I had the timerity to point out inaccurate reporting in a diary written by a member who can be considered a member of the “Zionist” lobby on Kos. He claimed records released which included Nazi camp records would silence Holocaust deniers. I pointed out a couple of matter that meant I though that this was over optimistic and that any records would only reduce the range of estimates of deaths.
Of course this they took to be a Holocaust denial, presumably in an attempt to silence someone they see as anti-Israeli and therefore by extension anti-semitic. The usual tactics of character assassination by selective quotes, invented references etc are being employed by the usual suspects.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/16/62951/6424
The comments are slipping in and out of hidden status so I will reproduce the discussion, with apologies for the space used (and the spacing not coming out, will try to fix it later)
[UPDATE: Now removed – see below re edits and a fuller exposition of the tactics used as a long response to a post]
on dailykos is needed. Over on these other blogs, it’s amazing how many of us have been banned, and yet there’s not a sound about this at alternet, commondreams.org, or other alternative media.
I’ve been banned from DKos not due to my progressivism, but because I am relatively conservative by DKos standards. Of course, to my friends I am a rabid progressive wacko, but not in the uber-rabid world of DKos, in which ANY quibble in the righteousness of various wacko positions is used to brand you a rightwing troll.
The whole troll ratings thing is a huge damper on free speech and a conformity club, which is gradually making DKos a selective group of fairly homogeneous moderate progressives.
Needless to say, I won’t be attending YearlyKos.
to the ever increasing club! You are in good company.
Google “left gatekeepers”
http://www.globalresearch.ca
http://www.augustreview.com
http://www.projectcensored.org
Hey, I’m not really anti anything but in five minutes of conversation ten people would label me ten different things. Others decide who you are, not you.
Curious phenomena it is.
I was banned 3 times, once for disagreeing with the LWCW (left wing conventional wisdom) on illegal immigration, once for disagreeing about gay marriage, and once for disagreeing about impeachment.
I’ll tell you about another practice which frosts my pumpkin big-time: Morons on DKos keep track of posts that they disagree, and maybe 18 months after you say something, they pull it out and drop it on you. I used a LWCW-defined evil term and was troll rated for protesting the troll rating.
So, fuck the fools on DKos.
The thing that I find so amazing is that I first heard of DKos from Sam Seder on Air America. If he posted his opinions about I/P issues on the site he would also get banned.
for the email with the MIDI file of “The Exodus” to arrive…
I am about 1/2 way through the second book. Book 1 is about 800 pages, 100 endnotes. Book 2 is about 1000 pages, 125 endnotes. I’m at about 450, where the winter of 1941, when Germany is mired in muck in Russia is discussed.
About the Holocaust:
But on the holocaust itself, I haven’t gotten to. I can report one important idea from the book: The author discusses, on almost every page, the idea of “working toward the Fuhrer.” Essentially this means that you do what the Fuhrer would approve of without his approval. The 3rd Reich was, according to Kershaw, incredibly badly managed, with little central control through the war. So, I don’t think that Hitler ever signed off on a lot of stuff. There was a HUGE amount of voluntary, Babbitt-like jew hatred during the war. People used the Jew as a scapegoat, and a huge amount of collective angst was expiated upon the stereotype of the jew.
Certainly, also, early in the war, the “mentally deficient” were killed by order of either Hitler or someone else very high up, and this was deliberate and very clearly planned.
So, I’m not going to contradict you. I do suggest that anyone who has an interest in WWII and the rise of fascism will learn from these books. I have found them to be very interesting, but of course they are quite long and with an incredible amount of detail.
AntiSemitism and the Holocaust were real. That cannot be doubted. However, for right wing Zionist apologists, to use antiSemitism or the Holocaust as a justification or apology for the atrocities Israel has committed against the Palestinian people while they attempt to complete the colonization of their lands simply diminishes these realities.
If people express doubts about them, it is only because antiSemitism and the Holocaust have been dragged through the dirt by these lying right wing Zionist propagandists.
The Shoah is the Israeli political device which is pulled out to justify all sorts of dreadful policies.
It’s too confusing to read, because all the posts run together. Edit this a little, please.
From what I rather, Londonbear, you are not very experienced at getting youself banned. Being an expert, I happily offer my services. I know all of the key words, but first you have to get yourself listed, so that the right wing Zionists begin to keep a dossier on you. It will not work unless you make statements contradicting Israeli propaganda. So work on that first. Then when you think you are ready, send me an email. I’ll get you banned in no time at all.
shergald
The experienced one.
I don’t think the holocaust issue should be conflated with being pro-palestinian. They are entirely different issues.
Yet that is precisely the groupthink. If you express pro-Palestinian views or criticize actions by the Israeli government therefore you must be anti-semitic. This disqualifies you from commenting on the Holocaust. You can also be anti-semitic if YOU use “Holocaust” instead of “Shoa” as this denies the Jewish nature of the suffering.
for lack of paragraphs.
just kidding. but if it makes you feel better i can ban you from skippy.
