PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — His U.S. Senate campaign under fire, Maine Democrat Graham Platner said Wednesday that a tattoo on his chest has been covered to no longer reflect an image widely recognized as a Nazi symbol.
The first-time political candidate said he got the skull and crossbones tattoo in 2007, when he was in his 20s and in the Marine Corps. It happened during a night of drinking while he was on leave in Croatia, he said, adding he was unaware until recently that the image has been associated with Nazi police.
This is the part I take issue with. Christopher Hitchens is not a neocon. Nothing I saw in anything you linked to made it seem convincing to me that any other ones of these people were neocons either. Also you flipped it around trying to say (apparently) that genuine neocons can also be considered as Trotskyites because of their “revolutionary posture” which to me is utterly insane. It’s weird and not correct on both sides, as far as I can tell.
You say I have misunderstood you. Sure. Let’s narrow it down. Aside from that one singular factor of him supporting invading Iraq for totally different reasons than the neocons wanted to invade Iraq, what makes you think Christopher Hitchens is a neocon? Or is it just that one thing?
hmmm, k.
It’s manifestly not what I said
It’s his aligning specifically with neocons and writing in support of the full-scale invasion of Iraq that I took issue with. You are asking me to have a charitable read of someone who took an opposing geopolitical position. I hope you can appreciate the irony of the posts you’ve made complaining about communists on lemmy being too aligned with Russia, especially because any ‘support of russia’ that I’ve seen from anonymous posters has been significantly more muted than any of the many articles that Hitchens wrote in support of the full-scale invasion of Iraq.
Holy shit – okay, TIL. I genuinely am sorry to be so rude about this part of it when it seems like you’re 100% right about it. There really were a bunch of people who were anti-Stalin communists in their youth and Trotsky fans, who then went on to become neocons. Fair enough. All I can really say is that you say stuff which is so bizarre sometimes that I assumed this was more of that.
Case in point!:
How did he align with neocons, other than that they supported invading Iraq and he supported invading Iraq? Is it literally just that one thing, or is there something else? You didn’t address that part of the question.
I really am sorry about being rude about that other thing, I just didn’t know that part of the history so I apologize. You definitely didn’t do yourself favors by bringing up Hitchens though lol, because him I do know. Again tell me: Why do you think he is a neocon?
apology accepted, anyways the last thing I want is to be taken too seriously.
I brought him up because I’m familiar with him as well, I read a number of his books early on in my own political trajectory and it was his full embrace of fearmongering about Islam post 9/11 that turned me off of him entirely. I appreciate that he was principled about waterboarding at least.
bringing him up served my wider rhetorical point that you would cry foul at association of Hitchens with neocons over a geopolitical position, but participate in spaces where a perceived alignment with Russia on geopolitics is all it takes for communists and anarchists to get smeared as secret Republicans, Russian bots, faking being trans, etc.
looks like special pleading
Sure. But that doesn’t make him a neocon.
This kind of stuff is why I don’t like arguing about labels. He self-identifies as a Marxist or a “liberal hawk” which very much aren’t the same thing as each other. I guess “liberal hawk” is maybe similar to “neoconservative” to some extent… at least in the genuine version of it, which is very different from 2000s-era neoconservatism, which was gangster capitalism dressed up in the world’s least convincing disguise of caring about democracy and liberal values. If you’re trying to use the definition from the 1970s then maybe I can see what you’re getting at (and also only if you pick out literally only that one aspect of Hitchens’s views and willfully ignore all the Marxism.)
But in any case, I’m honestly not trying to defend him by saying any of this. I asked you why he was a neoconservative, and instead of referring to any of the tenets of neoconservatism and trying to say why he fit them, you started talking about Islamophobia and did a whataboutism about people making accusations about “your side.” Like I said, it seems to me like sort of fuzzy thinking that reduces every question to “Is he a good? Or a bad?” and that’s why it is relevant whether he is Islamophobic, so that he can be assigned as one of the “bads” and my attempt to say that he’s not a neocon can be interpreted as me trying to say he’s a “good.” I said nothing at all about what I think of him positive or negative, honestly I haven’t really made up my mind, so IDK where that even came from.
Sure, let’s talk about this whole new conservation and topic lol.
This is absolutely not true. The thing that will get people smeared as those things (at least by me, and most of the time by people I’ve seen do it) is showing strong indications of being those things. I mean people will definitely give you grief for being pro-Russian-government, for the same reasons people will give you grief for being pro-Israel-government. I can understand how you wouldn’t want to hear that as a Russian person but for sure you can’t possibly think it is somehow confusing.
