Opinion of the tempbanned poster: GeneralMacArthur

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

One of our most controversial red avatars.

[OSR stands with Israel]

His temp ban was completely unjustified. The mods really have jumped the shark the past few days .

[Horus]

HP. A very angry guy who never misses an opportunity to dehumanize people he disagrees with.

90 does may seem harsh but remember it hasn't even been half a year since his last ban. Palestinians are an ethnic group and the rules about bigotry don't suddenly not apply to them because you worship Israel.

[Ancestral Republican]

Reposting from the last thread:

He is, I believe, well into his 30s, and still posts like an overconfident and overliterate teenager who hasn't had the necessary formative experience of spending ages ~17 to ~21 having people repeatedly tell him he's an insufferable prick until he actually gets the message.

He did not exactly engender sympathy with me by repeatedly calling for me to be banned in recent weeks.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I agreed with him on most things. Except that: 1-His style was offputting and he was often pretty hostile when he didn't need to be and 2-Some of the things he said about Palestine were pretty awful.

Hoping he takes the time to recalibrate and changes when he comes back, especially because after that long of a ban this is likely the last chance he's getting.

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

The Conflict sure brings out the best in people.

[VBM]

FF

[VBM]

HP. A very angry guy who never misses an opportunity to dehumanize people he disagrees with.

90 does may seem harsh but remember it hasn't even been half a year since his last ban. Palestinians are an ethnic group and the rules about bigotry don't suddenly not apply to them because you worship Israel.

What bigoted things did he say about Palestinians?

[Lumine]

I feel he has a lot to contribute despite his godawful attitude, but he really and repeatedly crossed the line over the Israel-Palestine comments lately. Wouldn't be the first on either side of course.

Ultimately, you really can't expect to be shouting from the rooftops "Palestinians are bad and the Palestinian cause is bad" - literal quote - without consequences.

[President Johnson]

He needs to be a little calmer. But overall I consider him a FF.

[Ferguson97]

Not the biggest fan, but there are worse people on this forum.

[Vice President Christian Man]

FF

[Joseph Cao]

In the simplest of terms, what we are doing on Atlas is this: We are trying to prevent a third outbreak of posfs so disconnected from the reality of the Conflict that normal, non-online people are repulsed by them.

I think most people on the Blog recognized that fact last year. And they warmly supported the decision of the mods to preserve the sanity of posters against proposals to move every Palestinian in the Strip to Egypt. Now, many persons, even some who applauded our decision to defend the Blog, have forgotten the basic reason for our action.

It is right for us to aim to make better posts. It was right last year. It is right today.

The question we have had to face is whether the ethnic cleansing defenses, unintentional or otherwise, can be stopped without infractions. Our Modadmin and other moderators associated with us in the Mod Cave believe that the best chance of stopping it without infractions is to meet the attack on the Blog and defeat it there.

That is what we have been doing. It is a difficult and thankless task. But so far it has been successful.

So far, by fighting a limited war against massive walls of text, we have prevented excessive aggression from succeeding and bringing on a general descent of forum discourse. And the ability of the whole Blog to resist ethnically motivated aggression has been greatly improved.

We do not want to see the conflict on the USGD and IGD boards extended. We are trying to preserve the forum—not to bury it. The best way to do that is to make it plain that we and the other users will continue to resist posting about a heartbreaking conflict from the standpoint of scoring points against people they disagree with.

But you may ask, why can’t we take other steps to punish the aggressive posters of the other side. Why don’t we merge more threads into the campus protest megathread? Why don’t we ask fellow posters to condemn Hamas, the Grand Mufti, House Republicans for some reason, or whatever unhinged thing Itamar Ben-Gvir said in a press conference this morning?

If we were to do these things we would be running a very grave risk of making the relevant boards even more unreadable than they already are. If that were to happen, we would have brought about the exact situation we are trying to prevent.

