. . . and have a key post deleted, WITH NO DETAILS PROVIDED.
I finally found a blogger email* in my gmail junk box, which said that nice generic smear, "hate speech." I am of course invited to self-incriminate by changing my post to conform to whatever claims underlie the anonymous complaint. Which also neatly manages to suppress whatever viewpoints Google does not like. That reeks of poor governance, to me.
__________
* U/D, Dec 3, a "no-reply" email address, but in an attempt to communicate, I replied anyway -- including giving a link to this post; it has not bounced back, so I hope there has been some effect. I thereafter found a button to appeal on the edit page (this was apparently an update), and pressed it, eventually seeing that the edit page indicates an appeal is in process, but of course I don't even know if my reply much less this blog post has been received much less responded to; I wonder if I have had any opportunity to speak for myself in whatever process is going on, for sure I have received no specifics. All of this underscores the opaqueness and lack of two-way communication that has marked this process. I again point to Governor Festus in Ac 25:16, who showed how the Romans understood principles of natural justice and due process, 2000 years ago. The accused should have occasion to face the accuser and answer specific charges tied to sound law. Learning of a judgement, punishment and vague but tainting accusation ["hate speech"**] after the fact with a grossly inadequate appeals process does not measure up to where our civilisation was 2000 years ago. That speaks sad volumes, but it does provide a base for reformation.
** Of course, as a self-aware conscience guided individual I know directly, that I am not acting from hate, spite, revenge, irrational fear etc., and it should be obvious that the page is an exercise in philosophical analysis on matters tied to the core warrant for the Christian Faith, to fatal cracks in the foundations of various worldviews that reject that faith and associated civilisation principles and further analysis on ways forward to reformation, down to laying out first principles of aesthetics using Mona Lisa and bad architecture as key examples.
So, what is the problem?
(Apart from, how, when I was doxxed, smeared and subjected to attempts to rob me of employability by a whole hate-blog, I was told by Google about free speech, how the best thing would be to respond, and only a court order would move Google? Well, NCSTS U2 was -- it is deleted -- a major response. That leads me to doubt that Google's reply was an honest reply then. Yes, double-standards, Google team, free consultancy: fix your governance and customer communication systems before you face a serious lawsuit. Especially, as it has been all but impossible to find any means of communication with complaints and customer service. Of course, I have been at Blogger since 2000 and in general have not been impressed with the Google takeover was it about a decade back.)
In absence of another means of response, here is my first observation regarding alleged hate speech, something that appeared high in the blog post and should have itself triggered pondering by Google's Blogger team:
Now, specifics informed by my knowledge of culture-form, Frankfurt School Neo-Marxism, now usually styled as various critical theories:
1: Truth vs Hate: There is of course a fair comment principle and defamation defence, that principled objection -- even if not true in the end -- is not to be treated as X-phobia, irrational fear and hostility. NCSTS U2 is principled objection, from the ground up, literally, laying out the first self evident duties that guide our behaviour. Where, truth is a further defence against defamation, and for cause I believe that while obviously controversial, my remarks are credibly true also.
2: Acid, vitriolic hyperskepticism as a key challenge today: This is manifest, all around and it is not particularly noted for its genteel conduct, say in the cases of riots against those who dare to try to say the politically incorrect on many campuses. It is also appallingly destructive to the cultural buttresses that sustain a constitutional democracy against its inherent instability. (For history, kindly see how Athens destroyed itself and discredited democracy for 2000 years, through the course of the Peloponnesian War.)
3: Misanthropy and anti-civilisational behaviour of Jacobin-derived radicals: The history of the radical left in our civilisation, since 1789, has shown consistent resort to lawless ideological oligarchy, terror and mass killing. This includes, that the Communists have killed over 100 millions in assorted democides.
4: The National Socialist, German Workers' Party meant the "Socialist": As a child, I was taught the widely held view that there was a mirror-image pair of tyrannies, Communists on the Left, Nazis on the Right. When I became a man, I learned better. Nazism and Fascism were Nietzschean Superman, political messiah ideologies in which some mass victim group sought rescue in the face of allegedly unprecedented crisis, by a revolution implementing a totalitarian state led by a superman, beyond ordinary law. This is an obvious echo of Marxist thought on revolution, but nationalist (or the like, the mass base can use other bases to build identity) rather than internationalist. Marxism, from 1848 on, has always had many sects and heresies. Fascism and Nazism are right of Stalin, but left of anyone else, in a day when the hoped for international uprising of the working class failed to appear. The eschatology failed, new sects arose.