At Daily Kos, and posting as “another American,” I have taken heat for uprating your comments in that diary. I also defended you against the erroneous accusation of Holocaust Denial.
But, IMHO, you misunderstand the response to your DKos comments. IMHO, the comments have an unnecessarily hostile tone and, in one key place, used a word, “agenda,” that, in context, was susceptible to an unfortunate meaning. Accordingly, I would not ordinarily have recommended them. I did uprate, however, because I thought, and still think, they were far from troll-worthy.
What disturbs me about your current diary, and with others of its ilk, as well as some of the comments criticizing you over at DKos, is the unwillingness or inability to start with the working presumption that we are engaged in a good faith disagreement.
In particular, it is false and inflammatory to suggest that you were responding to a “diary written by the ‘Zionist’ lobby on Kos.” You were responding to a diary written by one member of DKos, a member with a record of interest in the Shoah (Holocaust).
Many thanks – the uprates have taken me out of autoban so I have deleted the cut and paste as it should no longer be needed. It was done in a bit of a rush as I had intended to go and get some food in. Still a day with a bowl of porridge and a lot of finger exercise should help the diet.
I have also changed the wording a bit. I do have a bit of a history with this particular Kos member and actually was attempting to be a) concillatory after earlier “flame wars” and b) make some comments about the story which I still consider a very poor piece of journalism. Instead I was jumped on which annoyed me greatly. I also opened a thread of my own in the hopes that the flame fest that was starting would be diverted there.
I can understand the problem of misreading an accidental use of “agenda” and it could have been better worded. Indeed, you will see that I have attempted to come to an accommodation with another poster on the same thread who I also clash with regularly. Despite this and making a gesture towards the diarist, he re-abused me and continued his attack.
Like you I have uprated posters including Shergald with who I have problems with their language or posts (sorry S and I am already on their little list) but who are, in my opinion, being attacked for their opinions rather than their words. Also like you I have been attacked for doing this. Unlike you I have just gotten thoroughly pissed off with their tactics which strongly remind me of the ways in which the BBC reporter was attacked by the Church of Scientology.
They actually (and by “they” I mean an easily identifiable group of between 12 and 18) seem to have a menu of tactics to intimidate users expressing pro-Palestinian views or any critical of Israel.
The first is to use the “you criticise Israel, Israel is a Jewish state therefore you are anti-semitic” meme. This frightens off many but it has become less effective as sentiment towards Israel lessened last year with the attacks on Lebanon and the Gaza strip. A variation on this is still used and is along the line “you blame the problems of the Palestinians on Israel therefore you are anti-semetic”.
The second is to trawl your comments for items to selectively quote or quote out of context to use against you, again with accusations of anti-semetism. See Dataguy’s comment about this. When you eventually lose your temper with the tactic, any immoderate comments are also used against you.
A further harassing tactic was to delete all the tags and replace them with “Troll diary”. They have now been warned off this. Also effectively banned is their troll rate swarms as there was a 5 a day limit imposed. They have replaced it with mutual uprating of any and all comments by another in the “gang” effectively avoiding each other losing TU status and keeping their abilities to troll rate and trawl the hidden comments for attack material.
One of the latest is to challenge the veracity of your sources. One recently objected to somebody quoting Hanan Ashwari and then quoted a paid shrill for Israel who was formerly an MEP and now runs a “Euro-AIPAC” organisation that arranges “educational” trips to Israel for MEPs. I have actually had a report from a World Bank expert group challenged apparently on the basis of the WB being anti-Israeli.
All of this is to intentionally start a flame war to shut down the debate on the substance of the diary and to put people off reading. In this they have to some extent suceeded but still they mount their attacks just in case anybody has failed to get the message. The most recent activity appears to have the intention of going further – to get the whole topic banned on the grounds that it “will not get Democrats elected”. To achieve this they are initiating these flame wars to get the Front Pagers throughly pissed off.
Quite ironically, by starting the flame war against me, they have subverted a diary by “one of their own” in exactly the same way that they have been subverting I/P diaries. I would be enjoying the schadenfreude at the tactic backfiring and the squeals about it if it were not that there was a proper discussion of archives that could have been in place of the flame wars.
Opps, I should have read down to your comment before I posted mine…
But this….”The most recent activity appears to have the intention of going further – to get the whole topic banned on the grounds that it “will not get Democrats elected”. To achieve this they are initiating these flame wars to get the Front Pagers throughly pissed off.”….is exactly what I was talking about seeing on there a long time ago in my comment. Pretty obvious where it was headed. I guess they think we all slept thru our junior courses in Propaganda 101.
If a disinterested reader (does one exist?) were to sample the I-P threads on Daily Kos, I think she would find that sympathizers (partisans?) of both sides have engaged in both troll-rating and uprating on political grounds, as well as personal abuse. IMHO, the “pro-Palestinian” side has been, to put it mildly, no less so engaged then the “pro-Israel” side. And among the most egregious of these was Shergald.
Perhaps there is something inherent in the medium that leads people to write and behave in ways that they would be much less likely to do in direct conversation.
