Hatewatch Tweets
Hatewatch is managed by the staff of the Intelligence Report, an investigative magazine published by the Alabama-based civil rights group Southern Poverty Law Center.
Online ‘Hit List’ Targets Liberals
Anti-liberal propaganda has been ramping up for years. Former Fox News host Glenn Beck, who was cited as an inspiration for at least three rightwing extremists accused of committing or plotting violence, called himself a “progressive hunter” and attempted to rebrand Hitler as a leftist. Anti-Muslim activist Frank Gaffney routinely warns of a “red-green” alliance between liberals and violent Islamist terrorists. But the people behind a website called “Target of Opportunity” (motto: “Eliminating the planet of liberals one at a time”) have taken things several steps further, creating a “Hit List” profiling supposed liberal enemies of America.
“This website is a list and record of people that betray and endanger America by their Seditious, Treasonous, and/or Terrorist activities,” its homepage reads. “Operating under the false illusion of Peaceful and Non-Violent activism, their methods are anything but Peaceful and Non-Violent. These people present a serious threat to all Americans. Each and every one of them should be considered a “TARGET OF OPPORTUNITY.”
Beyond lies a mission statement proclaiming the website’s devotion to “fighting Terrorism and the forced integration of Marxist oriented ideas and values into the American mainstream,” and a “Hit List” of “groups and people that pose a considerable threat to the citizens of America.”
Some of those listed, like the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front (ALF/ELF), have a long history of violence. Others, like the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, which publishes communiqués from underground activists, are linked to violent activists but are not known to engage in violence. A third set includes outspoken individuals with whose politics, typically socialist, anarchist, or pro-Palestine, TOO’s creators vigorously disagree.
Its open use of the term “hit list” notwithstanding, TOO is hardly the first example of radical activists using the Internet to publicize names of individuals they want silenced. Anti-abortion extremist Neal Horsley pioneered the technique in the late 1990s with his “Nuremberg Files” site, which lists the names and locations of abortion practitioners and clinics across the country. On the left, the approach has been used by animal rights extremists like Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), six of whose members were found guilty in 2006 of using the Internet to terrorize the employees and business associates of a pharmaceutical research company that uses animals to test drugs and chemicals. More recently, the radical animal liberation group Negotiation is Over (NIO) has begun posting pictures, names, addresses and other personal information about scientists who use animals in their research, urging activists to attack them and offering its followers suggestions about how to carry out those attacks.
(Ironically, SHAC is among the groups named on TOO’s Hit List. So is Steve Best, a philosophy professor at the University of Texas at El Paso who is intimately involved with NIO and rationalizes violence against “animal oppressors” by saying that “since [animals] cannot defend themselves … humans must act on their behalf” – using violence, if necessary.)
TOO insists that its hit list exists for educational purposes only and that it does not want to “stop anyone from exercising their Right of Free Speech or expressing themselves however they choose.”
But the oversized, bold-printed banner at the bottom of its mission statement strongly suggests otherwise. “This is a call to action! These anti-American Liberals are dangerous people that can no longer be ignored! One person can make a big difference!” it says. “There are those that read about history. There are those that make history. Which one do you want to be? It is time to get involved. These people and organizations are Enemies of Freedom, the American people, and the American way of life!!! Each and every one should be considered a ‘Target of Opportunity.’”
In case there’s any doubt about what it means by “call to action,” TOO directs readers to “Misc Links – To Help You Get The Job Done.” Several lead to online purveyors of ammunition, knives and survival gear.
The rest of the website is devoted to “educating” newcomers about the “liberal threat.” One section lists “Anti-American, Racist, and Terrorist” websites, from which readers can get to know the “enemy.” In keeping with the far right’s tendency to lump together everyone it doesn’t like under the label “leftist,” the list of enemy sites includes genuine purveyors of hate like Stormfront, Nation of Islam, and the National Alliance; radical leftwing entities like the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front; old-fashioned lefties like Michael Moore and MoveOn.org; and Al Jazeera English, the award-winning English-language version of the Arabic-language news network.
Readers seeking inspiration from “The True America” are directed to a list of sites including Peter Brimelow’s white nationalist VDARE; the racist and immigrant-hating National Policy Institute; Pam Geller’s virulently anti-Muslim blog Atlas Shrugs; the nativist extremist Minuteman Civil Defense Corps; and Joseph Farah’s far-right WorldNetDaily, an online publication best known for its relentless “birther” propaganda.
A 265-point questionnaire titled “Are you a liberal” includes statements like “You believe America deserved 9/11”; “You fail to see the connection between Lenin and Lennon”; “You believe that pornography should be federally protected as ‘Freedom of Speech,’ but public profession of Faith should be outlawed”; and “You only see white people and Jews as racists.”
on January 25th, 2012 at 5:24 pm
The thing that kind of stands out for me is the stuff about Hitler and Stormfront being leftists.
