This is Unibot writing as “El Scorcho” for a commentary series called “Attacking the Conventional”. Published March 13 2013.
Forum Destruction: Tragedies and the Political Opportunism that Follows
A Tell-All Interview with EuroSoviets on Forum Destruction and Condemn Allied States of EuroIslanders
NOTE:The opinions expressed by EuroSoviets are not necessarily the opinions held by myself in fact we disagree in key areas.
On March 13, 2013, I had the pleasure to sit down with EuroSoviets to discuss, perhaps the first, highly politicized incidents of forum destruction in NationStates: the destruction of Invaders/The Black Hawks/DEN forums by two rogue operatives, The Red Factions and Ketoprofen. The Red Factions and Ketoprofen had broken the rules of the RLAs Intelligence Division and, subsequently, were punished following a tribunal. But the public outrage was enormous and there have always been lingering doubts whether the punishment of The Red Factions and Ketoprofen was nothing more than a slap on the wrist by a group that largely sympathized with forum destruction.
El Scorcho: Let’s just start off with the understanding of events in the http://rlanews.blogdrive.com/archive/30.html – do you agree with its stated of the facts? The two lone rogue Intel agent theory, shall we say. That story hasn’t changed for you, no?
EuroSoviets: Not in the slightest since I wrote the bulk of it.
El Scorcho: Alright, moving on. What was your immediate reaction and opinion when you heard that these incidents occurred and the RLA could be connected or was tied to it?
EuroSoviets: I heard both at the same time - that it had happened and that it was public. I was furious for the most part; I had spent an inordinate amount of time building the RLA into what was at that time the pre-eminent defender organisation in NationStates. By our diplomacy were closely linked to other groups such as the Pacific Defenders and the EAA, and outnumbered the ADN at the update defences. This threatened that, because it breached the ‘fourth wall’, if you like - the line between the game and not.
There was another element to my reaction however. It was irritation. “Global opinion” was a catchphrase used by blowhards in regions like the Meritocracy. Generally I trusted the agents of the RLA to do what they thought was best, what was in the interest of the RLA, and against that global opinion could go suck a tailpipe. I was irritated with the crass hypocrisy with which people immediately began attacking us with all sorts of slanders - that we had ordered it, that we were reckless etc. A part of me wanted to simply say, yeah, sure we ordered it. So what? But in actual fact that reaction was outvoted by the RLA Central Soviet, which was justifiably outraged, believing that its prerogatives to direct the organisation had been stepped on, and that the actions taken were utterly unjustified.
El Scorcho: Do you believe there was an element of political opportunism for the Meritocracy and (possibly) the ADN and others? Gaining a political advantage from all of this? And I’m correct in inferring that you meant to say this opportunism got you angry enough to consider siding with the forum destruction simply out of spite?
EuroSoviets: Yeah, your inference is correct. There was absolutely an element of political opportunism. In fact, we had people at the higher levels of ACCEL at the time, and their whole decision as regards declaring war was explicitly motivated by their fear of falling levels of activity. Meanwhile the ADN needed something to deflect from the fact that they triggered the destruction of the forums by outing the Red Factions. So they latched on to the issue of the forum being destroyed and our “targeting” of a community.
El Scorcho: Right, most people reading this article would never consider siding with forum destruction regardless of the political opportunism of their opponents. It’s kind of a political genocide these days – you don’t stand beside it. So, for those readers, I guess I’d like a straight answer from you, do you support or not support forum destruction and why? Even against invader targets, might I add.
EuroSoviets: The issue with invaders in the current incarnation of NS has changed since the old days, where invaders would simply camp out in the regions they conquered and kill those regions. The rivalry seems more about one-upmanship rather than actually devastating other alliances or regions, which is what it used to be about in many instances. For that reason I don’t think the two eras and their attitudes can be compared.
To answer your question simply, I’m ambivalent. I’m not for it, I don’t believe in the excommunication of those who do it, if it’s against those who desecrate the communities of others. It would simply never have occurred to me as a tactic if The Red Factions and Ketoprofen had not gone off and done it.
The whole event though was a beautiful illustration for me, however, that RLA democracy was the most absolute, independent system of democracy ever to function in NS, during my time.
El Scorcho (left) interviewing EuroSoviets (right).
El Scorcho: There’s an argument to be made that two wrongs do not make a right, EuroSoviets. People often espouse this idea of an ideal defender that doesn’t commit these same desecration against invader communities as invaders commit against others. The idea of rising above one’s opponents. Do you reject this ideal?
EuroSoviets: I do. Such a naive approach precludes the concept of war, where two sides attempt to do each other harm. In war, where one side is attacked, they have a moral right to strike back - and if that means conquering the regions of their opponents (assuming that is possible), then that is generally considered fair game. Only idiots fight with one hand tied behind their back. That said, I am not opposed to mutual agreements that certain things should be off-limits.
