The Importance of Objectivity in Polemics: A Case Study Involving AD Robles
This article will interact with the AD Robles video embedded above (or viewable here).
For context, AD Robles has been an aquaintance of mine and a helpful voice in the battle against the “woke” trend within Christianity. We have created multiple videos together over the years.
Around 2022 onward, AD Robles became a key voice in the Christian Nationalist movement within the Reformed Twitter niche.
That movement has centered largely around a book by Dr. Stephen Wolfe: The Case for Christian Nationalism (Published by Canon Press, November 1, 2022). I have strongly disagreed with Stephen Wolfe’s views.
The following will be a case study about methods of objectivity in communication.
Objectivity
Objectivity is an approach to truth-seeking. To be objective is to look out for the possibility of intellectual error and to take appropriate measures to ensure that one’s ideas and claims are based in specific observed data (and also that they are logically consistent).
The topic of objectivity is an interest of mine — so much so that I created a series of videos attempting to understand the topic. (Find that material here.)
Objectivity in communication is a specific application of the broader concept. It means taking steps to make sure that your reader/hearer knows what facts you are using to form your conclusion and offering a way for the reader to check your facts and your reasoning process as appropriate.
Objectivity in communication is a key principle for being helpful to an audience. For that reason, I am offering this case study. I hope it will be helpful to AD Robles and to others engaged in online polemics and discernment.
Jane!
The idea of objectivity in communication can be understood by reference to an old trope. (Please note, I’m only using this as an illustration, not a direct comparison.)
In an old Saturday Night Live skit, Dan Akroyd’s character opened a “Point/Counterpoint” segment by shouting:
“Jane, you ignorant s***!”
This is not the way to be.
The problem with Akroyd’s approach is often misunderstood. The problem is not that he derided his opponent. (Derision, as such, is not always off-limits.)
Derision should be tempered, and it should be suitable to the seriousness of the topic. Akroyd’s character moved things beyond the boundaries of common sense, but the more important error in Akroyd’s method was this:
He disrespected his audience.
In order to be helpful to an audience, you need to position your moral evaluations as conclusions, not premises.
Question-Begging Is Off-Limits
You need to know the difference between the build-up and the pay-off. Your build-up should include facts. Your pay-off should match what was established in the build-up.
I’m not suggesting that AD Robles spoke in a way comparable to Akroyd’s character. Rather, I’m offering the Akroyd skit as a way to keep in mind the nature of the danger we are trying to avoid.
Namely:
Do not disrespect your audience by offering them your conclusions apart from evidence they are able to evaluate with their own minds.
To do that is to be unhelpful. I believe AD Robles made this error several times in his video.
Be Helpful
One of the goals of objectivity in communication is simply to be as helpful as possible. Even if your audience does not agree with your evaluation, at least they will know what facts you are referring to and how you formed your conclusion.
Do not leave your audience in the position of having to simply decide that they will take (or not take) your word that something is the case. Do not act like a Van Tillian in your method of arguing.
That is where I believe AD Robles’ video fell short.
The Limitations of YouTube
Most people watching a YouTube video are not well-versed on the many discussions about Christian Nationalism. Nor are they likely to be up to speed about some of the key facts about what Stephen Wolfe has said, nor about what criticisms have been leveled against him.
The Stephen Wolfe / Christian Nationalism discussion is a niche topic. That fact matters.
Given the format of YouTube channels, it is not reasonable to expect that a viewer has watched any number of older videos. And it is not reasonable to assume that the viewer has any niche information.
For these reasons, those who use YouTube for discernment and polemics should be careful to provide links, sources, quotations, etc for the people they are critiquing. This will be relevant.
My Comments
Below, I will offer several comments about AD Robles’ video. After that, I will provide an appendex of additional information that might be helpful for evaluating the broader concerns about Stephen Wolfe’s work (and even Wolfe’s personal character).
I have attempted to transcribe AD Robles’ video accurately. I have selected only the excerpts that I found helpful for the purposes of this case study. I encourage readers to watch AD’s entire video.
AD Robles: Every time Christian nationalism comes up on Twitter, Christians and non-Christians (…) say that Christian nationalists want to force people to believe in Christ, to profess Christ’s name.
And the reason that they give for that is because we talk about the civil magistrate enforcing the First Table of the Law or at least having some role (…) there’s some role for the magistrate in the First Table of the Law, and so that’s what they say is the reason that Christian Nationalists want to force someone to believe in Christ.
I think Andy Woodard also used (this is so stupid… I mean Andy come on… you’re smarter than this dude… you’re smarter than this) he uses Stephen Wolfe’s tweet where he says atheism will be crushed under Christian Nationalism.
