|
Welcome to The People's Free Republic
by Edgar Steele
Welcome to The People's Free Republic -- Your papers, please...
Good morning, fellow lemmings --
You hear it all the time. Thank goodness for the Internet, because "they" haven't figured
out how to censor it yet. Yep. The morning paper long ago lost its independence to its
advertisers, then gradually became totally taken over and owned by "them," but nobody owns
the Internet.
Yep. Cant trust Dan Rather -- even Fox News has an agenda, what with their now trying to
break into that China market and all, but on the wild and woolly Internet you get it all,
raw and uncensored. Yep. Good old Internet. Yep.
Nope. While we werent looking, "they" took it over with nary a shot being fired. About the
only thing now left on the Internet that really is free of censorship is person-to-person
email, and they're busy working on that, what with Echelon and all.
We all already know about people getting shut down by their ISP for being intolerant, for
indulging in "hate speech," or for providing a venue for excessively politically incorrect
types.
"Hey, what about all those great forums, like Free Republic?" you say. The Peoples Free
Republic is more like it. "They" are in there, monitoring every single thread and, like
the good little worker bees that they are, ensuring that every discussion and debate is
free of politically incorrect thinking. Clean, clean, clean. Dust, dust, dust. A
political commissar's work is never done, you know.
If you dont believe me, watch this articles thread get pounded to a pulp just as soon as
the word gets out that I have posted it to Free Republic, particularly since I will
do so under my real name. The flaming will get so out of control that Free
Republic's owner and manager, Jim Robinson, likely will feel compelled to pull it off
line. However, Im also sending this around to my email lists and a bunch of list managers
who might find it interesting enough to post to their members and that way will get the
word out, anyway.
Freepers (what denizens of The People's Free Republic call themselves) like to think that
they occupy a special niche in cyberspace. They imagine that all the congresscritters are
on line with them every night, just listening to their pearls and molding legislation to
suit their mood. Maybe they are. In fact, based on results, they probably are. But,
then, those poor souls lost their way long ago, anyway (otherwise, they just wouldn't have
been allowed to take office, you see).
Let me get this in about Jim Robinson right now. I dont know much about him, but I get
that he is basically a good man. I'm going to illustrate this article with the case
history of a thread that I waded into, strictly as a sort of lab experiment. "They" got
Jim to pull that thread (two, actually, since it got broken in two once it grew too
large), but he listened to my argument for keeping it and then put it back online, albeit
with a few postings deleted here and there. If Jim were really one of "them," he wouldn't
have given me the time of day, preferring instead merely to ban me from TPFR altogether
(which he might just have to do after they get through with him on this article).
I have been watching a whole string of articles posted to TPFR on the subject of JoAnn
McGuckin and family. Because I had a brief fling with JoAnn, and have continued to speak
out on her case, my name came up with some regularity in the posted comments, even though
the articles themselves generally stopped mentioning me long ago. And there was a
familiarly nasty tone to some of the comments, one that I recognized from other Internet
venues.
Now, normally, I stay out of such dustups, knowing full well that engaging "them" when they
are busy rewriting history and merrily shoving things toward the memory hole only results
in their redoubling their already-considerable efforts, again and again, until one simply
gives up from sheer exhaustion.
This time, however, I wanted them to lash out in their ever-so predictable fashion because
I wanted fodder for the very article phosphorescing out at you right now. I wanted a case
history to show you as proof for my proposition that the Internet was taken over a while
ago by "them" and now is almost as free of original thought as, well, network TV. They did
not disappoint me.
I only wish that the still-posted threads had all the original posts for you to read,
because some of them were so over the top that you simply wouldn't believe me if I quoted
them here. You can find my "lab experiment" threads for yourself here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b4145396355.htm
[Removed from server -- Ed.]
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b42ad1d6b18.htm
[Also removed by Gunga Jim.]
If you really want the originals, however, I have copies of the entire threads just as they
were before they were cleansed. They really do make interesting reading. Email me and I'll
send them, if you like.
Okay, I admit it, I provoked "them" and then started openly laughing at them while directly
pointing out what they were doing. Then I belittled their intellectual acumen, which you
simply don't do, of course. As Robinson said about one of them in a private email to
me: "I've never seen her so angry."
The leftist approach to conservative public speakers is now familiar to almost everyone:
get the speech canceled altogether, or else picket, call names, shout out insults and
attempt to get the speaker to engage the hecklers, then drown out the speaker in the
resultant uproar, trying at every turn to get the presentation summarily ended.
Nevernevernever ever actually engage the speaker on whatever issue is being presented, but
later claim that the speaker avoided all legitimate questions and was, in fact, a Nazi in
drag all during his childhood. It often works pretty well.
