7 ms·
Bertrand Russell to Oswald Mosley (1962)
- giraffe_lady 1y agoThanks mods for the title fix. I can't find a copy of the letter this is in response to which would provide more context. I believe it was an invitation of some sort. Bertrand Russel was a prominent logician and philosopher, more or less invented types to solve a problem he was having with set theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell Sir Oswald Mosley founded the British Union of Fascists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Mosley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Mosley
- OtherShrezzing 1y agoFor general context, this was addressed to post-ww2 Mosley, in the 60s, who argued a unique form of holocaust denialism at the time. He didn’t take the position that the holocaust didn’t happen, he took the position that it was justified.
- haijo2 1y agoMr Mosley also had a pretty well known son lol.
- seanhunter 1y agoFor reference, this is alluding to Max Mosley who used to be prominent in formula one car racing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Mosley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Mosley
- aryonoco 1y agoAs well as F1, he was quite a popular figure in some Nazi cosplaying dungeons.
- haijo2 1y agoThats what I was really trying to get at.
- owisd 1y agoActually he successfully sued the tabloids for defamation on the grounds that while, yes he had a cosplaying dungeon, and yes the “attendees” were all in uniform, none of them were in Nazi uniform. To twist the knife he then went on to bankroll all the phone hacking civil cases against the same tabloids.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- thomassmith65 1y agoBertrand Russel also was - and hopefully still is - a public intellectual, like Einstein or Chomsky (for better or worse), whose opinions on many areas of life reached ordinary people. His values were ahead of his time. This is a wonderful interview with him that gives a great sense of what he was all about: • A Conversation with Bertrand Russell (1952) https://youtu.be/xL_sMXfzzyA https://youtu.be/xL_sMXfzzyA
- lostlogin 1y agoRussell also lived a long time, with family who did too. While young his grandfather told Bertrand about meeting Napoleon. Late in life Bertrand watched the moon landing on TV. Obviously that two experiences that span more than one life time, but they are very far apart. https://www.openculture.com/2022/05/philosopher-bertrand-russell-talks-about-when-his-grandfather-met-napoleon.html https://www.openculture.com/2022/05/philosopher-bertrand-rus...
- UncleSlacky 1y agoHis (ex-)wife Dora was my wife's neighbour, she was quite a force in her own right (and lived to 92): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dora_Russell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dora_Russell
- colinbeveridge 1y agoI understand that Professor Yaffle -- the woodpecker bookend in the classic kids' TV show Bagpuss -- was loosely based on Russell.
- ndsipa_pomu 1y agoThere's a live action Bagpuss film due: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crrjwlvxknko https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crrjwlvxknko
- interestica 1y agoThey had a long history of correspondence. The preceding letter is archived and you can probably get a copy. (https://bracers.mcmaster.ca/79128 https://bracers.mcmaster.ca/79128) > Jan 6/1962 Re nuclear disarmament and world government. BR is not inclined to agree or disagree with Mosley's views, but he does think that Mosley is "rather optimistic" in his expectations. BR provides criticism of his main two objections. (A polite letter.) > Jan 11/1962 Mosley wants to lunch privately with BR about their differences. These are basically all the letters exchanged with Mosley: https://bracers.mcmaster.ca/bracers-basic-search?search_api_fulltext=&field_record_no=&aggregated_field=Mosley&field_date_text=&body=&field_published_text=&field_document_no=&sort_by=field_date_text&sort_order=ASC https://bracers.mcmaster.ca/bracers-basic-search?search_api_...
- Noumenon72 1y agoThis letter makes perfect sense to me if he had sent it as his first reply to a fascist in 1946. Why did he correspond with him over 43 previous letters from 1946 and only in 1962 act as though he had principled objections to corresponding with fascists? The tone is not "this time you've gone too far", or "I have decided we're not getting anywhere", but "We have nothing in common and could never converse". I wonder if he realized it was the same guy, or was submitting this to some public forum.
- cycomanic 1y agoAs I wrote above they did not have a long history of correspondence (previous correspondence was mainly with a Gordon Mosley). The letter written by Russell was preceded by a letter from Mosley (maybe trying to bait BR) on "the root differences between us" in December 1961 to which BR replied with two letters before Mosley tried to invite BR for a private lunch which prompted the letter of note response. I think this makes perfect sense, he initially engaged intellectually, but when invited to associate privately he strongly refuses.