El Scorcho: So are you in favor of forum destruction possibly as a means of war – conflict between parties with some sort of jus ad bellum in a legitimized and articulated war? Because I don’t see the Invaders or The Black Hawks as having been engaged in a “war”, I see them as having been acting as “thugs” in regions and The Red Factions and Ketoprofen acting as “thugs” back to them. Without really a legitimized “war effort”. Do you make this distinction? Or do you see what The Red Factions and Ketoprofen did as simply a move of a chess piece in a war?
EuroSoviets: As I said, I’m ambivalent. I was not one of those who voted to rule out absolutely its future use.
The legal status of the conflict with the invaders is a matter of some dispute. I would have considered it a war, and the executive powers bestowed on the Commander of the RLAF and the Direction of Intelligence were conceived with that in mind. There was no formal vote to declare war - but it underpinned everything that we did in the military sphere. Invaders had declared war on anyone they could stomp on, and we declared war on them. This distinction between “police action” and “war” seems unreal to me.
Ketoprofen and The Red Factions’s actions were precisely as you describe; a chess piece in a war. You may liken them to the use of nuclear weapons, perhaps, and say that their use is unthinkable, causing too much collateral damage. But that doesn’t make them any less a chess piece in a struggle. What people call that struggle is irrelevant.
El Scorcho: Youve brought up the idea of reciprocity (“you attack me, I attack you”). But in terms of war, we also usually talk about proportionality. Do you see the forum destruction attacks as proportional-, or was that a failing of The Red Factions/Ketoprofen? Was forum destruction too much for what it was in response to? Was it, as you said, a nuclear bomb in response to skirmishes?
EuroSoviets: The destruction of the forum was a response to the agents being outed. It was an attempt to cripple the capacity of the invader organisations to invade, as the last act these agents could perform before their cover was blown and they were rendered useless. If you set these particular forum destructions against the actions of these invader groups, and consider that in the aftermath, the activity of DEN and Invaders collapsed for a significant period of time, I would not call it disproportionate.
El Scorcho: Bearing in mind the costs to not only the reputation of the RLA but the entire defender world (I don’t know if ADN was able to distance themselves enough – but even the UDL today is associated occasionally with the forum destruction of the RLA, so was FRA, at least lightly) – was this really, regardless, of the proportionality, an effective use of RLA’s resources?
EuroSoviets: The reputation of the RLA amongst the people we cared about did not suffer. And truth be told, when it comes to the battle with invaders, public opinion and reputation did not count for very much. We had the means to train and deploy expert intelligence agents who penetrated the very highest level of all significant regions, outside those of our allies. We also had the capacity to field a large update-ready army. Neither of those were impaired by this; this was a political storm only, and for the most part only amongst groups already hostile to us.
Penetrating the invader networks was absolutely an effective use of the RLA resources. It gave us carte blanche when it came to counter intelligence, through our picking off of IP address records. It gave us foreknowledge of invader attacks, so we could defend where necessary. It gave us oversight of invader tactics and training and knowledge of game mechanics. These advantages were crushing to invaders. The forum destruction was merely an afterthought, completed on the way out the door. I’m not sure the effectiveness use of our resources can be doubted.
The question is a moral one; are we prepared to tolerate collateral damage? And the RLA answered very clearly that it was not.
El Scorcho: There is some speculation that Unistrut instructed The Red Factions that his work in DEN had actually greatly benefited DEN in professionalizing it – that has been said to be one of the factors involved in the forum destruction? Have you heard of that or did that idea come up?
EuroSoviets: No I had not heard that, and I doubt very much that it was said at the time, or it would have come up in the public accusations against us, that we had aided invaders.
El Scorcho: So your Intel agent, which was head of the DEN at the time, had not aided invaders? That just sounds kind of far-fetched, to be fair. Grippsholm was a respected member of the invader community.
EuroSoviets: Grippsholm was not head of DEN. He was head of one division and a forum admin. And of course when acting as an intelligence agent, he assisted in invasions, and led some of them. But no region was destroyed on his watch, and moreover the information he provided enabled defenders to do their job. He protected our regions from the long term sleeper invasions, to which several were particularly vulnerable.
EuroSoviets: This was all generally accepted in any case; when I say “aided” I mean your mention of professionalisation.
El Scorcho: Just to fact check, http://www.nswiki.net/index.php?title=DEN – but admittedly my history of DEN isn’t so strong.
EuroSoviets: chuckles The editorialising on that link is rather amusing.
El Scorcho: So the RLA rejected the defender-invader convention rather forcefully. You called them in a statement, “a bunch of whining malcontents” and insisted “international consensus can piss off”. So I guess my question is whether you still see forum destruction as a regional matter to be dealt with the offenders’ homes, or something to be tackled as an interregional issue?
