Problems with Eric's posting

[Flower]

I want to inform you and warn you about Eric's posting.

Lately I have noticed that Eric has been twisting the truth, posted lies and failed to respect other members on this forum. This has been going on in the thread about Norway and most recently the thread about England burning. I believe this kind and style of posting has been going on for years and little has been done about it. I for one know of several members leaving the forum due to this behaviour being allowed.

Being a Dane I find it a lie and down right offensive when Eric writes about the terrorist in Norway, Breivik, who has killed about 80 people and makes out that this has happen because right-wing parties are in parlement in countries in Scandinavia. The truth is that we do allow right-wing parties working according to the law and that the terrorist in fact found these kind of parties to be too soft etc.
Eric has accused a Danish newspaper of setting out to make people in the UK look like nazis etc. which is obviously a lie.
I could carry on and I am sure if other people taked a closer look they themselves could find details in Eric's post which are twisted and lies.

I have reported this and made a complaint about Eric. I find it to be a shame that he is allowed space where he can produce such posts and nothing is done to stop him. The way that he argues is very often without reason, facts or truths. He simply produces assumptions out of thin air, twist the truth to suit his purpose, regardless of what and who he offends and what kind of information he is spreading.

I for one are aware of how heated a talk about different topics can get but I also believe that one should correct one's mistakes in public and try to clear misunderstandings and be good enough to "shake hands" and let by gones be by gones if needed.

The problem is that no one is stopping Eric, there are no boundaries set for how twisted the truth must be and how offensive apparently. Several people have become tired of trying to reach out to Eric and get him to see his mistakes and I can understand why a moderator cannot be his babysitter and check every post his makes.

We are all adults here and I had hoped that Eric himself would change his style of posting in the more political threads. That the way we debate here at least could have a rule of sticking to the truth and facts of a topic. In short have better standards than we have seen before.

I trust that everybody will check Eric's post and see and think for themselves and make your own judgements as to what the truth of the matter is.

I hope that Eric will stop this behaviour and stick to what he is good at and that is language.

Take care and show respect and keep posting folks!
Flower

[lenz]

I don't think Eric should be stopped from speaking his mind. He sets himself up as an antagonist and many members of the forum counter his verbal attacks with non-violent, sensible comments. This is healthy exchange of ideas, as he challenges us to justify our own thinking. The forum might become rather bland and complacent without him.

[Liam]

I have to point out that Flower is not calling for Eric to be banned but for him (and I quote) to "change his style of posting in the more political threads."

[Eric]

I don't think Flower likes me. Serious and rabidly distorted reply later.

Gauleiter Eric

[Galatea92]

Despite my better judgement, I want to defend Eric's right to say what he wants, in whatever way he wants. He is often scathing and critical about things that I hold dear, but I don't take that those criticisms personally. If I can be bothered I'll have an argument with him; otherwise I'll look the other way.

And to be honest, his misrepresentations of the truths are no worse than the misrepresentations other people are guilty of. You don't have to be a right-winger to stack the decks in your own favour.

[Eric]

Flower and others:

I've heard this sort of lashing out before, and by comparison, Flower is being civilised. I would like to point out what I was trying to say, though I may have put things badly at times. Let me first make it clear that I can read all four major Scandinavian languages: Swedish (the best), Norwegian, Danish and Finnish. Any faults of interpretation are likely to be mine, not because I don't understand the language.

The Danish newspaper Politiken highlighted this Starkey man, and later I found the exact interview as a video with him conducted by Emily Maitlis on the news background programme Newsnight. He is a schoolmasterly man and it rather surprised me that he had indeed used rap in some social teaching project. So he is aware of what it's like. He is not neo-Nazi or anything sinister. He is just saying that the rap culture - which is mostly associated with Afro-Caribbeans - is a very bad role model for Brits, Black or White. It is decadent, sexist, violent, crime-enhancing, and so on. Black parents would do well to keep their children away from this macho culture of illegality.

My point is: Danish papers should not shout too loud. There are riots waiting to happen in Denmark too. Denmark has also been very lax regarding immigration, integration, drugs and crime. No one expected a Norwegian White psychopath (with a diplomat father!) to commit atrocities as he did. But certain Scandinavian papers make me sick by constantly bringing up his name and adding stories every day. They want to sell their papers and have no feelings for the parents and relatives of the 69 kids and older people who were murdered. This is News of the World journalism: squeeze every drop out of the story and ignore decency.