I’m sort of in the middle of re-reading a great book about Nazi germany. It’s called “Hitler” and is by Joachim Fest. I think the info below, all together, should convince most people who are confused about this that the Nazis were much more on the right than on the left.
1. I can’t remember exactly what the details were, but Hitler’s regime had a mixed attitude towards capital- some good, some bad (for capital).
2. It simply got rid of the unions.
3. It killed some communists and social-democrats and sent many to concentration camps.
4. It elevated the race and the nation above class and tried to cover up class conflict without doing anything to erase income inequality.
5. Probably the most important thing is to look at who allowed the Nazis into government. It was centrists and conservatives. Even after Hitler created a dictatorship, such politicians continued to be part of Hitler’s government.
Tom
on January 25th, 2012 at 5:49 pm
The cowardly hatemonger[s] operating such sites, may want to pay heed in the recent history, when it comes to making death threats. Former FBI informant Hal Turner was a prime example. Some of them eventually get arrested. Such also was the case of Hardy Lloyd, the self-described “Lone Wolf”. And that site called “White Watch”, which was later taken down a couple years ago.
Recently, there was another website, which praised the killing of cops. Death threats were made out to Sheriff arpaio, in which he is currently seeking a search warrant in the state of Cali, at the Google headquareters, to get the IP address of the operator of that site.
I guess it’s only a matter of time before someone operating these sites, find themselves doing the perp walk striaght into federal prison.
on January 25th, 2012 at 7:09 pm
This story is a LIE! The truth is the opposite! The TRUTH is that Leftists are the ones who always try to get people on the right fired from their jobs. Look at what happened to Pat Buchanan! What a horrible, horrible LIE this story is! Look at what happened to Frank Borzellieri! He was fired from his job at a New York private school just because he wrote the book “The Unspoken Truth”, way back in 1999. More than a decade ago! That book was published by New Century Press and has a foreward by Jared Taylor. I’ve read it. Everything in it is true! There’s nothing wrong with it! You people at the SPLC are LYING!
on January 25th, 2012 at 7:23 pm
Sounds a lot like how the SPLC conducts its own hit lists. However, the super capitalists at the SPLC rake in millions upon millions of dollars with their hit lists that they publish.
on January 25th, 2012 at 7:37 pm
This is agreat example of what happens when our government becomes gridlocked and our political sphere in the U.S. become as misinformed and polarized (at least from the media and elected official front end) as it is currently. Sounds like the makers of this ‘LIE-bur-uhl’ burn e-book @ least seemed bi-partisan in listing as many genuinely threatening terrorist sects to imaginary ‘oppressors’ whose mere existence makes their black hearts skip two beats…
Sounds like those voices in some of the fringe folkies heads are starting to make it impossible to form anything resembling a coherent idea or express functioning cognitive ability. Raving lunatics doesn’t even begin to describe how darkly humorous this is; I’m sure a Tea Bagger or dyed-in the wool Reich-Wing reactionary will post here to give there sure footed approval!
on January 25th, 2012 at 10:12 pm
I suspect this is the tip of the iceberg. FSTDT has retrieved quotes from various sites indicating that not only is this organization being targeted, but that violence against women is being co-ordinated. Certainly, we’ve been seeing the incitement of stochastic terrorism for some time, but it appears to me that something rather less random is in the works.
on January 26th, 2012 at 8:03 am
my guess is that once some nutcase actually kills someone on their hit list that their claims that their website was “for educational purposes only” will be as successful as the claims by Palladin Press that “Hitman: A Guide for Independent Contractors” was “for educational purposes only.”
on January 26th, 2012 at 8:25 am
Yesterday I found a site titled:
” Jew S.elf-H.ating I.srael-T.hreatening List”
with many names (at least 2 of my relatives and a number of friends and colleagues, famous and obscure).
It’s old, probably addressed here before,
there’s so much ugliness out there, sometimes it’s just heartbreaking.
on January 26th, 2012 at 9:08 am
All of this nonsense mus come to an end. People should have every right to disagree, but nobody deserves to be killed over it. Get it a rest People. Life’s too short
on January 26th, 2012 at 9:31 am
For the first time, I have to agree with Concerned. Everybody SHOULD have the right to disagree, but nobody has to die over it.
Life really is short enough as it is.
on January 26th, 2012 at 10:10 am
I’m concerned about seeing the animal rights groups targeted. Not all groups are “radical,” but many conservatives want them to be perceived as such. The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act would punish people who boycott business for practices they believe are immoral or abusive. And now some states want to criminalize undercover investigators who reveal the cruelty of factory farming.
