I think his posts were offensive to many because his positions attack the core of a mainstream liberal-left consensus that is very emotionally meaningful to people. Including me—I frequently disagreed with him. But his points weren’t radical or off-the-wall outside of the particular mainstream Western liberalism that forms the dominant discourse here. For example, I think his perspectives on China would have been quite mainstream in many parts of Asia and his perspective on Israel would have been mainstream throughout the Islamic world. His posts helped you make the imaginative shift to seeing those non-Western perspectives.

I think the fact that some people were so offended by him is indicative of a certain level of self-righteousness.

http://crookedtimber.org/2008/09/29/republican-talking-point-whack-a-mole-yet-again/#comment-253857

I first noticed Asher here:

http://crookedtimber.org/2008/09/15/valuing-children/#comment-252036

Abb1 seemed to be able to type any thought filter-free, and your house, your rules, can’t disagree. But loons who favour abortions to keep ethnic dummies from breeding – flagged as trolls by abb1! – may fly under the radar if they’re using more civil language to dress up the crazed meanness.

Another aspect of this is that – guessing – moderators usually police only their own threads and don’t meddle in others. Readers then get confused at the varying amounts of tolerance, assuming there should be some kind of site-wide definition of the Pale. I don’t actually think there should be site-wide strict rules as different contributors must value contributions in different ways. But I as an internet user involuntarily see CT as more of a monolith than I’ll bet the moderators do.

My own comments aren’t exceptionally brilliant or civil, so where there is moderation I can accept it, although it’s always something of a surprise given what I see elsewhere at CT (and again, stuff elsewhere is justifiable).

I guess all I’m saying is that there will always be complaints in such a system and nobody needs me to tell them that. Shutting up.

the trouble involved in dealing with a discussion of this kind outweighs any enlightenment that is produced

In what way does ‘the trouble involved in dealing with a discussion of this kind’ differ from ‘the number and vehemence of accusations of racism / anti-Semitism posted in response, and the embarrassment accruing as a result of being casually labelled a racist /anti-semite on forums that may well be read by or drawn to the attention of colleagues and superiors’?

Ave atque vale, abb1, we hardly knew ye, strange, USSR-loving, Swiss-dwelling person you allegedly were.

The production of enlightenment can be a game of inches, not always a sudden rush of satori, especially in the arena of contemporary online opinion.
The new ideas may have to wait until the old ones get a fair and open hearing.

JThomas: I’m sorry for being snippy. It’s more a matter of tone than content. That’s a worthwhile suggestion, though one I’m unlikely to act on.

I did read the Nation article you referred in the OP, I have been familiar with BHL’s work for many years, including his regular feature in Le Point and his short-lived blog. I do think the Nation article is invoking a straw man argument about how grains are dumped in the sea because of capitalism and McLemee’s reference to the alleged antitotalitarianism of the left is weak.

I write to the OP and I have been consistently civil with those hurling abuse at me.

If, after all this, you think I crossed a line, fine.

but I think most bloggers have come to the conclusion that the trouble involved in dealing with a discussion of this kind outweighs any enlightenment that is produced. It’s a long time since I saw any new ideas on this topic.

My fault as a a writer for allowing the ambiguity of “force and power” to influence your response unnecessarily.

JThomas, thank you for providing me these opportunities to experience for myself my own maturity and patience.

As for the ML comparison – two points. First is that ML is probably the best comments section on the WWW, and TNH has gotten hired for Real Money for her comment-fu – so it is a tough act to live up to. Second is that CT has an obviously left wing group of front page posters, with a mostly left-leaning comments section, but has more right of center commenters than most left leaning blogs. However annoying that may be at times, I think it has real value (not that all blogs should be like this – the paper I reffed up above is all about how it is legitimate to have blogs that preach to the converted, contra Cass Sunstein etc). Not unsurprisingly, these arguments are often non-productive – but I think it’s useful to have some places in the blogosphere where they happen.

Final thing to remember is that we are not a hierarchically organized group. Different people in CT have different degrees of toleration for different practices. I banned Dan Simon pretty sharpish, but he’s still allowed to post comments on a few other CTite’s posts. Generally, we don’t impose collective bans except where (a) someone is clearly horribly racist, anti-Semitic or unambiguously nasty in other ways or (b) is clearly breaking rules over sockpuppeting, failure to respect limited bans etc. Abb1 falls under the second category. When I repeated my warning above, he made it clear that he had no intention of respecting it, and effectively challenged me to bring it on. That is the kind of behaviour that is liable to get you a general ban.

CT has a horrible comment section, and it’s sucking the life out of the blog. You have nothing like the vibrant community that Making Light has. You were right to ban abb1 from posting to I/P threads, because her comments would disrupt the thread. Otherwise, she’s rarely abusive, usually on topic, and ignored by almost everybody. Instead, you have some dumb-ass right-winger (Order of Magnitude in this thread can serve as exemplar) who shows up without comprehending the simplest facts about the world, and successfully diverts the thread into a discussion of whatever weird cognitive distortion is bouncing around the wingnut brain these days.

The most interesting discussion you had this month was the one-thousandth repetition of John-Emerson-versus-analytic-philosophy. You have a terrific array of front-page posters, so that’s a really bad sign.