Cornelius Castoriadis Agora International Website

A Third, Interim Response,
to Inclusive Democracy's Second Final Reply

I CANNOT STOP LAUGHING: COMING FULL CIRCLE (AUGUST-DECEMBER 2006)

We have now come full circle.

Back on a Saturday afternoon, August 26, 2006, the Cornelius Castoriadis/Agora International Website sent out its regular electronic update announcement, which included the following brief yet accurate death notice among its "News" updates:

We have received word of the death of Murray Bookchin on July 30, 2006. Bookchin (b. January 14, 1921), a former Trotskyist like Castoriadis, shared Castoriadis's advocacy of direct democracy and even preceded the latter in his concern with environmental issues. Castoriadis discussed Bookchin's municipally-based, ecologically-informed, anarchist views briefly in Crossroads in the Labyrinth. They both joined the Editorial Advisory Board of Society & Nature in the 1990s. When Bookchin and his partner Janet Biehl resigned from this journal in 1997--considering it, among other things, too "Castoriadian"--Agora International's David Ames Curtis wrote a reply, "On the Bookchin/Biehl Resignations and the Creation of the New Liberatory Project," at Castoriadis's request and with his approval, the text appearing only a year and a half later in censored form in the successor journal, Democracy & Nature. It was on account of D&N's censorship effort that Castoriadis had determined to leave its Editorial Advisory Board as soon as the censored version appeared, a decision he was not able to carry out, however, due to his own intervening illness and death. Bookchin later wrote Curtis a conciliatory letter acknowledging that Castoriadis's views deserved further examination, but ill health and other priorities kept Bookchin from realizing his aim of writing such a text.

Sunday evening, AI received a hurried and vague protest/threat: Unless this "Letter To Agora International Website" was published by AI in some unclear way and in time to meet an unspecified deadline, it would appear in the International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, presented by Editor Takis Fotopoulos and the rest of ID's Editorial Committee as Democracy & Nature's "successor journal." Before AI even had a chance to reply, these Editors published their Letter on Friday, September 1, 2006 as Agora, Chomsky, Bookchin, and Democracy & Nature in ID Newsletter #37--and not, as they had promised, in their Journal, the next issue of which has still not appeared and which is now announced for January 2007. . . . In its impulsive reprint, their hastily drafted Letter was left undated, thereby concealing the short time period elapsed, but it was accompanied by exclamatory commentary alleging that I, personally, had already "refused to publish!" it--whereas no such thing had occurred, since the drafting of an initial reply from AI was as yet incomplete. (In an editorial capacity, one needed to take the time to ask, among other issues raised by this Letter's precipitous composition, whether ID Editors really wished to misspell repeatedly the name of the negationist Robert Faurisson while posing as experts on the affair that takes his name.) Since this charge of a positive "refus[al] to publish" seemed directed more at me, by name, than at the CC/AI Website per se, I responded to it in the first person the following month . The ID Editors in turn published The Autonomy and Inclusive Democracy Projects and "Agora's" Defamatory Delirium on October 9, which I described as "a grim, humorless, indeed witless 10,750-word rejoinder posted a scant five days after the September-October CC/AI Website electronic update announcement" when I replied to this piece the following month in A Second, Interim Response. (The most care taken in their otherwise rapid reply was to rewrite, with no hint given to the reader, some quotations of theirs in which they had previously made grammatical and spelling errors that indicated, as I had already pertinently shown, glaring weaknesses in their arguments.) Indeed, with the confidence that comes from impulsive one-sided dialogue mixed with invective, they stated: "As we have now indisputably shown the deviousness and pure dishonesty of [Curtis's] methods, we believe that there shall be no need to respond to any further distortions that he may fabricate in future [sic]." I therefore laid out in the conclusion to my "Second, Interim Response" what, it seemed to me, remained to be done--"Let us now wait and see whether the ID Editors will ever fulfill their original threat to print their protest in the pages of their journal--and whether they will indeed, as they say they in principle 'always' do with exchanges, print this second, interim response as well as my previous response from September there, too"--while promising to answer other claims, should they be willing to reprint my first two responses in their journal (why, I thought, go to the trouble of responding to every last charge when their history of censorship is now well known?).