- doug-moen 1y agoThe long correspondence that you describe (from the 40's to the 60's) was with Gordon Mosley of the BBC, and not with Oswald. The only letters that Russell personally wrote to Oswald were sent in January 1961.
- seanhunter 1y ago> more or less invented types to solve a problem he was having with set theory. For people who haven't encountered it yet, this problem is the famous "Russell's Paradox"[1], which can be stated as Consider the set R, consisting of all sets S such that S is not an element of S. Ie in set builder notation R = {S : S ∉ S} and then the paradox comes from the followup question. Is R an element of R? Because of course if it is in R, then it is an element of itself so it should not be. And if it's not in R, then it is not an element of itself, so it should be. This is a logical paradox along the same lines as the famous "The barber in this town shaves all men who do not shave themselves. Does he shave himself?" In modern axiomatic set theory, Russell's paradox is avoided these days by the "axiom of regularity"[2] which prevents a set builder like "the set of all sets who are not members of themselves", so what I wrote above would not be accepted as a valid set builder for this reason by most people. Russell proposed instead Type theory which got revived when computer science got going. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_paradox [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_of_regularity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_of_regularity
- triceratops 1y ago> The barber in this town shaves all men who do not shave themselves. Does he shave himself? I'm not familiar with this one but is it misstated here? The barber doesn't only shave men who don't shave themselves. If he doesn't shave himself then he shaves himself and therefore can shave himself without contradiction. If he shaves himself he can shave himself without contradiction. Either way he shaves himself. (Or maybe I'm just bad at logic)
- siegelzero 1y agoYes you're right it's typically stated as "shaves all those, and those only, who do not..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barber_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barber_paradox
- ndsipa_pomu 1y agoI prefer the version that leaves the barber's gender unknown (i.e. could be a woman): > The barb in this town shaves all men who do not shave themselves. Does the barber shave themself?
- hackncheese 1y ago[dead]
- dboreham 1y agoHe's less well known because the British generally don't elect their charismatic fascists leader of the country. Instead he was jailed and his organization banned.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- lostlogin 1y ago> the British generally don't elect their charismatic fascists leader Hold that thought. Current UK politics have taken a turn and the combination of major party incompetence and rising anger might change that.
- JetSetWilly 1y agoFortunately in Britain we have moved far from the values of former labour MP and noted Europhile Sir Oswald Mosley. I would see reform as a fairly traditional conservative party, though I appreciate that there are many that are keen to shift the overton window so far that they can be described as somehow “far right”.
- graemep 1y agoI do not think many people are aware of his post-war politics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Mosley#Post-war_politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Mosley#Post-war_politic... There are quite a few things there (e.g. that he wanted laws against marrying someone of another race, that he saw himself as left wing, etc.) that I did not know, although id did know of his involvement in the Union Movement. He was also a Conservative MP (later joining Labour)
- mjd 1y agoI always feel funny starting letters with “dear”, but next time that happens I'm going to remember that this one started with “Dear Sir Oswald,”.
- esafak 1y agoI thought that was how one simply started letters -- you used to even say "Dear Sirs" in the past -- but it seems "dear" has come to be reserved only for close recipients.
- seabass-labrax 1y agoDear esafak, It is not entirely true that the usage has changed; I usually start my emails with this salutation, both to recipients close to me and those whom I do not know well. I address mailing lists with a simple "Dear all". Nonetheless, this is the first time I have done so in a Hacker News post, and it shall probably be the last too. Best wishes, seabass
- jcul 1y agoFor an actual letter I think I would use Dear, not an email. But it's so very seldom that I write a physical letter these days.
