Trolls: leftist fantasies of rightist bigotry
Trolls come in many shapes and sizes: concern trolls, flamers, and goalpost movers, just to mention a few. But there’s another kind of troll who comes to blogs on the right now and then, and we had a recent visit from this particular type.
I’m not sure what to call this sort of troll, so I’ll call him/her the Pretender. The Pretender comes to a blog masquerading as a sympathizer towards whatever point of view the blogger espouses. The Pretender’s goal is to create a character that supposedly sounds like a person on the right, but far more offensive and extreme.
Since the actual person behind the troll character is almost certainly on the left, however (or at least some group opposed to the right), that person can only create a caricature of a commenter on the right, one that sounds plausible to the troll but actually isn’t believable at all. Because, funny thing, the stereotypes that a person on the left generates (or swallows) about those on the right are just that, stereotypes and caricatures.
One of those stereotypes is about racism, which the left says is rampant and vicious on the right. And I have no doubt that there are people on the right who are in fact racist haters—just as there are on the left. But I’ve seen very few bona fide racists here, and certainly if they are going to flaunt their racism in some crude way they’re not going to last long here as commenters.
But the troll doesn’t know that. The troll thinks that he/she can slip this stuff in and the blogger and the other commenters will either ignore it—in which case the troll can later point to how racist the blog and its commenters are, based on the comments posted by the troll him/herself—or they will applaud it. The latter never happens, because the right (at least, mainstream right blogs like this) isn’t racist. Ignoring the racist comments sometimes does happen on a blog where the comments are too numerous (or the blogger too lazy) to be well-policed.
The goal of the troll is to make sure the right is seen to be hosting racist comments. It resembles those fake racist incidents that sometimes happen, particularly at universities, only to lead to the discovery that the person thought to be the victim of racism was actually the perpetrator trying to stir up a fake but believable claim of racism.
There are various ways to tell that a troll is a troll, but I’m not going to reveal them here. Trade secrets. What interests me about the Pretender type of troll is what the phenomenon reveals about the leftist mind. The Pretenders’ comments are a leftist fantasy of what people on the right think, but that fantasy is something emanating from the mind of leftists. Food for thought.
[NOTE: I am informed that the word I was seeking is “Moby.”]
The word you want is ‘moby’. First definition here:
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=moby
Oddly enough, Wikipedia doesn’t have that use as an entry.
Sonny Wayze:
That’s right! I couldn’t recall it, and couldn’t find it when I looked up types of troll.
“It resembles those fake racist incidents that sometimes happen, particularly at universities”
Sometimes? I haven’t seen a one that wasn’t a hoax. The anti-racists are so desperate to find racism they have to make it up. Naturally when the hoax is discovered the universities do nothing to the perpetrators. The dishonesty is excused.
Another thing the moby phenomenon reveals is the lack of evidence supporting their claims. Why do they have to make it up?
What prompted me to identify him as a troll – without having read both of the threads this particular troll populated- was that his comment was atypical of the comments posted here. Which led me to conclude he was trying to make an outrageous comment which would then be seen as a “typical” wingnut comment on the blog.
Yeah, Mobys are one form of “special Liberal” that exists, that thinks their empty-headed illusions of how their nemesis thinks are reality, and go looking for proof of it regularly, yet NEVER manage to process it when things fail to work as-expected.
Another form is the “Rules for thee, but not for me” Liberal.
Notice how, if you have ANYTHING to say which ANY SINGLE INDIVIDUAL finds offensive, that means you can, and should be, Silenced.
Then, there’s the kneeling at football games… Which CLEARLY, BLATANTLY, is offensive to a considerable number of people…
Oh, but you have NO RIGHT to “silence” them… because… “Free Speeeeeeeech!!!!!!!” :-/
Apparently, Free Speech is only for PostModern Liberals…
I will also recall something posted here and elsewhere, by me under my two common Nyms, OBH and IGotBupkis…
This is the relevance to the above of the Liberal Midnight Reset Button®….
P.s., anyone notice a behavior change — I’m guessing in the browser, where it no longer manages to remember and refill form entries (i.e., typically. Name/Mail fields) the second time through? You have to explicitly re-enter this now… Just noticed it here and one other place (Chicago Boyz) that doesn’t use blogger… Which is why I’m guessing at this point that it’s a browser change in Chrome Mobile.
I see the same problem, and I’m on a Mac laptop, using Firefox. Same problem exists on Samizdata.net, where people are using quite a variety of browsers and machines.
I say this is definitely a WordPress issue.
By definition, trolls are engaged in deceitful behavior, which brings to mind a troubling question; if those on the left are so very certain of the moral and intellectual superiority of their side… what need for deceit? What need for dehumanizing those who disagree with them? What need for hateful accusations of unethical motivations?
