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[Ponn]

My main worry and fear about this is that it cant be reversed at this point. Even if you completely eliminate the Russia factor you still have the alt-right, Fox News, Breitbart and Infowars. And just about every Trump supporter interviewed and asked about the Russia thing has the same response of "I dont want to hear about Russia anymore" People are not going to change their beliefs or stances over this because they already had them. This stuff the Russians were doing is the same shit the above mentioned media outlets have been doing for years now. Manipulating and playing on peoples fears and beliefs.

 

[R0ckman]

Oh wow, the same bullshit that you posted in the last thread.



I do lots of research in and about Scotland. It's literally my job. How much archival research about Scotland have you done exactly? Normally I wouldn't bring this up, because I think it's rude to try and bully people, but you've decided to call me into question on this front.

Meanwhile your idea of research is finding one book, taking it out of context, something along the lines of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_people#Black_Irish as quoted in the last thread and then handwaved away by you being an example of what was meant there, and then act like your work is done. This is a pretty important error. You probably don't have experience reading 18th century Scottish documents and are probably generally quite unaware of the context more generally. But we can only understand documents through their context. Finding a random old book that says something the kinda sounds like it says what you want it to say isn't research. It's lazy nonsense. Coincidentally, it's pretty much the same thing you did with that one link you had, which I went back and read, but somewhat less egregious because you weren't also disagreeing with it while lying, and so far this is the only time I'll say you've done that intentionally, about having "slightly different conclusions", even though you have an entirely different one.

Meanwhile, you've totally managed to avoid the many other points I made in that post. Including your grossly incorrect assessment of the state of the Irish language currently. And of course you've competently failed to mention why the entire understanding of Scottish and Irish history that has been produced by centuries of scholarship , i.e. not reading a single book and calling it quits, is totally and completely wrong.

Even if we accept this one source as actually saying what you want to say. If a single source is sufficient I can find you overwhelming evidence that they also ate babies. Historically resource involves many sources, not just one. People lie, and make up stories. More importantly they understand the world around them through a cultural framework we can never fully recapture.

And even if we want to be ridiculous and grant you that large numbers the Islanders were Black, I'm still not seeing where most Gaelic speakers were black is coming from.

Also I'm honestly curious, do you have some explanation for why Scotland is quite white today? Did these large populations not intermarry? Also only a few thousand Jacobites, if I recall correctly 4500 or so, were transported. So if the majority of Scottish Gaelic speakers were black, where the are the great numbers, there were around half a million Scottish Gaelic speakers, that weren't transported?

This argument falls apart on a bunch of different levels, because it's nothing but poor extrapolation from a single almost certainly misinterpreted source.

Ironically if anything that source mostly shows just how unfamiliar with Black people Gaelic speakers were.

The book is here by the way, https://archive.org/details/descriptionofwes00mart, if anyone wants to read it.

I hand wave you because I've done this dance before and its a waste of my time when I can tell you are being dishonest, and you pretend like I'm being dishonest to distract from that. Shouldn't you know of the damage of the civil wars that took place in that region? The extent of the damage and destruction of artifacts orchestrated by Oliver Cromwell (some of these even mentioned in memoirs and first hand accounts)? That should be fairly common knowledge for an historian that would get so upset over this. I ask the above because if you were legitimately honest in your dialogue with me you would have a legit wonder at what happened to change the population and your own possible conclusions would run through your mind, instead you took offense and snapped back with "Okay wise guy... Explain THIS!"

For one a complexion is not simply a hair color, and when you look at other first hand accounts of descriptions of the people (in this same region mind you) and that they relate these complexions to other regions in the world, you can easily understand that they are talking about skin color, not just hair (The Journal of a tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson for example likens them to savage Americans and in one instance the writer confuses one native as an African), but you won't bring that up as evidence (not necessarily this mentioned book but the cases where more specific descriptions are given, instead using another interpretation to appeal to ambiguity - "Well we can't be sure --- it could mean this") you will project that I'm being dishonest and taking things out of context, while at the same time (as I previously stated), attempting to use an "interpretation of complexion" and applying in only to hair (I actually think its fairly obvious anyway that skin or face is being used here with out back up sources, as brown and black are both used but when brown hair would qualify as dark or black under the interpretation you are trying to appeal to) so you are doing the very thing you are accusing me of (keep also in mind you asked me to post one book I mentioned, not multiple, me valuing my time and leaning my assessment of your integrity towards what I just earlier described I had no desire to post anymore sources, despite actually having a predisposition to do so.