100 percent.
It will be (…)
Atheism will come to an end. It’s as simple as that.
That’s a really stupid reason to think we’re trying to force you to believe in Christ. How could that even work?
I mean, how could you force someone’s conscience to trust in the Lord or profess Christ? You couldn’t do that.
I mean, I guess you could force them to say they profess Christ, but it wouldn’t actually be a profession of Christ.
Comments: Is AD Robles engaging with Andy Woodard’s actual position? What specifically did Woodard say? (I do not know, myself.) Is he able to show what Woodard said? And what was incorrect about it?
Which opponent of Stephen Wolfe’s views has claimed that Wolfe thinks it is possible to coerce someone to hold an internal conviction? I’m not familiar with anyone ascribing that view to Wolfe.
Wolfe has been clear on this topic. He wants some amount of outward governmental power that outlaws some speech and some action.
***
AD Robles: The question is what do we mean by ‘the civil magistrate has a role in the First Table of the Law’?…
Obviously some people are going to have different opinions on how far that should go and things like that, but this is something that they did in New England in the time of the Puritans. You know, Sabbath laws and things like that.
These are things that are in many places still on the books right now, and it doesn’t force anyone to believe in Christ.
But what it does do is privilege the worship of Christ on Sunday…
Comments: In this section does AD Robles mean to imply that Wolfe’s critics are not aware of the history of religion-oriented laws in the US or Europe? Which, if any, of Wolfe’s critics does he have in mind here?
***
AD Robles: People are going to make it seem like that’s crazy, that’s insane, that’s totalitarian, that’s a dictatorship.
[NOTE: The referent is laws favoring Christianity, blasphemy laws, heresy laws, faith tests for political leaders.]
All you have to do is know just a tiny bit about history to know that (…) the people that say that (…) that’s insane, they’re lying to you…
I forget who it, was it (…) might have been O’Fallon or it might have been his little atheist crony [NOTE: Presumably AD Robles refers to James Lindsay] but they said something about how, if blasphemy laws are enacted, the United States will cease to be the United States.
And it’s like… then I guess the United States has never been the United States… because when it started there were blasphemy laws.
I mean that’s an insane take.
Comments: In this section, AD Robles is suggesting either that Michael O’Fallon and/or James Lindsay are lying or that they are offering an insane opinion. But he is not offering quotes from them. It’s not possible for me as the viewer to assess his concern and judge those two men fairly.
Has one of Stephen Wolfe’s critics claimed that it is by definition heretical to advocate ANY sort of religious laws? I don’t hold that view. I would not say it is heretical.
To have a helpful discussion on this issue, we would need to discuss proposed laws individually. Most laws that we could imagine/advocate are not the sort of thing that could make someone a heretic. For instance, I don’t think that someone would become a heretic for making or advocating a law requiring every person to affirm that Jesus is Lord.
The question under debate is whether this topic or related topics (such as sabbath laws, blasphemy laws, etc) fall under our jurisdiction. The question is: Has God given any man the jurisdiction to require such and such of his neighbors? Implied in the above question is: Has God given any man the jurisdiction to punish his neighbors by force if they refuse to obey him?
It is not unreasonable for the critics of Wolfe’s views to raise the concern that he is giving an unwarranted amount of power to the government. It is also not unreasonable to claim (as Michael O’Fallon might) that, if a government were to have the powers Wolfe advocates, then it would be something different from what the American Founding Fathers had in mind and from what they actually created.
The fact that the individual states had religious laws at the time of the American founding is not under contention here. The questions Wolfe’s critics would want to discuss are: What are the unique features of the American system of government? Are those features good? Would it be a bad thing if we were to lose those features?
The level of disparagement toward Michael O’Fallon here is out of proportion to the level of understanding AD Robles is showing for O’Fallon’s position.
***
AD Robles: That being said, I want to also talk about this Twitter thread from Stephen Wolfe. And I think that (…) you should take this seriously even if you don’t like Stephen — even if you think that some of what he says is a little suspicious or whatever.
Take this thread seriously (…) If you don’t hear anything else from Stephen, hear this. This is important, I think.
Here’s what he says:
“It’s clear at this point that the G3 guys and allies do not know classical Protestant political thought.
“And of course their audience doesn’t know it. So they can either do the right thing and learn it, present it fairly and critique it on its own terms, or they can continue to straw man and distort and rely on the ignorance of their audience to score points.
“There are ways to move the conversation forward and that involves getting acquainted with what most educated Protestants once understood…”
Comments: The writers at G3 display different levels of understanding on these issues. I have expressed concern about some weaknesses in their argumentation.
