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Category: In-Depth Articles

In-depth, meaty articles — political analysis, critical thinking

Revusky’s Laws of Debate

Jonathan Revusky

The goal of the following “laws” is basically to disarm the trolls that pervade public discussion. They are largely based on my own personal experience in online “debates” over the last few years, in which I have observed just how defenseless good-faithed participants are against the same repeated trolling tactics. Some of these already appeared in essays I have written. I anticipate that this list will expand over time. Anybody who starts with this vacuous nonsense about “conspiracy theories” and/or calls you a “conspiracy theorist” has thereby conceded the debate.1 If, in a debate, someone is upholding some narrative, and it becomes evident that their only “proof” of the story amounts to simply repeating the story, then that person has…

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“Seth Rich Confidant” Escaped to Russia

David Martin

Edward Snowden and John Mark Dougan are both relatively young American whistleblowers who have been granted political asylum by the Russian government. Dougan could be the more important of the two “fugitives,” but almost no one in the United States has heard of him, while almost every halfway-informed person has heard of Snowden. This fact speaks well of Dougan, suggesting that he might well be the more genuine of the two. Snowden is a former CIA operative who spilled a lot of beans about surveillance of the public by the National Security Agency (NSA), perhaps beans that they really didn’t mind seeing spilled. Dougan is a former Marine and former police officer who used his considerable computer skills to embarrass the leadership of his former…

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Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression

David Martin

(Editorial Note: This is a classic piece that originally appeared on Dave Martin’s website) Strong, credible allegations of high-level criminal activity can bring down a government. When the government lacks an effective, fact-based defense, other techniques must be employed. The success of these techniques depends heavily upon a cooperative, compliant press and a mere token opposition party. Dummy up. If it’s not reported, if it’s not news, it didn’t happen. Wax indignant. This is also known as the “How dare you?” gambit. Characterize the charges as “rumors” or, better yet, “wild rumors.” If, in spite of the news blackout, the public is still able to learn about the suspicious facts, it can only be through “rumors.” (If they tend to…

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The Charlottesville Operation

David Martin

(Editorial note: This in-depth article, which first appeared nearly a year ago on Dave Martin’s site is timely once again, since the media has been running a lot of pieces commemorating the first anniversary of this bogus event.  Also, listen to Dave’s interview from Kevin Barrett’s radio show.) It was May of 1970 and my wife and I, both graduate students at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, had joined hundreds of other people, most of whom were students, in an enormous march around Chapel Hill in protest of the shooting of demonstrators at Kent State University and incursion into Cambodia, expanding the Vietnam War. As we were marching toward Franklin Street, the main drag in the town,…

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The Muslim Rape Army Is Coming to Getcha! Further Thoughts on Reclaiming Reality

Jonathan Revusky

The Brawl that Wasn’t A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. Mark Twain Sometime a bit over a year ago, I came across an article describing a big brawl that occurred in, of all places, Murmansk, way north in Russia. The story, in the Daily Caller, by one Jacob Boesson, is entitled: Refugees Go Clubbing In Russia, Harass Girls, Wake Up In Hospital The Next Morning. The story is dated February 4, 2016, but the events described would have taken place on the previous weekend, on Friday 29 January. “A group of 51 refugees were brutally assaulted outside a night club in Murmansk, Russia, after they groped and molested women at a night club…

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Faith, Reason, Fanaticism, and the Deeper Meaning of “The Donald”

Jonathan Revusky

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em Perhaps the greatest historical archetype when we think about religious fanaticism and intolerance is the Spanish Inquisition, in particular the fearsome figure of Tomás de Torquemada, the first Grand Inquisitor. The historical backdrop is that, in the wake of the Reconquista, centuries of back-and-forth conflict between Muslims and Christians, the Christians eventually regained control of all of Spain; the last Muslim stronghold, Granada fell in 1492. As Christianity gained the upper hand, many people who were formerly Muslims or Jews decided to become Christians. However, it was widely believed that many (most?) of these conversions were not sincere, but rather, made for reasons of expediency. Now, when you look at this problem in a more…

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The Show Must Go On

Jonathan Revusky

A Night at the Theater One evening a gentleman decides to go to the theater. There is a play showing that is reputed to be a very funny comedy. It’s hilarious, people are raving about it. At various points in the middle of the performance, hecklers disrupt the play, shouting disparaging insults at the actors on stage. At first, the actors on stage ignore this and carry on in their roles, but then, at some point, some of them lose patience with this, and respond to the hecklers. Let’s say it begins when an actress on the stage, who is portraying a very prim, proper lady in the play, goes completely out of character and responds to the hecklers with…

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A Framework for Reclaiming Reality

Jonathan Revusky

I believe I first read George Orwell’s essay, Politics and the English Language, as part of the reading list for an English 101 college class. I was a teenager at the time and I don’t believe I really understood what Orwell was getting at. I think my understanding was at the superficial level. I mostly just took it to be a screed against crappy writing — which it is, of course. But it is much more than that. Some of the ideas in that essay were later developed in his magnum opus, the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, wherein the government of Oceania are designing a new language called Newspeak, which brings to mind the current-day scourge of “political correctness”. Come to think…

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Battling the Matrix and Freeing Oneself from the Roger Rabbit Mental World

Jonathan Revusky

In 1999, a big hit movie was The Matrix. I went and saw it but I don’t recall it making much of an impression on me. At the time, my understanding of the world was pretty conventional. I believed the things I was told — for example, that a lone nut by the name of Lee Harvey Oswald had shot President Kennedy, and another lone gunman named James Earl Ray later shot Martin Luther King. Of course 9/11 hadn’t happened yet, but, when it did, a couple of years later, I assumed that the official story was broadly true. In retrospect, I am not sure whether, at the time, I even knew the term “false flag terrorism”. Probably not. In…

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