Identity Theft

Last updated on: December 13, 2007 at 10:50 am by Fred Clark

Identity Theft 2007-12-13T10:50:55-05:00 Fred Clark

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“Concern trolling” predates the Internet. Consider, for example, the “lifelong” letter to the editor. I’m sure if we dug through 19th-century newspaper archives, we’d find letters to the editor that begin, “As a lifelong member of the Whig Party …” and go on from there to express concern about and disapproval of all things Whiggish.

This bit of duplicitous dirty-trickery probably dates back to Roman times. It wouldn’t surprise me if archaeologists found the first-century equivalent of a letter to the editor written by a Sadducee that began, “As a lifelong Pharisee …”

Wikipedia’s definition of a “concern troll” is, delightfully and predictably, tagged as “disputed,” but I find it useful:

A concern troll is a pseudonym created by a user whose point of view is opposed to the one that the user’s sockpuppet claims to hold. The concern troll posts in Web forums devoted to its declared point of view and attempts to sway the group’s actions or opinions while claiming to share their goals, but with professed “concerns.” The goal is to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt within the group.

The concern troll’s disingenuous claim of belonging attacks essential matters of identity. The CT’s dubious assertion of membership is not motivated by a desire to belong to the group, or by a genuine respect for what that group is or what it stands for. The CT, instead, is posing as a member in order to change the identity and the definition of the group, and thereby to undermine it.

It’s a common tactic, but an effective and corrosive one, which is why the whiff of concern-trollery raises red flags and unlikely claims of membership or identity tend to be viewed with extreme suspicion.

Consider, for example, the case of the wonderful Anne Lamott, author of the spiritual memoirs Traveling Mercies and Grace. Lamott is as Jesus-y an evangelical Christian as you’ll ever meet. It’s impossible to read those books without acknowledging that her life is shaped and guided by what we evangelical types call a “personal relationship with Jesus.” Yet many evangelicals would view her impish impiousness and, even more so, her progressive politics, as wholly alien to evangelical Christianity. There’s a sense, in other words, in which she clearly seems to be an evangelical Christian and a sense in which she clearly seems to be something else.

The question “is Anne Lamott an evangelical?” is, at least partly, a matter of semantics, since it necessarily raises the follow-up question of how we define “evangelical” (a notoriously difficult and slippery question). But it doesn’t feel like a matter of mere semantics for anyone involved. Lamott says she is, and this claim is, for her, an important aspect of her identity. Others who find her politics literally anathema tend to view her claim with suspicion, fearing that it may be the deceptive tactic of the concern troll and a threat to an important aspect of their identity.

I can appreciate both points of view. I can certainly relate to Lamott. I’ve had a long and public lover’s quarrel with my own evangelical Christian heritage and I know what it is like to have one’s claims of identity questioned and challenged, to be told that one doesn’t really belong. But I’ve also had enough experience with the bogus claims of concern trolls who have sought to undermine other aspects of identity that are important to me — from modern-day Dixie-crats to the sham environmentalism of Bjorn Lomborg and his ilk — that I understand the gatekeepers’ suspicions as well.

All of the above is a long preface to my thanks for the many thoughtful and honest points of view expressed in comments to the previous post regarding the dispute over Mormonism’s relationship to Christianity. The Mormon choice to identify as “Christian” does not seem to me a likely or an easy fit, but it also does not seem to me to have anything to do with the malicious dishonesty of the concern troll. It strikes me, rather, as being motivated by a desire to claim a share of the cultural acceptance and legitimacy that Christianity enjoys here in America. As such, even if one views this claim as mostly vicarious, it pays a compliment of sorts to Christianity. It would be churlish of me, as a non-Mormon Christian, to respond to that compliment with a blanket rejection.

So while I remain a bit unsettled by and about this claim, I think it’s helpful to recognize the role semantics plays in this question as well. As the back and forth in comments to previous post demonstrates, there are senses in which the claim can be viewed as accurate and senses in which it can be viewed as inaccurate.

That being the case, and me being in the unfortunate position of Not Knowing Everything, it’s probably best to conclude without a conclusion and move on to other topics.

How’s that for anticlimactic?

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