Finally, I question the prevalence, at least at Daily Kos, of what you call “the ‘you criticise Israel, Israel is a Jewish state therefore you are anti-semitic’ meme.” While I do not claim to have read every DKos I-P diary and comment, from what I have seen, accusations of antisemitism are only rarely made and, in my experience, not for simply criticizing Israel. Moreover, so far as I can tell, the vast majority of “pro-Israel” posters at Daily Kos support a genuine two-state solution, which means that, at a fundamental level, we diverge from official Israeli policy.
When the antiIsrael criticism=antiSemitic charge failed to work, it was abandonned, not that anyone hasn’t seen in spades or that it does not return periodically.
Egregious, from shergald. Doubtful. If anyone is stupid enough not to appreciate that GIYUS and TIP are into Daily Kos, deep, or is stupid enough to think these organizations are run by stupid people, think again. Prove it? If one cannot assume it with confidence, given the purpose of these organizations, then my diaries and comments on the topic have been egregious. Otherwise, it has been a consistent pattern of right wing Zionists taking down one diary after another. Too bad that the only publicity value of a diary is its title, and after that its text. Comments aren’t usually worth the read.
Interestingly, Booman and MLW are much more productive in that regard. It is only lately that we have seen right wing Zionists interested in coming here. I hope that is due to an increase in the daily readership, because these guys deserve it.
Well you might call me disinterested because I am not Jewish or Israeli or Arab or Palestine.
I am American plain and simple I have no alleigence to any country except this one and don’t advocate or work for the benefit of any other country, religion, ethnic group or etc.. I am basically a equal opportunity adocate for “everyone’s rights here and around the world. And I don’t mind telling you straight out I do not approve of Israeli actions, or the Jewish lobby’s interference in what should be strictly even handed American policy. And if you want to get into a tribal fight on this in this country I guarentee you when push comes to shove the unhyphened American tribe will beat your American-hyphen-Israeli tribe.
And since it is pouring down rain and I had two hours to spare I went over to DKos and poked around.
It is not my intent to insult you but I abhor censorship and you strike a suspicously false note with me…..maybe it is the official talking points you employ overly couched in trying to appear reasonable while adhering to the official Israeli policy that makes you off key. So I looked up some of your comments, 99.9% of which are on the Isr-Pal topic. This one about your “witch hunt” I thought nailed it and you got nailed on it.
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2007/5/3/161834/0275/330#c330
There are some comments there accusing you of visiting other sites to hunt down anti-Israeli posters that also post at DKos so you can drag their comments back to DKos to get them banned or prove their anti-semite bona fides.
If you are a full time activist for Isr and it appears you are ..or else you have a lot of time on your hands and an overwhelming obsession with Israel..why not just be honest about it and say so instead of trying to portray your interest as “american”?
And I must agree with others on here that your attempts, at least in the comments I read are totally transparent as passive agressive ploys aimed at trying to censor any opinions or differences that don’t agree with your particular brand of zionism or ideas about what a final settlement with the Palestine should look like. I noticed you said also said in one that you were a member of Peace Now?…I must say I thought that was a good group but your type gives me reason to reconsider and check twice on the actual motives of that group.
But don’t feel bad, it is impossible for anyone to keep up a facade for an indefinite length of time..that’s why you should come out of the closet and put your case on honest basis even if it reveals your own personal basis and interest.
Honesty is always the best policy..other wise you trip yourself up.
It is comments like this one that turn you reality into dust. If you act naive enough not to appreciate that GIYUS and even TIP are sending over bloggers to counteract antiIsrael diaries and posts, you are one of them.
You in particular have taken this tolerant perspective in order to ply Israeli propaganda of the worst kind, such as the “generous offer” or repeating the latests memes, such as “terrorism” and “Israel’s right to exist.” So while you may deceive others about your intentions, I am not among them. And it is not just your duties on the “Zionist diary police” that has convinced me. It is your terribly deceptive diaries intended to pacify the opposition, while Israel continues its Zionist quest for an Israel from the Jordan River to the sea. That would make you a right wing Zionist of the Likud or Kadima variety, an ethnocentric nationalist of the worst kind.
On Daily Kos, and even here at Booman, you have to judge people not by what they say, but by what they do not say. By that criteria, you are fooling no one.
Huummm..another DKos problem.
I gave my opinion on DKos on an earlier thread some time ago so just let me say Kos is toast…or will be shortly…for a lot of reasons. I quit reading it some time ago so I don’t know the current situtation but the crapola over there on the I-P issue back then put out by the rabid pro Israel side of “you have to support Israel or you aren’t a dem or if the dems don’t support Israel it will cost dems votes” and the anti semite slurs turned me off completely….no one tells me what I have to support least of all those primilary concerned with the welfare of a foreign country and not mine. Piss on them, this is the US not Israel and I am going to say and do whatever I think is in the best interest of this country…and the world at large since we seem to be having such a bad effect on the rest of the universe with our current madness.
If I were Londonbear I would take my talent elsewhere and not waste time on DKos…they sure don’t speak for or represent 99% of the democrats that I know out here in the real world.