There are other people who are clearly being dishonest in some way about where they’re coming from and why they are saying the thing they’re saying. The guy in these comments who was claiming he was in the US military, and using that as a position of authority to say some things I think are talking points, but clearly not knowing some of the basics of how things work in the US military. That’s pretty fucking relevant to the conversation. Why would I not talk about that? It’s weird, it’s worth talking about. I get that probably there are sincere pro-Russian viewpoints or something that sometimes get falsely accused, I get that, but surely you can’t say that it’s this wild thing that happens for no reason. Right? Maybe not.
my dude we are here having this conversation because you just did exactly that here and I indulged the question, even though it was beside the point.
In my response I picked someone I knew would be a provocative and ironic choice in the context. And now here you are trying to debate me over the surface reading, acting like me explaining my intended subtext to you is changing topics.
If you’re having such an issue with people making broad assumptions based on geopolitical positioning, maybe you should reconsider the extent to which you do that yourself.
You say it was not convincing, but it was convincing enough to get all these ‘liberal hawks’ on board with the imperial program. That seems like a pretty damning indictment of anyone who went along with the Iraq war, do you think were they dupes or willing co-conspirators?
I have no context for this, if you want me to read a comment chain then link it.
I have routinely pointed out - and linked to - comments from myself and others with lots of upvotes shitting on the Russian government in the troika comms. Shitting on the government for presiding over a capitalist, misogynist hellscape, and groups like CPRF for going along with it.
You have lots of nuance for the dead guy who openly supported a full-scale invasion of a country in order to impose gangster capitalism on it (and bring democracy™️). I know that wasn’t the entire body of his work, I read several of his books prior to that. I am asking you to have that same level of nuance for living communists and anarchists who haven’t written dozens of articles for high-profile magazines in support of a full-scale invasion, but have committed a far worse crime: failing to adhere to the common media narratives while posting on niche internet forums.
I’m “debating” you on the idea that Hitchens is a neocon. You said he is, but he’s not. To me in my general way of dealing with factual conversation that is a problem.
This is why people don’t take you guys seriously lol. To me, the example you picked was just wrong. I do sort of get what you’re trying to get at, if you want to abandon the Hitchens thing and just say you were playing a bit, and say you were trying to make a genuine point about Trotsky supporters who became neocons which I had no idea about. Sure, fair enough, honestly I was just ignorant about it. I would still really advise you that this “subtext” and “provocative” is fuzzy thinking in a way that opens you up to thinking things that are not true, or make it really difficult to think critically about important issues (replacing them with the “man good” vs “man bad” conversation, which you still are trying to have I guess even though I literally never said a word about my overall assessment of Hitchens, because I don’t really have one of him).
Anyway:
https://piefed.social/comment/8550632
So that’s a perfect example to me of someone who is both making a conveniently establishment-friendly political point, and also lying about their background and why they are making that point. Why are they doing that? I don’t know. But they’re doing it. I’ve seen a bunch of people do this, and they always seem to fall into the same types of patterns of political arguments when they do. I think that’s very much worth talking about when it happens.
That is very very different from accusing anyone of being a Russian bot any time they contradict the hegemony. Is you saying that the one is the same as the other just more “being provocative”? Pretty much no one actually does that thing you are accusing (again, at least that I have seen).
I don’t think the US government makes much effort at intellectual consistency. I think they wanted to make their friends rich who sell weapons and mercenary services, benefit some other friends who buy and process oil, and do something exciting and politically popular.
Maybe I am wrong, I do think the US government has gone through periods of genuine confusion where they were trying to follow some kind of ideology and sincerely trying to adhere to it believing good things would come out the other end if they were faithful to it. I don’t think invading Iraq was that. I think mostly, they wanted to make their friends rich, and "liberal hawk"ism or whatever reason they could talk about on TV or to employees, to make it sound like a good idea, was as good as any other. Basically, I don’t think anyone would have let Wolfowitz into the room to share his theories if it wasn’t already a money-making endeavor that his theories happened to line up with.
I also think Hitchens was wrong to support the invasion, for different reasons. I think he was potentially sincere in his ideology when he talked about it, and I also think the ideology was wrong, but that’s different from why the US invaded, to me.
Yes, and I linked you to someone being banned because they said “Fuck Russia” and explained why that’s a problem and why people don’t take lemmy.ml’s moderation seriously.
Imagine a Zionist community where you’re allowed to give vigorous criticism to Netanyahu but saying “fuck Israel” will get you banned. Would you want to be there? I would not. But you treat Russia different because they’re your genocidal gangster-state instead of someone else’s.