Since the ID Editors have yet to make good on the original threat to publish their own Letter in their Journal, it will come as no surprise to readers that they have neither fulfilled their promise to refrain from further replies (whether they do so or not is a matter of indifference to me) nor respected their unilateral commitment to print, without exception, all responses in their journal (in attacking AI for having allegedly "refused to publish!" their Letter, they stated unequivocally in Newsletter #37 that they "have always [sic] published in the past all [sic] the exchanges with other journals/authors"). For, we are now treated to a 1,000-word "Addendum" to The Autonomy and Inclusive Democracy Projects and "Agora's" Defamatory Delirium : "As we stated above, we have no intention of responding again," this Addendum begins . . . but with a tiny yet important revision--"in detail"--added immediately thereafter that allows them to try to respond now to some of the more embarrassing points raised in my November response while violating their vow of silence. Another slight but significant revision is introduced there, this time into their principled stand in favor of universal open dialogue within the pages of their journal:

Similarly, when we referred to the fact that our journal has always hosted dialogues, even with people hostile to the ID project, we of course meant dialogues with bona fide people and not the various Curtises of this world, who have repeatedly shown their bad faith and clear intention to defame us. It is, therefore, only indicative of the nerve of this man that he wonders whether we will publish his libelous deliria in our journal.

Thus, from an invented charge of a "refus[al] to publish" on my part, an unqualified claim that they "always" publish "all" exchanges, and a clear commitment to refrain from further replies, things have come back round to this: The Inclusive Democracy Editors write once again after all, now explicitly refusing to publish in their journal any responses from me or from any member of that elastic group of people deemed by them non-"bona fide." Indeed, it remains unclear whether they will even make good on the original threat to publish their own Letter there.

A side issue was their Letter's complaint that AI had "forg[otten]" to mention, in the Bookchin death notice, their original reply to my piece on the Bookchin/Biehl resignations . Their 1999 reply had studiously avoided any mention of the censorship dispute that had arisen in 1997 and that was at issue in that 2006 death notice, but in order to satisfy them mention was duly made of this URL in my September piece. Now their Addendum refuses even to cite, for the reader's benefit, either the titles or the URLs of my September and November replies--their only concession being to reprint AI's general URL (which ID readers already know from the ID links page).

ID Editors thus seem determined to keep their readers as far removed as possible here from open exchange as well as from knowledge of what has been said in criticism of these Editors. I cannot stop laughing. The only conclusion to be drawn is that any promise or criticism Fotopoulos and his shifting et al. have ever made or edited in any venue requires independent verification before acceptance as trustworthy or sincere.

While the ID Editors are rather creative in their writings, altering at will what they have already said or previously promised, it seems that a limited number of options remain for them. Either they will reprint their original Letter in the January issue of the ID Journal, as they had pledged, or they will not. If they do not, they prove themselves unwilling to fulfill what they had threatened to do, in which case all claims, charges, allegations, criticisms, etc. made in this Letter and in their subsequent contributions on this issue can be viewed as without substance or consequence, and there is no need for further responses to what they have decided against printing where they said they would print it. Case closed, to their detriment and embarrassment for failure to keep their promise. If they do print this Letter in the ID Journal but fail to print my replies, thereby going against the open policy articulated in that very Letter, all claims, charges, allegations, criticisms, etc. made in this Letter and in their subsequent contributions on this issue can be viewed as without substance or consequence, since they are unwilling to allow a right of response, thereby reconfirming their censorious streak. Case closed, to their detriment and embarrassment for failure to keep their commitment. Should they, in order to avoid a glaring appearance of hypocrisy, reverse themselves and print in their journal their Letter as well as my and their subsequent exchanges, I shall simply reserve the right to respond further, answering in particular anything they feel is still outstanding as regards this brief but accurate death notice that has been the occasion for such controversy. (I made a similar offer in my November response, asking any person to contact me about any feature of this controversy that still bothered them. The only replies I received laid out criticisms of the ID Editors; no one brought up the least concern about even the tiniest issue raised by ID.) Thus, they are also welcome to make a third final reply, should they so wish. It should again prove hilarious. I look forward to the possibility.

