Who are the most annoying ideologues in online forums?

I'm not talking about the ideology you disagree with the most, I'm talking about the type of ideology who gives rise to annoying asshat who disrupts intelligent conversation at the fist opportunity.

For me, it's the Libertarians. They are little more than apologists for unrestrained capitalism, and their worship of Ayn Rand is just plain disturbing.

What do you think?

...and they come in all flavors.

no way.

You can't reason with them. There is just a disconnect that nothing can fathom.

Living such comfortable lifestyles, never knowning any real violence, having the audacity to support overthrow or civil war. Standing in the way of progress that others need to literally be able to live another day. I can't abide anarchists. Complete waste of space as far as I'm concerned.

Anarchists are usually spoiled white brats who are sheltered from the full force of the state when they set a garbage-can on fire.

They know nothing nothing about what a violent revolution or an anarchist state would entail.

I wrote a short essay on the topic:

The One A-hole Factor. (Or: Why an anarchist society doesn't work.)

Ever hear of the Anarchist called Gandhi?

Ghandi was a lawyer who invented a way to use the legal system, that the occupiers imposed, against itself. He never called for the dissolution of the state... in fact he was reluctant to split Pakistan and India into two countries.

Ghandi was a lot of things, but he wasn't an anarchist.

If you want to continue this discussion, then I suggest we start on an agreement over the definition of anarchism. What do you think anarchism is?

http://calpeacepower.org/0201/gandhi_anarchist.htm

I think this offers a good description of both Gandhi and my own definition of Anarchism.

Or, Gandhis friend and fellow Anarchist.

http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/tolstoy/tolstoy.html

Anarchism was not an alien philosophy in Ghandi's time. He certainly would have heard about it.

I'm not saying that Ghandi didn't have ideas similar to anarchists, but he was against British occupation and expoloitation far more than he was against the state.

Personaly speaking, a society without heirarchy is a fun mental construct - like unicorns and lepricons, but in the real world all human relationships are heirarchal.

All of them.

To say that it's possible for humans to function without heirarchy is like claiming it's possible for goldfish to survive without fresh water.

The "Mud-Sill" Theory

Excerpt from Senator James Hammond (South Carolina) speech to the U.S. Senate, March 4, 1858 on

In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air, as to build either the one or the other this mud-sill. Fortunately for the South, she found a race adapted to that purpose to her hand. A race inferior to her own, but eminently qualified in temper, in vigor, in docility, in capacity to stand the climate, to answer all her purposes. We use them for our purpose, and call them slaves.

The Senator from New York said yesterday that the whole world has abolished slavery. Aye, the name, but not the thing; all the powers of the earth cannot abolish that. God only can do it when he repeals the , "the poor ye always have with you;" for the man who lives by daily labor, and scarcely lives at that, and who has to put out his labor in the market, and take the best he can get for it; in short, your whole hireling class of manual laborers and "operatives," as you call them, are essentially slaves. The difference between us is that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, and no want of employment among our people.Yours are hired by the day, not cared for, and scantily compensated, which may be proved in the most painful manner, at any hour in any street in any of your large towns. Why, you meet more beggars in one day, in any single street of the city of New York, than you would meet in a lifetime in the whole South.

We do not think that whites should be slaves either by law or necessity. Our slaves are black, of another and inferior race. The status in which we have placed them is an elevation. They are elevated from the condition in which God first created them by being made our slaves. None of that race on the whole face of the globe can be compared with the slaves of the South. They are happy, content, unaspiring, and utterly incapable, from intellectual weakness, ever to give us any trouble by their aspirations. Yours are white, of your own race; you are brothers of one blood. They are your equals in natural endowment of intellect, and they feel galled by their degradation. Our slaves do not vote. We give them no political power. Yours do vote, and, being the majority, they are the depositories of all your political power. If they knew the tremendous secret, that the ballot-box is stronger than "an army with banners," and could combine, where would you be? Your society would be reconstructed, your government overthrown, your property divided, not as they have mistakenly attempted to initiate such proceedings by meeting in parks, with arms in their hands, but by the quiet process of the ballot-box. You have been making war upon us to our very hearthstones. How would you like for us to send lecturers and agitators north, to teach these people this, to aid in combining, and to lead them?

Rather than engage in a logical fallacy, why don't you demonstrate an example of human-to-human cooperation that is not, in some way, hierarchal?

I think the misconception that many anarchists have is that hierarchy represents repression and stagnation. Nothing could be further than the truth. Hierarchy isn't about violence, it's about social cohesion. It's about being able to work with other sentient beings. It's about knowing when to give, and when to take.

Human hierarchy and power relationships are constantly in flux: The policeman gives a doctor a speeding ticket in the morning, and later that afternoon he might go to her asking for advise on how to deal with an illness. The obtuse office manager at work, might go to a night class and pay rapt attention to the teacher. The wife might might make all the decisions concerning the finances, but the husband is in charge of the kids education.

The problems that arise around hierarchy is when people attempt to maintain their status artificially with violence.

Work for social equity where violence is not an acceptable way to maintain status, rather than the abolition of hierarchy. The former is achievable, the later creates chaos until hierarchy is re-imposed.

