muckrights-sans-merde
bonum fabula frat
### bullshit-detector-overload
other pages:
=> why-would-muckrights-stop-advocating-real-freedom-after-so-many-years.html why-would-muckrights-stop-advocating-real-freedom-after-so-many-years
*originally posted:* may 2021
may 30th in muckrights irc-- a complete orgy of bullshit!
the reality-distortion field was so powerful there yesterday, even i could feel myself getting swayed. this has implications, which i will talk about here.
im not here to tell you i can prove yesterday was bullshit-- on the contrary, i absolutely cannot. now what does that mean?
the purpose of gaslighting is to convince someone theyre crazy for knowing what they actually (realistically) know. its reality-distortion, it is a particularly acute and abusive and manipulative form of lying.
ive already covered whether i think muckrights is a cult or not. generally speaking, i dont think it is. but for a moment yesterday. an ad hoc cult was formed, like a flashmob or a shop that shows up and is torn down and moves the next day. maybe "circus" is really the best word for this one. it was a carnival of lying.
but however you describe it, my poor bullshit detector had to limp away in pain. there were so many people saying things i knew they had said just the opposite about 24 or 48 hours ago, i couldnt possibly keep up with the relentless lying. in yesterdays article i quoted another former muckrights contributor who said:
"Ron is incredibly redundant. Kind of like propaganda..."
and maybe it cant be helped entirely. after all, muckrights-sans-merde addresses the repetitive lies of muckrights, and muckrights addresses the repetitive lies of giafam. so muckrights would probably still be repetitive, even if it were honest.
im not joking about feeling a little bit swayed, though. (is that what dt meant? i dont think it is, but fair play if it was) ill tell you more about it in a moment. i went for a walk, i feel a little more objective now (nobody is entirely objective of course-- that would require knowing everything, including having a perfect understanding of yourself. so at best you can be relatively objective, compared to what or whom?) but i still planned to write about this.
muckrights itself commented on relentless lying as an approach in 2015-- it even quoted what goebbels had to say about it: http://techrights.org/2015/01/28/more-openwashing-of-microsoft/
"If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth."--joseph goebbels
the context of this quote is the "big lie" that microsoft is "open source". microsoft and the companies muckrights says they "bribe" (advertise with-- though i think the comparison muckrights makes there is apt) keep hammering away, telling people theyre "open source" until people believe them.
so far ive kept track of some similar narratives that muckrights has adopted-- talking points that are anything but true:
=> https://muckrights-sans-merde.neocities.org/list-of-muckrights-false-narratives.html
and what happened in irc? i wasnt even there-- i was just reading the logs. but i could feel myself actually starting to believe that just maybe, these lies were true.
if gaslighting is a special category or method or process (sounds like part of a patent application now) of lying, then narcissistic hoovering is a special category of gaslighting. its where an abuser or narcissistic liar / manipulator goes on what muckrights rightfully calls a "charm offensive":
> Microsoft Has Just Blackmailed Linux Twice in One Single Week and the Media Didn’t Notice or Just Ignored It Because of Microsoft’s Charm Offensives http://techrights.org/2016/03/10/charm-offensives-distract/
comes v. microsoft evidence talked a lot about charm offensives as a conscious and deliberate strategy-- charm offensives are not always deliberately planned or even done self-consciously though. people on a charm offensive will start pretending to be friends (again?) telling people things like:
* everything is okay, dont worry
* no, i never said that-- you got it all wrong, i would never do that
* im certainly not going to do that (thing which they threatened to do just 5 minutes, or 2 days ago)
* no youre taking that (threat, or promise broken) out of context
* in fact thats completely against all my principles (even though theyve done it before and will do it again)
all sorts of things like that have been said (by the same people-- plural) several times this week / month. there is a LOT of narcissistic hoovering going on.
and whats two of the central themes of narcissistic hoovering? reconciliation and unity!
of course some things are worth reconciling-- some kinds of unity are worth the effort, even if it takes years.
thats beside the point, because what we are talking about here is a cycle of lying and manipulation and abuse (including threats and the lasting trauma, doubt or insecurity caused by threats even after they are "taken back", which is one reqason narcissistic hoovering often fails, just not completely) but like gaslighting, hoovering creates the feeling that you must have imagined or misconstrued or exaggerated things you absolutely knew (and could even prove) were true.
its serious emotional and psychological fuckery-- to the point where it is literally weaponised by various militaries. oh, but garden-variety narcissistic douchebags do it too.