* * *

For amusement's sake, a few additional comments are in order here. While it would be presumptuous of me to say that there are general "lessons" to be learned from these efforts to expose, through humor, the silliness of what sometimes passes for the "Left" today, I do view my specific role here as similar to the gadfly one performed so felicitously by London Solidarity several decades ago.

I STILL CANNOT STOP LAUGHING: AGORA INTERNATIONAL VS. INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY?

One good thing has come out of the ID Editors' Addendum. Previously, Agora International was denigrated by them for . . . not doing the same thing as they do in the same way they do. And yet, AI was said to be in fierce "competition" with ID while also being woefully inadequate by comparison. Fotopoulos and his shifting et al. now seem to have withdrawn their earlier fabricated charge (the only criticism ever published against AI) that AI had joined in league with "various post-modern academics" . . . simply by our announcing a colloquium at a university (I suppose they thought that censoring that announcement would have been more politically correct). By personalizing their attack completely against me, the ID Editors now speak instead of the "useful function" the CC/AI Website performs "as a helpful bibliographical resource on autonomy and the work of Castoriadis." For AI's sake, I can only welcome this latest bumbling inconsistency on the ID Editors' part, and I am glad now to be the sole object of their name-calling when it comes to members of AI and the CC/AI Website's bibliographers' collective. The validity of my hunch to treat these attacks as personal, even when couched as criticisms of AI in general, has been confirmed.

I JUST CANNOT STOP LAUGHING: ON- AND OFF-AGAIN "CASTORIADIANS"

Insecure polemicists are faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, they must feel absolutely superior to their adversary; on the other hand, they still must deem the latter worthy of their efforts at criticism. In October, I was treated as unheard of by most ID readers . . . an epithet these Editors no longer use after it was pointed out that they themselves have cited my Castoriadis translations myriad times in their journals. But since they made the mistake of citing an Editorial Board member about there being "every potential [of] a very fruitful working relationship" between myself and D&N, the ID Editors must now backtrack and say that I was merely a token "Castoriadian" addition: their invitation to me "was simply offered with the intention of adding a Castoriadian voice--albeit by poor proxy--to the jounal's [sic] output." This denigration is an especially humorous retrospective explanation. In a May 10, 1997 e-missive, Fotopoulos denied that, through my invitation to D&N's International Advisory Board, "there may have been some kind of 'plot' to make the composition of the IAB more 'Castoriadian.'" We thus come another full circle--from 1997 until today: Takis's use of the term "Castoriadian" was made right after he asserted that "[w]e hate to use these personalised terms [Bookchinite, Castoriadian] which you also correctly criticise" . . . but which the ID Editors themselves regularly use, when convenient, as in their October 9 reply ("pure Chomskyite" is another epithet used there to dismiss a person instead of engaging in argument). For my part, I have always challenged the use of the adjective "Castoriadian" when applied to people, including myself--a point at the heart of my original D&N reply to Bookchin's resignation letter. Fotopoulos and his shifting et al., we now see, have not been so consistent.