- Theodores 1y agoDear Seabass, One other reason for using the 'Dear [name]' salutation is that you can demonstrate that you can spell someone's name correctly. It takes time and effort to get this detail right and there can be consequences when getting it wrong. If I write to Stephen with 'Dear Steven' then nothing might be said, but you know it will be noted, albeit momentarily. There is also a level of familiarity to get right. Stephen might be 'Steve' in everyday conversation with just his mother using 'STEPHEN' when he is in trouble. My mother could not spell so I have a common name with an uncommon spelling. I am not too fussed about that, however, it acts like a check word of sorts. If someone goes to the effort of spelling my name correctly then they have passed the test and I know, from the first line, that I need to take them a bit more seriously than those that are unable to pass the test. The only times I have tried to correct anyone is when it is to do with bureaucracy as that is needed if you want things like your banking to work. I certainly would not try and correct anyone else as I would not want anyone to feel bad for getting this minor detail wrong. As well as the salutation there is the way we close a message. As well as the standard 'Yours sincerely/Yours faithfully/Best wishes/Kind regards' there are interesting variants that people use. The former British Prime Minister John Major used 'Yours ever', which I have not seen anyone else use. Just for the lols, I might start my HN messages with 'To whom it may concern'. Not really. But I am glad that the people that don't use salutations have won. In the early days of email and the web, a considerable amount of bytes were wasted with salutations and, more notably, signatures. Until next time, Theodores
- 1970-01-01 1y agoSimultaneously polite, peaceful, respectful, diplomatic, and succinct in writing. LLMs have a long way to go.
- SideburnsOfDoom 1y agoIDK, I see this as in some ways verbose, not succinct at all. A completely succinct reply to Mr Mosley would be two words only, the second being "off". This letter tries to "unpack" its point of view rather than reply succinctly. But you're right that LLMs do not do it that clearly.
- moritzwarhier 1y agoWhy did you write so many words then? Your second paragraph says nothing. The letter in question here doesn't have a sentence that is irrelevant to Russells perspective. That's succinct, not "the minimum amount of words communicating anything that might roughly align with a view". The sentences he writes to explain why he doesn't consider further correspondence fruitful seem genuinely thoughtful to me, they're not fluff or pointless pleasantries for code reasons.
- mikestorrent 1y agoEnglish is a very front-loaded language, information-theoretically, isn't it? Often the first few words of the sentence tells us everything we're going to need to know about the rest of it.
- moritzwarhier 1y agoYeah but f.. off simply does not say the same thing that his letter says, now matter how succinct. He writes like he assumes good faith, then explains why he thinks that exactly this attempt won't be fruitful, giving a good-faith argument for why Oswald should consider further correspondence fruitless, unless he changes his whole political ideology. That's a lot more than just "I don't want to talk to you and I think badly of you"
- cubefox 1y agoA tangent.. > Bertrand Russell, one of the great intellectuals of his generation, was known by most as the founder of analytic philosophy That title is usually attributed to Gottlob Frege (in particular his 1884 book "Grundlagen der Arithmetik", and his 1892 paper "Über Sinn und Bedeutung") who directly influenced Bertrand Russell, Rudolph Carnap, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, who all later became large influences on analytic philosophy themselves. Frege is most known for the invention of modern predicate logic.
- esoterae 1y agoWhere do any of us stand but on the shoulders of giants?
- Der_Einzige 1y agoOn the shoulders of god(s)?, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan "He credited his acumen to his family goddess, Namagiri Thayar (Goddess Mahalakshmi) of Namakkal. He looked to her for inspiration in his work[111] and said he dreamed of blood drops that symbolised her consort, Narasimha. Later he had visions of scrolls of complex mathematical content unfolding before his eyes.[112] He often said, "An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God." "While asleep, I had an unusual experience. There was a red screen formed by flowing blood, as it were. I was observing it. Suddenly a hand began to write on the screen. I became all attention. That hand wrote a number of elliptic integrals. They stuck to my mind. As soon as I woke up, I committed them to writing." —Srinivasa Ramanujan "The limitations of his knowledge were as startling as its profundity. Here was a man who could work out modular equations and theorems... to orders unheard of, whose mastery of continued fractions was... beyond that of any mathematician in the world, who had found for himself the functional equation of the zeta function and the dominant terms of many of the most famous problems in the analytic theory of numbers; and yet he had never heard of a doubly periodic function or of Cauchy's theorem, and had indeed but the vaguest idea of what a function of a complex variable was..." - G. H. Hardy
- kolektiv 1y ago
- pickaprick 1y ago[flagged]
- alkyon 1y agoThere is a transcription but reading the original letter, typewritten by Bertrand Russell, with all the typing corrections that probably stemmed from some kind of holy anger he must have felt responding to someone like Mosley, was incredibly more pleasurable.
