Monday, July 16, 2012

James Kush

In this first article, I will talk about James Kush. James Kush is obviously an alias for one or more people. When this blog was brought to my attention one of the first things that I asked myself when I looked at his blog was "How the hell could anyone justify spending this much time on this?"

I looked over a lot of the articles and found that Kush would sometimes take a grain of truth about something and then write an entire blog about it that was obviously him just making up the rest of it.

One of the tricks of propaganda is to get someone to believe everything you say because portions of what you have said are known to be true. You can put the lies next to the truth. It's kind of like drinking booze with a chaser. The difference is you don't know that is what is taking place when you read it. Sometimes they can enhance this further with sensationalism. Or jumping to conclusions hoping that the reader will follow you on the jump without giving any thought to "Wait....why are we jumping here again?"

http://zeitgeistmovements.wordpress.com/2012/07/16/peter-joseph-sells-out-zeitgeist-movement-gravitas-ventures/#comment-5999

Take this one for example.

"Now we know Zeitgeist Movement is the poster child for a new web religion as uncovered by scholarly peer reviewed journal written by a Manchester Professor, we also discover Peter Joseph Merola, cult personality founder of the benign fringe conspirituality religion “The Zeitgeist Movement”, has sold out to Gravitas Ventures and has licensed the use of his so called “activist” films to the likes of Wal-Mart, Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, Playstation, Vudu, XBox 360, Time Warner, Direct TV, I Tunes, the list goes on and on.  Will Peter Joseph reveal his license agreement and royalty checks to his Zeitgeist fan base who he promised a “poetic” $5 tag?"

So it looks like this article is about trying to convince people that Peter Joseph Merola "sold out" the Zeitgeist movement. Why? Because he is selling his movies on other venues. I guess my big question is, so what? Mr. Merola obviously spent the money to make these films. He put his hard work and time into them. (I also find it dubious that the supposedly "free market" authors that participate in this blog would ever stand for someone being chided for selling their work. But that's a different argument.)

What is this about? Well, it's pretty clear he is hoping that people reading this will be stupid enough to distrust Peter Merola for daring to sell his work on other venues.

There is one major point that pretty much makes all of this fall on it's ear.

Peter Merola still gives his movies away for free. Including torrents that allow you to make your own fully functional DVDs. 

So, clearly he is in this for the money only...right?

Here is another one:



http://zeitgeistmovements.wordpress.com/2012/07/14/another-zeitgeist-member-accuses-zeitgeist-leaders-of-abuse/

So right out of the gate, we have a sensationalist headline. VTV is now an abusive cult leader. I know him pretty well and I know enough about TZM to know that it's not a cult. (Nevermind the utter failure of Mr. Kush and his friends to convince anyone who actually knows what a cult truly is that TZM is a cult.)

"Another Zeitgeist Member Accuses Zeitgeist Leaders of Abuse"

So what is this article about? Well apparently Mr. Kush has signed up for VTV's facebook page for his radio show. A member of the Zeitgeist Movement is having trouble in the activist organization. (Here's a hint. I am involved in some activism myself. And it's pretty normal for these sorts of problems to exist.)

He is upset that apparently he was kicked out of a voice chat meeting for refusing to support Ron Paul's presidential bid. Well, last I checked TZM was not about supporting political candidates. But lets assume that he is telling the truth.

Where is the "abuse"? He got kicked off a voice chat server. He was not forced to drink poisoned Kool-aid. He was not forced to distance himself from his family. He was not sexually molested. So again, where is the abuse?

I read the entertaining but at the same time frustrating debate between VTV and these individuals on the Rick Ross forums.

http://forum.rickross.com/read.php?12,97823,page=1


There are several pages where the individual who started the thread tried to suggest that the evidence of "cult abuse" was that TZM has anonymous moderators. And that they did not post all of their financial information. That did not work out that well for them. (Because it's asinine.) But it seems that Mr. Kush and friends are repeating the same mantra. I think the willingness to abuse the concept of "cult abuse" to try and bring negative attention to an organization is akin to a woman falsely accusing someone of rape to try and ruin their reputation. It is an attempt to use a controversial issue to cause controversy dishonestly. And it is an insult to the actual victims of such abuse.

