For many years, this List has been blessed with the postings of Peter Kurilecz, who has brought to the attention of the List thousands of items in the mass media of interest to professionals in the field of information management.  At the same time, a small minority of people on the List have disliked his postings.  These criticisms have reached a new height with an offline blog posting that constitutes an outrageous, personal attack.  There are so many things wrong with this blog posting that it will take some time to unpack them, but here is a start.

1.Ideology over Facts

            As a survivor of the student revolts of the 1960s, the posting brought back a flood of memories about ideological pronouncements about the events of those times.  For example, we “learned” that America’s involvement in Vietnam “proved” that America was an expansionist, militaristic, imperialist power.  We also “learned” that the Vietnam War was not an effort—however flawed—to contain the spread of Communism, but rather a struggle of end-stage capitalism for markets and resources.  One of my favorites was the scholar who began with Karl Marx’s questionable analysis of French society in the 1840s and then claimed that it applied to a basically Confucian, peasant society—Vietnam—on the other side of the world.  Later, in graduate school, I read the terribly deformed, Marxist-Leninist histories that were the staple of East German Communist historiography, and which were so far removed from reality as to be laughable.

            Now we have before us an event we have all experienced—Peter’s postings—as interpreted through the prism of radical feminist ideology.  I say radical feminist, because my wife, who claims to be a feminist, would judge as extreme this kind of nonsense.  In any case, this blog posting is a textbook example of ideology at work, in which reality is forced to conform to the Procrustean Bed of ideology. 

            The writer has imposed on this discussion a paradigm of male domination/female victimhood that is entirely alien to the List, which after all is normally an anodyne place for archival professionals to discuss matters pertinent to their profession.  Moreover, the writer admits readily to basing her analysis, not on specifics, but rather on “archetypal forms.”  The essay fairly bristles with ideological terminology:  “reinforce the status quo of social privilege,” “marginalization,” “structural discrimination,” and “unethically leveraged power and privilege.”  The “power” argument is odd, because Peter K. has no power over me or anybody else on the List.

            The writer then categorizes and stereotypes the people on this List based on this tendentious ideology.  On the basis of these dubious stereotypes, the writer then proceeds to construct an elaborate argument.  Are the 4,000 persons on this list so easily categorized by this amateur social scientist?  Certainly, this system of thought is alien to the kind of inductive, evidence-based analysis that historians usually require, and it is far from the daily reality of the List.

            The writer notes that Peter K’s postings account for 45% of the postings on the List, but they are mostly postings of links to articles of interest to archivists.  There may well be an innocent explanation for this outsized role for one person, that by the nature of those postings (news articles), they appear with much greater frequency than do naturally occurring items for professional discussion.  Thus, Peter’s postings are filled with pertinent, professional content.  It is true that Peter K. has his own strongly held opinions, but these are posted with far less frequency than his news articles.  It would be a much different situation if he spouted off opinions that filled 45% of the List.

            In fact, the most prolific poster of opinions over the years—though now inactive—has been Maarja, a female, who used to post her opinions on this List routinely up to 4-6 times per day.  Where does that leave the paradigm of male domination?  Moreover, as I recall the beginnings of this issue a few days ago, the issue was mainly one of email management, that is, how to deal with the plethora of news articles posted by Peter K.  Into that discussion has now stepped a feminist ideologue to politicize this discussion by forcing it into the matrices of the radical feminist ideology.

            In the end, I would consign this blog posting to the same realm of fantasy as the Soviet propaganda posters of the past that showed workers smiling and laughing like chipmunks while they brought in the harvest on a collective farm.  Educated people should be immune to this kind of ideological nonsense.

2. The Hidden Sources and Methods of This Critique

            The writer of the blog posting has problems with the List but has chosen not to engage Peter directly and publicly on the List, but rather to write on a blog posting aimed at other true believers.  Most of us on the List would not even know of the existence of this posting, had not Peter K. discovered it and posted it, a brave act in itself.  In addition, she has encouraged her followers to post on Twitter to bypass this List.  In her posting, she disingenuously did not name Peter, although anybody on this List would recognize him immediately by the way he was described.  So, why this subterfuge?  If her ideas are so blindingly obvious and true, why does she need to act to furtively?  If her ideas are true, then certainly they can stand the light of day in a public forum.  She has done a disservice to the List and ultimately to the profession, by taking this discussion away from the List.  If this tendency were to continue, it could ultimately undermine the List and its usefulness to the profession.  Finally, we live in a society that we define as “open,” which means that matters of common concern are debated in the open, whenever possible, and not in the shadows, behind closed doors.

3. Other Matters

            The writer denigrates Peter’s postings as “linkspam,” without considering their immense value.  This is another instance of blindly applying terms and distinctions from one context to another.  She asserts that “content value can, and should, be separated from the size and shape of one’s digital footprint.”  Says who?  What if the digital footprint is informative and useful?  Does one blindly delete it, regardless?

            The use of terms like “toxic” and “poisonous” to describe Peter K’s postings, without providing any evidence to support that statement.  If Peter disagrees with you, is that “toxic” or “poisonous”?  Is the List inherently unwelcoming, as the writer charges, because not everybody agrees with everything posted?  If so, why have a List at all?

            The innuendo that Peter’s personal emails to “often young, female recipients . . . [is] a bright red flag.”  This remark is a smear, that Peter has done something unethical.  In truth, I have been occasional recipient of his personal emails, which in every case has been a means of continuing the List discussion without clogging up the List with minor points of difference.  The writer has chosen to take offense with this behavior, even if it was not intended to be offensive, which is unfair in the extreme.  Is this the reason that she posted offline, because smear and sarcasm (“mansplainy”) would have been considered out-of-bounds in a public forum?

4. Conclusion

            In her conclusion, the writer cites a number of qualities that she thinks should characterize the List:  “playfulness, humor, nerdiness, cooperation, encouragement, and speaking truth to power.”  In other words, the exact opposite qualities of her blog posting.  It is telling that her list excludes the two most vital characteristics of a professional listserv:  useful content, and freedom of expression.  And we have rules in place to guide the etiquette of postings, thank you.           Over the years, there have been attempts by some people on the List to politicize it.  We have resisted those attempts in the past, and we should resist them now.  The List should retain its cherished non-partisan, professional focus. 

For my part, I wish to thank Peter Kurilecz, yet again, for his years of dedicated service to this List, along with the hope that “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” should not dissuade him from continuing this great task. 

Note:  My esteemed employer bears no responsibility for my postings on this List.

Paul Rood, Archivist

National Declassification Center

National Archives

College Park, Maryland

3 June 2014