- dfltr 1y agoIt's amazing how much fuck-you-and-fuck-who-you-fuck-with Russell managed to fit into a few ink smudges on a piece of paper.
- shrewdcomputer 1y agoAnd in such polite prose too
- ghurtado 1y agoYou can almost feel the hammer violently hitting the paper and nearly poking a hole in it with some of these words.
- djeastm 1y agoHe also had just turned 91 years old when he wrote this
- lovelearning 1y ago[flagged]
- ljsprague 1y agoYou're just like him!
- lovelearning 1y agoI was wondering what to reply to this and then remembered that it is always difficult to decide on how to respond to people whose ethos is so alien and, in fact, repellent to one’s own.
- exoverito 1y agoBy your omission I can assume you don't feel that way about leftists? I certainly find tankies and figures like Sartre repellent on multiple levels. He was an apologist for Stalinist communism, downplayed the show trials and gulags, and infamously denounced Camus for his 'naive' rejection of revolutionary violence.
- mikestorrent 1y agoMuch as I like the elocution of Russell's letter, it's clear that it boils down to an unwillingness to continue the conversation, which is inherently somewhat an indication of weakness, even if it doesn't imply defeat. When one is resoundingly winning an argument, it's much rarer to take this position, after all. It's entirely possible to logically respond to fascists (if you actually find one that isn't just a role-playing fool) and to push back against their extremism. The first step of that is actually understanding what it is that they really purport to believe, rather than attacking the easy strawmen that have been rhetorically established for you. Anyone who wants to attack fascism should read Evola's critique on fascism "from the right" - really helped me fill in my understanding on what these people were trying to do, to separate the ideology-in-theory from the ideology-in-practice. Just like with communism, where "true communism has never been tried", so too nobody's ever really tried "true" fascism, or democracy for that matter. When arguing with someone, it's usually best to actually get a mental model of how they themselves think... but that's a vulnerable moment for both parties involved, and not always something that can happen in the heat of verbal sparring.
- interestica 1y agoIf you’re really interested in his works and correspondence, McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario holds the Bertrand Russell archives. Some stuff is online. Here’s a curated collection of some really interesting letters sent to him: https://dearbertie.mcmaster.ca/letters https://dearbertie.mcmaster.ca/letters
- lifeinthevoid 1y agoIn case someone's too lazy to enter the address in Google maps, here you go: https://maps.app.goo.gl/oZ5c8aqH1uJ35VaD8 https://maps.app.goo.gl/oZ5c8aqH1uJ35VaD8
- mlsu 1y agoThat house is in Belgravia which is one of the wealthiest and most exclusive districts in London. Some of the most expensive real estate in the world, even at that time.
- Anthony-G 1y agoI had only heard of Belgravia from watching the Sherlock Holmes TV episode, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scandal_in_Belgravia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scandal_in_Belgravia It looked like a fancy area from that.
- IndySun 1y agoA propos
- mkfs 1y agoOf what? Both the OP and those who've responded largely have an air of > SEE? as if the letter's current relevance is obvious. Are they implying Russell, a noted pacifist incarcerated for anti-war activism during the Great War, would have endorsed Kirk's assassination? Or is this about the protests in the UK? People who've actually read Russell will recall many instances of him saying things that today would get you [flagged] [dead] on HN or dogpiled on Bluesky. For example, note here how he, like Voltaire, takes for granted that Islam is inherently more violent than Christianity due to its theology of martyrdom promising eternal, carnal paradise to those who die in its service: https://www.panarchy.org/russell/ideas.1946.html https://www.panarchy.org/russell/ideas.1946.html > Then came Islam with its fanatical belief that every soldier dying in battle for the True Faith went straight to a Paradise more attractive than that of the Christians, as houris [e.g., 72 virgins] are more attractive than harps.
