Joshua Goldberg | Attack Garland (Texas) – Geert Wilders | ISIS | Islamophobes |
The lack of real-world verification of Goldberg by journalists and publishers allowed him to gain a public platform. The “Australi Witness” social media accounts were taken at face value by some journalists and intelligence analysts.
Internet users have also been shocked by the Fairfax Media revelation that “left-wing social justice warrior” Tanya Cohen was yet another of Goldberg’s multiple personas. Under the guise of Cohen, Goldberg had published articles on a number of well-known sites.
On online forums Reddit and 4chan, under the name European88, he uploaded thousands of anti-semitic and racist posts as a neo-Nazi, and on the specialty neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer, he his alter-ego Michael Slay did the same.
Revelations about Shaun King of BLM
Since the story broke of his arrest, accusations have mounted against Goldberg, as internet users, particularly those on Reddit, trace his online footprint.
They have discovered that Goldberg was a source of information for a series of articles that accused Shaun King, an activist with the Black Lives Matter movement, of lying about his race.
The accusations resulted in an emotional public appearance by King who revealed personal details about his family history.
Emails of Goldberg’s correspondence with the journalist who “outed” King have been made public, as have tweets under his main account, Moon Metropolis.
Shooting at Geller Hate-a-Thon Shows the Need for a Hate Speech Law in the US | Daily Kos | by Tanya Cohen | Wed May 06, 2015 at 10:49 PM PDT |
On Sunday, April 3rd, 2015, notorious right-wing hatemonger Pamela Geller hosted an anti-Islam event with the sole purpose of inciting racist hatred and violence against Muslims. A vile and grotesque assault on the basic human rights and human dignity of Muslims which clearly has no place in a modern democracy, the event had contestants “draw Muhammad”, with the “best” drawing receiving a $10,000 prize. To the cheers of right-wing bigots across the country, two radical Muslim men attempted to shoot up the event before being swiftly shot and killed themselves.
This event brings to the forefront one of America’s biggest human rights failures: the fact that America is the only country in the world which lacks any kind of legal protections against hate speech. The fact that America values the so-called “right” to spew racist hatred to be more important than basic human rights does a great deal of damage to America’s international image. After all, what kind of government values the rights of racist bigots more than it values the rights of the most vulnerable and marginalized minority groups?
Muslims are perhaps the most vulnerable, marginalized, and disenfranchised minority in the United States. For many years, the US government has launched overseas wars against Muslims (killing thousands of innocents) while, on its own shores, persecuting Muslims with a wide range of draconian “anti-terror” legislation.
Meanwhile, American media and American politicians continuously paint Muslims as evil, savage, dangerous terrorists that every citizen must be wary of. Muslims in the US have been systematically stripped of their human rights, their human dignity, and their basic humanity itself. So, when right-wing hatemongers like Pamela Geller use their so-called “freedom of speech” to mock and belittle American Muslims – who already face widespread persecution from the government and from society – is it really any surprise that some of them would snap and see violence as their only option? Is it really any surprise that some Muslims would feel like their life in the United States simply isn’t worth living any more, and that they have nothing left to lose?
More Internet references of Joshua Goldberg …
○ Australian Online ISIS Jihadist Turns Out to Be Florida Jew | Haaretz |
○ Tanya Cohen on twitter
○ Reaction to Idea of Samus Being Transgender Shows How Transphobic Gaming Really Is | Feministing | [cached]
Unmasking a troll: Aussie ‘jihadist’ Australi Witness a 20-year-old American nerd
More below the fold …
Unmasking a troll: Aussie ‘jihadist’ Australi Witness a 20-year-old American nerd
The unmasking of Joshua Goldberg’s began with a chance encounter. In April, a fake Facebook page was set up in the name of Australian journalist Elise Potaka using a picture from her Twitter profile. The imposter used this fake account to send a private message to one of her contacts, Junaid Thorne. Thorne is a young Islamic preacher with connections to IS supporters.
By coincidence, when the Facebook imposter messaged him, Thorne had been chatting to Potaka about a fake Twitter account that had been set up in his name. It soon became apparent, through the language and phrases used, that both were victims of the same online hoaxer.
The fake Facebook account had just one “friend”: “Joshua Goldberg”, and its web address was facebook.com/moonmetropolis.
An online search led to a blog and a series of posts published on American website, ThoughtCatalog. The distinct theme here is free speech, and the strong criticism of individuals and organisations calling for limits on hate speech.
The only easily accessible information about Goldberg described him as an “American author and columnist”, but he did not appear to have been published by any credible media outlet. Further research showed Goldberg also had a Twitter account, @MoonMetropolis. When confronted via this account, he admitted that he had impersonated Potaka on Facebook and Thorne on Twitter. He claimed he’d had conversations with jihadis who were following Thorne online.