I have plenty of nuance. I didn’t even kill any of my political opponents with an ice-ax. I am just blunt about telling people when I think they are wrong.
This is the other disservice lemmy.ml moderation does to you: It means that the users exist in protected spaces where it’s hard for people to disagree with them, and so they interpret someone just telling them they’re wrong as this wildly unfriendly act. When was I lacking in nuance?
I feel like you missed my point entirely, mostly because to reckon with it would require you to do any amount of introspection [impossible].
Ah yes, the old ‘thinking about implications makes you gullible’ argument. Very airtight.
All language, art, and politics have subtext. Calling attention to subtext isn’t “fuzzy thinking”; it’s analytical. It’s how meaning works.
Ambiguity isn’t the same as confusion or being false; some truths are inferential. Subtext is where ideology hides.
That’s absolutely a nazi tattoo on his chest.
spoiler
The fact that someone didn’t continue to respond to you doesn’t make them a liar, however playing dumb about a nazi tattoo you’ve had for 20 years kinda does.
Russia isn’t ‘Israel’; they’ve not been genociding a captive population for the last 80 years. Was America genociding Iraqis when they invaded and Hitchens supported them? does that make him a genocide apologist?
The point isn’t that the US government pulled off some great subterfuge, many people could see what they were doing, even myself as a teenager. What I take from that is you agree that Hitchens also saw that it was a lie, but went along with it anyways. You realize that’s worse than the first option, right? It also doesn’t make his ‘ideological committment’ look like anything other than thinly-veiled xenophobia/racism.
I cited him as a neocon, because from the left perspective, he was. You can ‘want’ lots of nice things, but if you’re spending your time talking about how it’s actually good that the soul harvester is landing on a civilian population, people are going to conclude that you approve of using the soul harvester on civilians.
Calling people tankies is pretty much the first response people here have to hearing a geopolitical opinion they don’t like, feels like obvious gaslighting for you to say otherwise.
Philip, you are describing yourself. You are always losing your shit because you can’t interpret someone disagreeing with you as anything other than hostile people lying about themselves. You surround yourself with nazis to complain about the evil troika. I wish I could say I was surprised that you’re digging in so hard to defend a white guy with a nazi tattoo.
Sounds good. So you’re sticking with Hitchens being a neocon? Why do you think that, without needing to claim something which you then later claim was just you being “provocative”?
Absolutely true. But, if you show you can’t grasp accurately the meaning of the surface and the plain facts, then I’m not going to take you as super qualified to make points about the subtext, or assume that when you said something wrong it was just you making a point about the subtext and let you triangulate yourself away to some point distant from the facts of the matter where you were just saying something so smart that I can’t grasp it.
I thought of something else about this dude who claims he was in the military and so I’m not allowed to disagree with him about these facts he’s claiming. He also claims to have grown up in the same county as Platner (population 16,000). If we assume that the 12,000 active users in !news@lemmy.world are 100% Americans, and the distribution of Lemmy users is perfectly equal between urban and rural, and that it’s one person per user exactly, then the expected value number of people from Piscataquis County here should be 12,000 * 16,000 / 343.6 million = 0.55 users. That’s actually kind of higher than I expected, it doesn’t make it totally outlandish statistically that he is telling the truth about that part even though he’s lying about the military part, but it does make it somewhat unlikely I think when you do the Bayesian analysis.
See? Analysis! I feel like you would really like to get behind this kind of looking behind the text for context and meaning beyond the surface level.
True that.
So it’s more than 80, they’re coming up on the 100-year anniversary. This explains why the Ukrainians are so eagerly vigorous in killing invaders, they know what the endgame could be for them and their families from knuckling under to Russia’s aggression.
Anyway, the point was not that the two states are the same. The point was that you can easily understand how protecting one genocidal murder-state by deleting comments critical of it could be seen as a bootlicking and laughable behavior by moderators, but then all of a sudden when it’s your genocidal murder-state, it’s different.
Also, there’s this and this recent examples of lemmy.ml mods protecting these regimes from criticism by deleting criticism of them. I don’t really care if they are leaving in place your own tepid “critical support” type of criticism. The only posture for a free medium of communication is to allow vigorous criticism of any nation-state.
Again, the failure to do that and active protection-running for friendly aligned nation-states even when they are killing motherfuckers is why they don’t take y’all seriously.
Clearly. Obviously. I mean, describing someone disagreeing with you as “losing your shit” and “calling people tankies” instead of what it is, firm criticism with citations, is part of the spin lemmy.ml likes to apply to anyone who disagrees with them. Cling to it! It will make you feel better.