EuroSoviets: I still think it a regional or alliance matter to be dealt with. I had no interest in wasting time reading the self-righteous hypocrisy of the invaders, the smug selfish ambiguity of the “non-aligned” Meritocrats or the pompous bombast of the ADN. I was accountable to the RLA Central Soviet, not to them. I voiced my opinions freely within the context of the alliance democracy and then it was my job to toe the line.
“Condemn Allied States of EuroIslanders” passed on Nov 10 2011. 6,083 to 3,544 (FOR).
El Scorcho: Alright, I’ll set this final question as a chance for you to respond to the NationStates | World Assembly Resolutions, bit by bit.
There are two main thrusts to the resolution’s argument.
— Begin quote from ____
- That RLA committed the forum destruction strikes. The acts of Ketoprofen and The Red Factions were de facto accepted by RLA.
- Members of your region bragged about those incidents of forum destruction.
— End quote
Evidence to the first, was this statement by you:
— Begin quote from ____
“Of course while the ADN fielded the bigger army, Blackbird, TPC delegate and RLA director of intelligence, perfected the dark arts of infiltrating invader groups. As Evil Wolf mentions, some of our greatest triumphs involved being completely in control of DEN and sundry other invader groups via our well-placed agents. In terms of counter-intelligence, we were unparalleled, having the IP address for 90% of invaders. We would have continued to control them, restricting them at need, had certain imprudent people at the ADN not decided to out them. So we used our weapon of last resort and absolutely torched the forums they handed over so easily to our people - not once but for a couple of the leading invader groups of the time.”
— End quote
And evidence given of the latter point was another statement by you. Which could be interpreted as a bad joke or an admission of guilt:
— Begin quote from ____
“They [Unknown] better not make me come out of retirement, to destroy their forums all over again.”
— End quote
Do you think these two main arguments are justified given the evidence and what you know and believe?
EuroSoviets: I think the two arguments are ridiculous and typically ill-informed when it comes to the hysteria which surrounds this issue. People don’t seem to understand that the RLA was not my puppet organisation. There were some real characters in there. They didn’t do or think what I told them. I say this to draw out the point that even if I did take personal responsibility for the forum destruction, that would still not be the same as the RLA or the ASE bearing responsibility.
The facts of the matter are reflected in the report you linked to earlier. The RLA Central Soviet hit the roof, demanded an investigation, passed a law banning forum destruction and then ratified the report with its unprecedented recommendation that RLA members be suspended from their rights and duties in the organisation. The RLA took the matter incredibly seriously. I, on the other hand, was one of the two major international ambassadors for the organisation. My public statements - such as the one you allude to last - were very much coloured by this desire to attack, mock and demean those whose hypocrisy led them to attack the RLA.
Other public comments by me long after the time are not evidence of anything whatsoever, and both of those comments are at least four years after the forum incidents.
Did I know in advance? No.
Did I order it? No.
The first I knew of any of it was a panicked message from Blackbird that The Red Factions had done something bloody stupid and outrageous.
The RLA appointed an external observer, Lanier, to oversee our investigation. Every thread relating to the matter was moved to a forum this observer could see. Following the motions of condemnation passed by Lanier’s region, he withdrew as observer because he felt he could not be impartial. However, he believed absolutely in the integrity of the investigation and said so publicly as part of his resignation. I don’t think there’s a better example of how seriously the organisation took it, and how caught by surprise they were.
As for condemning the ASE, the key members of the ASE had less clue than I did - and the majority of those who were active then are not active now. This makes the motion of condemnation risible.
El Scorcho: Alright, as per usual NS Interview norms – you have the floor for any final comments. It was an honour and pleasure sitting down with you to speak, EuroSoviets.
EuroSoviets: The RLA never said sorry, that I ever recall, for the forum destruction. It was. In the absolute barracking and the crescendo of patronising, arrogant, self-serving rubbish that flowed in our direction, it was forgotten that actually we are against this sort of thing. We were forced, in some respects, to defend Ketoprofen and The Red Factions because they were ours and we had great respect for them. I am sorry it happened. I know firsthand how much effort we all put into our communities.
I stress that I am not against forum destruction. The situation would have to be dire for me to consider it, but such judgments are armchair judgments, made in hindsight. I was not the agent in the heat of the moment, with absolute knowledge of how things worked in DEN or Invaders. My discomfort with the tactic is hedged about with loyalty to my agents, to two spectacular intelligence agents and two honest, capable socialists. If I contradict myself at points above, I suppose these competing impulses are why.
There is one general observation I would make, consonant with my constant battle for organisational democracy in NS. The incident of the forum destruction illustrated that public opinion, when faced with a tightly knit, well organised group, had absolutely no teeth. All the brainless hysteria in the world could not force our hand. This is not a bad state of affairs. So long as organisations are democratic, power will remain where it belongs - in the hands of your members. Because the RLA discharged that duty of accountability so remarkably well, I still feel proud to have been part of the Red Liberty Alliance.