Indeed, as early as the D&N issue in which my text appeared, in Fotopoulos's mind I already spoke for "Castoriadians [who] were right to try to dissociate the thought of Castoriadis from the journal--see David Ames' [sic] Curtis article in this issue." I certainly would love to see the faces on some people the ID Editors might consider "Castoriadians" when they read that I am their leader and spokesperson. (For the record, I led no vast group of "Castoriadians" out of D&N. Cornelius and I--as must now be repeated once again--decided together, for ourselves, to withdraw from D&N on account of its censorship of my text.) As late as 2003 , Takis was still citing his "exchange with David Ames Curtis on the differences between the Castoriadian project of autonomy and the ID project," as if my word held as definitive for "Castoriadians" in general. Nevertheless, in his actual 1999 reply to me , Takis discerned a supposed rift between Castoriadis and myself over what constitutes a worker. (Actually, Castoriadis--though not "Castoriadians"--had read and approved my entire response; Fotopoulos simply misinterpreted what was written.) But when, by contrast, Fotopoulos wished in 2003 to prove a point against a critic of Castoriadis, he appealed to this same old exchange, quoting me as an unimpeachable source about Castoriadis's thinking. How hilarious that now, in 2006 , the ID Editors write:

Curtis is in clear competition with the Castoriadis' family -a competition which has led to various disputes and to what Curtis currently describes as a labour dispute "with the management"![the exclamation mark is a good hint that the ID Editors messed up the quotation--DAC])-- as to who would be the authentic cultural heir of Castoriadis' legacy, with all the benefits, social and financial, that this implies.

given that, in that same 2003 text, Fotopoulos had already consecrated me (rightly, wrongly, or beside the point) as Castoriadis's "closest political associate, David Ames Curtis." I cannot stop laughing.

(N.B.: Given that CC/AI Website Greek-language bibliographer Yorgos Oikonomou contributed a piece to D&N volume 9, no. 2--D&N's abstract of that article lists the title as "Plato and Castoriadis: the concealment and the uneiling [sic] of democracy"--generalizations about "Castoriadians" in relation to S&N/D&N/ID are inadvisable.)

I REALLY CANNOT STOP LAUGHING: "INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY" AND EXCLUSION

In ID-speak, we saw, "always" means only sometimes. "All" means not everyone. These bold new redefinitions of inclusion to include exclusion upon the Editors' whim may now be added to what I wrote in November about "how to read S&N/D&N/ID":

[W]hen these Editors appeal to "any reader" or "every bona fide reader," you can be assured that an open and unresolved controversy exists over what has been written. If something is declared "obvious," that means that it remains in dispute. What is labeled "evident" is in fact what is lacking in reliable evidence. The adverb "clearly" is employed to cover over reasonable doubt. When a point has been "indisputably shown," the debate has not yet begun. The "self-evident" character of an argument they make is directly proportional to the tendentiousness of their claims. And so forth. Additionally, various "presumably"s, "might"s, and "may"s, among other expressions, serve to introduce unsubstantiated insinuations and innuendos that even these Editors dare not characterize as "obvious," "evident," "indisputabl[e]," or "self-evident." On the other hand, "coincidence" as well as "accident[s]" are to them suspect prima facie.

A hilarious earlier example regarding inclusion/exclusion was their simultaneous denial and admission that, as I had written in September, "[w]ith each new Fotopoulos journal--he has established at least three so far--Fotopoulos creates a new editorial board and advisory board, eventually dropping old members. It is now a journal calling itself "Inclusive Democracy"--from which some members of the 'Democracy and Nature' team have in time been excluded (I among them) or in which others no longer participate." In their defensive October protestation, ID's Editors explain:

Society and Nature's EB, after being expanded by the addition of one member in vol 2 no 1, remained the same throughout its life, until the break with the Greek editors who did not agree with the radical line adopted by the journal, which led to the creation of Democracy & Nature . . . . As regards the move over to D&N, this did not mark any change in the EB (apart from the one already mentioned) and brought about only a minor change in the AB, with the exclusion from it (as was the prerogative of the new journal) of only two members . . . . The shift to a new (commercial) publisher, as from vol 5, was accompanied by a change in the structure of the EB while its personnel remained the same, apart from the withdrawal of a Chomskyite member . . . . The only drastic change to the EB, therefore, took place with respect to the latest conversion of the journal from a printed to an electronic one. However, this was a perfectly justifiable change in view of the fact that not only had the method of publication changed but, more importantly, the character of the journal itself was altered and it has now mainly become--though not exclusively--the international forum for the ID project.

