Auster's exit from the big thread

The big thread over at Gates of Vienna was a really good discussion. With a wide range of people participating, including people who do not regularly comment at GoV. Me, Zenster and Erich were the ones at the core of the debate, upholding the main theme in the spirit of Westerner's article. The exchanges between the three of us is an example of when a debate is at its absolute best, each of us starting from different positions, thrashing over the problem until the point where we reached a general consensus on the main issues. A debate cannot be more constructive than that, and in this case about a highly important issue. Quite as in other team sports it requires that you keep the mental focus at the ball, and that you are not a thin-skinned person.

There were also several other people involved in this main discussion, of course. And there were also several different side tracks. One such side track was the exchange between Lawrence Auster and Baron Bodissey, which was developing well until at some point Auster was offended by something the Baron had written, halted the discussion and started to send several emails to the Baron demanding that he retracted the comment -- a comment that was not directed to Auster but that Auster felt could have been interpreted as being directed at him. The Baron eventually posted a clarification, but this side discussion was already derailed and never got back on track.

Instead Auster took up his attacks on Zenster. He spends five posts dedicated just for moral hissy fits and personalities on Zenster. The exchange did not move the discussion forward an inch. At this point Auster and his approach had been criticized by several interlocutors, and he decided to deem this whole discussion thread unworthy of him, and drop out. And since then he's continued his own "meta"-discussion over at his site.

I get the impression that Auster does not feel comfortable about the way he opted out of the discussion; that he doesn't feel that he managed to make his withdrawal look valid. The reason for this impression is how he has since posted 6-7 articles at his blog, groping for an angle to frame the whole thing to make his behaviour look valid; mainly different attempts at framing GoV as something objectionable in the eyes of the VFR readers. In a process eventually leading up to a point where he actually shows regret; something so unusual that it supports my impression of him feeling uncomfortable about how he handled this thing.

Auster main approach in framing the GoV community, with some help of his most zealous follower Adela G., has been in using expressions as:

• whacked-out liberal cranks
• "conservatives" who embrace moral liberationism
• loyal denizens of the contemporary liberal pop culture
• [like] the junk posted at Huffington Post or Daily Kos

USorThem described well the problem with this approach of Auster, and how it alienates many good people, who would otherwise be glad to call him an ally. (Read more about it here).

Henrik R Clausen made a more penetrating analysis of Auster spin method in this particular case: "Auster moves from the atypical sample to a judgment of not only the poster, of the entire GoV community, and even of GoV as such."

I will bring up these atypical cases in my following posts on this topic, and show how Auster uses them not only to paint GoV as a haunt of liberal cranks, but in groping for grips from other angles in order to put GoV in a negative light, in an attempt to make his own behaviour look valid.