Objectivity in communication requires doing better that what I’m seeing here from Stephen Wolfe or from AD Robles. Objectivity requires showing which claim or argument from a G3 writer is deficient, and why. Otherwise, the discussion is not going to inform or help the viewer.
If AD Robles or Stephen Wolfe have offered an intellectually serious interaction with some claim they have heard from G3, this spot in the video would be a great place to point to that and offer a link or a title. Without that, I’m not in a position to evaluate the claim.
AD Robles also implied that Stephen’s critics are in the position of having to believe that the founders of the Protestant tradition are “all heretics, neo-Nazis, racists, whatever.” Again, I am at a loss for how he believes this claim is founded in reality.
***
AD Robles: I’ve literally had a conversation with one of the G3 guys and what he said was that Stephen Wolfe is essentially an evil genius and that he is very careful to make the appropriate distinctions because what he wants (…) is plausible deniability. He wants to be a Nazi racist son-of-a-gun, but he wants to make it plausible that he’s not, so what he did was he made very careful distinctions.
Comments: I would be curious to know what the person said specifically.
It is likely true that some of Stephen Wolfe’s beliefs are implied in the book but made more clear in other places such as his Twitter posts in the past — and especially in his choices about who he endorses, who he quotes, and who he imitates in his argumentation.
See more about this topic in the appendex.
***
AD Robles: Keep it up G3. Keep it up. You’re selling garbage to your people. And people will only eat garbage for so long. It’s as simple as that. Because they’re gonna eventually read Stephen Wolfe’s book.
Because they’re gonna see how so many of us are like: I just don’t understand why they’re saying this about Stephen when his book says this… They’re gonna see that enough times.
They’re just going to read it for themselves. And when they read it for themselves they’re gonna see what you have done. They’re gonna see what you’ve done to Stephen. This is completely preposterous. How you could treat a brother in this way?
Comments: I don’t know specifically which claim or which person from G3 AD Robles is referring to here. Who is it that treated Wolfe badly? What exactly did they do? Is AD Robles referring only to the earlier concern that some people are seeing an attempt at bringing in pernicious ideas in a low-key way?
For reference, a self-proclaimed “Christian White Nationalist” writer has come to that exact conclusion. He claimed Stephen Wolfe is using a “back-door methodology.” So this conclusion is not outside the realm of consideration. Here is what that writer said:
Was Wolfe being this kind of clever in his book? Did he realize that most people embracing his broad outline of what Christian Nationalism is would then invariably embrace the ethno part of ethno-nationalism without him even having to be overly clear about his conviction on the matter?
I’m beginning to think this is a possibility. I think that Wolfe may have been going for conversion via the indirect route as opposed to going for conversion by my “in your face” route.
Additional Comments: Does AD mean to deny that Stephen Wolfe’s book and his other online communication seemingly contain positive references to white nationalists and to their distinct ideas? If AD Robles is denying that, then this would be a topic worth discussing. See the appendex for some key information.
***
AD Robles: How you could treat a brother in this way?
I wouldn’t even treat a freaking enemy like this! Where you don’t allow him to actually speak for himself and you have to think every word that he says is just a sinister plot…
Commentary: Here, I am not sure what AD Robles is claiming is being done to Stephen Wolfe or what is wrong about it. At this point in his video is he still referring to the comments from the unnamed G3 person?
I find it interesting that AD Robles claims he would never treat an enemy in this (undefined) way.
In fact, several months after releasing this video, AD Robles did release another video treating James Lindsay in a way that was strikingly non-objective.
AD Robles claimed James Lindsay was crying like a little girl over a baphomet statue coming down. He did this while he was reading a quote of James Lindsay saying something that was opposite of that.
How can anyone understand AD Robles’ claims about James Lindsay or take them seriously when Robles is reading Lindsay saying one thing and then attributing opposite views to him, all without specific supporting arguments?
Objectivity is not easy. And we all make errors sometimes.
What I’m seeing in the above case study is worse than a failure at objectivity. I’m not even able to identify an attempt.
***
APPENDIX: Some Information about Stephen Wolfe and Thomas Achord
I am attaching the following information as a resource for those interested in understanding the broader dicussion about Stephen Wolfe’s ideas and actions since 2022 and earlier.
Here I am not attempting to offer a full report of the events that came to be called the Achord Affair. I’m offering selected information and analysis.
As I watched Stephen Wolfe gain traction for his message on Twitter in the Reformed Christian niche, I attempted to understand the meaning of his claims. I had known of Stephen Wolfe since around 2019 or earlier. (I recorded a video episode with him in early 2019).
