suspension of police insignia thread in general forum

[jackamo]

Dear All,

I was told about a thread in the 'general' section concerning a posting by Flamesong concerning an anti-BNP march in Blackpool and the appearance of a number of police officers attired in unusual insignia, namely a square red patch framing a golden lightning bolt.

On arriving at the thread, I was kinda shocked to see that a decision had been autonomously taken by a the moderator John White to 'lock' this discussion and censor any other comments on this thread for the following reasons:

"I'm locking this thread for the time being, becuase it is moving away from discussing the insignia photographed worn by the Police Officer, and moving into a critique/defense of a political party, with associated emotive comments. This is more properly conducted elsewhere
The thread may re-open following consultation with other moderators. in the meanwhile, please do not start other BNP attack/defense threads"

There are two hackyned phrases that immediately spring to mind:

'locking the stable door after the horse has bolted' and 'don't throw the baby out with the bathwater'.

The discussion consisted of roughly thirty posts, approx twelve were directly related to the initial post, namely the appearance of police officers dressed in chic paramilitary black identifiable by fascist 'lightning bolt' insignia and non-standard ID numbering locations (Flamesong points out their ID numbers were apparent but obviously in the picture they do not appear on their shoulders) and the important implications of the police openly displaying a militarised uniform as part of their everyday policing role (not restricting the black paramilitary uniform to TSG/crowd/riot control)

Of the rest, approx thirteen were either 'spin' about the BNP being merely 'patriotic' (with a few over-enthusiastic members who are merely 'high spirited' no doubt ); a couple of other posts lamenting the fact that only 'white people' can join the BNP (where do you begin?...lol) and the rest a mixture of criticisms of the BNP and the usual 'I just write down the first thing that pops into my head and hit the send button' approach to furthering the debate)

I havent been reading the forum posts recently and this is only my second or third post but seeing the way this whole thing has been handled does not I think get the best out of this forum in general and that is why i am responding...

In terms of 'locking the stable door after the horse has bolted'. The fact that approx twenty nine posts were created on this thread before a decision was made to 'intervene' by a moderator makes the decision seem slightly 'arbitary' and 'heavy-handed' - especially given the fact that it was transparently obvious this thread was both used as a way to embed the ideology of the far-right and to provoke a 'discussion' about its relative merits and yet the moderator waits for approx thirteen posts of 'discussion' before they intervene - take it from me, a post that begins with "I have no idea what these insignia are either, and, quite frankly, I couldn't care less. I'm a member of the British National Party"
suggests to me they are about to go off-topic...just a hunch.

As the cliche goes, with power goes responsibility' - if moderators have the right to 'pull' (ahem) a discussion if it veers 'off topic' (as this thread indeed did) then surely it behooves them to first of all be slightly vigilant and post a warning to the thread, namely:the topic is going off-course and please keep on track - and then if the posters continue to go off-topic, think about suspending their posting and not the whole thread

This leads me to the second point about 'not throwing the baby out with the bathwater' - in suspending this post you have effectively curtailed any further discussion of either the identification of the police insignia or the wider implications of the overt militarisation of the police....especially given the fact the moderator hasn't moved the discussion elsewhere or simply removed the offending posts.

Now the 'hyper-conspiritorially' minded might suggest this was an effective intervention on behalf of the state to effectively curtail and censor any further investigation or discussion into the creation of a (possibly new) branch of the police apparatus and/or the wider implications of such an overt paramilitary display.

To be charitable, I dont think this was the case and i really hope that:

a) the thread is re-open (minus the propaganda) as there is much more to be discussed.

b) it is recognised that 'locking' a post before other strategies are implemented (or at least tried) is perhaps not the wisest move.

best wishes

jackamo

www.utopiated.net

[flamesong]

I have to say that as far as the forum being hijacked and subsequently locked, I was generally very disappointed. Once the topic had gone off track I decided to abandon it because it will do nothing for our campaign to be associated with right wing extremists and adding any input would only add fuel to a conspicuous blaze.

I think this is one area where forums (fora) are vulnerable. I would have liked the moderation to have allowed the discussion on the photo to have continued minus the parallel debate about the BNP but in some ways it would have been like separating conjoined twins. If moderators can perform this operation, I think there is some mileage left in the subject.

Anyway, disappointment has been somewhat soothed by the discovery that, as of today, there are about 910 web pages where the subject of the photo is still alive:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22UK%20Police%20Adorn%20Nazi%20Chic%22

Note: the exact phrase, "UK Police Adorn Nazi Chic" returned no hits prior to two days after its publication on propagandamatrix.com

[utopiated]

http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/november2006/281106nazichic.h tm

Nice the way PJW credits for his articles

I think that thread was indicative of net/forum research these days and the 911 movement generally. You find an interesting topic area worthy of research and 1 in 10 responders offer something worthwhile - the rest are trigger happy newbies [have you noticed how people can get 5 PENCILS or SUPAPOSTER status in 4 weeks?!] or simply people with their own unrelated agenda.

The issue with the topic getting locked is that no-one wins either way.

[John White]

Hi fellas.

Well the issue with the thread was of course that it was veering into a "pro's and cons of the BNP" thread, and, if one checks back to the site's posting guidlines, you'll see that it was either lock the discussion or delete certain members posts, which would then probably spill out into trying to continue defending the BNP elsewhere. I agree that locking the thread wasn't a perfect choice, but unfortunately moderation is usually the art of compromise, and it gave a clear message not to continue with the pro-BNP aspect of the debate here: what people talk about elsewhere is their own buisness

I am happy to ressurect the discussion becuase I agree the question of the insignia remains an interesting one, and I do in fact have some info passed to me that I could add to it, though I can't attest for its veracity: and I noted Flamesong's picture got some exposure on Prison Planet too: well done for that one mate

When I've brought the thread back, I'll pop a link here

[John White]

http://www.nineeleven.co.uk/board/viewtopic.php?t=5696&start=0&postday s=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

There we go

[flamesong]

[utopiated]

What's a pain in the ass these days is that people wholesale copy articles *without* adding anything significant on top or offering a new context. So within 24 hours we have numerous versions out there meaning when you come to do a bit of digging you just return those same dupes... that's when you have to get good with search terms/ideas.

I'm sure PJW has been endlessly duplicated and we all accept today that it's impractical to retain a chain of links to some "original". Which 99% of the time it isn't anyway.

Endless simulation as Baudrillard and crew say.

Anyway - thread re-opened -