There are somethings I'm fine making hypothesis on and I will state that as such during those times, and if I'm willing to guess these things were not passed down by native elders as accurately as they could have been so those viewed as historians back then (and even now today) who had no respect for the actual natives themselves will describe them as something they are not. As in the book just prior mentioned (by the way, your link is not the correct version; I mentioned in the post that there are different volumes, so its clear you aren't really reading the posts entirely) Martin says in the preface:

These old people are nowadays extremely reluctant to speak of such things, and it requires much tact and the most careful approach in homely Gaelic to excite their memories and set them a-speaking.

Then you claim that I'm making up statistics on the current populations' ability to speak Gaelic, when you could have easily looked it up yourself; Around 1% is insanely low, the only value I could get out of claiming that is some cheap shock.

Referring to the 2011 census that mentions it being 1%, in my reference it said Gaelic; it also made this statement in the census:

The census data on language skills in Scots needs to be carefully qualified. The question on language skills in the census questionnaire was relatively poorly answered. For example, a significant number of respondents provided information on their skills in Scots but didn't indicate any corresponding abilities in relation to English, perhaps suggesting they considered Scots and English as inter-changeable in this context. Research carried out prior to the census also suggests that people vary considerably in their interpretation of what is meant by "Scots" as a language, resulting in the potential for inconsistencies in the data collected.

Yet you chose to take offense and accuse me of lying. It's just dishonest and I don't care to have to go through every instance where you make an accusation based on preconceptions and correct it, its more work than its worth, like where you assume every time Irish and Gaelic are used they are referring to different languages when some writers use them interchangeably, but you won't bring that up (even the census makes that claim), instead you take offense and make an accusation.

 

[TacticalHotdog]

Russia has been attempting to stir up racial tensions in the United States since the Cold War.

The KGB’s First Main Directorate (the foreign intelligence directorate) included a special unit known as Service A, which orchestrated a wide range of mostly nonviolent measures to destabilize the United States and undermine its influence in the world. Service A, formed in the 1950s, almost immediately set to work spreading disinformation, producing forgeries, transmitting propaganda, and disrupting U.S. and Western public diplomacy.

The unit attempted to spread disinformation that supposedly linked the U.S. government to JFK’s assassination. The KGB funded the publication of conspiracy-mongering books by Western authors and forged documents and letters that tied the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, to the CIA and FBI.

Service A also sought to discredit high-ranking U.S. officials such as Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover and key figures outside the government, notably Martin Luther King Jr. The Soviet unit forged homophobic letters to the editor of U.S. newspapers claiming that Hoover was a gay transvestite who was seeking to establish a “network of like-minded homosexuals” within the FBI. These baseless allegations continue to enjoy credence in some circles even now.

King came under attack from the KGB, in part because he declined to embrace a Communist agenda for the civil rights movement, and in part because his hard-won achievements threatened one of Service A’s main selling points. The entrenchment of racial segregation and racial discrimination in the United States had been a severe burden on U.S. foreign policy, belying the government’s claims to be promoting democracy. Many State Department officials came to support the civil rights movement for this reason, sensing that an end to segregation would improve America’s image abroad.

For the KGB, however, the calculus was the opposite. Soviet propaganda had long highlighted the iniquities of racial discrimination in the United States, and Soviet officials were well aware of the potency of this issue in tarnishing U.S. leadership in the world. Congressional passage of civil rights legislation, the KGB feared, would eliminate one of the Soviet Union’s major lines of attack. As Soviet officials became increasingly worried about the success of the civil rights movement, Service A used forgeries to try to discredit King and other civil rights activists, depicting them as “Uncle Toms” who were secretly colluding with the government. The unit also fabricated documents and spread disinformation that President Johnson had taken secret steps with King’s implicit approval to ensure the continued subordination of blacks.

In later years, the KGB tried to stir up racial tensions in New York City by sending inflammatory forged publications to black activist groups and by setting off a bomb in a “Negro section of New York” and blaming it on the militant Jewish Defense League. Service A resorted to similar provocations throughout the 1970s and well into the 1980s, viewing race relations as the issue most likely to destabilize the U.S. political system.

http://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2017/01/10/vladimir-putin-donald-trump-mark-kramer

 

[Cocaloch]

I hand wave you because I've done this dance before and its a waste of my time when I can tell you are being dishonest, and you pretend like I'm being dishonest to distract from that.

First off, it was the comment that you're problematically handwaving away more than me. But calling me dishonest here is insane. Like you're just saying that because you disagree with me. The only time I called you dishonest was how you characterized your argument in relation to that article. Because it was dishonest. The article had an entirely different conclusion than what you were saying.

