First, let me say this.
I'm a HUGE believer in Twitter free speech. I've fought hard for it in the early days of Twitter when people like copyleftist cultist Cory Doctorow wanted to get a critic like me banned. I've literally refused to extend a contract with the Soros-funded Eurasianet.org of Open Society Institute because they unjustly wanted to slap a Twitter gag on me merely for legitimately (as board and staff members conceded) fighting back against the contentious Registan.net crowd. That's how strongly I believe in fighting Twitter censorship -- in a way few have ever done who spout about it.
And as I've documented amply on this blog, four people associated with Registan -- Joshua Foust, Nathan Hamm, Sarah Kendzior, and Katy Pearce -- all used Twitter to harass and heckle me for my *legitimate* criticism of their views, and even called for me to be removed from my position. I found that an enormously creepy phenomenon by those close to power getting Department of Defense contracts, and a tremendous chill on free intellectual debate. Joshua Foust is a very-much documented bully, but that he has groupies who also serve as his henchmen is not as well known.
So I'm very much for any kind of free speech on Twitter, and I have made the sacrifices for it personally. It's precisely for that reason that I distinguish between free speech and the kind of harassment and incitement for removal of somebody's livelihood that some engage in. In this post, I'm honestly asking whether a cocky public figure who brags about their knowledge and connection should be in government. That's what you get to do in a liberal democratic society.
So because I put my money where my mouth is -- very literally -- I think it's more than fine to ask when people harass and bully you on Twitter, going beyond even pointed debate -- whether they are fit for their jobs or fit for even more prestigious jobs.
I've been travelling and also on vacation and also started a new project so I haven't been blogging as much. I left it to Twitter to give a little pushback on Joshua Foust's awful article on Pussy Riot (and I'll try to return and give it due diligence -- Update, here I've taken it apart now). It was his usual ultimately pro-Kremlin stuff, wrapped in a surrogate attack on intellectuals and celebrities who criticize the Kremlin and a tucked into a cunning and misleading faux-critique of Putin -- and gosh, don't you dare ever take a position accusing Foust of cunning pro-Kremlin positions or bashing anti-Kremlin intellectuals as a surrogate, because then he will call you a neo-con, or worse, a McCarthyite! It's so tiresome.
That somebody could cross the street and dump on Pussy Riot and urge that it not become "the next Kony" is simply despicable. I've been far more tempered than most on the Pussy Riot question as I think freedom of expression doesn't get to trump freedom of religion under the principles of universality, but surely they don't deserve punishment more than two weeks of community service and it's a welcome and unexpected development that despite the pernicious fashion of the Kremlin these days, especially with agit-prop Russia Today. Foust can't see his way clear to moral positions like that, so he reaches for his club to bash his fellow intellectuals who can, all the while pretending that unlike everybody else, he understands the "real" threat of Putinism and has explicated it with far more sophistication -- *snort*.
For some reason, when I posted this tweet describing Foust's position as awful, after several people agreed with me, someone named Christine Fair @cchristinefair intervened and writes "@catfitz Hey Cat Fish..the dude is spot on. What's your grouse? @joshuafoust
Of course, the marker for Internet assholery is obvious here, when somebody has to make fun of your name to make an argument, but then the perspective -- supporting Foust in is odious slam not only on Pussy Riot but their defenders -- is its own marker as well. Who knows what drives these awful positions? It's part "enemy of my enemy is my friend," and part fake concern trolling for some putative balanced human rights position that they themselves never practice in condemning America and its friends as well. Does Christine Fair take the same uncritical -- and shifting and twisting -- position on drones as her pal Foust?
This Twit spat might have ended there, but it didn't. It goads her enormously that anyone is characterized as pro-Kremlin. "Christine Fair @CChristineFair @joshuafoust You are so pro-Kremlin! WHO talks like that? Ms. Cat Fish talks like that!"
Yes, I sure as hell do, because that's what the position is, and that's what needs to be called out. What *is* this fashion of going soft on Putin by pretending to understand him "better" really all about, again?!
Says Foust then, "@CChristineFair don't feed the trolls, Chris. You will rue the day!"
So there's more sillyness: "Christine Fair @CChristineFair @joshuafoust No sir. Ms. Cat Fish will rue the day...She'll be the Wikipedia entry for "cat fish rues the day""
Foust then replies, "@CChristineFair go get her. She's been banned from half the Internet for her horrible trolliness"
Ugh. Go get her?! What is this, the thought police?! I have been banned from... Sluniverse.com, a website for fans of Second Life whose denizens tend to be pro open source and to give griefing and online harassment a pass so I'm critical of them and they hate me and ultimately banned me for standing up to some really creepy types in 4chan and Anonymous, if not LulzSec, who in fact were banned from the virtual world of Second Life for harassment of other users and server crashing. Hello! I'm not banned from this world or from its official forums (as is often misreported, simply because long ago in 2006, I was for a time for the same reason -- thin-skinned open source cultists unable to take criticism, but then wiser heads prevailed because I had not violated the TOS).
I can't think of any other sites I'm banned from *except* Registan. In fact, one of the reasons the ban-hammer Nathan Hamm banned me was because in fright, he believed I was someone related to some other Internet critic of his, and in intimidation, he had this illusion that I was "banned everywhere" hyped by others, so he felt justified.
Good Lord, what a lot of nervous nellies.
Not Christine Fair, however. She writes boldly, "Christine Fair @CChristineFair @joshuafoust She can rumble with the trailer park rabble! Back to more Pak defense nonsense. Reading Hilal right now. Wanna shoot myself."
Er, trailer park rabble? I deserve to have my name ridiculed, to be threatened with online bullying ("go get her"), because...why? Because I stood up for Pussy Riot and its defenders against the immoral Joshua Foust? Huh?
