Registan -- a rather nasty and brutish discussion page, as I've outlined -- has done a rather mean-spirited thing -- attempted to tarnish my reputation by writing falsehoods about me and attempt to impugn my employment in my field with a series of nasty tweets. Those are pretty awful things to do just to win an argument -- indeed, it's part of the First Amendment jurisprudence in our country that you don't get to do that even in a setting of rich free speech principles because you then silence speech. To print falsehoods and attempt to harm somebody's livelihood -- those are the tests of libel. I've asked for the material to be removed because it is false and injurious, but I'm unlikely to have any resources to pursue this -- if anyone would like to help, for example by protesting to the administrators in a show of solidarity, they are welcome to contact me at [email protected]
Note: I never deploy the accusation of libel lightly -- I think in my entire history of blogging in the last 10 years or so, I've used it only twice -- regarding Registan, which I asked to remove content that was false and injurious, and another time some years ago, against one of the 4chan/Anonymous types who was endlessly stalking and harassing me and attempting to publish long tracts that supposedly were "outing" my real life so my pseudonym Prokofy Neva would be linked and somehow discredited, and I would be bullied and humiliated into silence. The facts of my "biography" were wrong, and I several times warned this character, who once facetiously claimed he wanted to "interview me for the New Yorker" (snort) that he was vulnerable to legal intervention because of these constant falsehoods.
What people often do in arguments is Google witch-hunt, and what you find if you look up my name is a zillion other people with the exact same name (one of the reasons I always put my middle initial, which is my confirmation name, Ann). For example, there's a woman journalist with the same name found guilty of plagiarism in Milwaukee who has nothing to do with me at all; there are other people with various other things like sensational divorces or who the hell knows what -- I'll never forget what it was like to be accused of "real life crime" in the Second Life community because of a case of mistaken identity. That's how people try to win arguments; that's wrong.
Nathan Hamm has done much the same thing on Registan.
He has claimed utterly falsely that I called him "a Stalinist asshole." I've done no such thing; I don't call people names like that in a professional context, that's ridiculous. Nothing remotely resembling anything like this sort of obscene smear can be attributed to me -- whatsoever.
He claimed utterly falsely that I accused him of "censoring" him (he claims I "assumed he was censoring me and flew off the handle". That's just silly. Managers of websites don't "censor" -- they aren't the state (at least not yet!). They are non-state actors and if they want to moderate their discussion, even in tendentious and propagandistic ways, well, that's their right. He's not accused of anything remotely like "censorship". I didn't "fly off the handle," I just told him that he was being childish.
Indeed, given his petulance at my reasoned arguments against various slams on human rights advocacy, he is indeed childish and manipulative, trying to win an argument by stepping in and telling me that my effective interventions in fact are "too long" or even "libelous" (!).
Catherine was leaving exceedingly long comments. Those get flagged and require manual approval. She assumed I was censoring her and flew off the handle. I assured her I wasn’t, that I would approve her comments, but that I request they be shorter than the (very high) character limit I’ve set; they derail discussion otherwise. In response, I was informed I’m sectarian, an idiot, etc.
Again, the record shows nothing like that. In fact, my remarks fit -- they weren't longer than the software automatically cuts off, but long enough to make him irritated -- maybe I was winning the argument.
Since many might take his false accusations -- which he's made in the course of defending himself from the surprised and dismayed readers even among his site's loyal fans of inappropriate silencing of a critic -- it's important to look back at where his notions came from.
In this long thread here, about the "Cotton Heresy" -- which was all part of Joshua Foust's effort to slam the cotton campaign, in which I've been active -- you can see how the debate ensued. The context is weeks and weeks of Foust's slamming a number of human rights and labor activists involved in this campaign. I didn't respond, thinking it only enabled him, and others were doing a good job of responding. But since he used my reporting so often in his debates, and kept trying to contrast me to other reporters, I finally decided to try to line up the reasons why he was wrong.
When you polemicize with people, sure, your answers can be longer. You go line by line and cite arguments. No one is bothered by Glen Greenwald spending thousands of words in posts and updates, or Zeynap Tufecki writing a 4500 word post with thousands and thousands of words from Clay Shirky. When you agree with somebody and like their politics, you don't feel the length; it's only when you dislike them and their views, that suddenly even 250 words feels like too much. I view any indignation about length of answers to be merely a placebo for arguing substance; other posters that divided their posts into two halves or went nearly as long or even as long got no such reprimand. So it's obviously just about arguing form instead of content.
In this debate, Nathan advances the kernel of the philosophy at Registan, which is this: "The bigger point is though that there is no good way for us to make meaningful improvements. It’s a pretty bleak situation. How would being a scold make it any better?" -- the essential "do nothing and leave the regime alone" school that I believe only needlessly helps enable the continuance of the regime's legitimacy among intellectuals at home and abroad.
Leaving the whole debate around that aside, I could note that others stepped in and went at great length as well.
I enter and make what seems to me a perfectly legitimate and civil disagreement of all their premises, and a moral challenge to explain why lately, there are so many attacks on human rights advocates. It makes no sense. If they are futile, why care? They're futile. If they in fact *are* eroding the regime's power, again, why care? Surely Registan writers aren't mere apologists of these regimes and don't mind if occasionally, human rights critics have some little victory. So what's up?
As I said in the post:
What’s more troubling is the claim that “Adversarial bilateral relations appear to actually make things worse.” And that’s why I challenge you guys to come clean with your real beef here. Are you saying that human rights protests harm our national security?! I’m not claiming you ARE saying that; I’m claiming that *it’s the logic of your arguments and you need to own that*. Because I’m not seeing any evidence whatsoever that protests of Uzbekistan’s bad behaviour, by governments or NGOs, has the “worsening” effect that you claim. Was claiming that human rights activists are violating the Hippocratic oath the only way you thought you could persuade them on this issue?