Scandinavians must realise that every single Scandinavian country has an ultra-right-wing political party with members in parliament. This is an unhealthy sign. It means that the normal parties, from the Social-Democrats on the Left to the Conservatives on the Right, have failed their citizens. They have allowed dangerous ghettoes and tensions to build up, just like in Britain - but hopefully less dangerous. But cars are still burnt, honour killings still happen. I am not spreading lies.

Scandinavians are often very naïve when it comes to the bigger picture. Otherwise, why were the Swedes fooled that Sweden had nothing to do with NATO, when in fact, even when Palme was leading protest marches against the American war in Vietnam, he was sneakily working with NATO behind the scenes. If a country does not respect the opinions and knowledge of its citizens, one day there will be trouble.

Scandinavia is not as far gone as London. But the writing is on the wall, and the normal political parties must act decisively before the fascists hijack the political agenda.

Like Flower, I too live in Scandinavia. I see what happens in Uppsala and Stockholm, and read about Gothenburg and Malmö. It is not in my interests to stir up trouble, but people must face the truth. Scandinavia is not immune to ethnic unrest. Let us hope that the sleepwalking politicians wake up.

[Flower]

Just for the record:

I have defended Eric once when I felt that Liam went to far in asking about his personal status so this is not about me not being able to see different sides to Eric's or other people's postings.

The Danish newspaper did not suggest what Eric mentioned in his post so he stated a lie as being a fact. Now he has toned it down a bit in his explanation here. Politiken reported about a program on national tv in the UK and the fact that it had lead to several people protesting for instance on twitter, that is all. The article was not blown up, it had the same size headlines as other articles.

We have basic democratic rules in our countries which allows different parties and we see that as a sign of tolerance and being an open and healthy society. So its a lie that we have failed our citizens, in fact the opposit is true; we have a democracry and we allow right-wing parties if they can work within the laws. But we do not allow political parties which appreciate violence etc. and that is where the terrorist in Norway thought the party was too soft.

I shall not reply to this thread any longer.

[Galatea92]

Though I defend Eric's right to post what he likes, I wish he wouldn't start so many threads. As most of the posts seem to fall into one of two camps, maybe we could have two special sticky threads for Eric, one called 'Don't translators get a raw deal?' and the other, 'Why I think the world's going to hell in a hand cart'. Any new thread that Eric starts should get filtered into one or other of these. (I think I could write a program to do the filtering, based on a statistical analysis of word use ).

[Rumpelstilzchen]

Just to add my two cents:

Maybe you will also have noticed that Eric is making very relevant contributions to the threads connected to literature and translation. Just a reminder, this forum is called "world literature forum", so I assume that should be the most important part of the forum. I have basically stopped reading the political threads for the reasons mentioned above by Flower. I am not really sure half of the time and cannot really distinguish if Eric is just trying to provoke a discussion with his highly questionable posts or if he is expressing his ill-informed or at least one-sided opinions. In addition sometimes I also have the impression that he is twisting reality and/or ignoring certain posts intentionally, but sometimes I also wonder if some of his strange posts are maybe not on purpose, but just caused by improper and hasty reading of other people's answers.

I think this was also the reason why Mirabell left the forum. I am really sad about this, because as everybody here (including Eric) should have noticed, he had a lot to say about literature. I am also very sad that Eric did not try in the least to restrain himself a bit after those troublesome days at the WLF some weeks ago.

As I said, I am mostly ignoring the political threads. Wow, and I just read the England Is Burning thread and I am shocked a bit, again. But I am also very glad that there are also intelligent people around like JTolle, HDW, Amoxcalli etc., who are arguing against Eric, who on the contrary does not seem to understand their posts or does not want to understand them.

I really wonder if I have just left the wrong forum (a nod to Liam)...

[Loki]

Mirabell left the forum. I am really sad about this

I am not. I should've thrown a party to celebrate the event.

Sorry about this little digression.

[Rumpelstilzchen]

And let me further add that I also think the forum without Eric would be much more uninteresting. I honestly wished Mirabell would come back (yes, this is an appeal that people should try to drag him back here). Think about how boring this fourm would get immediatly if you would just remove the few high frequent posters Eric, Daniel, hdw and Liam (Mirabell is already gone, Bjorn seems to have no time anymore). This forum needs more people posting regularly. I would be very happy if some people could just restrain themself a bit when discussing controversial topics. I know that it is hard sometimes.