Such phrases as "until," "apart from" (twice), "only two," and "only drastic change" are intended to show that "Curtis continues with his accumulation of distorted 'facts'" but in reality confirm the gist of what I wrote. My own exclusion from their Advisory Board does not really count, they assured readers, because it happened so fast that I was gone before the next issue--Fotopoulos's "Again, welcome on board!" (January 31, 1997 e-missive) being a quick prelude to an invitation to walk the plank. This is what their "inclusive democracy" amounts to. As they themselves eloquently verify: "exclusion . . . was the prerogative of the new journal." And such "perfectly justifiable" exclusion accompanying changes of journals appears most intense at the birth of . . . Inclusive Democracy (there, the "only drastic change" occurred). Since the issue at stake was what constitutes a "successor journal" and when it can legitimately speak in the name of the succeeded journal, I cannot stop laughing.

I TRULY CANNOT STOP LAUGHING: INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY AND ITS "FOUNDER"

Perhaps the funniest aspect of their Addendum is the ID Editors' repetition of their charge that I engage in "Goebbelian tactics." I had previously been the object of this accusation because I had correctly quoted their explicit, published claim that Fotopoulos is the "founder" of inclusive democracy. Instead of admitting a mistake or reversing themselves, they obscured the issue by blurring the beginnings and endings of quotations and then denied that they had used this word . . . elsewhere. (There are, of course, a near infinity of venues where the phrase is not used.) Only by my repeating their quotation, once again correctly, in November were they finally forced, some thousands of words later, to acknowledge lamely that this claim was indeed theirs, that it had to be revised, and that it was "hastily written." (The issue of "thoughtful doing," as opposed to rash reaction, has been at the center of my half of these exchanges from the start.) My audacity in pointing out this claim--a claim first affirmed by them, then dodged by them, and only repudiated by them in extremis--is said to be "one more confirmation of the tactics used by this master of Goebbelian methods." We see what it takes to extract from them just one tiny admission of error--as well as the stream of invective such extraction elicits. Which is why there is no point in answering in more depth unless they agree to let their readers know both sides--which will probably never happen. I cannot stop laughing. It is worth recalling here that I predicted a decade ago precisely the mind-set that this "hastily written" personalized claim about Fotopoulos as "founder" straightforwardly expresses. Also, in their latest production , a translation, they reportedly alter the original by adding the adjective theoretical in order to soften a renewed claim, published in Greek just a year ago, about Fotopoulos the "founder."

I TRY, BUT I CANNOT STOP LAUGHING: DOWN THE MEMORY HOLE

The practice of character assassination which accompanies this inadvertently honest claim to the status of personal "founder" now extends beyond me to D&N's last Assistant Editor, Alexandros Gezerlis. This, because the November CC/AI Website electronic update announcement conscientiously noted the existence of several suppressed links on the D&N website. The ID Editors are convinced there must be a nefarious reason behind such a discovery. The simple truth is that, in preparing my November response, I came across a first suppressed link while searching for a Gezerlis article mentioning AI and then discovered the two others. Earlier, I related Fotopoulos's demand that AI itself suppress references to any Gezerlis reprint link not authorized by his journal, something we refused to do in order not to deprive our readers of objective, accurate, and full information. What was not clear at the time was that this demand was a prelude to the Editors' suppression of the original links to all Gezerlis articles on their own website. Having little faith that people are capable of looking for a reference exactly where it is said to be found, these Editors complain that "[f]ew readers will realise that all the 'suppressed' links (three in total) refer to one person." The explanation they offer for "the real reasons behind the 'suppression' of these links" is worth noting. Such suppression--a new instance of retrospective censorship (they had already repeatedly suppressed, on Wikipedia, a link to my D&N article)--is "justified" because they "refus[e] to continue promoting the work of somebody" whom they label a "crook." Here, the epithet "Stalinist methods" applies--specifically, the practice, by those controlling a political organ, of suppressing knowledge of the writings of a person now deemed persona non grata. I cannot stop laughing. In my mirth, I now formally request that the Editors send me a single copy of each of these three issues to which Gezerlis contributed. I will pay the usual price, in pounds, euros, or dollars. I want to see if they have, in line with their new principle, ripped out the actual Gezerlis pages, as well.