Any group who shines a light on abusive businesses practices, from factory farms to puppy mills, may be labeled a “liberal” or a “terrorist,” This is a serious threat to freedom of speech and does nothing to stop abuse or exploitation. Obviously, this kind of mindset can apply abusive practices involving people.
on January 26th, 2012 at 10:29 am
“Jason Smith said,
on January 25th, 2012 at 7:09 pm
This story is a LIE! The truth is the opposite! The TRUTH is that Leftists are the ones who always try to get people on the right fired from their jobs. Look at what happened to Pat Buchanan! What a horrible, horrible LIE this story is! Look at what happened to Frank Borzellieri! He was fired from his job at a New York private school just because he wrote the book “The Unspoken Truth”, way back in 1999. More than a decade ago! That book was published by New Century Press and has a foreward by Jared Taylor. I’ve read it. Everything in it is true! There’s nothing wrong with it! You people at the SPLC are LYING!”
~Jason, take your damn prozac and go troll on around on Stormfront or VDARE.com; I know the reality based community can be a scary and overwhelming place for you to visit, but all these accusations of lying and slandering from a fringe idiot isn’t going to waiver those of us with functioning brain cells. Pat Buchanan DOES deserve to be fired (and not exclusively for his most recent white nationalist/far-right screed, but a long history of extremism masquerading as “mainstream paleocon”) as well as the other douche who got Jared Taylor, the most notorious eugenicist in the nation, to write a forward for him. FACTS HAVE A LIBERAL BIAS!
“Sounds a lot like how the SPLC conducts its own hit lists. However, the super capitalists at the SPLC rake in millions upon millions of dollars with their hit lists that they publish.”
~Yeah Chris, except the hate groups they actually DO committ violence and hate crimes to already marginalized minorities and DO DESERVE full justice. I’m sure if the perpetrators or groups were of any racial/ethnic makeup outside of all-European Caucasian male ensemble with some self-esteem and manhood issues you’d be all over yourself smearing them as monkeys and worse else…Its only the far-right dingbats making conspiracies that actually end up in widespread violence that is justified merely by the voices in their head. And anyone with any sense of objectivity, KNOW that…
on January 26th, 2012 at 11:16 am
these people are nothing but a bunch of ignorant idiots…they call other people marxist but i guess its all right for these right wing morons to behave in neo nazi activity.these far right deadbeats are exhibit a when it comes to the term hypocrisy….. neo nazi’s accusing other people of being commies….hilarious!…..are you listening jason smith!….you tell me what is better being a neo nazi or a commie which is the better of two evils.
on January 26th, 2012 at 11:17 am
Jason Smith – CREEP EXTRAORDINAIRE!!!!!!!!
on January 26th, 2012 at 11:25 am
It is not surprising to see left and right extremists converging to the same deplorable strategies. After all, terrorism is cheap and it works.
The obvious question is why the 99% of citizens should tolerate such behavior from the fringes of society.
Why?
A clarification is needed as well: the North American Animal Liberation Press Office (NAALPO) does not merely publish communiques from the underground, but actively incites to violence by celebrating, advertising and promoting their crimes, such as by offering “educational literature” on how to build your own firebomb.
on January 26th, 2012 at 11:26 am
Is Jason Smith a freaking caricature? Nobody can be that dumb, and I expect liars to be more careful. Also, if we upset him so much, why does he keep hanging around here?
on January 26th, 2012 at 11:39 am
I believe some do not know their history. The elite conservatives who brought down Wall Street in 1929 helped fund Hitler’s Nazi Party. Also funded the American Liberty League to implement the Hiterian policies in the United States with plans to oust or eliminate FDR. One was Bush’s grandfather. The ones today who call Libs Nazis are the very ones acting the part. Kill anyone who dares to disagree with the Hiterian policies, like the conservative Fascist Tea Party, Palin, Beck, Rush, Koch, Fox . Hate, Discrimination just like Hitler did, the KKK, far Right Christians Supremists whose predcessors were the Southern Baptist who killed whom ever they wish, murderers who hide behind God.
on January 26th, 2012 at 12:00 pm
Isn’t the SPLC just a fringe radical leftist hate organization with their own hate list ? It sure seems like it. The SPLC probably has the largest hit list than any other hate group.
BTY: Nationalist Socialist ( NAZIS ) and Communism are just two forms of socialism. Even Joseph Stalin said that Nazism was socialism, but Stalin said the Communism was a better form of socialism.
There are two types of socialist, nationalist and internationalist. NAZIS were nationalist while Communist were internationalist.
on January 26th, 2012 at 12:03 pm
Adding on to Tom’s list:
6. They were ferociously anti-gay, imprisoning and killing thousands of gay men.
7. They reintroduced Christian prayer into schools.
8. They were anti-abortion, at least when it came to gentile Germans.
on January 26th, 2012 at 1:11 pm
“Isn’t the SPLC just a fringe radical leftist hate organization with their own hate list ? It sure seems like it. The SPLC probably has the largest hit list than any other hate group.”
No, they are not. Please show us where the SPLC calls people targets.
“BTY: Nationalist Socialist ( NAZIS ) and Communism are just two forms of socialism.”
No they are not. National Socialism was just called socialism, because this was the only way a right-wing party could attract working class support in those days.
