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And in the Left Corner...

pomeroo

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The Marxist historian and far-left icon weighs in:

“Considering how the 9/11 tragedy has been used by the Bush administration to propel us into immoral wars again and again, I believe that David Ray Griffin's provocative questions about 9/11 deserve to be investigated and addressed.”—-Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States
 
pomeroo said:
The Marxist historian and far-left icon weighs in:

“Considering how the 9/11 tragedy has been used by the Bush administration to propel us into immoral wars again and again, I believe that David Ray Griffin's provocative questions about 9/11 deserve to be investigated and addressed.”—-Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States
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And to think I once respected this guy's intellect. :nope:

That was a long time ago--I'll have to go back and read some of the stuff he impressed me with back then...

What's the source of this quote?
 
boloboffin said:
How does Ron frame it? What is Ron's interest in framing it that way?
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I don't agree w/ the framing of it, but it does belong in the CT forum.

Ron, could you lay off the poltical spin on this part of the forum? I don't even use the terms left/right on the political section, because they're unnecessarily antagonistic and also vague.
 
boloboffin said:
Take it to the Politics forum, Ron.
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I am assuming that you're joking. The author of a Marxist screed that is required reading in many colleges and universities endorses Griffin's latest steaming pile and you think it belongs in politics, not conspiracy theories?
I'm not trying to pick a fight, but you can't be serious.
 
pomeroo said:
I am assuming that you're joking. The author of a Marxist screed that is required reading in many colleges and universities endorses Griffin's latest steaming pile and you think it belongs in politics, not conspiracy theories?
I'm not trying to pick a fight, but you can't be serious.
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I refuse to be the next contestant in Ron v. Leftist.
 
While I personally lean decently left, I have to agree this belongs here.

I feel the point can be made, that the more leftists, particularly DEMOCRATS, that actually give credence to the truthers, the more harm they do to the legitimate left (as Monbiot has discussed).

TAM:)
 
boloboffin said:
How does Ron frame it? What is Ron's interest in framing it that way?
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This is actually a very good question. I will attempt to explain my position.

Rightwing nuts like Alex Jones have zero cultural cachet. Jones and the deranged Morgan Reynolds are so far outside the zeitgeist that if they didn't hate Bush so much, no one would have ever heard of them.

The phenomenon I'm talking about can be traced back to the sixties and early seventies when Tom Wolfe described it perfectly as "Radical Chic." Beer-soaked neo-Aryans were, and continue to be, confined to the fever swamps where they belong, but murderous, drug-running thugs like the Black Panthers got to be honored guests at fund-raising soirees organized by the likes of Leonard Bernstein.

Jones is a crackpot; Zinn is an academic superstar; Rosie is a celebrity.

What the lefties can do that the rightwing loons can't is introduce the conspiracy liars' pernicious lunacy to a much, much wider audience. They can pollute the mainstream; Jones and Reynolds have no audience outside the fringe blogs.

The 911 fantasy movement is not strictly a leftist movement. The big-name leftists who embrace woo-woo are situated to do damage, and they know it.
 
pomeroo said:
This is actually a very good question. I will attempt to explain my position.

Rightwing nuts like Alex Jones have zero cultural cachet. Jones and the deranged Morgan Reynolds are so far outside the zeitgeist that if they didn't hate Bush so much, no one would have ever heard of them.

The phenomenon I'm talking about can be traced back to the sixties and early seventies when Tom Wolfe described it perfectly as "Radical Chic." Beer-soaked neo-Aryans were, and continue to be, confined to the fever swamps where they belong, but murderous, drug-running thugs like the Black Panthers got to be honored guests at fund-raising soirees organized by the likes of Leonard Bernstein.

Jones is a crackpot; Zinn is an academic superstar; Rosie is a celebrity.

What the lefties can do that the rightwing loons can't is introduce the conspiracy liars' pernicious lunacy to a much, much wider audience. They can pollute the mainstream; Jones and Reynolds have no audience outside the fringe blogs.

