Entries Tagged 'flame war' ↓
December 30th, 2007 — enemy propaganda, political correctness, leftist-jihadist convergence, terrorism, trolls, Mark Steyn, littlegreenfootballs, Gates of Vienna, Europe, politics, fraud, counterjihad, flame war, blogging
LittleGreenFootballs has been infiltrated
Bottehond 25 december 2007
For some weeks a controversy rages between the counter-jihadis of Little Green Footballs and a number of Islam-critical top bloggers. Your reporter went into the battle zone of this controversy to discover a sinister plot, and the explanation why this matter went completely out of control.
On first glance the issue seems to be whether or not some European parties are fascist or not, notably Vlaams Belang and Sverigedemokraterna. Both parties sent representatives to the anti-Islam conference in Brussels, where nearly all relevant players were present. This was not what LGF liked, being tipped off by Swedish anti-fascists.
But further investigation proved there is more going on. The debate went completely out of control: old alliances and long lasting friendships might very well be permanently damaged. How did this come to be?
Because of the Brussels Conference LGF boss Charles Johnson received messages from Europe about the assumed neo-Nazi secret agenda of Vlaams Belang and Sverigedemokraterna. Johnson obviously was flabbergasted. Understandable, because, as many posters said: “If it can be proven that European anti-Islam organizations are allied to fascists, many Americans will step aside from supporting the Euro anti-Islam organizations. An old problem was reborn again. Who doesn’t remember the messages collected by Blokwatch (and partly fabricated by them) about the roots of Flemish nationalism, who, as is commonly known, en masse choose to support the Nazis during WW2, in the hope of gaining independence after the war. Blokwatch also collected a lot of material about contacts between Vlaams Blok and questionable neo-Nazi organisation and persons. A similar file was collected about Sverigedemokraterna. The Swedes had some members in their ranks who maintained similar contacts with questionable clubs and persons.
In the following weeks many bloggers pointed Johnson to the fact that most of the “evidence” was razor thin, could be easily countered and was often manipulated. Then something important happened. Every reasonable man with sufficient understanding of politics will understand the vulnerable position of the international anti-Islam movement, and will know he has to work carefully and with restriction. Not so on LGF. Every critical remark about the “evidence” or suggestion of making things up were tarred as fascists or VB apologists. Even the most reasonable posters were scolded and suspected. Johnson was not capable of keeping the situation under control. Far from it: he was tempted by a herd of Lizards (which is how the posters on LGF call themselves) to estrange himself even more from such reputable bloggers as Fjordman, the folks of Gates of Vienna and Brussels Journal.
In the ongoing debate a Norwegian antifascist, Øyvind Strømmen, showed up. He wrote the book “Eurofascism”. Several times Charles Johnson published parts of this book, all of them accusations aimed at Vlaams Belang and Sverigedemokraterna. Of course, all of this was simply more of the same. In my opinion, it was a major error of Charles Johnson to quote from this book. Not just because the material was mainly irrelevant; to the contrary. Such accusations should always be taken seriously. But because he refused to call for a time-out or discuss matters with the (at that time) friends and allied bloggers, Johnson hanged himself with his, or better phrased, this evidence. That evidence became quickly irrelevant; matters had gone too far already. Apparently Charles Johnson had released the genie out of the bottle and had no idea how to get it back again. He had few options but to keep walking the path he made himself.
Now the smoke has cleared, mainly because Johnson’s opponents had the wisdom not to overreact we can make up the balance sheet. Those who followed the debates have seen the resentful tone that many Lizards used. LGF is known as very much pro-Israel, which really is a point to their benefit. It’s no surprise many Shoah survivors or descendants from them are amongst the Lizards, and they turned themselves away from the Euro movement. Add to this the deep suspicion many Americans hold about Europe, and European history, and we have the explanations for this debate that went completely out of control. At least, that is what a superficial observer will think.
However, to quote Daniël Belinfante: “there is more going on”. Let’s have a closer look at this gentleman Mr. Øyvind Strømmen. Who is he? A small investigation showed that Mr. Strømmen is member of this club: [listed at ECPR: European Consortium for Political Research]. When we read this list carefully, we find the name and founder of Blokwatch, the “anti-fascist” blog that began the accusations of fascism against Vlaams Belang. This is Bart Spruyt. You will find his name on this list.