” Even Joseph Stalin said that Nazism was socialism, but Stalin said the Communism was a better form of socialism.
There are two types of socialist, nationalist and internationalist. NAZIS were nationalist while Communist were internationalist.”
Wrong. The Nazis “socialism” was nothing more than some state intervention on behalf of large industrial capitalists and peasant farmers, two factions which were hit hard by the economic crisis and have an inherent conflict with finance capital. After winning power the Nazis pretty much gave up on even appearing to be “socialist.”
Look up the history of any fascist regime, from Nazi Germany to Pinochet’s Chile, and you will see the same pattern. Economic policies are made to suit the richest capitalists, religion and idealism is promoted, the military is glorified, workers are denied the right to organize on their own and they are told that all classes must sacrifice for the nation(guess who sacrifices more), and so on.
Those who equate National Socialism with Communism are either relying on sophistry based on superficial features or they are just plain ignorant.
In an unrelated note, seeing as how Jason Smith was reduced to tears, I am overcome with pity and will no longer torment him.
on January 26th, 2012 at 1:21 pm
Jason Smith, if you are real and you believe what you wrote, then the country is in worse shape than I thought.
on January 26th, 2012 at 2:23 pm
I live in the South and know just how off the rails some of these poor people are. The election of President Obama and the very good chance that he will be elected again has completely short circuited what little mind they have. Some of them have gone from having Blacks sit in the Back of the Bus to seeing one sitting in the White House. That has just wrecked the ideals they were taught almost from birth. They blame anyone and everyone… it’s a conspiracy in their minds to further destroy everything. I didn’t know how to deal with it in the 60′s and I still don’t.
on January 26th, 2012 at 2:35 pm
Jason I don’t think you need to worry. You have to have a job before you can get fired. I’m sure that, since you don’t, being fired seems like the equivalent of being shot.
on January 26th, 2012 at 2:59 pm
It’s also funny to see them pretend to care about Jews as well. In reality, most of these people see Jews as liberal “thugs” and the only concern they have for the Jews is as bit players in their end-times prophesy play. Some Jews will convert, and the rest get destroyed for the crime of…being Jewish.
All in all, the site is an incredible display of ignorance and arrogance. And then there’s this: “Eliminating the planet of liberals one at a time” Now this is coming from the same lot that whines about how we need English as an official language. The motto means that there is an actual “planet of the liberals” which they are trying to eliminate.
Conclusion: Just another effort by conservatives to prove how ignorant and stupid they are. Mission accomplished.
on January 26th, 2012 at 3:32 pm
Ruslan your post was enlightening. I was wondering why Egypt was keeping their emergency laws in place for those engaged in “thuggery.”
on January 26th, 2012 at 8:31 pm
Wow, there’s a connection between Lenin and Lennon? Is there one between Groucho and Karl Marx?
on January 26th, 2012 at 9:08 pm
Ha ha ha, liberals have been doing it for years only worse. Hows it feel SUCKAS?
on January 26th, 2012 at 9:30 pm
“Everything must be different!” or “Alles muss anders sein!” was a slogan of the Nazi Party. It is also the heart’s desire of every Leftist since Karl Marx. Nazism was a deeply revolutionary creed, a fact that is always denied by the Left; but it’s true. Hitler and his criminal gang hated the rich, the capitalists, the Jews, the Christian Churches, and “the System”.
Brown Bolsheviks
It is very easy to miss complexities in the the politics of the past and thus draw wrong conclusions about them. To understand the politics of the past we need to set aside for a time our own way of looking at things and try to see how the people involved at the time saw it all. Doing so is an almost essential step if we wish to understand the similarities and differences between Nazism and Marxism/Leninism. The following excerpt from James P. O’Donnell’s THE BUNKER (1978, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, pp. 261-262) is instructive. O’Donnell is quoting Artur Axmann, the Nazi youth leader, recalling a conversation with Goebbels in the Hitler bunker on Tuesday, May 1, 1945, the same day Goebbels and his wife would kill themselves after she killed their children.
“Goebbels stood up to greet me. He soon launched into lively memories of our old street-fighting days in Berlin-Wedding, from nineteen twenty-eight to thirty-three. He recalled how we had clobbered the Berlin Communists and the Socialists into submission, to the tune of the “Horst Wessel” marching song, on their old home ground.
He said one of the great accomplishments of the Hitler regime had been to win the German workers over almost totally to the national cause. We had made patriots of the workers, he said, as the Kaiser had dismally failed to do. This, he kept repeating, had been one of the real triumphs of the movement. We Nazis were a non-Marxist yet revolutionary party, anticapitalist, antibourgeois, antireactionary….
Starch-collared men like Chancellor Heinrich Bruening had called us the “Brown Bolsheviks,” and their bourgeois instincts were not wrong.
