Something I thought would have long faded into blog history has resurfaced. It relates to a blog battle in February (2012), but came up again at Dim-Post yesterday (I haven’t commented at Dim-Post since February and rarely go to read now).

Ironically from a post called Talkback bait a discussion developed questioning my absence.

16. Comment by alex — May 9, 2012 @ 4:37 pm

I have a question for the moderator of this blog, is it true that Pete George is banned from commenting on Dim-Post?

To my knowledge “the moderator” has never commented on any bans, blocked or deleted comments yet.

18. Comment by Clunking Fist — May 9, 2012 @ 5:31 pm

I’m not the moderator, but I believe Pete George was not banned from this site. Rather, he was hounded from it.

Not true. I was standing up to a sustained attack when suddenly my comments stopped appearing. I could no longer respond to accusations or abuse. Several comments were apparently blocked over a period of time. No notice or explanation was given.

21. Comment by Hugh — May 9, 2012 @ 5:57 pm

If he was hounded out my only regret is I didn’t have a hand in it.

33. Comment by Rhinocrates — May 9, 2012 @ 10:59 pm

Sorry everyone if I was such a nuisance in my role, but I thought that it was worthwhile to “go nuclear” as it were and destroy a couple of threads to drive him out (though I shouldn’t take sole credit).

36. Comment by Rhinocrates — May 9, 2012 @ 11:07 pm

Anyway, what I meant to say, in reply to eighteen and twenty-three, sorry if I was a bore, but I felt that it was necessary in my minor role in hounding PG, but it was his persistent stupidity that offended me. In this world, with the gift of life, one has no right to glory in being thick as if it made one a “nobel savage” and PG, like a true narcissist WOULD NOT BLOODY STOP. Sorry if it wreck a couple of good threads, but I felt that it was worth it in the long run. The Dimpost seems to be doing pretty well without him.

A repeat of a closing comment in February.

78. Comment by Rhinocrates — February 27, 2012 @ 10:19 am

Indeed, but I’m (perhaps vainly) hoping that the sacrifice of this or a few threads will finally drive the egomaniacal fool away for good. Then they can stay on topic. In the meantime, it’s like trying to have a serious conversation with road works going on outside the window – the drone goes on and on, and whenever someone says something important, it suddenly increases in volume and drowns out their words. The difference is that road workers are doing something genuinely useful.

So a deliberate and sustained attempt to “hound me” off the blog, which was eventually enforced by the moderator, in silence. This meant no explanation (even Red Alert usually warns, and also notifies of deletes and bans). It also meant I couldn’t defend or explain my position against continuing attacks after I was blocked.

It’s ironic that Rhinocrates claims “like a true narcissist WOULD NOT BLOODY STOP”, while he admits that it was him who wouldn’t stop until succeeding in shutting me out.

I accept that I was never flavour of the month at Dim-Post, no one likes their pomposity challenged. I admit I sometimes pushed the boundaries. I know I sometimes annoy others – but as has just been proven much of the annoyance factor is the quantity of attack reactions, some obviously motivated by an aim to shut down speech.

It’s worth looking at what provoked this attack and ban. From the reaction against me one could surmise I’d done something terrible.

It all began on What Then? in February, which was post on child abuse. There’d been quite a bit of reasonable discussion, then there was a link to a graphic image that I have resisted promoting but to provide a full record I’ll include here:

37. Comment by DeepRed — February 24, 2012 @ 8:26 pm

And the image in more detail:

I tend to speak up on things on blogs I think are inappropriate, so I did:

39. Comment by Pete George — February 24, 2012 @ 8:34 pm

DeepRed @37 – I think that’s disturbing, disgusting.

Whoops. Bad move on a sometimes satirical blog frequented by intellectuals.

40. Comment by Gregor W — February 24, 2012 @ 9:11 pm

You do know Swift was a pre-eminent satirist right, Pete?

43. Comment by Pete George — February 24, 2012 @ 9:33 pm

Gregor – I don’t care how pre-eminent you think Swift was, I find that graphically disgusting, and the implications are nasty. But if you think it’s clever why don’t you show it to your children, to understand the impact of that you must have children.

Modern New Zealand is incomparable to Ireland three hundred years ago.

44. Comment by Gregor W — February 24, 2012 @ 9:41 pm

@stephen

I guess you could see it that way if you were a humourless, moronic literalist who didn’t know that Swift made essentially the same hyperbolic joke wrt English landlords and their Irish tennants back in the early 18th century.

But I guess you don’t know that, as your contextual knowledge of the world seems to start around the turn of the 21st century.

We don’t have anything like the landlord/tenancy situation of that era. Swift didn’t have Photoshop, colour printing or the internet. And in his day many if not most children didn’t survive infancy.

This appeared to me as a repulsive modern political attack. And I simply made my point, and others made counter points…

45. Comment by Gregor W — February 24, 2012 @ 9:45 pm

For Christ’s sake Pete, dry up.

Instead of making us suffer your po-faced opining, how about you saddle up your high horse and piss off to another blog if you’re so bloody offended.

46. Comment by Pete George — February 24, 2012 @ 9:56 pm

Gee G W, steady. If you’re uncomfortable with me expressing an opinion you could trot off somewhere else yourself.