Frankly this is just a childish insult.

Shouldn't you know of the damage of the civil wars that took place in that region? .

If by the civil war you mean the Jacobite rebellion then they weren't really that impactful. The region declined in population over the course of the late 18th century at a decent rate due to immigration mostly to Canada and the Lowlands, and at a higher rate in the 19th due to the clearances. That wouldn't be enough for a large black population to magically disappear.

The extent of the damage and destruction of artifacts orchestrated by Oliver Cromwell (some of these even mentioned in memoirs and first hand accounts)?

What? Wait so you were talking about the Wars of the Three Kingdoms? You need to get your chronology straight, because you were originally talking about the Jacobites, which do not exist until 1689. Cromwell can't have anything to do with this because that was the 1650s, and that wasn't that impactful to demographics in Scotland. Do you have Scotland and Ireland confused here? Early comments would suggest that, but I thought that was a slip of the tongue.

That should be fairly common knowledge for an historian that would get so upset over this. I ask the above because if you were legitimately honest in your dialogue with me you would have a legit wonder at what happened to change the population and your own possible conclusions would run through your mind, instead you took offense and snapped back with "Okay wise guy... Explain THIS!"

No, if you had even the most rudimentary understanding of the chronology here you would understand why you are totally and completely incorrect here.

Why don't you educate yourself to even the most basic level before calling out others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wars_of_the_Three_Kingdoms

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobite_risings

to the bolded no I wouldn't have. That was a rhetorical question to point out that your understanding has a pretty massive hole in it. I wouldn't have wondered about where the black population went, because I know a major black population didn't exist in Scotland at that time.

For one a complexion is not simply a hair color, and when you look at other first hand accounts of descriptions of the people (in this same region mind you) and that they relate these complexions to other regions in the world, you can easily understand that they are talking about skin color, not just hair (The Journal of a tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson for example likens them to savage Americans and in one instance the writer confuses one native as an African)

Again you're missing a ton of context here. For one thing you bring up Johnson, who was writting after the Jacobite rebellions thus he is irrelevant to your argument anyway, who was a massive Scotophobe and trying to make the Scots look bad. That is why he compares them to "savages". This was pretty common. James VI and I also has a similarly famous comment about the Highlanders.

Here are some of his more famous insults, but he has a massive number.

http://www.samueljohnson.com/scotland.html

Moreover, I actively addressed this issue in my last post.

you will project that I'm being dishonest and taking things out of context, while at the same time (as I previously stated), attempting to use an "interpretation of complexion" and applying in only to hair (I actually think its fairly obvious anyway that skin or face is being used here with out back up sources, as brown and black are both used but when brown hair would qualify as dark or black under the interpretation you are trying to appeal to) so you are doing the very thing you are accusing me of (keep also in mind you asked me to post one book I mentioned, not multiple, me valuing my time and leaning my assessment of your integrity towards what I just earlier described I had no desire to post anymore sources, despite actually having a predisposition to do so.

No, the problem with this is I know the context of the time. Again, you almost certainly do not. You have not addressed doing wide reading on the topic of Scotland and you have showed a clear lack of understanding of even the most basic outlines of British history. As I addressed above people have been making comparisons between Irish people and Highlanders with Native Americans and Africans for centuries as an attempt to diminish them, the famous phrase about the Irish being the n-word(s) of Europe being the famous example. A black completion, while admittedly an odd phrase, doesn't mean what you think it means.

Furthermore you're trying to provide me with an impossible task here. I can't provide evidence that there was not an large black community among highlanders, because it was so unremarkable that they were at least overwhelmingly what we would consider white that no one would have ever bothered saying this. This isn't a cop out either, historians frequently address the sorts of information so commonsensical that they aren't recorded because people would never think them to be worth recording. Why is killing a cat funny in 18th century France?

Please post more of your sources and I will address them, as we addressed the book you posted in the last thread never to comment on it again.


And again the only time I said you were dishonest was with that article, which you objectively were. Anyone could read that article and realize you came to fundamentally different conclusions than that author.

There are somethings I'm fine making hypothesis on and I will state that as such during those times, and if I'm willing to guess these things were not passed down by native elders as accurately as they could have been so those viewed as historians back then (and even now today) who had no respect for the actual natives themselves will describe them as something they are not. .

Basically this just says you're fine making stuff up if you want to. Where are these elder Scottish people talking about this? This also demonstrates you have a clear lack of knowledge of how the discipline of history works now.

Why are Smith and, most especially, Hume not talking about the blackness of the Highlanders when they speak of "savages"? You aren't engaging with the primary sources, you aren't engaging with the general context of the time.