The recent pilloring of Jordan Peterson is a perfect example. Here is a man who presents thoughtful, erudite argumentation without the faintest intimation of questionable motivation. In response, the Left labels him reprehensible without the least bit of reasoned rebuttal.
Clearly they can’t respond with anything other than hate. I suspect that hate springs from their frustration with their inability to respond appropriately. They lack the intellectual rigor to examine the originating premise of their POV because you cannot use reason to examine a position that was reached absent reason…
People whose hate arises out of dogmatic emotion cannot be reasoned out of it. This is the seed from which springs fanaticism and fanaticism, when met with resistance… always resorts to escalating violence.
I noticed it too, and it’s doing it now. But I don’t comment anywhere else so can’t say if the problem exists on other platfroms.
Not off topic, but recently there have been three new trolls here: the dude with the IP from Canada the claimed to be living and working in northern VA, HLDave, and the latest muh/Johansen.
The comments section is remarkably Troll-free thanks to Neo.
OBH, the problem that you point out exists for every human being, regardless of political viewpoint; in fact, most people are like this in many areas of their lives. We hear a new idea or a different way of looking at things which seems plausible at the time. But often enough, after a week we have reverted to our former* view, sometimes because of mental habit — our old view is fairly firmly ensconced in our mind; and sometimes because during the week (or month, or decade) we have been pondering the issue, and come to the conclusion that our original idea was closer to the truth.
I say this not to disagree with you; quite the contrary: I think your observation is accurate and useful, as far as it goes. It’s just that it’s true of everyone and not just the Left or libruls or even liberals (in the original sense). And not just in regard to politics, but in fact in many areas — from cooking to music to math, and on and on.
*”Former view”: Sometimes that former view is no longer quite the same, because while we decide to reject the argument presented, it does cause a slight change in our view.
And if this happens often enough, and goes on long enough, sometimes we fetch up on a side of the pond where we swore we’d never be found.
At least, that’s my own experience. And I’ve pondered this and many related areas of human behavior, over several decades, and they are very much on my mind. And I felt the urge to express my own take on this issue. Lucky you guys! *g*
Some trolls come around just to see if your web connections and texting and PHONE are all working.
It’s working just fine for me (remembering my sign-in), and on my phone, too. I use Firefox.
It may be a new “Brave” browser bug. “Brave” blocks most ads and cookies and had been remembering the sign-in.
Yes to the blank fields on both my chromebook and this android tablet. Just started happening a day or two ago.
OBloodyHell,
You introduced me to the concept of the “Liberal Reset Button” many years ago and I’ve since shared it with a number of people. I’ve long considered it a highly useful concept in sharing with other puzzled conservatives, liberal’s apparent immunity to reasoned persuasion.
Since then I’ve begun to see that you can’t use deductive logic to permanently reason people out of a position they’ve reached through inductive ‘reasoning’ because they’re emotionally invested in the premise and conclusion.
Julie near Chicago,
I agree that we’re all susceptible to it but I perceive those on the Left to be especially prone to it. All protest on the left arises out of the inductive premise/conclusion; “that’s NOT fair!”. Inductive logic’s conclusion assumes that its premise provides evidentiary proof of the conclusion. Thus; Premise: “life should be fair” Observation: “life is often not fair” Conclusion: “life must be made fair”…(since it should be fair).
We all here have tried to reason with those on the left. The right typically uses deductive logic in its argument. Deductive logic is a process from premise to conclusion that relies upon consistent, coherent steps for its intellectual integrity.
Logic’s great flaw is it’s inability to examine it’s originating premise. All premises start with “if this is true, then” But what is truth? We simply don’t know, at least since we ate the apple…
Thus, when we on the right offer reasoned, logical rebuttal to liberal assumptions and assertions they are entirely ineffective because they do not address the inductive manner in which the liberal POV was arrived at.
We’re literally taking past each other… in what effectively amounts to a foreign language for the other…
Who said the Tower of Babel, a metaphor for an inability to communicate… was gone?
Now that I said it’s working fine for me (comments auto sign-in) it suddenly stopped working. But it’s still working on my phone.
Geoffrey, thanks for your response. I really can’t argue with any of that. I agree with it all, and note particularly the emphasis on “Fairness” as opposed to “Justice.”
Amazing how many people do not fully grasp this. Every logical system, including philosophical systems, must start with one or more postulates: Principles or “propositions” assumed without proof. Philosophers, mathematicians, others who ought to know better, seem to keep trying to derive reality Reality exists as a first fact. “Reality is” (i.e., “Reality exists”) is an axiom, more fundamental even than a postulate. (If there is no Reality, than no one is talking, no one is thinking, and there is nothing to talk or think about.)