5: The Left vs Right Political Spectrum is dead, and was never a serious model: c 1789, in the Revolutionary-era Assembly in France, the traditionalists sat on the Speaker's favoured right hand and the more and more disreputable to his sinister side. Across C19, the left became Socialist, especially Social Democrats. With the discrediting of Monarchy through that blunder and catastrophe, the Great War -- the Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Monarchies collapsed -- there was now no coherent framework for Right or centre, as is manifest today. In U2, I put on the table a more historically anchored spectrum (just crack and read your Bibles), Autocracy > Lawless Oligarchy > Lawful Oligarchy > Constitutional Democracy > The Anarchic, Chaotic State of Nature. I posited that this fits with the Overton Window revisioned as having BATNAS of lawfulness and Government. This is fair comment on the politics of our time, and a warning of what happened when law was effectively redefined as whatever those who control the legal presses choose to issue under robes, ceremonies and colour of law.
6: There is a creation-order, intelligible first law, the natural law: Here, I go back to Cicero in De Legibus and others, going forward to John Finnis' recognition that in effect once one sees the cluster of things the Positivists must engage but arbitrarily deem not law, it is evident that this now dominant school is simply a defective form of natural law theory. We are morally governed creatures, with consciences and principles of justice tied to the classic, love one's neighbour as one loves and cherishes oneself. This of course cuts across many rights claims today and many distortions under colour of law. But, as a descendant of slaves in a region founded on kidnapping into slavery and working to death on plantations, I know that there must be built in laws of justice that ground reformation. That is how slave trading and slavery were finally abolished, having been a universal custom and having been entrenched under colour of law. (And, so, from Mother's Milk on, I have ben aware of issues such as that sound conscience is a law, requiring correction and heart softening to reach soundness and due reformation.)
7: The mass killing of 1.4+ billion of our living posterity in the womb since the early '70's (growing at 1 million per week) is unconscionable violation of the first right, life: Without life, there are no other rights, and we have imbibed a global mass guilt of blood beyond any other holocaust in history. It is anything but hate or oppression to point this out. It is a call to turn back from grave wrong and to seek forgiveness and healing.
8: Exposing a false accusation of genocide as blood libel, is fair comment: Genocide, is geno + cide, a term originally coined to describe mass murder of 6 million Jews intending to erase that so often targetted people. Other yardstick cases include the Ottoman massacre of the Armenians (1.5 millions), the murder of 2 million Cambodians in the killing fields, the Rwandan mass murder in the 1990's. Arguably, Stalin's starving of was it 2 million Ukrainians in the 1930's, is another case as was the German intent to finish the Job during their invasion of Russia. Oddly, the wider mass killing of 100+ millions by the Communists is not a genocide, as there was neither racial targetting nor a cumulative toll likely to wipe out a people, the term democide has been coined for such mass killings. Genocide, then, is a sobering reality with a capital example that still reverberates around the world, it is not to be used lightly or maliciously for cases that do not measure up to the yardstick examples. When therefore I learned of how radical activists for a decade have tossed the rhetorical grenade, "trans genocide," and discovered a 2018 "report" on the Latin America and Caribbean [LAC] Region that irresponsibly accuses my home region of genocide, I called it out for what it is, blood libel that needs to be retracted and apologised for. Yes, we need to be compassionate to those suffering gender dysphoria and provide evidence based genuine help -- such as this expert testimony calls for:
In case you think I exaggerate, here is the report cover page on the LAC region -- not far short of a billion people -- the same cover featured in U2:
Now, protest at actual police brutality, or mob violence is a reasonable thing. (And, I do believe police and prison reforms are in order across this region.)
But, there is a manifest red line at libel, libel of blood. Where are the death camps, killing facilities or killing fields in my region? Nowhere. Where are the graveyards or crematoria or desert death marches with now desiccated hundred year old skeletons or rivers brimming with bloated bodies? Nowhere. Yes, there has been abuse and bullying (which I objected to). Yes, as with other serious psychosocial disorders, there is a higher suicide rate and lower life expectancy, something to be part of our sound, compassionate response. But no, blood libel is never justified.