The Internet really is not much different from public meetings, provided "they" are given
the same access to the audience that a speaker has drummed up. That's where these forums
come in, of course. "They" didn't even have to dream up new techniques, though some have
been evolving, nonetheless.
"They" assign certain of their members to cruise certain forums to keep tabs and maintain
order. Part of their assignment simply is to update their already incredible database of
politically-incorrect individuals in America. Part of their assignment is to engage and
divert whenever discussions become too real and too close to the truth about what is really
going on.
Often, they cruise in pairs, sometimes sharing the same "handle," with one person the main
worker bee who calls in his or her handler when a fish takes their bait, thereby making it
appear as though the same person has been speaking all along. Always, the approach is the
same: shout the speaker down with namecalling and irrelevant questions; always ignore the
answer and keep going for the jugular; draw from that incredible database sufficient
information to provide the illusion, if not the reality, of mud to be flung at the speaker;
never engage directly on the issues; always claim the speaker isn't answering questions and
is avoiding the real issues; always call the most derogatory names possible; when necessary,
make it up. When things get too hot, either because too much truth has gotten out or because
they have shown too much of their true nature, demand that the forum moderator step in and
wipe the whole discussion off the board (down the memory hole, as George Orwell would have
put it, of course). Threaten litigation, needs be. Call them racists...always call them
racists, that is the magic incantation, that and "anti-Semitic," of course.
I've become proficient at spotting these people because I already inhabited the Internet
before they got my profile established in their database. I know what it was like before,
you see. It was very different for me then, as I was just one of the many lemmings, though
I knew even then that there were certain forbidden topics (you know the ones I'm talking
about, of course).
Then, literally overnight, things changed. I agreed to represent Richard Butler and the
Aryan Nations in the trumped-up personal injury lawsuit brought by Morris Dees and the
so-called Southern Poverty Law Center. I didn't represent the real perps, who were
guilty as sin.
Now, you should know that I have been handling personal injury cases for a long, long time,
almost always as the plaintiff's lawyer. Trust me when I tell you that I could try one in
my sleep. Richard Butler was sued derivately; that is, Dees argued, Butler was guilty
because of his relationship with the perps, who were inescapably guilty. Problem is, I
have never in my career been able to make a case stick against someone as derivatively
remote from a personal injury "tort," as it is called, as was Richard Butler. Even so, I
saw the case as an uphill climb due to the tremendous unpopularity of my new clients, but
one that I felt I could win. I should have won it, too. Anybody who sat through that
trial with us would likely agree with my sentiment. Butler was found liable only because
they didn't like him. A runaway jury, it is called. O.J. Simpson got one, too, only it
ran the other direction.
Regardless, from the first day that I filed papers, formally beginning my representation of
Richard Butler, my Internet world changed. Suddenly I was getting hate email from around
the world. The local papers did their best to make it appear that I was a Nazi, too,
making all manner of outlandish allegations in an attempt to link me with every politically
undesirable sort in the area (and this area, Northern Idaho, has far more than its share, I
might add). The assembling of my dossier had begun with a vengeance.
Mind you, I had never had a politically incorrect client before Butler. I've had a couple
of modest consultations with some since then, and I have had some extensive email
correspondence with a few, but I have yet to take on even one more case with anybody
controversial, other than JoAnn McGuckin. Frankly, when I first took on her case, before
it developed its eventual media profile, I saw her merely as a poor neighbor caught up in
the county's bureaucratic machinery. Since then, she has been portrayed, variously, as
criminally neglectful of her children, crazy as a loon, anti-government and the possessor
of a bad haircut, anything but the reality, mind you. I certainly never saw anything very
politically incorrect about her.
Nor have I ever belonged to anything more controversial than the Libertarian Party, though
I have subscribed to some pretty outre periodicals in my time. I read a lot, and across
an exceptionally broad wavelength, therefore it is predictable that my mailbox might
collect some strange material, stranger even than the weekly copy of Time
magazine.
So, they had a hard time getting a handle on me, because I just didn't fit their mold.
Nobody ever believed me when I said I took the case because I saw it as a First-Amendment
case, which I had been hankering to take on here in my dotage. (You see, they wanted to
bankrupt Butler for what he thought and said, not for that two-bit PI case in which two
rather questionable plaintiffs ended up with not one penny of medical bills, but got a $6.3
million verdict, anyway. If that outlandish verdict alone doesn't tell you what was
really going on, then nothing I can say will make sense to you, anyway.) So, they just
made it up.
