A frankenquote is a chimeric monster: you take two separate quotes from someone, and then you stitch them together with an ellipsis, and presto, you can make someone say all kinds of strange things. My favorite example of all time was found by John Lynch, in a fulsome review of some creationist tripe from the Discovery Institute by a theologian named Edward Oakes. It holds some kind of record.
In making his case, Oakes also states that
Darwin actually, if unwittingly, promulgated the charter for all later social Darwinists: “Let the strongest live and the weakest die… . Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.”
Astute readers may recognize the latter part of the quote comes from the final paragraph of Origin (Chapter XIV). The earlier part comes from chapter VII (‘Instinct’). Yes, folks. Oakes has constructed a quote from two statements seven chapters apart, possibly the longest ellipsis known to scholarship.
Creationists are very fond of frankenquotes. I’ve spotted a few, including one from Luskin where the ellipsis spanned -36 pages. Sometimes they put the words together so seamlessly that they don’t even bother to include the ellipsis.
And now I learn that the MRAs have adopted the habit.
You know, you’re really in trouble when you’re cribbing your rhetorical style from dishonest creationists.
When MRA’s, without an ounce of shame, cribbed “Feminazi” from Rush Limbaugh, and when informed that it was a regressive, lying, conservative moron who popularized the term – the MRA crowd thought nothing of it and went right on using it. I guess that shouldn’t have surprised me one bit.
http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2015/10/30/a-self-described-harasser-and-abuser-of-feminists-is-accusing-me-of-threatening-cassie-jaye/
My, my. What interesting reading. In particular, this statement by Barnes:
These delusions of power are somewhat entertaining, however, there’s a whole lot of room for concern, given his insistence on continuing to harass and threaten people.
Robert Westbrook @1
Doesn’t “regressive, lying, conservative moron” describe a fairly large percentage of the MRA crowd?
Caine @2:
When I read that comment, my eyes nearly fell out of my head.
Tony! @ 4:
Yeah, mine too. Over all the other ones too. That man is one nasty piece of work. That said, I can’t imagine by what metric he thinks feminism has been almost completely eradicated.
I’ve seen an old quote (?) by Isaac Asimov used recently.
“creationists are stupid, lying people who are not to be trusted in any way.’ And that all of their ‘points are equally stupid, except where the creationists are outrightly lying”[7]
…
“7 L. Asimov, “Is Big Brother watching?,The Humanist 44(4):6–10, 1984”
and
“Asimov, L., Is Big Brother watching? The Humanist 44(4):6–10, 1984, quoted by Bergman, 2005”
First, I love the way every citation has been for “L” Asimov, showing a common origin. It also shows these people have not read the article “Is Big Brother Watching”. Has anyone here? It is not available online.
How close to accurate is this quote?
Creationism + Religion + Misogyny =
Menimism + MGTOW + Misogyny
surpriseaplenty — the article is available online if you have access to an academic library (the Humanist’s online archive only goes back to 2006 but my uni library has it). If you’re interested in seeing the PDF I can send you a copy in email (just drop me a line at [email protected]). It’s not a particularly great article, but suffice to say:
1. The quote is semi-genuine; Asimov uses those exact words, but not in that order (of course).
2. The context is missing; those words are what he used to put on postcards to people pretending to be evolution-believers in order to ask him what they think are difficult questions (which just goes to show JAQing off predates the internet), and he only did so *after* he had demonstrated a critical flaw in one of their JAQs, and even then, in the article he makes it clear he is that direct in his language for the express purpose of making it impossible for the creationist to parade his postcard as some kind of victory — hard to claim you’ve won over the famous Dr Asimov if his postcard calls you a fool and a liar.
3. It’s also worth pointing out that this was a transcript of an acceptance speech and not a published article written and edited by Asimov to the standard he would normally have submitted — in other words, it’s more of an informal speech than a serious article.
4. As you say, the error in attribution shows that, as usual, the creationist organ grinders can’t be bothered doing even the most rudimentary of proper academic work. Common origin indeed. It’s like tracking HIV by its genome.