9: Dan Brown and others were and are out of order and are appropriately called out: I here put up my markup on Dan Brown, who was widely hailed for promoting ill-founded ill-informed assertions, making millions. My markup speaks for itself on doctrine of fair comment:
10: The London Skyline is indeed spoiled through deliberate multimillion pound violation of canons of aesthetics, and we need to restore objectivity about beauty: I didn't even realise at first that I had found London's skyline, but the panorama speaks for itself:
11: It remains the case that for any reasonably defined topic or discipline X (including, Morality, History, Aesthetics, Theology, Philosophy etc.), it is demonstrable that the attempt to deny knowable objective truth refutes itself and is irrational: In short, "my truth/ your truth" fails. This is because, the attempt to deny such objective, warranted, knowable truth, ~k(X) is clearly intended to be objectively true regarding X, is manifestly about X and so is a truth claim belonging to X. The one who asserts ~k(X) therefore inescapably contradicts and refutes himself, which is irrational. This is fair comment, is warranted, is indeed undeniably true. It cannot be defamatory or an act of hate, though it cuts across deeply entrenched worldviews and ideologies. Of course, it also decisively undercuts many fashionable opinions, ideologies, worldviews and policy/cultural agendas in our day.
12: My adaptation of the Seven Mountains of Influence model is justified through sociology and is not extremist thought: I have found this frame of thought useful in helping people understand the relevance of the Christian Faith to all of culture, and note that it is closely connected to sociological analysis of major institutions of society:
13: Nor is it hate speech to point out the following map promoted by radical Islam: I found this map in a radical IslamIST web site on Sept 11, 2001:
14: Similarly, this assessment of two cultural tidal waves impacting the Caribbean, and of our internal weaknesses is fair comment not hate: This, is again, a reasonable, outline analysis
15: It is not hate speech to teach core Christian doctrine, or to point out that at the heart of that faith is the Lordship of Christ, a call to all men to repent from sin (including fashionable sins, cf. Rom 1), or that [cf. "sin"] gospel ethics is integral to the gospel: Indeed, this is freedom of Conscience, Freedom of Religion, and responsible fair comment:
16: It is fair comment to observe that the cosmos, D/RNA and many features of the world of life show observable signs of design: This is not anti-science or attack on principles of scientific progress, it is reasonable, empirically founded comment.
17: And, the like: In absence of specific objection, I am left to guess even as I appeal to those who have set themselves up as judge, jury and censors, limiting my right of reply. (And, couldn't matters have been simply resolved if you pointed to specific phrasing on my part that is inadvertently offensive to reasonable people?)
To all such, I close with the remark made 2,000 years ago by the then newly arrived Roman Governor, Festus, when the Jerusalem Elites asked him to hand over Paul:
Acts 25:. 16 I answered them that it was not the custom of the Romans to give up anyone before the accused met the accusers face to face and had opportunity to make his defense concerning the charge laid against him. [ESV]
In other words, it seems to me that Google is in manifest and gross breach of canons of natural justice and sound governance that were well understood by the Romans, 2000 years ago.
I suggest, the policy and procedures should be reconsidered. END
PS, Dec 3: I ran across a Forbes article on repeat demonetisation of the well known YouTube channel, C&Rsenal which shows that the opaqueness and strange readings of "rules" problem is Google-wide, i.e. it is a corporate-level governance (and likely, ideology) problem:
"Unfortunately there is absolutely no transparency with YouTube," said Othasis. "We've had a few months of smooth sailing but already some videos that have been up for years are being de-monetized again. We are constantly told we broke at least one rule out of a page of them, and yet when we review the matter we can't find a single point we've violated."
They also point to problematic appeals processes:
Appealing such decisions is even more laborious.
"Sometimes we manage to appeal to a guy who knows a guy and the
matter just goes away without explanation or clarification," Othasis
added. "It's absolutely not a reliable income source and even in the
best months has not made up even the base cost of production for an
episode."
So, it is no surprise to see similar problems with Blogger (even though there is no monetisation of any of my blogs).
Notice, on fair comment, how the underlying problem is civilisation-level, precisely being one of the key analyses in the now censored blog post. Natural justice, tracing to due, transparent, accountable process, is anchored in our creation order, built-in and branch on which we all sit, intelligible, self-evident first duties and first law. Which, are therefore antecedent to parliaments or corporate boards or legal departments, and are absolutely universal in jurisdiction. Namely, the Ciceronian duties to truth, to right reason, to prudence (including warrant for knowledge claims), to sound conscience, to neighbour and so too, to fairness and justice.
The irony is sadly telling.