But for a dishonest blogger, it's a great way to get attention.

So then an equally misleading update:

UPDATE 7/14/12:  ABUSIVE CULT LEADER VTV DELETES THREAD FROM FACEBOOK, TO HIDE THE ACCUSATIONS OF CULT ABUSE.  IT IS BELIEVED VTV and his FOLLOWERS “LOVEBOMBED” THE DISCONTENT INTO SUBMISSION.
At no point did Lawrence make any accusations of cult abuse. He pointed out he got banned from a Team Speak meeting. Then he puts the words "It is believed VTV and his followers...".

In this situation "It is believed VTV and his followers" translates into "We are completely making this up. We have no evidence of this. But we are hoping that you will be stupid enough not to ask for evidence. And we are going to use charged words like "LOVEBOMBED" which is a term that cult experts use for the practice of showering someone who is not content in a cult with attention until they feel content again. We are given no evidence that this took place. In fact, there is no evidence that VTV talked to this person again any further at all.  But, a reader who might be upset or unsettled over the "revelation" that there is an "evil cult leader" might just pass over this fact and go along with whatever they read. Sensationalism is often a tool to inhibit critical thinking.

Further statements that have no evidence to support them:

"Members are tools of the Zeitgeist Movement.  You must submit and obey or lose your friends, status, and rank."
 "The leaders of TZM do not allow descent nor free thought."
"Expressing yourself gets you labeled as a troll: the ultimate ad hominem. Once the leaders have branded you with their scarlet letter, you are an excommunicated outsider to be shunned and discarded."
These are all very harsh words. They are also all pretty obviously designed to mislead the readers. All that is actually described in the "evidence" is that this person got into a disagreement with one of their coordinators and were banned from a voice chat server. There is no evidence of him losing all his friends. There is no evidence that TZM does not allow descent nor free thought. Or any of the other items that the author is hoping the reader will follow him on as he jumps to the next conclusion. He is hoping that his "appeal to fear" fallacy will draw us in, and that we won't think critically about all of the extra drama he invented in his now fictional version of what took place.

In the comment section this sort of thing continues. Apparently this Jim Jesus fellow has a "feeling" that VTV used proxies to spam the website. I read some of that stuff earlier and all it takes is a little critical thinking to debunk that as well. The person(s) that was essentially "trolling" their website was openly hostile against TZM calling it "Techno-communism" and they even used the term "Zeittard" a few times. JimJesus has no evidence to back his theory that VTV would take the time to do all of that posting through proxies. Yet he repeats this over and over again on the site as if it's fully established with some form of evidence other then his amateur statements that the "writing style" is the same or whatever. But it is a common tactic of the dishonest blogger to simply repeat a lie often until the lie is seen frequently enough to be perceived to be "truth". 

Further in the comments from this Mario Brotha fellow, we have endless insults and ad hominem personal attack that delves into the absolute childish. I have yet to see this particular blogger contribute anything of intellectual value to any conversation I have read so far. But we are conditioned to believe that picking on people or insulting them is a way to achieve dominance over them. So this sort of mockery can actually win you points when someone is not critically thinking... "Wait...he is just calling these people names or bringing up irrelevant stuff about them personally to distract away from the strength of their arguments..."

There is plenty more on the subject of James Kush and I will write further on it later.

What lesson I hope the readers take away is this:

1. When someone makes a claim in an article that presents no evidence for that claim, be wary. Look for evidence. There is a reason in journalism we have a separate space for editorials as opposed to actual news. And many of these blogs try to frame their articles as news when they are really just editorials by definition. And in many cases editorials that are clearly written in a misleading fashion even as compared to other editorials.

2. When someone uses sensationalist language rather then allowing that to disarm you put on your "filter" instead.

3. The moment personal attack of an irrelevant nature is used be mindful of the tendency for people to allow an argument itself to be discredited, even if the argument was not discredited at all solely because the author was attacked.



 Solk





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