It seems inconceivable to modern minds that just a few differences between two similar ideologies — Marxism and Nazism — could have been sufficient cause for great enmity between those two ideologies. But the differences concerned were important to the people involved at the time. Marxism was class-based and Nazism was nationally based but otherwise they were very similar. That’s what people said and thought at the time and that explains what they did and how they did it.
on January 26th, 2012 at 10:56 pm
I’m with Jason on this issue. The left have been responsible for almost all the terrorist violence in Europe since WWII – remember the Bader-Meinhof gang and the Red Brigades? Let’s not forget the left-wing murderers outside Europe, either – remember Sendero Luminoso (the Shining Path) to name but one example from the the world encompassing cornucopia of leftist so-called guerilla groups. Wherever one goes it’s always the left that teaches peace and practices violence and the current unholy alliance of the left with the violent forces of Islam is just one more example of the left’s atttraction to dictatorship of the state and domination of the people.
on January 26th, 2012 at 11:05 pm
A couple more items for me and Ian’s list about the Nazis being right-wing:
9) They got a lot of financial support from very successful, mainstream businessmen, especially in the last 2-3 years before they took power.
10. A leader of the Nazi’s left-wing, Otto Strasser left in 1930. His brother, gregor, who had similar beliefs and was also a leader of the Nazi left, was killed by Hitler’s men in 1934.
Tom
on January 27th, 2012 at 12:15 am
Marcia, thank you for taking a stand against the suffering of animals at our hands. You might like the classic song, “Set Your Chickens Free”, by Gilbert Shelton. It was also sung very well by Merle Haggard.
on January 27th, 2012 at 8:42 am
Mark,
Your post does an excellent job representing the six years you spent at school. Because really, who needs education after the fifth grade, right?
on January 27th, 2012 at 11:36 am
Apacherat: the argument that every revolution is “left-wing” is a wholly specious one. John MJ: your perception is most selective. Mr. Molloy: I can’t set my rooster free. A fox would eat him.
on January 27th, 2012 at 1:30 pm
““Everything must be different!” or “Alles muss anders sein!” was a slogan of the Nazi Party. It is also the heart’s desire of every Leftist since Karl Marx. Nazism was a deeply revolutionary creed, a fact that is always denied by the Left; but it’s true. Hitler and his criminal gang hated the rich, the capitalists, the Jews, the Christian Churches, and “the System”.”
Again, more ignorant sophistry. Nazism claimed to be revolutionary but you have to look at the actual outcome once it came to power. Indeed, there were some key Nazis who seemed to have a very class-based outlook, but they were dealt with in the purge known as the Night of Long Knives. This action proved to the aristocrats of the army that Hitler had no intention of social revolution.
Basically it boils down to this: The development of capitalism caused a lot of upheaval and resistance. One group of people, having gained a sense of class consciousness, wished to move to a more egalitarian society, taking bourgeois liberal values to a logical conclusion. These were the Marxists, the leftists. Other people romanticized about the feudal era and its aristocracy. They felt that capitalism was breaking down the natural order and it had to be stopped; they wanted to go back(in fact the purged “left-wing” Nazis kicked around the idea of “guild socialism”, something based on the Renaissance era).
The difference is that wherever leftists took control, they implemented revolutionary policies against the traditional hierarchies and systems, for better or for worse. By contrasts, the Nazis and other fascists reinforced those traditions.
“Wherever one goes it’s always the left that teaches peace and practices violence and the current unholy alliance of the left with the violent forces of Islam is just one more example of the left’s atttraction to dictatorship of the state and domination of the people.”
Please show us evidence of the link between leftists terrorists and leftists pacifists. I am not a pacifist, but I don’t believe they should bear our alleged iniquities. Also, Islamic extremism is by-definition RIGHT-WING.
on January 27th, 2012 at 2:39 pm
“Sounds a lot like how the SPLC conducts its own hit lists. However, the super capitalists at the SPLC rake in millions upon millions of dollars with their hit lists that they publish.”
Please show us the links of where SPLC has advocated killing people who do not disagree with them. This is the type of hit list the article is referring to. The right wing has hit lists, with radio personalities advocating the killing of people they disagree with calling by them liberals, socialists, elites, etc. The SPLC does not advocate violence against anyone.
You might also look at the history of Rawanda where radio announcers and media pundits convinced one group of the population to kill another group of citizens by using incendiary rhetoric. This resulted in the Rawandan genocide. If you are curious about how this happened you can watch the movie, “Hotel Rawanda.” You might find that educating yourself about the world around you will do more for your self esteem than spouting nonsense that has no basis in reality.
on January 27th, 2012 at 2:59 pm
Hey John MJ,
Care to explain the Italian, Turkish, and Greek ‘Strategies of Tension?’ These gave rise to some of the worst political terrorism in Post-War Europe. And they were sure as shooting committed by right-wing groups.
The RAF claimed to be leftist, and at first they were. Eventually they became nothing more than bank-robbers and kidnappers.
Once again, a noble attempt at the construction and destruction of a strawman. But you Righties are going to have to try harder than that!