Foust later adds, "joshuafoust @joshuafoust @CChristineFair Hahaha Catty Catty Fitz Fitz is a priceless treasure whom everyone hates! (see also her Second Life: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=prokofy%20neva …)
"Everyone" hates me, you see -- LOL. And then he resorts to an entry in Urban Dictionary put in by 4chan and Anonymous bullies who have been hounding me since 2007, ever since I began reporting accurately on their Internet antics, long before it became fashionable. So yeah, Joshua Foust and Christine Fair are aligning themselves with an anarchist hacker movement that has attacked the Pentagon and other government sites. Are they pleased with themselves?
So I respond to Foust the only way you can:
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz @joshuafoust @CChristineFair Still feeling insecure after all these years, Joshik! You *wish* you were as proud of your second life as I am!Because at the root of every bully as we know is insecurity. That much is clear from the twisted account of his life put up by the equally-odious EXiled.
Now Christine replies, "Christine Fair @CChristineFair @catfitz dudette, you know that sounds cat-hoarding, stalker crazy? @joshuafoust
So, wait. Standing up to a bully online who has written falsehoods about you and harassed you for months on end is "stalker crazy"? Is "cat-hoarding"? How do people *get* like this? Have they been on the Internet too long? Has no one ever questioned what they do?
And this is why I ask, with frank bewilderment, how a person gets this arrogant and cocky and engages in what can only be described as casual assholery on the Internet. On her Twitter account, Fair writes:
Assistant Professor of South Asian pol-mil affairs at Georgetown. Views are my own-especially if they are twisted. Awaiting your anonymous, ad hominem attacks.
Washington DC · http://christinefair.net
Well, sure, we get the disclaimer, dearie. But what kind of professor behaves this way? Oh, I know. another professor who was at Georgetown -- Katy Pearce. Is this how they are?
Again, the issues isn't *criticism* of views or even *strong, robust criticism* of views. It's *assholery*. That's the word you need to describe when people behave badly -- calling names, calling on others to "go get 'em," bullying, harassing, making up wild stuff like "trailer trash" and "cat-hoarding" and "stalkery crazy".
As is known, when people continually do that, I fight back -- I fight back hard. In some cases, I'll find the perfect name for them -- and thought they have behaved badly first, they will then find a taste of their own medicine and then indignantly cry foul.
But I haven't called this Assistant Professor Fair any names nor accused her of any outlandish stuff, other than alliance with Foust which she herself expressed. I don't even know her and never heard of her, uh, contributions to the military-political affairs of South Asia.
Here this cocky, brash obnoxious lady brags:
Christine Fair @CChristineFair@faisalkapadia @Manticore73 AT least parts of the State Dept...won't say which one as I might be doing a fellowship in State :-)
So...let's get this straight? This, er, academic is not willing to call out which parts of the State Department still think the Haqqani network (just finally characterized as a foreign terrorist organization) are "useful" because....she might work for that department. How could someone be so craven? Only if they felt an absolute sense of their own high credentials and powers, even from their "assistant professorhood," because they feel they are a brain that someone will always want to hire for their expertise.
These kinds of fellowship seem to be more frequent under the Obama Administration than they used to be, but someone can correct me if I'm wrong.
In any event, I have to ask: this person should be in the government, with this kind of approach to debate and intellectual freedom? In other words, an approach that is antithetical to freedom and involves bullying and harassment -- name-calling and intimidation?
This person should be involved in diplomacy??? Why? Because they have a hook-up at State? Because they have friends in high places?
And of course there's the larger question of whether a) someone should publicly criticism State policy if they wish to work there or b) our modern-day challenge, whether someone should Tweet that they still hope to get a job with State so won't name the folks guilty of still hanging on to the Haqqani illusion -- calling into question their academic credibility.
Prof. Fair comes extremely high-credentialed:
Previously, she has served as a senior political scientist with the RAND Corporation, a political officer to the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan in Kabul, and as a senior research associate in USIP's Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention. She is also a senior fellow with the Counter Terrorism Center at West Point.
How is it that all of these institutions -- the RAND Corporation, that people still think of as nearly synonymous with the CIA with all their studies from the Cold War era (I'm reading a particularly delightful one now on Bolshevik tactics); UNAMA, which for all its troubles has tried to do good in Afghanistan and keep the record; USIP, which is a perfectly nice kind of pasture for all kinds of officials to graze in for awhile between jobs and serves a useful function in government; and West Point. West Point! How could somebody who has been through West Point and RAND take part in childish bullying online on Twitter against someone who *rightly* criticized an awful ultimately pro-Kremlin blog post? It's as if flirting with Putinism passes for critical thinking.
Prof. Fair may indeed be heavily qualified for her fellowship at the State Department. But if she wants to be a *good* official and engage in *good* governance, she will have to refrain from bullying and harassing. It's just not professional. And I hope some interviewer tells her so.
I'm going to read up on her works and positions and see if she enjoys such fraternization with Foust because she follows that same curious line of dismissing the documenters and critics of terrorism as ill-informed hysterics.
"She is a many-time survivor of the University of Chicago. She earned her B.S. in Biological Chemistry in 1991. She also completed an M.A. from the Harris School of Public Policy as well as an M.A in South Asian Languages and Civilizations in 1997. In 2004, she received her Ph.D. in South Asian Languages and Civilizations.She can cause trouble in multiple languages."
I'll bet.
The reason a heavily-credentialed person close to all the military analysis and planning of our country can do something like call a stranger names on the Internet and ridicule them as "cat-hoarders" (?!) is because they feel a supreme sense of impunity. Everyone who isn't in the same corridors of credentials and powers is fair game and unprotected.
Maybe this is one of the things that is wrong with our country?