But there is more: Mr. Spruyt, a friend of Øyvind Strømmen, did much to internationalize the ‘anti-fascist’ jihad by founding disreputable anarchistic-like clubs such as AFA Netherlands. These chappies are internationally organized. Scandinavia abounds with these little progressive clubs. Perhaps you recall the attempted murder on four SIOE members in Copenhagen, recently? Yes, friends of our friends Spruyt and Strømmen. Those of you who would bear the stench can open a cesspit of extreme left Inquisition. And be surprised of the way these little hysteric clubs work intimately together, internationally.
What are the conclusions of this little investigation? The obvious, of course. LGF has been infiltrated by left wing fanatics, who respect nobody and nothing to achieve their goals. Those who tar everybody fascist who resists, for example, the Islamization of Europe. We are talking here about delusional fanatics who are so utterly convinced of being right (compare them the Baader Meinhof gang) they don’t worry about one victim more or less. They actually became what they fought: merciless fascists. Their current champion: Øyvind Strømmen. The man shows off with his many ‘investigations’, but got his ‘investigation’ directly from Bart Spruyt. I do not doubt this applies to his ‘investigations’ about Sverigedemokraterna as well.
Please draw your own conclusions by reading his own forum. A very weak debater, drawing up smokescreen after smokescreen. All questions that might compromise him will remain unanswered. However, his strategy is clear enough: he wants to uncover the Islam-watchers as fascist fanatics, or at least as their helpers. Practically ALL Islam critics (Bat Ye ‘Or, Oriana, Robert Spencer, Mark Steyn, Fjordman, you just name anyone) have been criticized by him. There can be no doubt at all: Øyvind Strømmen thinks Islamization is a hoax, and Islam critics are mentally ill or (his preference) fascists. And this is supposed to be the source of Johnson? An infamy!
Did Strømmen enter the debate alone? Of course not. I found so much hatred in the ongoing debate that my conclusion is that Charles Johnson not only has a very questionable advisor, but also that the Lizards have been infiltrated. Check it out for yourself. Observe the responses from the Lizards: foaming at the mouth as they blast their ‘fascist’ mantra to your postings. Amongst them are a lot of Europeans who will claim not to be left wing orientated. But also a bunch of Lizards who feed Charles Johnson with a deluge of evidence. Evidence collected for many years by the Strømmens and Spruyts of the world. There is a little bit of good news to report as well. Charles Johnson has put some distance between himself and Strømmen. He repeatedly said that he doesn’t agree with everything Strømmen said or stands for. Hardly possible, as Charles keeps the photo of Oriana prominently on his website. Hopefully he will realize one cannot have it both ways. I called on LGF for a debate. Face to face, for communication of such and important matter by mail will not do. The raid on LGF by Euro extremists makes it crystal clear that we cannot afford to. Only reason can heal the breach. Therefore I suggest we all take responsibility for our own action and take it from there.
The only question remaining is: will Øyvind Strømmen hang Charles Johnson’s scalp on his AFA belt, or will Charles Johnson see reason, and organize a mediation?
Also see:
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December 27th, 2007 — flame war, Nazism, incivility, injustice, trolls, smiley, Serbia, comment policy, spam, wikis, forum, Israel, anti-Semitism, hate, blogging
To our readers, and other bloggers and admins:
As we all know, some people in the world are angry and destructive, and many of those are on the Internet. These angry people exert a negative effect on anyone who has the misfortune to encounter them, even if it is only a feeling of fatigue and disgust. Some angry and destructive persons are genuinely dangerous.
The Internet is a tool that can be used for good or ill. The team at 1389 Blog is working hard to do some good: to use the Internet to confront and curb jihadism and expansionist Islam, and to provide knowledge and tools to others who are working to accomplish the same goals. We will never allow anyone to abuse the comments on this blog for the purpose of undermining this effort.
False accusations, mudslinging, and editorial discretion
We have grown especially weary and disgusted with haters who use blogs, comments, forums, Wikis, social news sites, or email to circulate false allegations against others - whether it be public figures, other bloggers, entire groups of people, or whomever else they hate. Despite claims of “fairness” and “impartiality,” disinformation has been planted throughout Wikipedia and other social media, where it becomes fuel for flame wars, mudslinging, and propaganda.
Typically, one or more responders will put in hours or days of unpaid effort to refute those accusations, but then, the malicious accuser simply goes elsewhere and starts the same process all over again.
We have other things to do besides responding to the same falsehoods again and again. If these miscreants can’t win the argument on facts and logic, they hope to win by shouting us down and wasting our time.