(We on the center and left have got this thing called the historical record — do NOT confuse this with the Historical Dialectic — on our side. You might consider looking at it some time?)
Have at you!
on January 27th, 2012 at 3:44 pm
@Shadow Wolf: What’s the name of the website that praises the killing of cops?
on January 27th, 2012 at 6:18 pm
NAZI AMERICA, IS HERE…AMERICA…WE MUST WAKE UP!
on January 27th, 2012 at 6:24 pm
Sadly, I have had personal experience with family members and others that indicates to me your story is true. Those of the extreme Right Wing seem to be exceptionally concerned over thought and ideas which differs from theirs ! It seems sometimes to be pathological.
The subject of Anthropology seems to threaten them. I have been in sessions in the library with my students, assisting them with understanding evolution when others have interrupted the session challenging the theory while distracting my student from his or her own learning. A TA about to get her Masters in Anthropology has reported to me that she is frightened by the upsurge of radical fundamentalist religion on her University Campus including picture taking of her.
Oh, according to the right wing faithful, the subject of Anthropology is evil, and sadly a small person as myself is now viewed as deficient or evil due to my major Anthropology. Sadly,I can believe the targetiing of liberals:intimidation is an unreasoning coward’s tool
on January 28th, 2012 at 6:19 pm
Voltaire, Le Femme :
A coward’s tool is a comment full of ridicule, insults and name-calling signed with an anonymous user name.
on January 28th, 2012 at 9:49 pm
The best thing to do with trolls such as jason smith is to talk around them and ignore what they write. Nothing gets such them more upset than being ignored.
As far as the article itself, we should keep in mind that Gabrielle Giffords resigned a few days ago. What happened to her and others at the constituency event in Tucson over a year ago can happen again as a result of web sites such as TOO.
As far as the link between Karl & Groucho Marx, I believe there is one: Two economists were at a nudist camp. One says to the other, “Read Marx lately?” The other replies, “Yeah, it’s these wicker chairs.”
on January 29th, 2012 at 12:58 pm
The governor of our State, (p)Rick S(n)ott, has officially declared anthropology a discipline unworthy of financial support.
on January 29th, 2012 at 3:08 pm
Norio, a “troll” is someone who deliberately angers people. Jason Smith and many of the other WNs who drop in here(e.g. Woland) cannot rightly be considered trolls because rather than get people angry, they merely make a laughing stock of themselves. As a veteran troll, I do not wish to be equated with such failures.
on January 29th, 2012 at 4:07 pm
Hi Ruslan, I stand corrected. I am not a veteran of the SPLS blogs so I am ignorant of past history with WNs (does that stand for “white nationalists”?). I guess I thought of them as trolls because they get people off subject and responding to their idiotic comments rather than writing about what is important. I still think the best response is to write around them, but that is my own personal perspective. Thanks.
on January 29th, 2012 at 6:17 pm
Actually Aron, you don’t have the historical record on your side with respect to the so-called ‘strategies of tension’ (“strategia della tensione”). What you have is a great big whispered conspiracy theory invented by the left which alleges that the usual bogeyman for the left, the US of A, was behind a campaign to tar the left wing with an image of violence by using supposedly right-wing groups to supposedly conduct violent operations against unarmed civilians whilst at the same time left-wing groups actually were killing unarmed civilians and therefore quite effectively ruining their own reputation without the need for mad conspiracy theories.
It was primarily members and international supporters of the Italian Communist Party who invented and popularized the term ‘strategy of tension’. They meant to draw attention to the crimes of the Italian Right and Far-Right parties who were allegedly supported by the foreign belligerents. It has been alleged that Carlo Digillio’s groups pursued a campaign of violence to discredit the left – however, that is unprovable as is the allegation that the left was behind the violence or that the mafia was in some way involved.
It’s turned out to be impossible to actually prove anything but I’ll go with Occam’s razor – the simplest explanation is the one most likely to be true – and therefore the most likely truth is that most, if not all, of the violence was committed by those on the left and that, as usual, there is no need for complicated conspiracy theories such as the ‘strategies of tension’ which, in its ingenuity, is on a par with the left’s other great invention: that people are too stupid to take care of themselves and need to helped to make the ‘correct’ decisions – in other words, the decisions that the left thinks are the correct ones.
on January 29th, 2012 at 7:31 pm
Reynardine,
I went to UF in Gainesville. Graduated two years ago. The ‘Great De-Well Rounding’ if education in the state university system had started quite some time before.
I suggest you get out of the F State before things get even worse….
