Oh Lordy. I should just let kerfuffles die on their own, but the last time I (sorta) did that, the kerfuffle lasted for two years. I’m writing this mainly for people who actually try to inform themselves before embarking on a Twitter crusade lasting a year or more.

In my last post, I approvingly cited Scott Creighton of American Everyman, for being among the few to publicly draw links between CISPA and The Freedom Act. I also said that his blog was largely dedicated to “sometimes overwrought but well-researched conspiracism” and that I didn’t share his interest in the “conspiracy” he sees behind maneuvers to get CISPA through. When I did this, I truly had no idea that “conspiracism” and “conspiracy” are pejoratives among people who think conspiracies happen and specialize in identifying them.

After a ridiculously frothy dressing down by one of Scott’s fans, I changed the language so that it would presumably give less offense. The spewing continued unabated. If I were a more suspicious person, I might suggest his truly bizarre frothing in ostensible “defense” of a blogger with whom I mostly agreed, was an attempt to change the subject from the Freedom Act to me. If that’s the case, he succeeded admirably both here and on Twitter.

In response to his rabid, truly odd frothing — most of which I’ve deleted — I hazarded an incorrect guess at his identity, someone I described as an “anti-semite” among other things, and who later showed up to speak for himself. I have tended to identify his kind of extremely vehement, obsessive hatred for Israel — which basically makes it Empire’s Svengali — as anti-Semitic. Perhaps this is a mistake. Perhaps a foreign policy view that makes me Abe Foxman’s toady is simply wrong-headed.

Since I may be mistaken, I have deleted that remark from the comment and will no longer call people anti-Semitic if the only evidence for it is crediting Israel with supernatural power over all things, including The United States. However, I will not stop finding this guy and his ilk extremely obnoxious in their insistence that anyone who doesn’t see Israel quite the same way is a power-worshiping Zionist. For the record, I think the view of Israel as a run-of-the-mill U.S. client, that operates entirely in compliance with U.S. geopolitical requirements, is equally hard to embrace.

Elsewhere on this blog, I have defended conspiracism — or whatever I’m supposed to call it — but stated that I don’t share its emphasis on origin stories that we can never know. I tend to be concerned with effects, because they’re knowable — to an extent — and because I think our system has a capacity to improvise what are objectively Psy Ops without a lot of planning or deliberateness. Nevertheless, I think Scott Creighton is a smart guy. He and a lot of people in that realm are great researchers, and even if you don’t agree with them entirely on the false flags, psy ops and hoaxes they write about, they often provide good leads, source material, and political observations. In broad strokes, at least, they understand power better than the average liberal and they tend to be much better informed.

Often when I fail to give 100% allegiance to some internet subcommunity or another, I am accused of softness on whatever nemesis preoccupies them. Perhaps even an agent for that nemesis. The evidence, of course, is always the same: the fact that I don’t write about this thing that preoccupies them far more than it does me. Or I criticize people that do. It should be enough to simply say how disgustingly childish it is to insist that everyone share your preoccupations in the exact same way you do. But I’ll also point out that this blog has a pretty narrow, and obvious, focus: I am interested in political discourse that left media critics from Chomsky onward self-servingly exempt from scrutiny and analysis. I am now being condemned, not for the first time, for my allegedly deafening silence on Zionism. But Zionist propaganda does not figure prominently in the space I write about, and it’s a topic on which I can say nothing new, because there is no shortage of people who have said quite a lot already.

However I have mentioned it when it was germane to the topic, such as in this piece on Chris Hayes. I know how internet people really love hearing the things they believe said over and over again, but, though I repeat myself, I try to write, and repeat myself, about things that others mostly don’t. In the realm I contend with, covert fascism, white supremacism — as manifested in free speech absolutism, for example — imperialism and capitalism are much more pronounced than Zionism. In fact, many of the people I critique use anti-Zionism as a street credible substitute for a more thorough-going, coherent left politics. I know that some of the people who are now frothing about me think Greenwald is a shill for Israel. Hence, if I criticize Greenwald without mentioning that I must be some kind of fraud, when what it really means is that I simply don’t agree. For all his faults, I don’t think Greenwald is a covert Zionist. Sorry.

Anyway, do whatever you want with this info. These fights and the people who love them don’t interest me in the least. I hated Twitter crusades and crusaders long before I became a target for them, regardless of their political aim. If you think that’s because I fear your mighty laser-like Truth, you’re really not paying attention. There is not a person on earth I’m afraid of arguing with. I hate Twitter crusades because they are exceptionally attractive to the kinds of people I have spent my life avoiding: conformists, liars, social climbers, demagogues, moralists and witchhunters. People like this. But after the Glennbot fever, stirred up dipshits badmouthing me are like water off a duck’s back. Don’t confuse my objections to being mischaracterized and lied about with giving a shit what you think. The Glennbots could never get their dim little heads around this. How about you give it a try, while we get back to the topic from which we were very painstakingly derailed.

UPDATE

“For the record, I call it ‘journalism’” — American Everyman blogger Scott Creighton, commenting here.