As in the book just prior mentioned (by the way, your link is not the correct version; I mentioned in the post that there are different volumes, so its clear you aren't really reading the posts entirely)

What's a correct version, do you just mean the one you are talking about? I also don't see the problem if they are different (are they even), because I found the same passages on the same pages.

These old people are nowadays extremely reluctant to speak of such things, and it requires much tact and the most careful approach in homely Gaelic to excite their memories and set them a-speaking.

You're not even making a point here. What are you getting at here?

Then you claim that I'm making up statistics on the current populations' ability to speak Gaelic, when you could have easily looked it up yourself; Around 1% is insanely low, the only value I could get out of claiming that is some cheap shock.

Referring to the 2011 census that mentions it being 1%, in my reference it said Gaelic; it also made this statement in the census:

Okay, so you actually don't seem to understand that Ireland and Scotland are not the same place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_language

1.7 million second language speakers in Ireland (the Republic), this is low because of complicated sociological reasons, out of 4.8 million people total in the country.

The census data on language skills in Scots needs to be carefully qualified. The question on language skills in the census questionnaire was relatively poorly answered. For example, a significant number of respondents provided information on their skills in Scots but didn't indicate any corresponding abilities in relation to English, perhaps suggesting they considered Scots and English as inter-changeable in this context. Research carried out prior to the census also suggests that people vary considerably in their interpretation of what is meant by "Scots" as a language, resulting in the potential for inconsistencies in the data collected.
.

You really have no clue what is going on here. Irish and Scottish Gaelic are very closely related, but different languages. Scots and Scottish Gaelic are only related insofar as both are Indo-European and both share a number of words from centuries of close contact.

Yet you chose to take offense and accuse me of lying.

Because you absolutely did in that one case.

It's just dishonest and I don't care to have to go through every instance where you make an accusation based on preconceptions and correct it,

Why not?

like where you assume every time Irish and Gaelic are used they are referring to different languages when some writers use them interchangeably

It's complicated and you have to look at the context. Again your original post on the topic talked about Irish speakers in Ireland.

but you won't bring that up (even the census makes that claim), instead you take offense and make an accusation.

I take offense because you're spouting total nonsense about my life's work. You've also constructed a framework for yourself that's unfalsifiable. Any counterpoint you can just handwave away, and support with more random bullshit.

I'm stuck in my own personal time cube thread and yes it's very upsetting for me that people think like this. Moreover by the end of this, especially on the language front where you've demonstrated you don't understand the situation, you seem to be just flinging shit at walls to see what sticks.

Am I probably more emotional about this than I usually am? Yes. But that's because you are insulting many of my friends, myself, and our life's work over your own little ego for having discovered some secret truth about the world. Moreover you base this on a total misunderstanding of the methodology that even more of my friends and myself have dedicated our lives defending and improving.

I see what you're doing here as accidentally gaslighting people on a topic I have dedicated my life to, in an attempt to undermine the deserved authority we have gained over the topic, through lifetimes of rigorous and critical historical study, so you can feel special. So yeah, I don't take kindly to that. But who knows, maybe every single one of us totally missed the fact that an extremely significant portion of Scotland was black somehow, which would itself indicate that clearly everything we have ever done is totally wrong.

I have a feeling I won't be hearing from you again which is a pity, but relevant quotes for others lest they get gaslighted.

a majority of Gaelic speakers were black and were natives in that land (right now a bit over 1% of the population in Ireland can speak it).

because you weren't also disagreeing with it while lying, and so far this is the only time I'll say you've done that intentionally, about having "slightly different conclusions", even though you have an entirely different one.

Emphasis added

For the record I don't think you're lying generally, I just think you totally misrepresented a source in that one instance. I do think you're just someone that has no idea at all about this time and place. Which is fine, because the vast majority of the world doesn't. What isn't fine is pretending you understand something, making a nonsensical framework to support your equally nonsensical understanding, and refusing to actually listen to arguments from experts.

But yeah, go ahead, insult me, say I'm lying about all this. I'm sure looking through my post history won't yield any indication that I probably am a Scottish historian.

 

[Cocaloch]

Is this sufficient proof for you that I'm actually at least a researcher of this stuff, and not whatever you think I am?

https://imgur.com/a/LAtsm

(I forgot how to post images sorry)

 

[Irnbru]

That is some brilliant writing cocaloch. Drinks on me when I'm in Scotland in a month. The world needs people like you preserving the history of their peoples. ( I lived in Scotland for a minute and have a deep appreciation for the hospitality shown to me and the history there )

 

[BlazingDarkness]

R0ckman stop embarrassing yourself.