Overnight, I became a Nazi. And, that's the way it is today. I don't think I saw a single
print article concerning things McGuckin which mentioned my name without the appendage
"former lawyer for the Aryan Nations." At least, that part is true, but the implication
certainly isn't. Let me say this once again: I represented the Aryan Nations, I didn't
join it.
Therefore, in my lab experiment thread (especially the unexpurgated version) you will find all manner of reference to me as a Nazi and variations thereon. Even so, you might ask, why would they continue with such a full-court press? Because I might do it again, that's why. Because I might actually be a threat to them again in the future, and they simply cannot allow that. Better nip this guy in the bud.
You know what? They're right. Of course, it's a self-fullfilling prophecy because without
their ongoing campaign of harassment and deceit I likely would have gone back to my humdrum,
middle-class existence and you never would have heard from me again. Witness this article,
itself. Witness a whole string of articles I have now written. Witness a book or two with
which I am doodling and likely will someday complete. Witness the fact that I am now
actually looking forward to my next anti-establishment case, a case I would have rejected
out of hand if they hadn't made of me what you see today. Not likely now, though, White
boy. You're going to have me to kick around for quite some time to come.
But, I digress. Back to the main thrust of this little essay: that the Internet has been
overrun by the cultural communists and is now almost as firmly in their grip as all
mainstream media have been for as long as most anybody can remember. Read the thread I
cited above and consider what I have said. Why would they have carried on the way they
did, if what I say is not true? How did they pull up all that stuff on me so effortlessly
(note that the entire thread encompassed not more than 24 hours, and over a holiday, at
that)? Why did they invest so much effort in discrediting me? Why? If I am so
insignificant, so pointless, so shiftless, then how come I get so much attention from
them?
And read the thread as though it is a public-speaking engagement, with them heckling from
the audience. It will seem much more familiar to you then. Watch my commentary, because
I tell at every turn, right to their faces, exactly what it is that they are doing.
Keep in mind that I have seen these people before (maybe not these particular jackals, but
people charged with the same job, with the same training and with the same database access).
For example, a couple of weeks ago, out of the blue some guy I had never heard of sent me a
snippet from some skinhead forum that I also had never heard of, wherein a prominent racist
of our time, Tom Metzger, had just maligned me. Metzger was responding to a posting by
that same guy, a posting taken out of context from one of my articles, which appeared to
denigrate Richard Butler. In context, the posting meant quite another thing, of course,
but that got lost in the shuffle. Essentially, this guy had posted the comment with a
smirk, saying I wasn't enough of a Nazi. Metzger piled on.
Now, I didn't have enough sense to stay out of it, but then I never have claimed to have
an excessive amount of sense. I felt compelled to point out that, while I certainly wasn't
a Nazi and wasn't even a racist, I had no ill feelings for Richard Butler. Probably not
the brightest thing to be saying in the midst of a bunch of racist skinheads, I now realize.
All hell broke loose. Let's just say that Tom Metzger and I are not destined to be
drinking buddies.
Meanwhile, this guy is over in the corner, giggling, all the while throwing gasoline on the
fire that he started in the first place. I started a direct email dialogue with him,
designed at least to show him the error of his ways. All for naught, I soon learned,
though I detected a significant change in the level of intelligence on the other side at
one point. That was after I posted the same detailed response to two different forums, one
being to this guy among the skinheads mentioned and the other being a supposedly conservative
forum wherein a lady was then excoriating me for being (what else?) a Nazi. I introduced
the two of them to each other and suggested they continue their dialogue without me -- the
"Nazi" arguing that I'm not a Nazi and the "conservative" arguing that I was, asking only
that they let me know who won. The guy started off his new attack by complimenting me on
my adroit handling of both irritants at once, then continued the barrage, albeit at a
higher intellectual level. I finally gave up when it became clear that he was not
interested in a rational discussion. On a hunch, I asked around and someone had the
entire dialogue traced, only to discover that the guy was actually two different people,
one on the left coast and the second, the apparent "handler," on Manhattan's East Side, on
44th Street.
Picture a light bulb going on over my head. "Here's a new twist," said I. Of course,
there really is nothing new under the sun. For years now, it has been common for "them" to
have undercover agents infiltrate all skinhead organizations and serve as troublemakers.
Why should it be any different in the on-line forums? Pose as one of them, add to the
database, divide and conquer.
I had pretty much learned this lesson before, from prior forays into one on-line forum or
another. About the only thing that works anymore is these email list mailings where you
don't allow access to your audience by these poseurs.
So, give up the argument about how they're trying to take over the Internet, everybody.
They already did. As always, we didn't even notice.
EDGAR STEELE
|