(Come back, Charlie Christ!)
on January 29th, 2012 at 9:44 pm
Well I think Woland tries to troll, but he fails miserably and gets trolled, so you were partially right anyway. And yeah, WN stands for white nationalists. I often use their terms because they love saying things like “But I’m not a neo-Nazi/white supremacist, I’m a white nationalist!” So my response is to call them what they want, and then ridicule them until they are a smoking crater.
on January 30th, 2012 at 1:44 am
Mr. MJ, perhaps instead of “strategy of tension” you prefer the more official-sounding Operation Gladio, the history of which is well known. More information about Gladio and the connection between it and right-wing violence and paramilitary gangs continues to come out every year, particularly in Turkey.
on January 30th, 2012 at 11:17 pm
Good grief, that old canard again – the supposed ‘Operation Gladio’ has about as much validity as the so-called ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’, in other words: none. It’s a wonderful fictional conspiracy theory whipped up by left-wing so-called ‘victims’ to distract attention from their own violent behaviours and attempts to subvert legitimate democratic government.
The story just grows and grows with every credulous person who is taken in by some publicity seeking weirdo’s story or left-wing propagandist’s carefully constructed lie. With no hard evidence and no reputable testimony as to its existence people on the left have felt free to embroider this conspiracy theory in any way they saw, and see, fit and the gullible, regrettably, keep falling for it.
Personally, I prefer to read good fiction and not that sort of risible garbage.
on January 31st, 2012 at 11:57 am
Here’s a tip John. Before you dismiss something you’ve never heard of off hand(yes, I know you’ve never heard of it),you might want to try Googling it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
Congratulations! You’ve exposed your own ignorance for all of us to see.
on January 31st, 2012 at 9:18 pm
Ruslan, The article you link to at Wikipedia is one that I am well aware of, and have so been for some time. It is, not to put too fine a point on it, a load of unmitigated rubbish riddled with factual inaccuracies and unprovable allegation and assertions. At the very top of the article the Wikipedia moderators state quite clearly that “the article has multiple issues” and that “its factual accuracy is disputed” and that “its neutrality is disputed”.
In short, the Wikipedia article – just like everything else written on this subject – is nothing more than a fiction. Its just a myth, yet another of the countless conspiracy theories abroad on the internet today. Even small-town librarians know enough to dump this sort of stuff in the waste-paper bin rather than let it onto the shelves.
Despite a plethora of freedom of information requests in many different countries under manifold pieces of legislation not one single document has been discovered that backs up this weird thesis. Everything ever written about this peculiar conspiracy theory is nothing more then press speculation by wild-eyed journalists keen to tar the right with any brushfull of muck that they can and they are occassionaly inspired by left-wing propaganda merchants such as you.
If you truly believe that governments throughout the free world have kept a lid on this alleged rint-wing plot for over sixty years, have nurtured it, funded it and been dominated by it for over sixty years, then I think that you should go back to college and learn about how to recense documents and detect historical fact from historical fiction.
on February 1st, 2012 at 8:16 am
MJ, you can continue to cry and pretend that all these parliamentary inquires, documents, testimonies, etc. are a big “fiction” as you say, but it doesn’t change anything. You have no credentials yourself, and no refutation other than “It’s all a big lie!”
Come back when you have something.
on February 1st, 2012 at 12:23 pm
There have been no parliamentary enquiries, documents or reputable testimonies from believable, reputable, university based and trained historians, Ruslan, and there never have been so please stop trying to invent evidence. There simply is no evidence of any sort to back up the conspiracy theory which you seek to pass of as fact. Such things are just figments of your imagination and the fevered maunderings of left-wing conspiracy theorists. You would love them to exist so therefore you invent them.
Next you’ll be telling me that we are really ruled by lizards from another planet that disguise themselves to look like humans. Honestly, the things some people will believe in never fails to astonish me.
What you posit, on absolutely no credible evidence at all, is just another extension of the old ‘New World Order’ conspiracy theory
( see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N.....onspiracy) and also the completely loony site, which you will probably believe is true, at: http://educate-yourself.org/nwo/ )
and it comes perilously close to the discredited idea of ‘dominionism’ as beloved of conspiracy theorists just like you everywhere.
What you’re short of, what anybody who believes in any silly conspiracy theory like this one is short of, is good, hard, reputable evidence from renowned and trustworthy academic sources to back it up.
Your continued assertions that this ridiculous conspiracy theory is true, when palpably it isn’t, is very clever and very typical of the way people like you operate. What you are doing is asking me to disprove a lie which you maintain to be a fact and that, as any logician knows, is an almost impossible thing to do. Therefore you will continue to maintain that the lie is true until one of two things happens: either I leave in disgust and you claim to have won the argument or you claim to have won the argument anyway and leave whilst asserting that you cannot continue to speak to someone like me who is obviously stupid (you came perilously near that position in your last post). Either way, you will have avoided actually addressing the complete lunacy which is involved in your favourite conspiracy theory which is precisely, of course, what people like you on the left always do.
In your own words: “Come back when you have something.”
on February 1st, 2012 at 1:49 pm
MJ,
Wait a moment here. Now you’re claiming that ‘Dominionism’ doesn’t exist? Uhm… Perhaps you’re not familiar with current events?