The 911 fantasy movement is not strictly a leftist movement. The big-name leftists who embrace woo-woo are situated to do damage, and they known it.
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Very interesting. I had never really thought of it in that direction, but you are correct. So far the left stars they have acquired have been, for the most part, either know for being off the edge, or have been so far down the totem pole of hollywood to have little to no effect in that way (Charlie Sheen). Rosie, however, on "The View" may be a very different kettle of fish.

TAM:)
 
pomeroo said:
What the lefties can do that the rightwing loons can't is introduce the conspiracy liars' pernicious lunacy to a much, much wider audience. They can pollute the mainstream; Jones and Reynolds have no audience outside the fringe blogs.

The 911 fantasy movement is not strictly a leftist movement. The big-name leftists who embrace woo-woo are situated to do damage, and they know it.
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If you're talking only about 9/11 CTism, then you should APPLAUD the notion that lefties are lining up to hawk the "inside job" insanity. Quickest way to self-destruction. As your boy Bush says: Bring 'em on.

If you're talking about rightwing loons having access to a wide audience? Limbaugh. Hannity. Coulter. O'Reilly. Beck. Savage. Boortz. Malkin. Ingraham. Robertson. Falwell. And many of lesser "stature".
 
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ConspiRaider said:
If you're talking only about 9/11 CTism, then you should APPLAUD the notion that lefties are lining up to hawk the "inside job" insanity. Quickest way to self-destruction. As your boy Bush says: Bring 'em on.

If you're talking about rightwing loons having access to a wide audience? Limbaugh. Hannity. Coulter. O'Reilly. Beck. Savage. Boortz. Malkin. Ingraham. Robertson. Falwell. And many of lesser "stature".
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None of the names you mention is in the same ballpark as Alex Jones. They aren't even playing the same sport, to stretch the metaphor a bit further. That you seem to think differently is the product of your bias and nothing more. I rarely listen to any of those fools you list, but I have heard all of them at one time or another. It is much easier for a kooky left winger to be considered mainstream than for a kooky right winger to do so. People like Limbaugh and Hannity are wrong more often than not, but they don't rise to the level of kookery exhibited by Alex Jones or even Rosie.
 
Freddy said:
None of the names you mention is in the same ballpark as Alex Jones. They aren't even playing the same sport, to stretch the metaphor a bit further. That you seem to think differently is the product of your bias and nothing more. I rarely listen to any of those fools you list, but I have heard all of them at one time or another. It is much easier for a kooky left winger to be considered mainstream than for a kooky right winger to do so. People like Limbaugh and Hannity are wrong more often than not, but they don't rise to the level of kookery exhibited by Alex Jones or even Rosie.
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I think Ron is just looking for any way possible to bash the Left in the Conspiracy forum. He doesn't want to go to the Politics forum. He wants to get political right here. Maybe it's backlash from Ann Coulter getting so much flak about her Edwards bashing? Pure speculation.

Alex Jones, by the way, is neither left nor right. He's just a lunatic, a New World Order freak.
 
Er... aren't we talking about 9/11 Conspiracy Theories?

Thus isn't Ron saying that, while other CTers are too off-the-wall to be taken seriously by the general populace, people like Rosie O'Donnell and Howard Zinn will be taken seriously by the populace?

Thus isn't he saying these "lefties" have more credibility in the eyes of the populace?

-Gumboot
 
What I think Ron is saying here is that if you don't police your own side of the aisle, partisans from the other side will use the wacky positions of some of your members to tar your political philosophy with the association.

What Zinn deserves is a thorough rhetorical horse-whipping from the left wing intelligentsia. Liberals may not think this goes on among the right wing, but I can assure you that's not true. Look, for example at the war of words going on between John Hawkins and Jerome Corsi over at Human events. When Corsi signed onto the "Stop the North American Union" crap, Hawkins and Michael Medved did not hesitate to lay into him. And why? Because they know the NAU fantasy is poison for the conservative movement, just as the 9-11 Denial Movement is poison for the liberal movement.

I have often remarked that some of the best debunking of 9-11 Denial has been done by the organs of the left--The Nation and Counterpunch, Noam Chomsky, etc., have done yeoman work. Kos prohibits 9-11 Ct Diaries and bans their posters. And there is no doubt in my mind that while they all see 9-11 CTs as quackery, the reason they have been so vigorous in opposing it is because they see the risk of it catching on among their people, leading them to an intellectual dead-end.