You see, with respect to literature and languages I am basically a moron, this is just a hobby of mine (I got my education in physics), so I warmly welcome a large diversity of professionals in the looser or stricter sense: translators (Eric, hdw), editors (Bubba), literature/culture students wether it be undergraduate or PhD level (Loki, Liam, Mirabell) and maybe even authors. I am basically around here to get new input and to amuse myself a bit in the office.

[Rumpelstilzchen]

I am not. I should've thrown a party to celebrate the event.

Sorry about this little digression.

Well, he certainly is a hothead, but I can live with that.

[Eric]

Eric tries to be right. Eric is not in the Goebbels business of deliberately introducing a clever mix of truths, half-truths, and lies, to make his case. I can make mistakes. But what irritates me is when people deny that there are ethnic and crime problems in, for instance, Scandinavia.

So on the "England's burning" thread I have deliberately highlighted a Copenhagen suburb which has installed a large number of CCTV cameras. This article was in the same Danish newspaper, Politiken, that I was criticising for sensationalising the Starkey comments. This time Politiken highlights Danish government promises that everything will be alright with CCTV cameras, while someone replying points out that CCTV cameras did not stop the London riots, although there are masses of such cameras all over London. The police no doubt watched from their safe CCTV monitoring bunkers and clearly did nothing.

Just because Breivik is a truly evil and emotionless psychopath, does not mean that we should swing to the other extreme and think all immigrant problems are solved. And just because three Muslim men were murdered in Birmingham by thugs (I don't know which race, and it doesn't matter), this does not mean that there are no ethnic problems involving unintegrated non-Europeans in the West Midlands of England.

The Copenhagen suburb of Tingbjerg clearly also has a problem. I was surprised to see the word "ghetto" used in the centre-left Danish newspaper Politiken. And if you look at photos of Tingbjerg, it looks absolutely idyllic with lots of green spaces. But Muslims appear to have moved into that 1950s-built suburb and created a ghetto with drug problems and youth problems. Is it racist to mention these problems, or should we adopt ostrich tactics? Is it xenophobic to mention the fact that the problem-makers in Tingbjerg are not, as in London, from the Afro-Asian communities, with White hangers-on, but from the Muslim community?

Are we allowed to say and write what we believe to be the truth, or must we be censored to keep the peace, while people hope the problem will go away on its own without intervention by the authorities and police? Where is our freedom of speech if we are shouted down (or its written equivalent) by those who disagree with our opinions? I prefer to receive a reply, point by point, showing where you think I am wrong, rather than be harangued and branded as a liar. That is not the way to debate fraught issues. Debate means you keep personalities out of it, and you do not either defend or attack individual people, but defend the truth - in detail, not vaguely.

[Bubba]

I'm afraid I don't understand exactly what Flower is objecting to in Eric's posts. I don't see where he is "lying."

On a related subject, in the early 1990s, I spent several months living in Gellerup, which several Danes described to me as the worst immigrant ghetto in Jutland, if not in all of Denmark. At the time, I found the place very ugly, and a bit unfriendly, but not in any way threatening. So I was slightly shocked to read the Wikipedia page I linked to above.

[Eric]

I'm glad that I get a little bit of support. A couple of months ago, the situation became intolerable here on the WLF as one of our number adopted every dirty trick he could think of to spoil threads (mostly ones where my comments were present) including posting huge and irrelevant photos, just out of cussedness or bloody-mindedness. Where he did comment, he would write one snide sentence. I am still shocked that someone who calls himself a student or even intellectual would resort to such low forms of debate.

Let me stress that there is no one here on this forum now who has become such a destructive nuisance, but all I wish is that if people disagree, they simply list where they disagree and give rational reasons why. I cannot see the point of writing a diatribe several paragraphs long, where no concrete instances of misdemeanours are given, but I am nonetheless branded a liar. It is downright insulting to claim that a person is a liar, and doubly so if no instances are given.

I'm glad that Paul has noticed that despite my saying things that people don't always agree with, I do contribute quite a lot of literary material too. I don't expect everyone to agree with everyone else on every issue. Debate is not a love-in. But I am a normal middle-class person who translates books for a living and wants to live a quiet life - but one where you are allowed to have opinions on both literature and politics, without being shouted down by the pack. Paul rightly says that if you don't agree with me, or think I'm having a blustery day, then just ignore my comments. But feeling you don't agree with me, without furnishing any proof as to what, and then lashing out with random spite, is impolite and bad debating tactics.