And before you say anything, I don’t care how eloquent you are, or that you are somehow associated with the ‘New English Review,’ whatever that is. Operation Gladio and the ‘Years of Lead’ did exist. The bombings in Florence are proof enough.
If you are the intellectual that you claim to be, why would you so readily dismiss the opposition out of hand? Whenever I face opponents supporting some ridiculous conspiracy or another (chemtrails, FEMA camps, the non-existence of human originated climate change, etc.) I always read up on them. And there is always at least even the tiniest hint of truth to what they are saying. It may be misinterpreted, but it is still there.
Yet we aren’t even worth your time or attention. I’m sure your professors would be MOST proud of you.
on February 1st, 2012 at 2:03 pm
Hold on,
After reading your biographical blurb at Mr Joyce, I saw you are not, in fact, an intellectual. You’re a businessman. And your interest lies in philosophy. Not exactly the person I would turn to for twentieth-century politics.
A decent attempt at credibility. But a failure, nonetheless. Have fun with Artemis and Granny Weatherwax.
on February 1st, 2012 at 10:48 pm
“There have been no parliamentary enquiries, documents or reputable testimonies from believable, reputable, university based and trained historians, Ruslan, and there never have been so please stop trying to invent evidence. ”
Really? What’s this then: “Christian Democrat Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti publicly recognized the existence of Gladio on October 24, 1990. Andreotti spoke of a “structure of information, response and safeguard”, with arms caches and reserve officers. He gave to the Commissione Stragi, the parliamentary commission led by senator Giovanni Pellegrino in charge of investigations on bombings committed during the Years Of Lead in Italy, a list of 622 civilians who according to him were part of Gladio.”
“2000 Parliamentary report: a “strategy of tension”
In 2000, a Parliament Commission report from the “Gruppo Democratici di Sinistra l’Ulivo” concluded that the strategy of tension had been supported by the United States to “stop the PCI, and to a certain degree also the PSI, from reaching executive power in the country”. A 2000 Senate report, stated that “Those massacres, those bombs, those military actions had been organized or promoted or supported by men inside Italian state institutions and, as has been discovered more recently, by men linked to the structures of United States intelligence.” According to The Guardian, “The report [claimed] that US intelligence agents were informed in advance about several rightwing terrorist bombings, including the December 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan and the Piazza della Loggia bombing in Brescia five years later, but did nothing to alert the Italian authorities or to prevent the attacks from taking place. It also [alleged] that Pino Rauti [current leader of the MSI Fiamma-Tricolore party], a journalist and founder of the far-right Ordine Nuovo (new order) subversive organisation, received regular funding from a press officer at the US embassy in Rome. ‘So even before the ‘stabilising’ plans that Atlantic circles had prepared for Italy became operational through the bombings, one of the leading members of the subversive right was literally in the pay of the American embassy in Rome,’ the report says.”
I thought there weren’t any parliamentary inquiries, commissions, etc. And that’s just in Italy, BTW.
Keep grasping at those straws.
on February 9th, 2012 at 11:12 am
What I found noteworthy about TOO’s “hit list” is how incomplete it is. As someone who is a progressive/leftist activist and works with many such groups, I can state that TOO’s list is remarkably lacking. They clearly do not know much about the political left.
on February 9th, 2012 at 11:30 am
How can they hate Liberals, but love Jesus? Jesus was the original Liberal. Disconnet much?
on February 9th, 2012 at 11:55 am
Celiene,
It’s certainly possible. Everyone knows that Jesus of Nazareth HATED the poor. He was even known to burn down their hovels just for his own entertainment.
on February 9th, 2012 at 12:20 pm
It seems that the art of debate has been reduced to extreme hatred and the violence flowing therefrom. Political debate of this ilk will result in anarchy. This is as disfunctional as it is ridiculous. American education has failed. The future of life in the USA appears to be in question !! Ignorance is now glorified as religious philosophy. The LIBERAL ARTS education that was destroyed by Corporate skill centered education, ignored the human values and traditions upon which the west was founded. And it simplified everything down to the temple of corporate profit, dis-allowing any value as equal or superior.
on February 9th, 2012 at 5:31 pm
These folks would have KILLED our founding Fathers who weren’t just Liberal, they were RADICALLY so. The Right is without leadership and the Southern/Western Wing of the Republican Party is without anchor right now. When you are in that position hate and division is all you have. Hating Liberals is about as Un-American as it can get.
on February 10th, 2012 at 2:14 pm
Hmm, John MJ has certainly gone quiet now.
on August 6th, 2012 at 9:57 pm
My lord. You people are crazy. At one point in my life, I actually thought that the Southern Poverty Law Center did meaningful work and refrained from political bias. It’s become obvious to me that this is not and has never been the case. This is as slanted of an organization as I have seen, unfairly characterizing right-wing groups as extremist and even going so far as to label others as “hate-groups.” SPLC loses its credibility when it targets groups like Focus on the Family and other faith-based institutions due to their differing views on hotly contested issues of morality