Don’t forget their habit of never linking to the post being criticised, usually coinciding with their most aggressively dishonest attack pieces.
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman (Leviticus 20:13), I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. (John 10:28)
mykroft #10
Lovely.
You win.
May the Force be with you… make it so.
In the beginning … Amen.
@Caine #5:
I’m sure he could persuade himself of that, if he surrounded himself with his cronies and never listened to a woman.
Considering that social darwinism existed prior to Darwin’s Origins of the Species and took the name “Social Darwinism” to make their collective of selfish rich assholes look more sciencey than they really were, Darwin “promulgated” their charter the same way Sadi Carnot “promulgated” the creationists babbling about thermodynamics.
Doesn’t this sort imply that honest creationists actually exist?
Rich Woods @ 14:
Sure, I can see that easily enough. The gorilla in the ointment, of course, is why he needs to continually harass and threaten people via twitter and other social media, and continue writing vituperative screeds at AVfM, what with the evil feminists being almost eradicated.
Not sure if this strictly follows the above mentioned format of a Frankenquote but its a similar idea but for entertainment (and satirical) purposes
@Caine #17:
I think the gorilla might be the ability to hold two conflicting ideas at the same time and believe passionately in them both. Maybe he sits at his computer thinking, ‘One more coldly logical refutation and I will have eliminated that final 1%! There. Now, a final rapier barb and they will all have fallen before me! That’s it. OK, this witty retort will drive her back into her hole and my way will be clear! Done. Another cunningly-wrought vituperation and victory will be mine!’, repeated ad nauseam.
Self-reflection probably isn’t his strong point.
And then I got to thinking about Barnes’ statement that “We have all but eradicated feminism in the U.S. and India. When we are done here, Australia and the U.K. are next.” He’s American, so I can understand why his perceptions are going to strongly relate to the US, but to India next? OK, sixty million people in India speak English, which is a significant proportion of the world’s English-speaking Internet population (I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that Barnes is not particularly fluent in Hindi, Bengali or Telugu, for example). So how does he reach his conclusion regarding the eradication of feminism in India? I bet it’s because of the number of high-profile rapes and murders of women in India which have hit the international news over the last two years. If his opinions, if his words, or those of his fellow travellers, have made any contribution to the attitudes of people in India, that might well be how he measures success.
I could be wrong, of course. I usually am.
Anyway, look out Oz! He’s after you next. Or rather, after your sheilas. You must have done something wrong on the Internet for him to target you first. Maybe you once had a senior politician who said something thoughtless about another senior politician who merely happened to be a woman. That could have been all it took for Barnes to notice you ahead of any other country, to see you as ripe for moving into the light. But at least it leaves my own dear, sweet, mostly harmless UK free of such noxious influences for a while…
Rich @ 20:
And there’s one scary thought. You’re probably right.
Metric? He don’t need no stinking metric. Imperial rules!
I met Dr Frakenquote once. In an example of nominative determinism, she studied etymology, and especially the unusual or simply mistaken usage or pronunciation of words. A very nice lady, but … she had a habit … of spoking … like this … … which rapidly becomes … very … tiresome to … listen … to.
Petesh @ 22:
Ooops. The evil feminazism slipped out there…my bad.
blf @ 23:
Dr. Frankenquote was…was…William Shatner!
Imperial Roman, I would imagine, complete which such charming habits as owning people.
Stephen Meyer in ‘Darwin’s Doubt’ managed to do a Frankenquote (he probably did more than one, but the one I remember was “The edifice of the modern synthesis has crumbled, apparently, beyond repair…”, and then skips forward 5 pages in an article by Eugene Koonin in ‘Trends in genetics’ “The origin at 150: is a new evolutionary synthesis in sight?” to “The summary of the state of affairs on the 150th anniversary of the Origin is somewhat shocking” and goes on to quote another 9 lines.
And ignores Koonin’s conclusion that there will be Darwinian theory in 2059 in the 200th anniversary of Origin. And that it will be different from today’s theory because of increasing knowledge.
Meyer is trying to make Koonin into a sceptic on evolution, whereas he obviously isn’t.