Yes - these haters have the right to post what they want - on their own blogs - and to face whatever consequences accrue. When haters commit libel, their victims may sue. When haters incite violence against the persons or groups that they hate, they have passed the boundaries of protected political speech, and we will do what we can to shut them down.
No one has the right to take advantage of other people’s blogs and websites to spew false accusations, obscenities, and bile in front of the readership that reputable bloggers and admins have worked so hard to earn. No one has the right to spam the comments or forum threads on someone else’s website for the purpose of interfering with that website or harassing its owners and participants.
Excluding malicious comments is not censorship - it is vital editorial discretion. No blog or forum administrator - or for that matter, no publisher or media producer - can, or should, publicize every response that comes in. Bigoted ranting, name-calling, bullying and threats, spam, obscenity, incoherent rambles, libel and slander, and ad hominem attacks, attract a lynch-mob mentality, drive away decent readers and participants, and expose the website or organization to repercussions, legal or otherwise. And the endlessly misused argumentum ad Nazium, a/k/a reductio ad Hitlerum, is a signal to readers that the argument has worn itself out, and that intelligent life has departed from that venue.
Oh, and by the way…
If you want to argue with us, you’d better be loaded for bear. We expect to see verifiable evidence and valid logic, presented in a clear and civil manner. Just for starters:
- Calling us liars, racists, Nazis, or whatever else is evidence only of your incivility. Accusing us of being “racists” or “Holocaust deniers” or “fascists” merely because we do not accept your accusations against Jews, Israelis, Serbs, European conservatives, white Americans, or whomever it is you happen to hate, doesn’t cut it either.
- Hearsay, rumors, innuendo, or unconfirmed urban legends, or something you thought you heard from a “friend of a friend,” does not make for sufficient evidence to back up an allegation.
- Articles in Wikipedia are acceptable only for noncontroversial matters, such as technical background, computer and Internet history, and definitions of words and phrases (as shown here in the previous item). But when it comes to controversial political, religious, or historical issues, Wikipedia is far too vulnerable to vandalism, flame wars, and spin, and we generally cannot accept it as evidence. (See our Reference Material resource page, and Byzantine Sacred Art: Wikipedia, the Source of Disinformation, for more on Wikipedia spin jobs.)
- For that matter, we roundly condemn Wikipedia’s self-righteous pretense of enforcing a neutral point of view. It is senseless to make a virtue out of amorality! When we write or blog, we do our best to gather and publish the whole truth and nothing but. There is no neutral ground between right and wrong, between good and evil, between truth and error. There is no room for diluting the truth by presenting falsehood alongside it, in an effort to appear “fair and balanced.” The devil has too many spokesmen already, and too many spokeswomen too!
- Making patronizing remarks, such as claiming that you “pity” us, is nothing more than mudslinging disguised behind a false sense of moral superiority, and it will get your remarks flushed into the spam bucket without a second thought.
- If you, or any of your sources have a vested interest in the issue that could affect credibility, we expect you to disclose it.
- Just because you saw something in the mainstream media does not automatically mean it is true. Many stories, photos, and videos have appeared in the mainstream media and have later been shown to be planted by untrustworthy sources, staged, mislabeled, Photoshopped, or otherwise falsified. Check it first!
In particular, we will not post comments that contain racist or bigoted ranting, especially the anti-Semitic ranting and the Serb-bashing that seems to be plaguing the blogosphere these days. We don’t care how many times you have seen or heard the same piece of Serb-bashing or Jew-bashing or Israel-bashing in the blogosphere or even in the mainstream media. As we have just pointed out, this does NOT make it true, nor does it give you any right to repeat it here.
What’s a blogger or admin to do?
1389 Blog posts a comments policy and we enforce it consistently. Anyone with a modicum of common sense should already be aware of what is acceptable on this and most other blogs. But if you have any doubts, read it before you send us email or comment on this, or any other, post on this blog.
We encourage people to post comments or use the Contact Us form in our blog to expose injustice or other wrongdoing. We have no objection to leveling verifiable accusations against public officials or other culpable individuals, organizations, or governments. We have no objection to polemics or to strong opinions. We encourage readers to engage in vigorous debate and to point out any factual errors that we or other commenters might make. We also encourage readers to investigate and report suspicious incidents and criminal or terrorist activity, and to keep us up to date with that information. But if the accusations cannot be substantiated, the communication in question will be either refuted or deleted.