I CANNOT YET STOP LAUGHING: INCOMPETENCE TRUMPS COMPETENCE

The same schizophrenic insecurity shines through in the ID Editors' tirade against Gezerlis , a special new translation of a text published last year on the website of the Greek ID magazine Periektiki Dimokratia. Gezerlis is said to be "an unknown" and is treated as "insignificant." Yet he had "potential," for "T.F. saw [it] in him" and thought he might become a "significant future associate of the ID project itself." The young man was thus privileged to have Fotopoulos offer him "a post envied by people with a significant and internationally-recognized body of published work"--in fact, an unpaid job in a subordinate role whose "future" depended upon ongoing approval from above. All this alternating talk of "significance" and "insignificance" shows that disagreements would be filtered through Fotopoulos's sense of superiority and entitlement: "T.F. who, of course, has several decades of writing experience behind him, including translation," as the Editors put it defensively, after his editorial and translation competence was challenged from below. This assertion of correctness on account of professional experience is especially comic. After I had pointed out, in pertinent ways relating to actual issues, specific instances of poor editorial work and ham-handed translations on the part of Fotopoulos and his shifting et al., my points were dismissed by the ID Editors in October as follows:

[The] use of English [is] presumably [sic] the only area in which Curtis feels competent enough . . . . Our journal, on the other hand, is an international political journal, written by and directed towards an international public, whose common medium of communication is the English language. It is not a literary journal written by and directed towards Oxbridge and MIT intellectuals and, therefore, as long as the content of our articles is understood by our readers, the journal's aims are fulfilled.

Thus, as soon as their own competence is questioned by someone whose expertise they must recognize, experience is spurned as extraneous academicism. Reciprocity in the application of articulated principle seems just plain alien to them. I cannot stop laughing.

I ABSOLUTELY CANNOT STOP LAUGHING: IN THE BEGINNINGS, THERE WERE THE FALL (THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY)

This translation of their character assassination need not be taken seriously--or at least, I recommend that it be read in light of what I wrote about "how to read S&N/D&N/ID." Indeed, there are seven "presumably" phrases, plus one "possibly," amid all the wild speculations advanced in less than three pages. (We saw last month the pride Fotopoulos takes in ignorance of actual facts: "In fact, it was valid deductive reasoning that led me to these conclusions, particularly so since I was unaware of what actually happened . . . .") Moreover, this screed identifies two distinct "moments" for the "beg[inning]" of Gezerlis's supposed "descent" into an objective alignment with those "many enemies" who oppose the ID's courageous "anti-systemic approach." (In a confusion of personality, position, and principle all too frequent on the Left, ID Editors regularly conclude that if one is not with Inclusive Democracy one must also not be with inclusive democracy, and therefore, since ID and its Editors are "anti-systemic," any opposition to them must mean that one favors the present system.) Here, the typical ID-speak paranoid phrase "from this moment onwards" is followed two paragraphs later by "at the moment at which," this second first "beg[inning]" even making explicit reference to the first first one. I cannot stop laughing.