Zinn is an important man of the Left, and his endorsement of Griffin's nutty stuff encourages Leftists to consider wasting their time. As others have remarked, this should cheer Ron up to no end.
 
gumboot said:
Er... aren't we talking about 9/11 Conspiracy Theories?

Thus isn't Ron saying that, while other CTers are too off-the-wall to be taken seriously by the general populace, people like Rosie O'Donnell and Howard Zinn will be taken seriously by the populace?

Thus isn't he saying these "lefties" have more credibility in the eyes of the populace?

-Gumboot
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No.

Ron is doing just exactly what Perry Logan mentioned while he was still in the JREF forum. Perry went off the track, got baited, took it, did some irresponsible posts and that was it.

But Logan was correct in that Ron wants to get his right wing agenda into this forum under the guise of: Oh, the populace is going to be absolutely slain by the evil left-wingers because they have the ears, eyes, hearts and minds of everyone in America.

Howard Zinn, a person whom I was not even aware of, is required reading in American colleges? Really? How come when I went to college, they didn't make me read him?

Instead of bashing the Left in the politics forum where it belongs, Ron cooked this up as a Trojan horse. Seems to have worked, eh? Look at how many right-leaning JREFers are rushing to his side.

Take it elsewhere, Ron. Or would you, and other JREFers, like me to start posting threads in the Conspiracy forum with derogatory references in the titles to the right wing and Republicans? I can, you know.
 
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ConspiRaider said:
Howard Zinn, a person whom I was not even aware of, is required reading in American colleges? Really? How come when I went to college, they didn't make me read him?
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Maybe you didn't study the right topics...

In the years since the first edition of A People's History was published in 1980, it has been assigned reading both as a high school and college textbook, and is one of the most widely known examples of critical pedagogy.

Source
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Do you refute pomeroo's claim that people like this Howard Zinn and Rosie O'Donnell will be considered credible by more Americans than people like Alex Jones?

It seems pretty obvious to me. O'Donnell has mainstream media coverage that I gather is relatively popular. Zinn is read in American schools and has a huge impressive collection of works to his name, plus numerous acknowledgements of his successes and achievements.

In contrast, about five minutes in the presence of people like Alex Jones, Judy Woods, or Killtown (Sorry, couldn't resist!) will convince most people they are raving lunatics.

Admittedly I fail to see how this has anything to do with left or right at all. It's about respectability.

Had Charlie Sheen instead been a currently popular A-list actor I think he would have fallen into the same boat.

-Gumboot
 
ConspiRaider said:
No.

Ron is doing just exactly what Perry Logan mentioned while he was still in the JREF forum. Perry went off the track, got baited, took it, did some irresponsible posts and that was it.

But Logan was correct in that Ron wants to get his right wing agenda into this forum under the guise of: Oh, the populace is going to be absolutely slain by the evil left-wingers because they have the ears, eyes, hearts and minds of everyone in America.

Howard Zinn, a person whom I was not even aware of, is required reading in American colleges? Really? How come when I went to college, they didn't make me read him?

Instead of bashing the Left in the politics forum where it belongs, Ron cooked this up as a Trojan horse. Seems to have worked, eh? Look at how many right-leaning JREFers are rushing to his side.

Take it elsewhere, Ron. Or would you, and other JREFers, like me to start posting threads in the Conspiracy forum with derogatory references in the titles to the right wing and Republicans? I can, you know.
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I disagree, and agree with Brainster. I was blog posting in reply to Ron long before he came here to JREF. He may lean right, but I do not think he ever came to this forum with the intention of spreading a "Right Wing" Agenda. He has never said anything to me in opposition, yet he knows I lean much left of center on most issues.

This Zinn Fellow is an influencial man on the left. If anything, this should be a warning to those in the USA, on the left, to keep your radicals in check, or they will undermine all the hard work the left has strived for...for more, see the article by Monbiot on this matter.

TAM:)
 
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