however, presently i have to tell you this INTELLECTUALLY. because INTELLECTUALLY, i know these things first-hand, from personal experience. i know HOW this works, in the same way i know how electric lights work.
but EMOTIONALLY, i am still reeling from what i read. to the point where i do actually have substantial feelings of doubt about the false narratives ive studied at length for months, if not arguably years.
you know the ending of 1984 where winston loves big brother? (sorry if i spoiled it for you-- its a necessary point for this article). im not saying i love muckrights-- muckrights is a completely narcissistic endeavour-- i know it lies because there are things i already knew first-hand were not true (for one, because they were about facts about me personally, and because i could prove ron was lying about them-- just as i demonstrated yesterday about his smears of of openbsd) and ron didnt just lie about them to other people-- he lied about them over, and over, and over again.
"If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth."--joseph goebbels
so i still know ron lies. compulsively. it is a fact that he lies.
and i still know that ron lies in an OLYMPIC fashion. ron doesnt just skate across the lake and leap over an obstacle as an alternative to plowing into it, oh no-- he leaps into the air and comes back down in a triple spin, then skates backwards over everything he just said, while taking a bow. of the many liars ive known, ive truly never witnessed such flourish.
people arent exaggerating when they say some people lie like its an art form. why do people go to so much trouble to paint a realistic picture, when they can just take a photograph? because of the personal expression, because of the joy of creation, and although most people lie simply to get something accomplished-- some people must take great joy in raising it to the level of an art. and although the execution does seem a bit clumsy at times, ive watched ron really go for some flourish. this as much as anything, is why i think his lying is compulsive.
that however, isnt the point of this article. it is the backdrop. the point of this article is that DESPITE ALL OF THE ABOVE, i STILL felt swayed, reading what i read earlier.
in other words: i have long called him a liar about systemd, and i feel (on an emotional level) swayed into buying his bullshit today.
similarly, the person pulling HIS strings seems extra convincing and agreeable today. i know what is really true intellectually, but i dont FEEL it. the confidence i usually have about it? replaced with feelings of doubt-- with lots of second guessing.
that is the entire point of hoovering. as well as gaslighting.
and IT WORKS! im telling you, no matter how much of a hardcore sceptic you are (and i run a website dedicated to this) these things do exactly what they say on the tin. the reason even good people quote an evil person like goebbels is because its a warning to all who may find themselves suckered by propaganda-- be warned, because propaganda works.
you can still fight it, of course. there are all sorts of nasty things that demonstrably work, but there are ways to mitigate them.
one thing you can do is PRACTICE. this means youre going to deal with a lot of pain, a lot of bullying, a lot of lies aimed at manipulating you. im not really sure what a "safe" way to train for that is. hanging around people like this always comes with the risk of being pressured into being more like them-- like theyre manipulating and fucking with people, so theyll want you to join them in doing this.
a safer approach im sure is to read a lot about the subject, and i think its so relevant to free software and especially open source-- which is still taking over free software now, that ive included a chapter on it in the books ive done about rebooting the free software movement.
heres the latest edition of that chapter, incidentally:
=> https://wrongwithfreesw.neocities.org/rebuilding-communities.html
> you dont need a gullible project leader for this to happen. you can actually have a project leader / founder who becomes aware of-- and will even admit-- this problem exists, without having any idea how to fix it or what to do about it.
the more that people understand this intellectually, the more it helps.
once you have some understanding of this problem on an intellectual level, what helps on the emotional level?
the first thing that helps is a BROADER view. this means in terms of scope, but also in terms of history.
when people want to control a narrative, they use several different tricks. one is to isolate the audience, using various means. simulating a community where there really isnt one gets people to feel emotionally invested, and protective of any perceived threats to the community. cancel culture thrives on this sort of isolation and control-- its monopolistic.
when you call out a percentage of cancel culture proponents, they will say that cancel culture doesnt exist, or that theyre not trying to censor or punish people. those are lies, but they sometimes believe their own double standards are reasonable and thus NOT dishonest. not much you can do to call them on it, at least not in a way that will get through to them.
another thing that was already mentioned, is repetition. if you tell people a lie over and over, it starts to seem like a well-established history. or what really happened.
in these two approaches, is the seed for mitigating them-- to fight narrative isolation, you go find what other people have to say. thats why there is so much censorship and cancellation-- it harms the monopoly that these people rely on to make you believe their bullshit. so they try to limit what you access by censoring and cancelling, but they dont call it censorship or cancellation-- those arent neutral terms. they call it JUSTICE. thats something nobody can be against, right?