In an act repeated with his other hoaxes, Goldberg lured journalists into his deception. He’d already shopped around screengrabs of these conversations with the “jihadis” who followed “Thorne” to at least one reporter, and the West Australian published an article in April describing how the fake Junaid Thorne account had fooled wanna-be jihadis.
In fact, in the hall of mirrors created by Goldberg, it was him doing the fooling. Not only had he created the fake Junaid Thorne account, he was also playing the part of the “wanna-be jihadis” in the conversations.
Many of his hoaxes were designed to smear people and organisations he perceived as being enemies of free speech. Goldberg told Potaka online it was “pretty stunning” how many jihadis “claimed to be connected with the Human Rights Law Centre … and/or Amnesty International”.
But, masquerading as these jihadis, he was the only one making the connection. One of his personas, “akhi_alaustrali” wrote that he worked for Amnesty, and another, ShamiWitness claimed that he and other IS supporters donated money to the Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) because it was “working to outlaw and prosecute anti-Muslim hate speech”.
Australia Must Have Zero Tolerance for Online Hatred | AIM Network | by Tanya Cohen
Here in Australia, it’s just common sense that freedom of speech doesn’t give anyone the right to offend, insult, humiliate, intimidate, vilify, incite hatred or violence, be impolite or uncivil, disrespect, oppose human rights, spread lies or misinformation, argue against the common good, or promote ideas which have no place in society. We all learned this in school, and it’s not something that’s even up for debate. Hate speech is not free speech, as the oft-repeated saying goes. Freedom of speech is something that comes with responsibility and it has to be balanced against other human rights, such as the human rights to dignity and respect. This is something that more or less everyone here agrees on, including libertarians. Journalists and human rights activists are the biggest supporters of our hate speech laws, but the laws have universal support among all sections of Australian society. Freedom of speech is a core Australian value, but it’s not the only value we have. As Australians living in a society built on diversity and multiculturalism, we simply refuse to tolerate any forms of racism or hatred. The need to protect vulnerable minorities from all forms of hate speech is something that practically all Australians firmly agree with (aside from a few racist bigots who want to incite hatred against vulnerable minorities as “free speech”, of course). Our courts have ruled multiple times that it doesn’t matter whether your statements are “true” or “balanced” or not – if the statements are likely to paint vulnerable minorities in a negative light and/or incite hatred against vulnerable minorities, then those statements are illegal in Australia, as they should be.
Our federal Racial Discrimination Act makes it illegal to say things which may offend, insult, humiliate, or intimidate vulnerable minorities. This law has been successfully used to convict right-wing hatemongers like Andrew Bolt. When the Abbott Government recently proposed watering down our federal laws against hate speech (they wanted to replace the words “offend”, “insult”, and “humiliate” with the word “vilify”), it outraged the entire country, and human rights groups like Amnesty International Australia and the Human Rights Law Centre launched a highly successful campaign to force the government to back down. Across the country, people held protests against the proposal to weaken our federal hate speech protections, and polls found that almost everyone in the country was staunchly opposed to any proposals to weaken legal protections against hate speech (according to one Fairfax poll, at least 88% of Australians agreed that it should always be illegal to offend, insult, or humiliate minorities, and all other polls showed similar results).
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As a member of Australia’s Jewish community and a descendant of Holocaust survivors, I can proudly say that Australia’s Jewish community has played the single largest role in passing and expanding hate speech legislation in Australia, and Australia’s Jewish community also played the single largest role in forcing the Abbott government to back down when it recently tried to weaken our federal hate speech laws. The changes to federal hate speech laws were staunchly opposed by every single human rights group and minority advocacy group in Australia, but Australian Jewish groups definitely played the largest role in making the Abbott government abandon its plans to weaken our federal hate speech laws. In fact, The Times of Israel actually ran an article titled “Australian Jews block change in local race-hate laws“. Without the immense pressure from Australia’s Jewish community, our hate speech laws would have been watered down like Brandis wanted them to be. I am immensely proud of the fact that Australia’s Jews have been at the forefront of protecting and promoting human rights in this country. The Online Hate Prevention Institute (OHPI) – which works to combat online hatred in Australia and abroad – is staffed entirely by Jewish Australians. Without Australia’s Jews, hate speech legislation in this country would not be anywhere near as strong. In fact, it might not even exist at all. The Jewish role in human rights activism is a source of immeasurable pride for me.Fredrick Töben helps Jewish Lobby to block changes to 18C Hate Speech Law