If we were to do these things, we would become entangled in a vast conflict in Columbia and our task would become immeasurably more difficult all over the forum.

I believe that we must try to improve the forum for these vital reasons: to make sure that the precious lives of our posters are not wasted in playing with families of strawmen; to see that the security of our bulwark against Twitter rando outrage is not jeopardized; and to prevent further mass derailments of threads that end in infractions and tears.

A number of events have made it evident that General MacArthur did not agree with that policy. I have therefore considered it essential to register the Blog's broad consensus that General MacArthur needs to try to make less infractable posts.

It was with the deepest personal regret that I found myself compelled to take this action. General MacArthur is one of our greatest suppliers of recommended post statistics. But the cause of peace on the Blog is more important than any individual.

The change in command in the IGD theater means no change whatever in the policy of the Atlas Forum. We will carry on the fight on the Blog with vigor and determination in an effort to bring the campus hostilities to a speedy and successful conclusion.

We are ready, at any time, to negotiate for a restoration of peace on the boards. But we will not engage in appeasement. We are only interested in real peace.

In this hard fighting on the Forum Community board, we are proving that collective action among posters is not only a high principle but a workable means of resisting anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Defeat of unduly aggressive posting on the Blog may be the turning point in the Blog's search for a practical way of herding cats achieving peace and security from lunatic chants about globalizing the intifada.

The struggle of the Atlas Bloggers here is a struggle for peace. The posters have united their strength in an effort to prevent yet another episode of the interminable Israel–Palestine conflict.

That war can come if the Hamas cheerleaders and Likudniks want it to come. But this Blog and its posters will not be responsible for its coming.

[Santander]

Ultimately, he got himself banned from an Internet forum not out of concern for Israel, but to own the Bernie Bros.

This sums it up. He is a very unpleasant person.

[Pheurton Skeurto]

Seems to be fueled entirely by anger. I'm no doctor, but I don't think that's recommended.

[7,052,770]

Kinda ends the "mods biased toward Democrats" conspiracy theory, doesn't it?

[John Dule]

Few bans have been more deserved. I was clearly never a fan of his, but since October 7th his posts about Palestinians have been astonishingly dismissive and dehumanizing. I cannot fathom how people like him or OSR handwave away the suffering of millions of people for ideological or political reasons. Hopefully he is just the first of many ethnic cleansing advocates to take well-earned vacations from this site.

[Old Man Willow]

Kinda ends the "mods biased toward Democrats" conspiracy theory, doesn't it?

Not really because the views he is being infracted for are more associated with the right.

[7,052,770]

Kinda ends the "mods biased toward Democrats" conspiracy theory, doesn't it?

Not really because the views he is being infracted for are more associated with the right.

MacArthur was the biggest defender of Biden to ever post here. "Left" and "Right" are arbitrary and debatable, but he's the most loyal Democratic cheerleader we've ever had. He could get a job working on Biden's comms team.

From now on, any time a Republican tries to complain that Republicans are held to a tighter standard than Democrats here, all anyone has to say is "But MacArthur" and the argument is over.

[No War, but the War on Christmas]

POS.

[SnowLabrador]

Tilt FF. I strongly disagree with him on Israel/Palestine, but other than that he's spot-on about almost everything. Of course, the "other than that" qualifier does some heavy lifting here. Even so, I remember his thread about narratives surrounding abortion in which he made a lot of sense. That's why I voted the way I did.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

I'll allow the families of those held hostage by Hamas (some of whom are likely dead) to render judgement on the FFness or HPness of GMac.

[Antonio the Sixth]

The Conflict sure brings out the best in people.

It sure does.

My heart goes out to the mods who have to deal with this flood of vile, idiotic, self-righteous drivel on a daily basis. They're heroes honestly.

[Progressive Pessimist]

I usually don't mind him, but he definitely steps over the line more often than he should.

[Big Abraham]

He needs the full MacArthur treatment.