www.thornwalker.com/ditch/hate_tld.htm
 
Correspondence with MetaReligion's Webmaster.
Comment from TLD readers.
The Hate Department.


 

This means They
really, really,
really
hate us, right?

By NICHOLAS STRAKON
Chief among the officially hated

 

TLD has finally made it! We've been listed as a "hate group" by a site called MetaReligion: Religion, Occultism, and Science at
http://www.meta-religion.com/HomeEnglish.htm. The MetaReligion folks say their mission is

to promote religious tolerance and a well documented criticism to the espiritual [sic] or metaphysical: religions, cults, sects, magick, esoterism and spiritualism. And to promote a multidisciplinary view of the religious and esoteric phenomena. And finally to create an individual perception of the Sacred to undestand [sic] what is beyond the religions of the world.

MetaReligion lists their links mostly under such heads as "spirituality," "ancient religions," "philosophy," "paranormal," and "magick," but since all respectable, uptown people more or less have to be in the Hate Business these days, they've got a "hate" page at
http://www.meta-religion.com/Directory/hate_groups_links.htm. Steve Sniegoski, who first spotted us there, says that the "hate" category seems to be a catch-all for those sites that don't fit in the more-occult drawers. He says, "If you contact them and tell them TLD is doing an upcoming series on human levitation, maybe the classification will be changed." Naaa, thanks, Steve, but I'm having too much fun.

Anyhow, we appear just as a plain little old link that takes the reader straight to our home page. (Jeez, a kid could hit that link and put its eye out! Maybe MetaReligion itself should be barred to kids.) There's no explanation or commentary accompanying the link, not even a brief description, except, of course, for HAAAAATE.

But then one hardly expects to see arguments and evidence these days, does one? It's funny. Just this morning I was flipping through an old issue of the Journal of Historical Review (uh-oh! HAAAAATE alert!) and came across Mark Weber quoting George Orwell, apparently from one of Orwell's essays:

At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to state this or that or the other, but it is "not done." ... Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.

Fashionable, respectable, right-thinking (or right-nonthinking) folk don't need arguments and evidence, and they certainly don't need to give the unrespectable any fair hearings, either; they do very well without all that. In monetary terms, at least. (I'm not complaining. As Hyman Roth said, "This ... is the business ... we have chosen." On the other hand, he was a millionaire.)

Not to mention, yelling HAAAAATE! at the top of your lungs is a lot easier than risking actual mental activity, which involves defining your terms, evaluating evidence, and making important distinctions. All of that can be hard to, you know, liyeeek, "undestand." If you get all tangled up in that fancy thinkin' type stuff, why, you can hurt your brain, while on the other hand it's mentally painless to slap together a list where TLD and American Renaissance rub shoulders with the Nazis and the KKK.

***

Now, it is true that we haven't quite made it all the way yet: being listed by MetaReligion, which no one has ever heard of, is bush league. But can the Southern Poverty Law Center and AOL and all those "childwatch" outfits be far behind? The Hate Experts are all members of the same Hive, to borrow Joe Sobran and Tom Bethell's indispensable term. Rest assured, we will be tracking the spread of TLD's nifty new reputation — buzz buzz — and will be reporting any developments.

Meanwhile, I'm off to the barber to have my beard trimmed into a proper goatee. I guess it's the right thing to do, seeing as how I'm turning into Emmanuel Goldstein.

***

Can't resist, just one more time: HAAAAATE! As Count Floyd might put it, "Ooooh, reeeal scary, kids!"

August 17, 2002

 

© 2002 by WTM Enterprises. All rights reserved.

 


If you'd like to see your brief comments posted on the site, please respond here.

All comments will be subject to the usual editing, and we will be looking for those that are the most thought-provoking, pro or con. And we would be interested in knowing about any other "TLD hate" sightings on the Web.
 

If you found these observations to be interesting, please donate something to our cause. You should make your check or m.o. payable in U.S. dollars to WTM Enterprises and send it to:

WTM Enterprises
P.O. Box 224
Roanoke, IN 46783

Thanks for helping to assure a future for TLD!


Notice to visitors who came straight to this document from off site: You are deep in The Last Ditch. You should check out our home page and table of contents.