so theres a two-prong approach there, to censorship and cancellation-- the first is to fight what people have access to. the second is to fight what people WANT to access. and thats where smear campaigns come in.
ron says he doesnt censor-- but he DOES lie about people. thats a contradiction. he lies about people to make you not want to hear what they have to say. ron doesnt censor, he pushes his readers to distrust anything that goes against his narrative. he doesnt want people thinking for themselves-- hes a monopolist. hes not even the only one over there-- there are others.
i still read the website, and that means im subjecting myself to its bullshit. but i prefer to DEMONSTRATE-- to show people how and why it is like that, so they can evaluate these things themselves.
thats going to be harder to do this week, because right now i doubt too much that i was right. i know the truth on an intellectual level, but there was SO MUCH bullshit in chat that i dont know how long this feeling will last.
but i know that it will pass. and that brings me to the other thing you can do to fight this:
apart from broadening your perspective (ZOOMING OUT as it were) in terms of SCOPE, you can also broaden your perspective in terms of TIME. and thats why history is so fucking valuable.
the reason that i know open source is a scam is because i caught it in the act-- i caught it rewriting history. i caught it lying AGAINST ITSELF, with no justification or explanation-- only bullshit.
and ive caught muckrights doing that too.
IN THE MOMENT, caught up in the moment, all these lies i read yesterday can be so persuasive, you can start emotionally doubting what you intellectually know you can logically prove is bullshit. its not a great feeling. this is what they call cognitive dissonance, right?
but anyway, its not like THE MOMENT has a monopoly on truth-- thats what history is for.
i didnt give a shit about history in school. it was a boring subject, taught in a boring way. its just impossible for everybody to get the best history teachers, so a lot of them are going to-- or be required by the school to-- teach history in the most fucking boring way possible. with no drama, no intrigue, no obvious relevance to the present.
but EXTREME relevance to the present is typically what makes history so fucking interesting. HISTORY is the WEAPON i used to penetrate open source and its propaganda. its what enabled me to escape the practical cult of open source and find something else that was at least relatively legitimate and relatively original and honest.
unfortunately, a goal of open source is to conquer and absorb free software-- like agent smith in the matrix, or-- like narcissists in general (hence the purpose of an entire chapter about narcissism in a book about the free software movement). and as that happens, free software takes on more of open sources bullshit. thats one of the biggest crises we face in free software today. its certainly not the only one.
think about all the lies and gaslighting and narcissism that goes into a problem like systemd. richard stallman, alas, does not. but ron lied-- outright lied, and said he did.
a day or two ago, he smeared openbsd with more of his silly bullshit (his anti-openbsd fu is fucking weak, but hes practicing-- he WILL get better at it, so the time to learn to fight his bullshit is now) but yesterday, he said he has long supported bsd! which is true, in a very literalistic but ultimately dishonest and reality-bending sort of way.
> "The 'old Microsoft' is still the 'new Microsoft', only the face of the company has changed – CEO and PR." http://techrights.org/2016/04/04/ceo-and-pr-change/
and still the effects of propaganda are powerful. the effect of passionate, compulsive lying is incredible. and history is one of the greatest defences we have.
when you cannot find a sane person on earth (at least, not one who is interested) to help figure out if youre right or if its just you-- you can go back in time, you can run a sort of temporal hashsum on reality itself, to see if whats being said now REALLY DOES jibe with its own historical facts.
because its possible that everything we ever knew UNTIL TODAYS LIES was ALL bullshit, but-- its far more likely that if someone starts lying their arse off all of a sudden, thats the narrative that is truly suspect.
dont just pick up a history book, though-- do what historians do-- pick up OTHER old texts, old books, old songs and poems.
and compare.
the best (poor mans) lie detector in the world, is a time machine. but its a fine emergency escape for a cacophonous orgy of bullshit, too. (unless you mean the tardis, of course. such a shame. but then, if you use it to travel back to when the show was good, even that thing still works).
finally, some will argue that the best thing to do is stay well away from liars. and its not the worst advice. it would have prevented the feelings i had reading the logs today. but its hardly an option if one of your goals is to report on those lies, you know? plus, its good to have a backup plan-- when it comes to the free software movement, liars are always going to try to take over. we still need SOME sort of defences.
if we wait, muckrights will show its hand again. probably sooner, rather than later. lies can really shake your confidence sometimes, but they dont change the truth.
=> https://muckrights-sans-merde.neocities.org