 

[manzoman96]

 

[7DollarHagane]

This has always been the goal. Russia isn't in with Trump, they are in with destabilizing the country and making different groups hate each other so much that they are willing to attack each other and fight.

Well, mission accomplished.

 

[Valhelm]

This has always been the goal. Russia isn't in with Trump, they are in with destabilizing the country and making different groups hate each other so much that they are willing to attack each other and fight.

Well, mission accomplished.

This is a weird post. It sounds like you're suggesting that Black political agitation (ie, demanding that they be treated as humans) is bad because it destabilizes our sacred political order. In other words, you support the dominance of white people over black people because you fear that challenging this hierarchy could lead to some unrest.

I don't think Russia gives a shit about black people and they have done nothing to help any black movements succeed. And white America certainly doesn't need any amount of Russian influence to hate black people. What Russian intelligence has done, however, is create outlandish and offensive caricatures of black activists that affirm the existing biases of conservatives to rally support for Trump.

 

[thehypocrite]

Both sides

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

It was from a while ago and I don't think I fav'd it, lemme see if I can find it...

*heads to Google*

Didn't think I'd be able to turn it up since Googling stuff on Twitter is nearly impossible. But here it is! https://twitter.com/BarryGsGhost/status/895840586661593088 (The Storify version might be easier to read: https://storify.com/BarryGsGhost/russia-is-attacking-on-2-fronts)

Be sure to check out this thread too. It's where I found the link to the previous thread. https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/900158639884955648

Jesus Christ. I'm reminded of that thread about the fake black Republican model who was really 5 people hocking Trump merch out of their college dorm.

You don't fight. It's that simple.

We need to stop treating everyone like they're our enemy and engage them with discussions/debates in good faith. According to a Pew poll on race conducted in February of this year, "87% agree that “Our country should do whatever is necessary to make sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed.” It's difficult to see that because we spend so much of our time slinging mud and so little of it trying to understand different points of view. A little civility can go a long way.

Think of it like a street fight where the trolls happen to be the spectators cheering both parties on - the trolls lose if those two fighters can get past their differences without throwing a single punch. Much like this fight.

What an odd thing to post in a thread about fake/troll accounts. They aren't interested in discussion, their purpose is to spread FUD and build visible strawmen for people to rage against.

 

[Cocaloch]

Sorry to have hijacked a thread with a topic that deserves to be talked about, but obviously I have some strong feelings on the subject.

 

[Clefargle]

My main worry and fear about this is that it cant be reversed at this point. Even if you completely eliminate the Russia factor you still have the alt-right, Fox News, Breitbart and Infowars. And just about every Trump supporter interviewed and asked about the Russia thing has the same response of "I dont want to hear about Russia anymore" People are not going to change their beliefs or stances over this because they already had them. This stuff the Russians were doing is the same shit the above mentioned media outlets have been doing for years now. Manipulating and playing on peoples fears and beliefs.

You're not wrong, but most of the things you listed that conservatives listen to are further right wing than Fox News. Once Fox News reports that Trump had been indicted, they will have to turn against fox or accept the news as "not fake"

 

[Joe T.]

What an odd thing to post in a thread about fake/troll accounts. They aren't interested in discussion, their purpose is to spread FUD and build visible strawmen for people to rage against.

That's missing the point. I'm not saying you should be civil with the Russian trolls aiming to undermine your democracy, I'm saying you should be civil towards your fellow American when engaging in discussions/debates about topics such as racial inequality so those trolls have nothing to work with.

 

[BlackDoomShadow]

I'd be willing to bet a large sum of money that most of those "Black Republican" / "Blacks for Trump" Twitter accounts that are enormously popular are also Russian bot accounts.

 

[Slayven]

That's missing the point. I'm not saying you should be civil with the Russian trolls aiming to undermine your democracy, I'm saying you should be civil towards your fellow American when engaging in discussions/debates about topics such as racial inequality so those trolls have nothing to work with.

Cause black people being rude is the source of racism

 

[BrutishMrFish]

That's missing the point. I'm not saying you should be civil with the Russian trolls aiming to undermine your democracy, I'm saying you should be civil towards your fellow American when engaging in discussions/debates about topics such as racial inequality so those trolls have nothing to work with.

They'll always have something to work with because they're liars. Obama was perfectly civil when he campaigned, that didn't stop Republicans and Trump from lying their asses off about him to great (though somewhat delayed) success. If these people don't have any mud to sling, it's incredibly easy for them to use whatever they shit into their hands.