I had also known Thomas Achord as an online aquaintance. He often posted about the “woke” trend. I distanced myself from Achord when I noticed that he seemed to be caught up in ideas associated with white identitarianism.
Around 2020, I noticed that Stephen Wolfe and Thomas Achord had formed a podcast together. It was called Ars Politica. Their partnership was active from late 2020 to late 2022 and it released around 70 full-length episodes.
Most or all of that material has now been removed from the podcast’s website. From what I can tell, only Stephen Wolfe’s more recent episodes are available. Older episodes featuring Wolfe and Achord can be found at some syndication websites.
In late 2022, news stories broke at multiple outlets (for instance here, here, here, here, here, and here) about Thomas Achord being exposed as the owner of a Twitter account that routinely (and for several years) openly expressed general derision toward black people and toward their inclusion in American society.
At the time this story broke, I already held concerns about Achord. I had seen some posts from him that seemed hostile toward people based on their race. But I was surprised at the level of open racism found at Achord’s formerly anon account.
I did some searching through old posts from Achord’s various accounts, some of which were under his own name and some under pseudonyms, and I realized he had been expressing these views for some time.
I also realized it was overwhelmingly likely that Stephen Wolfe had been aware of Achord’s activities and that he lied about this fact during the Achord Affair in Fall 2022. (I will provide evidence below.)
Achord first denied being connected to the account, but then confessed to it. The sequence of events was disorienting.
The kinds of claims Achord made about black people were unconscionable. Worse yet, his stated intention was to influence the Christian homeschooling world, in which he was working as a school headmaster.
For some evidence about what Achord was posting and what Wolfe was likely aware of, consider the following thread of posts on Twitter (X). Please tap each post to see the entire thread. It is a lot of information.
Some Evidence About Stephen Wolfe’s Involvement:
Please tap the above thread to review a large amount of information.
Stephen Wolfe had many opportunities to know what Achord was posting about. Any claim that he did not know about it would seem highly implausible.
Based on publicly available evidence, it seems overwhelmingly likely that Stephen Wolfe did know that Thomas Achord was actively promoting hatred toward black people long before November 2022.
For instance I knew Achord was promoting some of these things as early as 2021, as you can see from the screenshot and date below, taken from my phone.
It is difficult to imagine that I knew more about Achord’s online activities than Wolfe did.
More Information:
In late 2022, during the Accord Affair, Stephen Wolfe claimed he had not known about Achord’s posts. See the following thread for details:
What Wolfe Claimed and When:
Stephen Wolfe also continued making it clear that he supported Achord, even after Achord’s confession about having made the posts.
What Does Stephen Wolfe Believe?
The concerns raised about Thomas Achord’s ideas and about Stephen Wolfe’s ideas are not disconnected.
Wolfe’s public claims (in his book and on Twitter) are strikingly similar to the belief system that Achord represented online.
Also, Wolfe has endorsed Achord’s work, including the following book: Who Is My Neighbor: An Anthology of Natural Relations.
The book contains material of this sort:
What follows are several Twitter posts and threads that, when considered together, provide at least some support for a case that Stephen Wolfe is attempting to bring some pernicious ideas into Reformed Christianity while hiding the meaning of his claims in order to avoid being held to account.
Evasion and Lack of Straight Answers:
Tweet Thread:
(Please tap the thread to read the whole thing.)
Tweet Thread:
(Please tap the thread to read the whole thing.)
Tweet Thread:
(Please tap the thread to read the whole thing.)
Tweet Thread:
(Please tap the thread to read the whole thing.)
Closing Remarks
Why did I take the trouble to put all this together, over a year after the Achord Affair?
Here’s why:
I used to be in a private communication channel with a lot of the people on both sides of this Christian Nationalism debate.
It’s not just that I was in that channel. I was the one who created the channel. It was called the “Social Justice Contras.”
I was one of the people who did a lot of work in 2019 to try to form a resistance movement against “woke” ideology. My goal was to find people who could be worthy allies and to introduce them to each other.
It turned out that many of the people I used to talk to were never really my friends at all. And they are now wrapped up in something that is making the world worse instead of better.
I care about Stephen Wolfe, Thomas Achord, AD Robles, and a lot of other men wrapped up in this Christian Nationalism trend. At one time, I thought we could build something great together. It doesn’t look like those things are possible any more, or worth pursuing.
I care about the people that these misguided men are maligning. Most of all, I care about the truth of the situation. Our goal in communication should be the shared pursuit of truth.
Perhaps this case study can be used to help future leaders become better at what they are doing.
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