alex Jones who said it, instead of Glen Beck. I couldn't escape the distinct impression that this was completely calculated. I mean, who could take seriously the notion of Alan Greenspan or Robert Rubin as a "progressive"? So, Beck is not just relying on the ignorance of his audience - he could have stuck to the usual smorgasbord of righty smears and distortions of the left, if he had wanted to. No, he's up to something.
Beck, of course, is a right hatekeeper. (Though, like most righties, he doesn't use the word "hate" nearly as much as the left hatekeepers do. A righty Xkeeper is more likely to make something up out of whole cloth, it seems to me.)
Maybe his disinfo role is partly to make lefties associate legitimate subjects like the fractional reserve with nutty righties. IOW, he is muddying the waters, and thus getting a two-fer. On the one hand, he's reinforcing hating/loathing/contempt for the Left amongst righties, and OTOH he is setting up lefties to associate real conspiracies and hidden agendas with their righty foes.
They all need exposing. Even if they're useful idiots, they're just as highly damaging to democracy as some neo-mockingbird asset.
To aspiring authors out there: Please note that a) this has elements of a blockbuster who-dunnit and b) a lot of independents are already well beyond foolish left/right dichotomizing. IOW, you could perform a public service, follow your natural career proclivities, and maybe make a lot of $$ in the process of exposing these creeps.
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Final note: the Left/Right paradigm is not completely an illusion, of course. The genesis of liberalism goes back to the Enlightenment, and I, for one, am very glad that the Enlightenment came along. I actually think the Church has better insights into some non-temporal issues, but it's also true that the Church had degenerated to - pardon the phrase - a god-awful level. I don't think there's any doubt that the Enlightenment has made the churches (and religious conservatives) more humane, even if I, personally, think that people relying on their own mental constructs, no matter how idealistic, is asking for trouble.
Well, I believe that "intuition is the mind of the soul", and that's useful for knowing which religious propositions on the one hand, and which 17th century philosophical principles (or their 20th century bastardizations) one can profit by paying attention to, and which should be ignored...