I CANNOT AT ALL STOP LAUGHING: AMOUR-PROPRE ON STEROIDS

Bracketing for a moment the truth-value of their claims, this denunciation of their former assistant editor is quite revelatory on its own of the ID state of mind. What, according to the ID Editors, was all the fuss about (in the second first "beg[inning]" of his "descent")? The author wished to revise the title of his own piece for a reprint, which would be called "The Project of Inclusive Democracy: No Longer a Toddler." Now, a normally constituted reader might find this proposed change rather flattering to the ID project: the project was said to have already to some extent matured over an unspecified period. In the recesses of the ID, however, the new title must have been chosen

with the obvious [sic] intention of belittling the significance of the ID project, if not giving the false impression that it had begun to mature only with the launching of this dialogue, presumably [sic] also due to his participation in it!

This is amour-propre on steroids!

Worse (remember, we are merely within ID-world for the moment), the author reportedly contacted an Argentinian review to reprint the same text, but

without Takis's prior knowledge and possibly [sic] without mentioning his dissociation from the journal--and not only requested the publication of his article with the new pejorative title, but also demanded that a long addendum be included with a strong attack against the ID project, highly revealing of why he had wanted the change of title in the first instance.

Gezerlis is apparently (remember, we are still just within ID-world) a "crook" for allegedly exercising the authorial right to supplement his own text in light of further reflection:

Galafassi, presumably [sic] embarrassed to see someone whom he knew to be a strong supporter of the ID project proposing a clearly [sic] polemical article against it, of course [emphasis added] rejected the request for the publication of the addendum, although he accepted the proposal for the new title, presumably [sic] in full ignorance of the fact that this proposal had already been declined by [the original proposed reprinter] Steve Best.

This "of course" phrase is precious, for, quite apart from whatever the reality of the situation might have been (there is no real indication of any actual knowledge of what was said and done between Gezerlis and Theomai editor Guido Galafassi), it indicates the ID Editors' mind-set. "Of course" another editor should reject an author's wish to write an addendum if it expresses a "polemical" view against the ID project. . . . I cannot stop laughing. (In fact, in the original version presented to Steve Best, these brief "Fragments of a Critique of the Inclusive Democracy Project" simply began, "Given that the Inclusive Democracy project is no longer a toddler, I would like to take this opportunity to offer a few critical remarks," and suggested that it might be in order to take the psyche as well as ontological, instead of just epistemological, questions into account. Of note, ID's new translation reportedly suppresses the original's reference to this authorial addendum.)

I CANNOT, REPEAT, CANNOT STOP LAUGHING: WIKIPEDIA REDUX

We can refrain from examining this translation's reflogging of the Wikipedia incident, where the ID Editors repeatedly suppressed references to my D&N text and then, without effect, demanded that any references to D&N, ID, Fotopoulos, etc. be "withdraw[n]" from the Wikipedia website, after they failed to win acceptance for their position within the Wikipedia review process, the ID Editors now turning their own censorship and demand for withdrawal into an accusation that this is what Gezerlis had done. The feverishly-written, redundantly titled, and self-contradictory section of their October reply entitled "The case of Wikipedia's [sic] or Curtis's resort to dishonest [sic] and nasty lies [sic]" lessens such a need. Let us simply note here what all the fuss was about: Fotopoulos and his shifting et al. objected to the addition, within Wikipedia's entry on Democracy & Nature, of a section entitled "Main Theoretical Influences," for that would be, in another display of bruised egos, "blatantly distorting the history of the journal in order to diminish the ID project and Fotopoulos's theoretical contribution to it." "In this section," they inaccurately complain, "the journal was presented as expressing mainly the views of Bookchin and Castoriadis." Back in the very issue where an attack on Agora International was inserted into an otherwise creditable D&N review by Gezerlis of Castoriadis's The Imaginary Institution of Society, Fotopoulos himself , after praising Gezerlis's "bright analysis," makes reference to Cornelius Castoriadis, "this great thinker who together with Murray Bookchin played a crucial role in the new synthesis expressed by the inclusive democracy project." Fotopoulos diminishes himself, but with impunity. When a Wikipedia contributor says the same thing, it becomes a near-criminal act. I cannot stop laughing.

David Ames Curtis
Paris - Winchester, Massachusetts, December 2006