"But they take up a lot of bandwidth on FR, and as you may notice, they also seem to be gaining 'converts' on these boards."
I really didn't know much about the issue until I learned about it on FR.
ELINT types learn to identify particular emitters by sound. Ah, that's a SAM fire control radar...that's a shipboard surface search radar...etc. Transmitter ID'd by sound of emitter, you could say.
There are analogies on line. Vocabulary, style, tone, use of certain strategems, contempt or respect for the opposition...sometimes somebody logs on under a different handle, but you can spot him right away. Seminar posters are usually pegged pretty quickly here, because even when they're trying to dissemble, they still sound like liberals.
When I stumbled on the Modernist Heresy controversy and started trying to figure it out, one thing struck me immediately--one side was emitting sounds that were very, very similar to those of political liberals, and the other side was not. One side was contemptuous and nasty, and the other side much less so.
In short, one side was arguing like DU liberals, and the other side was not.
If SSPX is making converts here, that's thanks as much to the tawdry conduct of many of their detractors as to anything else.
It becomes VERY tiresome to refute the same lies and neatly-sliced-and-diced quotations, hundreds of times a month.
IOW, some liars SEEM to have cogent arguments. It's very easy for the Father of Lies to keep lying. It's part of his nature. And usually, the Father of Lies lies very convincingly.
In a way, I didn't learn about lying by omission, or lying by careful construction, until Clinton was in office. But I find it disgusting that SSPX uses the same techniques.
Don't you?