(Unfortunately nowadays few people seem to grasp the difference between axioms and postulates, and even professional mathematicians, logicians, philosophers use the words interchangeably. Yet the concepts are wildly different.)
[It’s not a “flaw” in logic that logic requires postulates (and rests first upon axioms). That in itself is a fact of reality. However, it is an inconvenient fact *g*, and unsatisfactory to the well-ordered mind. At least until you learn that “it is what it is.” :>)) ]
Here’s an interview with a famous Moby, to give you an idea of what motivates them:
https://preview.tinyurl.com/y94mgfu3
Julie,
I see you too remember logic 101.
Lizzy,
The end justifies the means.
““Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult.
To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.” ― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology
OBloodyHell Says:
“This is the relevance to the above of the Liberal Midnight Reset Button®”
I’ve encountered this before. +1 it is a real thing.
Respecting Obloody’s hypothetical discussion with a liberal, with all respect, I’ve never gotten that far. After three, maximum, back and forths, it devolves to hysteria and name calling.
Poisoning the comment thread was a tactic some guy in Canada did, and then sued under the HRC rules.
R.A.:
That would be Richard Warman:
https://www.popehat.com/2008/04/10/richard-warman-saving-canada-from-ideas-from-speech-from-itself/
Off topic but of extreme importance; UK’s Tommy Robinson given a death sentence for publicizing the trial of 4 Muslim rape gang young girl groomers.
“UK Police State: Activist Tommy Robinson to Serve 13 Months in Prison for Livestreaming Report on Child Grooming Gang”
But it gets even worse, on pain of law (strictly enforced) the media is forbidden to report on any aspect of this…
“Orwell’s Nightmare: Articles About Tommy Robinson’s Arrest Rapidly Scrubbed From the Internet”
“the media is forbidden to report on any aspect of this…”
Britain seems to be following in the footsteps of Nazi Germany’s ‘Nacht und Nebel’ policy, under which people were simply disappeared.
Britain is becoming a Police State. Demonstrating my assertion that all forms of socialism incrementally progress to greater and greater levels of coercion.
As all collectivist ideologies reject basic aspects of human nature and key operative principles of the external reality within which we all exist.
That renders them unsustainable, necessitating ever greater levels of oppression.
Until finally ALL thought, speech and behavior is declared to be either forbidden or mandatory.
Racism is a subset of diversity that is individual and institutional judgment and discrimination between individuals based on the “color” (e.g. race, sex) of their skin.
Diversity denies individual dignity.
Selective-child denies the moral axiom of intrinsic value, evolution of human life, and the commonly acknowledged basic human right to life. After the first month, and development of a basic nervous system, it is not only premeditated termination of a wholly innocent human life, but the willful torture of a male or female fetus (i.e. offspring), conventionally known as a baby, for social, economic, political, and narcissistic progress. There is nothing comparable to the normalization of abortion rites in history. Even one-child is the expression of a transhuman orientation of a minority imposed on the majority. That said, both are wicked solutions.
The liberal (i.e. divergent) and progressive (i.e. monotonic) sects of the Pro-Choice Church need to reevaluate their faith (i.e. twilight) and religious/moral (i.e. selective, opportunistic, congruent or “=”) philosophy, and secular motivations (e.g. money, ego, stability).
Bigotry. Sanctimonious hypocrisy, indeed. Conflation of logical domains does not help their cause or credibility.
OBloodyHell, 5:26 pm — “Now, a week passes, seek them out. Bring the subject of their supposition up again, subtly. You will hear them espousing the exact same notions of their original supposition unchanged, unaltered, as though the entire reasoning process you took them through . . . never happened!”
I had this happen with a liberal/leftie friend of mine. We calmly discussed the point of disagreement — this was the late 1980s, so it was actually possible to do this — and we came away, not with him agreeing with me, because no way *that* was going to happen, but with him acknowledging my reasoning: an “I can see where you’re coming from, even if we’re differing as to the conclusion” sort of thing.
Fast-forward a couple of weeks, when I saw him again for the first time since that conversation. I managed to mention the earlier conversation, and said liberal/leftie friend did not even remember the conversation, even despite my gentle attempt to jog his memory.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/04/07/one-country-biggest-publishers-fake-news-says-did-for-our-own-good/fzIDkkKZf7IbYA9oyGuzhI/story.html?camp=breakingnews:newsletter
That’s an interesting interview story.
Now imagine what the CIA and FBI can do with a multi person run shop compared to this one man run shop. Then imagine what greater powers do with even more resources, pulling the strings of the intel orgs. Then one might be able to grasp the scale of the problem.
BustaTroll’s disinformation analysis process is pretty standard in military psychological warfare. The Soviet KGB used quite a lot of it.