Considering Putin33 still supports North Korea despite it having concentration camps, I think President Putin being mean to gays is a small issue for everyone's favorite 20-something Stalinist to overlook.

Putin33 never did defend Putin much. He said that he chose it randomly and would have chosen something else if given the opportunity.

I feel confident that, given this question, putin would merely lament that the west had corrupted his beautiful Russia from its Communist prime when, as under Joseph Stalin, homosexuals were treated with a dignity and respect unknown at any other time or place in world history (notwithstanding what the mendacious bourgeois propoganda of the west would fill your credulous head with).

Putin is still a socialist.

I believe this policy originated in Russia under Stalin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aotlEpmAFVQ

Actually, Putin33 vehemently defended everything about Putin the president, and then add a little sentence about how he didn't support everything Putin the president did. He would totally spout the idea that the Soviet Union was a great place for homosexuals to live, just as he claimed it was such for Jews. All while dismissing the refusniks as troublemakers, saying giving Jews a token homeland in barren patch of Siberia literally as far as possible from where they lived the the USSR was this marvelous thing, and just straight-up ignoring that the the Doctor's Plot existed. He's really a detestable human being and I for one am glad the forum is without him now.


"Putin is still a socialist."

You are still an idiot. Putin the president is solidly right-wing.

I mean that the Doctor's Plot existed in Stalin's paranoid mind, of course. There wasn't actually a Jewish conspiracy against him.

I miss Putin, and not even because I would agree with him occasionally on policies, but I think it is nice to have a diverse range of people and opinions on the forum, and whilst we still have our batshit crazy right, no names mentioned (but anyone that think Putin of Russia is a socialist is probably one of them), we haven't got the same on the left. Also he could articulate himself well and did contribute to the community I think.

I also don't see how you can call him a detestable human being - maybe he believed wrong things, maybe he was a tad deluded, but like he wasn't an anti-semite, even with his above beliefs.

I loved it when he explained how N Korea was not a monarchy, because Kim3 would never become president of some prestigious military commission and then one day later Kim3 was appointed exactly to that position.

"Putin is still a socialist."

...How is that pertinent to our pointing out that (while I miss his antics) it'd be nice to hear Putin33 try and defend him/Russia/his favorite troublesome nation NOW?

(Well, Russia or North Korea...or China, he loved them, too...say, do you think Putin33 might be Snowden himself?! China and Russia, same taste in nations!)

Putin33 had style.
He'd waste no time with the impulsive bickering and abuse that a "commie" always provokes from the wolfpack. He'd go straight to the facts as he found them and argue rationally as he saw it.
I may pity his choice of political alignment as a waste of a strong character.
Pro "the people" ultimately becomes pro the very wolfpack that will scent the blood of the "outsider" and voraciously tear his flesh.
But I suppose it's an excellent school to try a life as a commie.

I never understood people being impressed with him. He employed fallacies and ad hominem more than any other intelligent person I've encountered. He was just good enough to make it look like he was reasoning, sometimes.

impressed with his tenacity more than his debating skills perhaps, I also do believe his compassion with the oppressed was sincere, however misguided he was about how to shape that compassion.

I have noted there is this trend: The trick to call any statement you don't like a "fallacy" or to be "ad hominem" as a magical spell instantly defeating your opponent.

It's a general thing I've noted that the people obsessed with formal Logic are most awkward at using a bit of the logic that we cannot do without if we are to make everyday communication functioning.

And the "ad hominem" cries... Let's take an exaggeratedly simple example:
I am an outspoken, verbal, elaborate pacifist well-known in media... I spend my days walking around with a gun shooting people... Someone calls me out as a propagator of violence, an anti-pacifist.
I cry "ad hominem! Straw man fallacy! You should only answer my arguments rationally and not put words into my mouth. Everybody knows my position, my intricate and subtle argumentation for peace."

I guess maybe I'd find that convincing if I hadn't lived through as many putin33 arguments as I have, Sylence. Since I did, and since I know anything about what an actual ad hominem attack is, I stand by my claim.

Here would be an absolutely typical putin33 exchange. (Made up, because I don't have time to find an actual example tonight):

putin33: Stalin did more for the economy of Russia than anyone else in its history. Ergoslav Thusovski showed in his 1973 book that if the Tsars had stayed in power till the 40s then Russia would have been devastated in the war.

semck83 (say): I don't know, man -- tens of millions of people died under Stalin, both famine and direct extermination. How much worse could it have been?

putin33: Oh, listen to the Texan whining about people being killed. How many Mexicans did you guys slaughter to get access to your oil? Damned hypocrite.


I rarely ever had or saw a conversation with putin where he didn't use this move at least once or twice. It's just an astonishingly flagrant ad hominem (and red herring), but he succeeded in it because he charged so hard that he made people angry and they became defensive and then looked bad, instead of calling him on it.

As for the fallacies -- you're talking in a bunch of generalities (and so am I). As for me, I'm confident that I know fallacies when I see them, and I routinely saw those (and worse) from putin33. If you don't believe it, fine.

whose putin is he old

@rh, fair points.

One further thing worth noting, I suppose, is that there may have been poor overlap between my primary areas of interest/knowledge and putin's, so that when I engaged him, he was farther from his home base. Notwithstanding the fictitious quotation above, I didn't discuss Russian history that much with him, because it's not much my thing. It's possible that this accounts for my being less impressed by him than others who did.

putin33 was actually right on the economic count, and your argument wouldn't have responded to that, so even in this hypothetical argument trusty putin comes out on top! yes there was the adhominem at the end, but he won the argument too. miss the guy.

If you want a liberal nut to miss, miss Sicarius. That guy had more character than most of this Forum put together.

lol@SD, well, I made up both sides, and like I say it's not a topic I know much about. I rarely if ever argued with putin about Russian history. It was just an easy example to make up.

the thing about his adhominems is that they were so ludicrous and out there i laughed rather than anything else

Quit red baiting.

Sicarius was the guy to miss. However, considering his lifestyle, he very well is in prison or even dead now.

I suppose all you Putin33 lovers forget about how he denied that the Bosnian Genocide occurred. And how, in a discussion on the topic, he linked to a page that featured what was allegedly a Croatian soldier carrying another man's severed head, among other pictures. I closed the tab before seeing what else was there. The website was written in Serbo-Croatian so the intent was purely to shock, and make us think that Serbs didn't commit a genocide because Croatians also committed atrocities. As I said before, detestable human being.

Haha well said, semck. That's exactly what he did.

Putin33 tried to sell DPRK as a democracy because they could vote which guy from the communist party they wanted to elect :P

And he'd call you an idiot for disagreeing with him.

You can't forget something you never saw/knew

Fair enough, but it's true.

Also, @abge, there was virtually nothing "liberal" about this guy :-)

Putin did use ad hominem, but he was still impressive. He knew his shit. Backwards and forwards. He could comment on seemingly any period of history in any region as if he had read two books on the topic. It was impressive.

Sicarius, by the way, is fine. I'm friends with him on facebook.

Good to hear about Sicarius. Still seems like it's just a matter of time, though...