It is up to us, as bloggers and admins, to maintain civility in our part of the blogosphere. If we fail to make this effort, the better part (in both senses of the word) of our audience will leave. I suggest that it is time for each of us to set up and enforce our comment policies to stop that from happening. And when it comes to dealing with haters, I suggest that we take care neither to let malicious commenters spew their bile until everyone else gives up and lets the haters have the last word, nor to allow false accusations to stand unanswered in any of our comment or forum threads.
Also see:
Technorati : Israel, Nazism, Serbia, anti-Semitism, blogging, comment policy, forum, hate, incivility, injustice, spam, troll, wikis
December 13th, 2007 — political correctness, littlegreenfootballs, treason, activism, leftist-jihadist convergence, MSM corruption, Gates of Vienna, moblog, fraud, counterjihad, flame war, blogging
(Image from Free Speech in the Face of Inhumanity. Be sure to stop by and visit!)
Gates of Vienna explains it all:
The decline and fall of Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs. Sadly ironic, in a way…
Even so, his motives for launching these attacks on so many of us were clearly negative, self-serving, and harmful to the Counterjihad.
His ugly behavior and his constant lying could not have been motivated by any positive principles. Either he has allowed himself to become enslaved to his ego, or he tried to sell us out in return for some real or expected material advantage.
Posted by mobile phone
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August 28th, 2007 — injustice, Islam, political correctness, media, CAIR, MSM corruption, flame war, Florida, censorship, culture wars, hate, counterjihad, Christianity
CBS has no room for Christians or for American Southerners.
For those who are not aware of this, it’s part of the Christian faith that believers are required - yes, REQUIRED - to tell the truth about our beliefs, and to bring the Good News to everyone we can reach. Taqiyya has NO place in Christianity. Florida televangelist Bill Keller was simply doing what a good Christian should do on a Christian talk show. But CAIR, a Muslim pressure group affiliated with Hamas, bullied CBS into dropping Keller’s show.
Here are two accounts of the disgraceful way CBS Corporation treated Florida televangelist Bill Keller:
But that’s not all. The CBS website has been providing a forum for over-the-top hate comments. CBS has allowed random crazies to spew filth and venom on the CBS website, particularly against American Southerners. After they got enough complaints, they eventually deleted the comments and, in effect, pretended the comments had never existed.
A high-traffic mainstream media site such as CBS has no business ever allowing unmoderated comments to appear in the first place. They should publish a comment policy with enough moderators to enforce it. They refuse to take any responsibility for what happens on their site, and they have no respect for Southerners or for anybody with traditional values. With that corporate mindset, it’s no wonder that the networks and the mainstream media have been steadily losing their audience!
Now let CBS know what you think of this!
Address of CBS Headquarters:
51 West 52 Street, New York, New York 10019-6188
Technorati : American South, CAIR, CBS, Christianity, Islam, censorship, flame war, hate, incivility, jihadism
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Also on FHK and on JennSierra.
July 4th, 2007 — flame war, incivility, social media, forum, politics, wikis, Web 2.0
Why do some people look askance at Wikis in general, and at Wikipedia, the 800-pound gorilla of the Wiki world, in particular? This project page, entitled Wikipedia: Lamest edit wars, reveals the human frailties that tend to weaken the credibility of what should be a valuable social media tool.
Free and open debate is a vital part of the search for truth, but is that what we’re seeing here? When it comes to certain hot-button issues, the search for truth among the Wikipedia community (such as it is) degenerates into a welter of animosity, politicking, ego-tripping, spin-doctoring, and ad hominem arguments. Evidently, the Wikipedians who wrote this project page saw no alternative but to give up on the possibility of making any further progress toward resolving these issues. Instead, they labeled these edit wars “lame,” characterized all of the participants as equally unreasonable and contemptible, and held the entire process up to ridicule.
The character flaws that give rise to such ugly disputes are, sadly, part of the human condition. All too often, they are encountered not only among independent researchers, but also among those in academia, government, and the corporate world. But it’s a matter of degree. In cyberspace, without traditions or established systems in place for resolving such things in a civil manner, incivility often runs rampant under cover of anonymity, and the interaction readily devolves into a flame war.
The problem is that incivility erodes credibility. Discussion and debate have a vital place in the process of building and supporting a wiki. But honest debate has nothing to do with bullying, manipulation, or spin-doctoring. Nor is there any room for the mistaken concept that truth can be arrived at simply by putting the matter up to a vote! For the wiki to earn the respect of the public, this debate must be conducted with respect for the other participants, for the readership, and, most of all, for the truth.
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