- giraffe_lady 1y agoThere are two things I found valuable in the letter which is why I posted it: First an example of a notable figure, known precisely because of the habitual strength of his reasoning, refusing to engage an opponent because of the repugnance of the opponent's values and insincerity of the opponent's participation. Second despite the (clearly evident elsewhere) power of Russell's reasoning, his justification is exclusively emotional. He feels strongly about this and he stands by what he feels. He does not attempt to downplay this motivation or launder it through reason or rhetoric.
- mkfs 1y agoYou're ascribing special significance to Russell having held a position, rather than the position's own merits, which is bizarre given how frequently Russell was known to change his mind. Had he outlived Mosley, I could easily see him having had a change of heart and regretting not having taken up Mosley on his offer. And the dots, for me, remain unconnected. Are you suggesting Kirk represented such a radical, rightward departure from the Christian conservatism of (for example) Pat Robertson--a fixture of late 20th century American politics--that Mosley is a reasonable point of comparison? Are you making a point about the protests in Britain, and not realizing that "refusal to engage," at least on immigration, is a major, if not the primary, reason why far right parties have risen in Europe and why Trump is in the White House again?
- draw_down 1y agoI gather by the mention of fascism that the correspondent is a bad person. So it makes sense that Russell told him to get bent. But, that is all that he's really saying here. I can only guess this is noteworthy due to the parties corresponding because it isn't very interesting outside of that.
- shermantanktop 1y agoHave you been reading the news? Perhaps about someone who engaged people in debate while holding extreme views? In the process, they gained some measure of credit amongst people with less radical views, merely for the act of having conversations. Except in this case the debates were not with Bertrand Russell, but with 18 year old college freshman. I understood the posting to be a subtweet-style comment on that.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- draw_down 1y ago[dead]
- unstyledcontent 1y agoFeels relevant, thank you for posting. I have so many swirling thoughts and emotions from recent prominent events and this letter provides a compass for that.
- bufio 1y ago[flagged]
- arduanika 1y agoHe was so angry he could hardly contain himself.
- boppo1 1y agoWhat did Mosley write to him?
- JackAcid 1y agoMy dad went to a Bertrand Russell lecture at Michigan State University. This would have been around 1960. He can't remember anything BR talked about, though.
- UncleSlacky 1y agoHe also gave the inaugural BBC Reith Lectures, available here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00hgk62 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00hgk62
- socrateswasone 1y agoMosley was an anachronism but his time seems to be coming. Shying away from it isn't the answer. Young men are online a lot and they're seeing an appeal in traditional values and group identity in opposition to individualist and technocratic norms. The left is weak, and these spasms of violence like the Kirk assassination are symptoms of that. Let's hope this right wing energy can be released productively and some of their grievances addressed before it builds further.
- azangru 1y ago> Young men are online a lot and they're seeing an appeal in traditional values and group identity in opposition to individualist and technocratic norms. > The left is weak When you say that young men see appeal in group identity, are you suggesting that 'the left' isn't one? From my observations of online discourse, it is far more common to see people claim that identity than anything else.
- Hikikomori 1y agoNazis made fascists temporarily embarrassed. We had Mosley, the business plot and American Nazi rallies, last one was German fascism which wouldn't really have worked but its back and draped in the American flag and christianity, they even have their boogeyman.
- FridayoLeary 1y agoIt isn't. That's just projection from the left who are dismayed that the young generation are not as enthusiastic as they are about the arbitrary, opaque and ever changing social justice causes that they love. "luxury beliefs". Put another way, the left wing, particularly in the US has a single, holistic philosophy with very little tolerance for anyone who doesn't support every aspect of it and the young generation cannot see how that vision can substantially improve their lives. You even said it yourself >traditional values and group identity in opposition to individualist and technocratic norms. What on earth does that have to do with facism? Not a personal criticism, to be clear, just a general observation.
- webdevver 1y agoquite the redditor
- jcul 1y agoI wonder if this was a response to a letter from Mosley. Would love to see more context.
