and that group may have been how the Social Justice Warrior (aka Butthurt Brigade, aka Injustice Collectors) disease infected DKos in the first place. All the things you were Not Allowed To Say regarding Native Americans, all the eggshells you had to walk on to TRY to avoid their hypersensitive bunions (and it usually didn't work anyway), etc. etc. etc.

I may not know what exactly happened between Meteor Blades and let's say the founders of this site, like Joe and JtC. I don't know what really caused the wounds and scars some people might have gotten that pushed them to create this site. I haven't followed it and it's hard for me to get the picture of it by some hints and comments here and there to reconstruct it.

All I can see is that Meteor Blades doesn't take "online revolutionaries shouting some anti-imperialist slogans around" seriously. Navajo once said she doesn't like those "pitchfork" people much. Ok, I don't blame them for it.

I have watched posters, who were clearly not "socialist or democratic socialist" oriented a while ago, make a turn and now timidly admit to be Bernie supporting democratic socialists. So, people say a lot of things that are not that much written in stone. What they now say is also not written in stone. So, flip-flopping is just a feature among people who would like play a role in the political/activist arena.

But I really wonder, has Meteor Blades ever commented on Black Kos or Denise Oliver-Velez diaries? I happen to not remember they have, but I am not sure, because I didn't pay attention to it in the early years.

What about the "victim" argument? I wonder when someone points out to his/her identity/tribal/ethnic heritage and then points to the victimization of their forefathers and ancestors and make it their your own, even though they personally weren't victimized, I wonder when this is an understandable and fair attitude, and at which point it is used as a manipulative and rhetorical political tool.

I think it is perfectly alright to make the invisible or silent voices heard and count all activism in that regard as commendable. In that regard I like all of Denise "Afro-American history" lessons and all of Meteor Blades diaries covering the American Indians and all of Ojibwa's diaries teaching us a lot. Navajo's role I understand to offer her tribal brothers the home base, where they can collect and archive their diaries and where they are always supported and showered with some love. No problem at all. Similar I see Black Kos as an effort to collect all historical material covering the "Black Experience and Achievements" in the US. They act as the POC tribe. Well then of course white looking Latinos also are POC tribal brothers now and then or at least they are cousins.

Their discussions in their comment sections are over words. Words have meanings. But then words are not yet deeds, but they can spill over into them and it's usually hate related speech or deeds. So, it becomes a matter of balance at which point you believe the arguments to be intentional demagoguery that is bound to be divisive, and to what extent it is reasonable, justifiable and not an intentional divisive expressions of political activism. So some smarter people then try to hide behind sarcasm and cynicism. If they are good they are funny. But still people understand what they want to express and it remains under-cover divisive.

There are so many people and writers online that can perfectly well hide what they think and perfectly well express things they absolutely do not believe in. Us poor readers have to spend so much time to do the "defogging".

I happen to come to the conclusion that most people are hopelessly tribal, when it comes to their personal, intimate lives and feelings. Intellectually of course you are not tribal, but instinct wise most are.

I do believe now (took a long, long time for me to come to believe that) that it's for most people very, very hard to overcome that may be dna based behavior. When people have no feeling of belonging to any "tribe" or any "community" and didn't grow up in something that gave them the feeling of belonging to some sort of culture and group or community, they will search for one. If they have a tribal identity through the ancestors, they will revive their ancestry's victimization and make it their own and eventually that develops into an over-identification and may be seen by the people outside of that tribal identity as fake.

That's what I believe is happening a lot online. Just that no online community or tribe can replace the real thing. How desperately obvious that can become, when you realize that what you thought were your online community and tribal belonging, is nothing of that kind in real space?

I remember how strange I thought it was, when I made some comments about my family's experiences in wwI or wwII that some people thought it was necessary to "console" me over the "hardship" they went through. I never went through that hardship, so I would never think about using a simple mention of some history as a tool to convince someone of my own "hardship" or "identity".

I thought a long time about the usage of one's ethnic identity victimization and exploitation of past generations as a manipulative or persuasive tool. I am still not clear about it. Should you use it as long as the former victimization and exploitation has effects on current members of that ethnic identity? I think so, yes. That would be the case for almost all Afro-Americans and American Indians.

Should you use that among white ethnic tribes, let's say the people of Eastern Europe and the Middle East and all their ethnic atrocities against each other? They would probably say, yes, but people who are very far outside those ethnic groups seem to not see that and for them it's all one big "white sauce with privileges". There it becomes racist.

Similar things happen, when tribal identities and their atrocities against each other, are denied to exist or completely judged as "those black bushman's savage jungle people" or some such, so that becomes then a big "brown sauce with no civilized flavor". There it becomes racist.

I have just one hope. If we mix each other we all become grey. Nothing exiting anymore of being "different", all the same "grey sauce with no spices". Uff, what kind of sauce to you like best?

Phew. I really hate that stuff.

Welcome aboard!