Need help beating down a crazy right-winger (metaphorically)

[NoodleBoy]

Here, his name's temperflash:

http://p208.ezboard.com/ftalkinghistoryfrm1.showMessage?topicID=474.topic

Here's a gem from this man of superior wit:
"Racism was not as much of a factor in those days. It took Darwin and the British Academies to establish the idea of Racial inferiority."

He's pretty much ruined that forum for me, and most people there don't get his underlying ultraconservative motives for posting things because they're British, and his posts tend to babble on.

Any help is appreciated, I'm tired of his crap.

and sorry... you've got to apply for registration to post there, if you're interested it's free, but you just have to send a PM to one of the mods or the op.

[fshrink]

1. You can't do much here,

the guy is obviously a sort of obsessive, who has index cards on everything, lots of time available and the mission of "debunking". There was a guy like that in France, who built a whole case about the death camps being a creation, or an exxaggeration, of the liberals. By even talking to them, you get to reinforce their existence and their sense of purpose. So that you find yourself in the situation of 1- not talking to them, which is interpreted as your inability to prove them wrong, and therefore as validating their argument, or 2- talking to them, thus validating their purpose by entering an endless exchange, which they love as ants love sugar. Note, however, that their line of thinking is always about the same: a rational, argumented, documented version of old extreme-rightist ideas and beliefs and that they are usually completely ignorant of liberal ideas. If you want to beat him down, you need to work, or know more than he does, which is not much but still requires you to work.

[Az]

2. Yep its a huge investment

And usually not worth it. You can chase down such a nutter and carefully research and refute each and every aspect of their argument. But it is often so large and cumbersome that by the time you refute one aspect they will switch to another. And this is the evil part. They will even switch to a point you have already refuted and be in denial about the fact until your force them to switch again.

I am most reminded of debating creationists. They would gather a small audience and then begin beating on the notion of entropy. Insisting that evolution violates the 2nd law of Thermodynamics. We point out the clear fact that Earth is not a closed system. It recieves energy from the sun. They go silent on the subject while we are present. Then they gather a new crowd and hit them with the same argument. It is sickening in its seeming deliberate dishonesty.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

3. "Seeming"?

It IS deliberate dishonesty.

Most of the pro-fairy-tales punditry don't believe the shit they peddle. They use it for control.

[Az]

4. I will stick to seemingly

I have seen people who when faced with irrefutable evidence that a concept is flawed will stick to it. My understanding of the nature of the mind suggests that even a blatant obvious truth cannot overcome a sufficiently strong emotional belief. This is not a flaw of the brain. It is simply how it works. So the paths we wind up on determine the weight of our emotional beliefs. For some the emotional investment of some beliefs can be extreme.

In these circumstances it seems to us that they continue to ignore a fact. Which seems to us unreasonable. But to their mind they may simply be unable to accept that their beliefs are flawed. Thus their mind does not hold the facts as presented to them and discards what does not fit their world view.