I argue for a living (not always as well as I hope) and it doesn't take too long to notice that there are valid arguments and there are arguments deployed to disconcert. And they have to look as indistinguishable from each other as possible, otherwise they wouldn't work. And "That's your white liberal guilt talking!" is a stunningly good argument in a) cases when it's true; b) cases when it's not true but it looks true - for example, when someone on the other side has come out with a barefaced lie and everyone is in that gob-smacked position when faced with a barefaced lie of wondering if it can be an honest mistake. And one's a valid argument and the other is designed to disconcert.
In fact, the Ianto death business is a good example of b). It's a nasty urban myth being circulated for reasons I'd not like to speculate about by people for whom I otherwise had some respect (I have contradicted it with full evidence three times on a particular lj and not been acknowledged once). And it plays into a particular kind of US victimhood. The fact that US citizens were, with the encouragement of senior US politicians (yes, Ted Kennedy, I'm looking at you - though I'm sorry for your loss, all the same) sponsoring and paying for terrorism on British soil for very many years (Kipling has a story from the 1880s about US sponsored terrorism)is of no interest to these people - they want us to be disrespecting their glorious dead, and choose to lie to achieve that end.
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In fact, the Ianto death business is a good example of b). It's a nasty urban myth being circulated for reasons I'd not like to speculate about by people for whom I otherwise had some respect (I have contradicted it with full evidence three times on a particular lj and not been acknowledged once). And it plays into a particular kind of US victimhood. The fact that US citizens were, with the encouragement of senior US politicians (yes, Ted Kennedy, I'm looking at you - though I'm sorry for your loss, all the same) sponsoring and paying for terrorism on British soil for very many years (Kipling has a story from the 1880s about US sponsored terrorism)is of no interest to these people - they want us to be disrespecting their glorious dead, and choose to lie to achieve that end.