Nathan doesn't address any of my legitimate queries, but responded snarkily, "please write shorter comments. I have a character limit for a reason."
But the character limit isn't posted anywhere, and the comments software doesn't have a box that cuts you off -- as many do nowadays, i.e. the New York Times. So to berate someone for violating a character count when a) they have no notification and b) they don't have a mechanical cut-off *is indeed childish*. It's controlling and petty. If you don't like long comments -- and as I saw in retrospect and learned myself, people just worked around this by posting in two sections -- then force a cut-off with software or just tell people that if their long comments get put in the moderation queue, they may have been too long, and that they can't expect to be read. Certainly nobody is under obligation to read and moderate and post long comments -- they can dispense with them that way if they like. But don't ask them to somehow figure out how to "just know" what 5,000 characters are until they are not published by the system.
Nathan also tells me imperiously to "refrain from straw men". But my reply there, as anyone in good faith can see, takes up the precise slams that Joshua and others have indeed been making against human rights critics, and answers them, properly. Again, he says unpersuasively that he "applauds those who stand in solidarity" with dissidents, but he doesn't think they accomplish much. Then...why the constant attacks on them for doing that?! He claims he believes activism work, but thinks Uzbekistan is "perniciously different".
So, what this is is a talk about policies and policy options. It’s been a theme for the past eight years here that discussions of Central Asia in the west routinely deny reality in various ways. We’ve nailed western governments, especially the US, for denying realities in Central Asia and Afghanistan. And we’ve routinely criticized elements of the human rights community for engaging in policy debates without actually considering political and policy realities.
Maybe it's time to come out of the eight-year rut -- regimes changes, that's what they do.
So my reply -- far from having any obscenities or improper accusations, was simply this, regarding the admonition to cut off posts:
No, I won’t be doing that because you’re being childish just to annoy. If you have a character limit — and it shows as 5,000 characters available through technological exigency! — then….it should have cut off my comment. It didn’t. Because it wasn’t 5,000 characters. So I will go on writing. If you then ban me for “comments that are too long” (*rolls eyes*), I will merely answer you on my own blog and Twitter and your controlling behaviour only gets more exposure that way, so stop it
There aren’t any strawmen here, so please stop it with the Boys’ Latin School stuff, too. That, too, is really juvenile. Pro-tip: if you think you see an ad hominem, a slippery slope, a double half Nelson, just answer it anyway, and either it will then evaporate in self-discredit or in fact enable you to see through the scrim of your church-lady rhetorical rules perhaps to some hard truths.
Nowhere in any of my replies have I said anything about "Stalinist assholes" or even "censorship". What I said was this:
BTW, I mainly don’t bother with Registan and haven’t for years because you’re so sectarian and snotty here. I don’t mind if you decide to be that way, but being that way *and* trying to squash resistance to it through silly methods of hectoring, lecturing with the Boys’ Latin School stuff and blocking and banning just makes you even *more* sectarian and irrelevant.
So my accusation -- and I stand by it, because it's true -- is that Registan bullies, and Registan is sectarian. Sectarian, in that they represent some non-mainstream political perspective. A position that has to actively badger and bully legitimate human rights critics of regimes *is* a sectarian position -- it's deliberately contrarian against the general mainstream perspective that human rights criticism is valid, even if not every element of American government can engage in it. Even conservatives that think relations with authoritarian states should be maintained cordially for reasons of realpolitik don't feel the need to cross the street to bloody a human right activist's nose.
Nathan then replied that comments over 5,000 get pushed into the moderation queue -- but then, if my comments showed up, that means they weren't over 5,000 lol. I didn't realize that I could, like others, start dividing them into two sections. In any event, Nathan then answers curiously:
But thanks for suggesting you’re one of the folks who’s been slandering me. It’s cute backpedaling to calling me objectively pro-Karimov, but at least it’s some proof.
"Objectively pro-regime' is a topic I'll return to, as it seems a favourite one at Registan to try to deflect critics, but the operative point here that he's apparently gotten a case of mistaken identity. I'm not "one of the folks who's been slandering" him (he means "libeling," if in writing; "slander" if orally). I have no idea what this is about, truly. I don't recall debating him. I don't use pseudonyms to write in this field.
He ends by writing cryptically:
I have no hysteria about ad hominem, but I do have problems with people harming my professional reputation and attacking my integrity. My balances on both of these accounts are quite good. Some of the things you’ve said here are nearly identical to attacks on me recently. I’d be an asshole to someone whom I at least owe some human decency to divulge more details. So, if you’re not At all involved, let’s just go back to thinking one another irrelevant.
Again, I have no idea what this is about; I haven't said something "nearly identical to attacks on" him recently because I truly have no idea what he is going on about. But this paranoid perception is part of what enabled Nathan then to write his falsehoods here, that I was claiming that he "censored" me (I didn't do that); that I created legal liability for him because I came close to libel (?!) -- and so on.
Nathan closes the debate with this:
And regarding libel, if it’s false, malicious, and defamatory like a duck, might as well say what it is. It’s unlikely that it would meet the standards for US cases, but the things she says are certainly more clearly over the line than the weak sauce she has threatened to sue me over.
Again, the easiest defense against all of this nonsense is the truth defense. Look at what I actually write in this thread and this thread and you cannot find anything remotely false or injurious. Far from "weak sauce," my request to remove deliberate falsehoods about me made on Twitter designed to malign me in a professional context and harm my livelihood, with an indication that "the next letter will be from counsel," has real merits.