- raffraffraff 1y agoThing is though, it would be more useful to have such an intellectual actually take apart Mosely's views. For posterity. For all of those people who haven't properly thought things through (which is, I would say, most people) Thinking completely outside of our post-WWI bubble, history has been far more brutal in the past. This is the anomaly. Taken as a whole, human history has been full of genocide, slavery, brutality. When somebody misrepresents "survival of the fittest" in the way that the 20th century fascists did, and embark on mass extermination "for the good of the world" (in their warped view), citing the fairly recent Darwinian view of evolution, isn't it better to tackle these views head on, for the benefit of those who haven't the inclination or the ability to think it through themselves? What I see nowadays is a complete lack of curiosity. Nobody wants to try to understand why people "go bad", they just want to put them in the bin. That only works if those "bad" people are a minority. Also, when the "good" people stop engaging in debate with the "bad" people, there's a danger of creating a dogmatic society. Looking at Christianity in the middle ages, and extremely confident sense of your own rightness can lead to atrocities too. Sorry, probably nonsense, boarding a flight, not paying full attention to my post
- pjc50 1y agoYou can dismantle them from the outside, like Arendt, but "debating" them gives them a platform to Gish gallop their views to an accepting audience. Fascism sounds great. It has terrific marketing. It's like cigarettes, awesome product apart from the bit where it kills people. Including people who never consumed the product.
- philipallstar 1y ago> Thing is though, it would be more useful to have such an intellectual actually take apart Mosely's views. For posterity. For all of those people who haven't properly thought things through (which is, I would say, most people) I agree. Celebrating a dressed up "I don't want to talk to you" note is a bit silly.
- sgt101 1y agoAnd yet here we are...
- like_any_other 1y ago[flagged]
- bijant 1y agoNo Idea what you mean by "white", are Jews white ? Polish, Russians, Germans ? Hitler killed Millions of "his own people" and I'm very grateful for the "slavic subhumans" and british colonial subjects who liberated Germany. If Britain had not committed the grave crime of colonialism and imposed it's language on the globe people from far flung places might not now be colonizing britain. Let's just hope that the new Hindu/Muslim version of England shall be more tolerant than the previous iteration.
- modo_mario 1y ago>If Britain had not committed the grave crime of colonialism and imposed it's language on the globe people from far flung places might not now be colonizing britain. If that were the defining line you'd see it for a lot of places and contexts other than just the west no?. Including let's say the arab empires but berbers and co aren't "recolonising" north africa let alone Saudi Arabia or Yemen and the Ful, Masalit, etc are continuing to be wiped out in Sudan rather than Sudan being taken over by non arabs.
- 1oooqooq 1y agoguy fights in the larger fight for colonial possessions for the elites, and blame immigrants.
- kitd 1y ago2 selected anecdotes is not exactly an overwhelming argument. IIRC, the golden generation who actually fought in the war voted against Brexit. And why mention race at all? TFA is about fascism. From the surveys I've seen, you're not like any other.
- prvc 1y agoAnyone wondering what might have prompted his evident change of attitude after already having engaged in a "correspondence" with Mosley should note that this letter was written during Ralph Schoenman's infamous tenure as Russell's secretary.
- afpx 1y agoI was a politically active liberal all of my life, but if the world forces me to choose between communism and fascism, I'm choosing fascism.
- apu 1y agoscratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds
- afpx 1y agoI guess so
- trickyager 1y agoI have good news for you afpx! We don't have to pick either of those options in the real world. This is all the more telling for the folks who have chosen fascism despite not needing to.
- afpx 1y agoI sure hope so!
- CommenterPerson 1y agoFeatures of communism, government owns the means of production and private property is illegal.
- rainingmonkey 1y agoOfftopic: Anyone else noticed an explosion in this kind of comment over the last few days? Not just here but all over the web. I sure hope it's just bots...
- afpx 1y agoWhat surprises you about my comment? I’m sure a lot of people are re-thinking where they stand in light of recent world political trends.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- catigula 1y agoThis is the genetic forebear of what we have today, a congenially disguised infection of the essence that has set man against man. People who vehemently disagree are supposed to and should have open dialogue, not elaborate letters of visceral moral rage. Without dialogue you are left with only force.
- ghtbircshotbe 1y agoStuds Terkel interview with Bertrand Russell: https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/programs/interviewing-lord-bertrand-russell-while-studs-was-wales https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/programs/interviewing-lord-bert...