The ideal is voluntary cooperation. Perhaps, hierarchy may never be abolished, just as slavery, in one form or another, has never been abolished.

The policeman and doctor metaphor is apt because both participants act voluntarily. The doctor doesn't shoot the policeman, nor does the policeman arrest the doctor for not giving him the diagnosis he desires.

The problem is power. Whether wielded as benevolent paternalism or as ruthless authoritarianism.

The imposed hierarchy of the Nazis, for instance, differs little from the "benvolent" hierarchy of the Communists, or the "democracy" of a vigilante mob (only one dissenting voice).

But, be that at is it may, Gandhi acknowledged that doing away with hierarchy was really up to the individual.

I have to end here because it's time for supper. That I, the dictator of the kitchen, in cooperation with my wife, prepared.

However, thanks for the discussion.

I am interested in your review of the article in post #13.

We can continue the conversation via IM or on Brainshrub Blog if you reply to the article there.

Peace,

Paul -V-

I've been homeless/hungry poor. Known violence of all sorts. I oppose violence of all sorts. So did another anarchist named Gandhi.

Most wars are started and perpetrated by capitalists of one sort or another. Name one started by Anarchists.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand assassinated by Gavrilo Princip at Sarajevo, a member of the Young Bosnian Movement and the anarchist group Black Hand.

Ostensibly Bosnian patriots, but influenced by the writings of Pyotr Kropotkin, Russian prince and anarchist.

He introduced the spark to the tinder that was Imperial Europe at that time. He gave them a reason to mobilize in defense of their respective empires. But yes, he did start a war that left an estimated ten million dead.

Ten million.

are like a dental pick against the last nerve in my neurons pick pick pointed needle on the crusted niche of the last bastion of sanity
i have left.

dammit! i want to think for myself, no matter how closed minded i must be.
dp

1) Trolls. Their only ideology is to disrupt. Fortunately, they are short-lived here.

2) Astro-turfers. Their ideology is to pretend that they are part of the community, yet to seed subversive messages. They can be hard to distinguish from run-of-the-mill critics, therefore sire admins are understandably hesitant to purge them.

3) Sock-puppets. These are a sub-set of Astro-turfers, in that they pretend to be someone that they aren't, but their motives are not contrarian but merely masturbatory. Their only ideology is to promote their own viewpoint, enjoyment or existence by posing as different people and posting messages under another name. This is usually done because their own viewpoint, enjoyment and existence is not welcomed by the community. There is a rare sub-species of Sock-puppet which will play the role of a helpless foreigner with limited grasp of English as this often engenders sympathy from community members and allows them to get away with more outrageous postings. Sock-puppets are usually exposed when they forget which identity they posted something under and accidentally respond under another guise.

4) Paranoiacs (Tin-foil and chemical). They are just not as special as they would like to believe.

EDIT: 5) People who post polls just to put forth their own viewpoint. Hey, don't ask the question if you don't want the answer. ;-)

You were probably hoping for a vote on political ideologues, but I find these social ideologues and sociopaths to be much more annoying.

:P

we're filled with sexist crap that would never be allowed if it were race-based instead of gender-based.

Why cannot more people see this?

:shrug:

Oh, wait, it's the same reason, as Al Gore, quoting Upton Sinclair, says that the "shills" don't believe in global warming. It's difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

Who said: "It's difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

It's a great quote.

(actually they are promoting sexism)under the guise of respecting "cultural differences."

and I consider myself, if we must use labels, to be a libertarian socialist anarchist (e.g. European-model-worshipping utopian).

Winning is everything no matter the price. Their lack of conviction about anything other than the aquisition of power and their lack of principles in getting it.

They have such a large following on the internet. Almost all of them are arm chair political commentators without any actual education on politics!

Anyone that has studied poli theory knows that an Anarcho-Capitalist society would simply be an Oligarchy.

It's so suburban.

They see themselves as the enlightened elite. The suffering of others is justified because it serves the higher good.

If I see another link to Paul Krugman's praise of sweatshop labor, I'm going to scream.

So I voted "Fundamentalists."

All the others are at least capable of rational thought.

who deals with reality. It's when they start knocking science and logic that my blood boils. Fundies are just stupid human beings who will stubbornly go their whole lives without understanding truth and rationale.

When the over arching concept in your life requires suspending disbeleif all the time, you become a highly trained ignorer of reality and fact.

People who try to reverse engineer what they'll never know
given how people are mutable and complex.

I'm sure my message must be subversive, because i intend totally to
subvert every crime that the republicans get up to, so i must be a
subversive. I call that justice, to block crime, to point it out,
to get pissed off about it and to speak up when people are timid
and unwilling to call a spade a spade. If it subverts people who
think it is not a crime, then not sorry.

The lie of subversion is what is humourous, as truth suverts all lies,
the ultimate subersion, every ticking second, every moment and our
unique choice in a given moment to drop the past and not speak to them
from the mental profile accumulated in the past, but the current
comments in a given thread, that the discussion is clean and not
burdened with ego. But profilers love their labells, their preconceptions
and preprepared knowledge, just liek bush does.

As a fundamentalist, you can take one book and have it mean whatever you want, whenever you want it. You don't need earthly logic or facts.

It is not of this world, and so to try to discuss things within the world, is to attempt to walk on water.