47. Comment by Gregor W — February 24, 2012 @ 10:32 pm

But there is a time and a place for tedious moralizing and being offended about things, and a blog known for satire is probably not the place where you’ll get the best reception.

…it didn’t end there, it was only the beginning.

49. Comment by Rhinocrates — February 24, 2012 @ 11:29 pm

Oh God, he really didn’t get it? Swift disgusts him? Quick, someone introduce him to William S. Burroughs – I want to see his head explode, a la Cronenberg’s Scanners -style.

No, it was Rhinocrates that didn’t get it. I wasn’t commenting on Swift, I was commenting in the image, in the modern context it was used.

That began a series of comments by Rhinocrates that was a sustained diatribe. It included his usual semantics over word meanings, but also some clearly intended abuse:

55. Comment by Rhinocrates — February 25, 2012 @ 10:02 am

You dirty old man, nobody else gets sexually aroused by images of child abuse – you’re projecting, I’m afraid.

57. Comment by Pete George — February 25, 2012 @ 11:29 am

Why do you use selective definitions to frame abuse? What you’ve done is quite nasty really. Perhaps obscene.

What about intervention with at risk babies and abuse of children? Don’t you care? Or do you prefer to resort to blog abuse?

I thought I’d made a reasonable objection.

58. Comment by Rhinocrates — February 25, 2012 @ 11:43 am

You’ve asked a leading question and I refuse to answer it because of your fundamental dishonesty of intent.

Have you stopped beating your wife yet?

Dual ironies – his fundamental dishonesty of intent (which he later admitted). And complaining about a “leading question”, then asking a leading question that was obviously a bait. I’m well aware of the use of that phrase, but in the context of his abuse it was very deliberate.

I did bite back.

59. Comment by Pete George — February 25, 2012 @ 12:16 pm

Rhinocrates – what you’re doing is far beyond mock, that should be obvious even to most urbane intellectuals.

You’ve accused me of ‘dishonesty of intent’. What was the intent of your attacks here on me using selective definitions?

Talking about my wife, she just asked me to show her the graphic that led to this – she said “that’s fucking sick in so many ways”. She was repulsed. And she’s disgusted by the accusations you’re making at me. You’re a gutless prick attacking like this from an·o·nym·i·ty.

You provide proof that the Kiwi culture of abuse is deeply entrenched in many facits of our society. And keeps blaming someone or something else, in perpetuity unaddressed.

Following that there was a lot of waffle, bluster and indignation. A couple of closing comments:

72. Comment by Rhinocrates — February 25, 2012 @ 8:38 pm

That is sad on one level, but on another it’s sickening because you want to turn a thread on the most serious of topics into an episode of The Pete George Show yet again.

That’s a common tactic – staging an attack (in this case with admitted intention of “hounding” off the blog) and blame the target. That didn’t go unnoticed.

79. Comment by alienredqueen — February 28, 2012 @ 7:28 am

What is sad is how many of you have contributed to this thread devolving from a mature discussion of the topic to your own personal flame war.

Fair comment. I claim to have mostly have been defending myself from attack. Rhinocrates has admitted an intent to attack and shut me down.

I thought it had pretty much ended there, but it was revived in Not too bright where I started off joining a new discussion. This continued fairly normally for about 50 comments, with a couple of digs at me commenting too much. But the previous stoush was brought up again – but not by me.  It developed into too much bluster again, with some support shown for both sides of the argument.

Some commenters started to suggest “you really should just shut up for a bit Pete”, then

72. Comment by nommopilot — February 27, 2012 @ 9:19 am

Pete you really are failing to understand a lot of what is said to you and misconstruing it. If you don’t like a picture on the internet, don’t look at it. The picture you’ve been squawking about for 3 days now is pretty mild compared to what’s out there in the wilds of the intertubez and it’s about time you STFU about it. nobody is making you look.

You do derail nearly every topic and what you say is mostly, as described above, “meaningless pompous claptrap”.

How about taking a little break for a few days? How about staying on your own blog so the rest of us can have a choice of whether we want to know every little thought you have?

73. Comment by Pete George — February 27, 2012 @ 9:30 am

nommopilot – you and anyone else can choose to take your own advice and ignore me, but instead a few choose to keep repeatedly attacking me regardless of what the topic might be about. Others (like Rhino) divert off topic far more than me.

And then I was literally shut up – none of my posts after that were accepted, but there was no comment or explanation as to why.

I got the blame and the banishment, but claim to have mostly made honest attempts to contribute to discussions, albeit acknowledging sometimes to frequent.

“If you don’t like a picture on the internet, don’t look at it” – if we all followed that advice there would be little blog debate. You can also apply “if you don’t like what I say argue against it or ignore it” but that would deny most debate too.

I know I can annoy others on blogs. Some people annoy me – but I either ignore them or speak up against them. I don’t try to shut them out or “hound them off”.

A word on the satirical nature of Dim-Post. Yes, it is sometimes satirical – but it is more often seriously political. Using “satire” selectively as an excuse for abuse and hounding is nonsense. And I’m not aware of any rule that says satire can’t be offensive.

Rhinocrates and the enlightened intellectuals who frequent Dim-Post can keep claiming a victory in my absence if they wish. In the absence of any explanation of why I was blocked I won’t be back – so that probably seals my end at Dim-Post. I just wish they were upfront and honest about it.

Comment by alienredqueen — February 28, 2012 @ 7:28 am