Re: <nettime> Fascist "trolls," meta

[tbyfield <tbyfield@panix.com>]

On 8 Nov 2018, at 14:25, jan hendrik brueggemeier wrote:

> just to reiterate: AB was an alt-right hack of nettime? times 
> certainly
> are changing ... (apologies for the slow response).

I'd rather spend time on just about anything but Bard, but on this 
point:

As far as I know, Bard's been on the list for many years, going back at 
least to the Tulipomania conference in 2000, when he was programmed in a 
debate with (my, how times have changed!) Richard Barbrook and Michael 
Gurstein. Personally, I think that Bard is "alt.right" and a hack, and 
it's a fact that he was on nettime, but to suggest he "*was* an 
alt-right hack of nettime" — no. That invites a level of 
conspiratorial thinking that's unjustified and unnecessary. I think the 
last time anyone suggested someone else on the list was part of some 
hidden plot to target nettime was 20 years ago, probably almost to the 
day. Let's make the next time it happens in November 2038. If this list 
should be about anything at all, it should be about advancing some kind 
of freedom in understanding how individual, collective, and mass beliefs 
and actions coincide. Conspiratorial implications that cast others as 
instruments of hidden agendas do the opposite.

That said, in a few private mails after being modded Bard made a few 
remarks that, in my view, confirm hat his ideas have aligned with the 
extreme elements of the alt.right — for example, something that 
sounded a lot like the "white genocide" bombast common in supremacist 
circles. That put an end to whatever reservations I had about modding 
him — not because those views are proscribed on this list, but because 
there was no reason to think he'd be able to engage in constructive 
debate. He also asked to unsubscribed, which he was. So: he's gone off 
to the happy hunting ground of, as he put it, "the Intellectual Deep 
Web." But I don't want to say anything more, because it isn't fair to 
discuss someone in a public context where they can't reply.

More generally, a few people have pointed out on- and off-list that open 
forums where people from across the political spectrum can exchange and 
debate ideas are desperately needed — as an ideal in their own right 
and for pragmatic reasons, because the alternative is a world of 
intellectual inbreeding, feedback loops, and closed systems.

If this list needs anything (and it desperately does), it's to expand 
the range of voices and ideas, not to narrow them and turn inward. So 
I'll repeat this:

> You know what would be great? If we — by which I mean all of you, 
> acting individually — could take a few concrete steps to nudge this 
> list in better directions. Rather than make a few banal suggestions of 
> things you can do *right now*, as if this were a political 
> fund-raiser, it's better to leave this as a standing invitation.

Cheers,
Ted
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