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It's difficult because the two of you are choosing to make it difficult! Perhaps it's impossible to follow the discussion above without Googling Nick Land, spen

by geofft 6y ago

It's difficult because the two of you are choosing to make it difficult! Perhaps it's impossible to follow the discussion above without Googling Nick Land, spending ten seconds skimming his Wikipedia page, and seeing the word "Atomwaffen" and reading the rest of the sentence. But you're interested in truth, aren't you? Are those ten seconds so much to ask? What you're doing is plainly poisoning the well - you haven't argued that the NYT is wrong (either in this subthread or anywhere else in this comment section), you're arguing that the NYT cannot possibly make arguments worth listening to. Elsewhere you're mocking the NYT Editorial Board. Maybe they're worth mocking, but it has nothing to do with the merits of this article! It's beneath you, and it's beneath this site. Maybe it works. But it only works because it's ruining reasoned discourse and scoring cheap points about those people at the NYT and how we don't like them. The debate is - ironically - no longer about the ideas the NYT is claiming and instead about the people and their proximity to other people we don't like.

rayiner 6y ago
> It's difficult because the two of you are choosing to make it difficult! No, it’s difficult because the New York Times has chosen to adopt a phrase that has a well-understood usage with respect to violent extremists, and use it to refer to literally all other white people. If you don’t want people to complain you’re being confusing then don’t do that. > Perhaps it's impossible to follow the discussion above without Googling Nick Land, spending ten seconds skimming his Wikipedia page, and seeing the word "Atomwaffen" and reading the rest of the sentence. But you're interested in truth, aren't you? Are those ten seconds so much to ask? Imagine if the New York Times had chosen to call all traditionalist/conservative Muslims “jihadists.” That’s exactly what the Times is doing with “white supremacy.” Should we all just play along, and Google to see if someone actually wants to kill non-believers, or whether they just support the tradition of gender-segregated prayer? > What you're doing is plainly poisoning the well Poisoning the well is a form of ad hominem where you invoke an unrelated fact to detail a discussion. In discussing a newspaper article about white supremacy, it’s not poisoning the well to point out that the newspaper’s deliberate editorial choices have made it impossible to understand what’s being discussed without doing your own research. It’s totally relevant.

by geofft 6y ago

rayiner 6y ago

> It's difficult because the two of you are choosing to make it difficult! No, it’s difficult because the New York Times has chosen to adopt a phrase that has a well-understood usage with respect to violent extremists, and use it to refer to literally all other white people. If you don’t want people to complain you’re being confusing then don’t do that. > Perhaps it's impossible to follow the discussion above without Googling Nick Land, spending ten seconds skimming his Wikipedia page, and seeing the word "Atomwaffen" and reading the rest of the sentence. But you're interested in truth, aren't you? Are those ten seconds so much to ask? Imagine if the New York Times had chosen to call all traditionalist/conservative Muslims “jihadists.” That’s exactly what the Times is doing with “white supremacy.” Should we all just play along, and Google to see if someone actually wants to kill non-believers, or whether they just support the tradition of gender-segregated prayer? > What you're doing is plainly poisoning the well Poisoning the well is a form of ad hominem where you invoke an unrelated fact to detail a discussion. In discussing a newspaper article about white supremacy, it’s not poisoning the well to point out that the newspaper’s deliberate editorial choices have made it impossible to understand what’s being discussed without doing your own research. It’s totally relevant.