Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Right-Wing Harassment of Liberal Bloggers

For seven years, our good friend Libby of The Impolitic has been writing a column for the Detroit News. Hers is a thankless task because she is a token liberal at a right-wing rag, which means she is also a frequent target for harassment. On any given day, trolls will gang up on her, fabricate lies from thin air, lift phrases out of context and misquote her, and assassinate her character. Ugly stuff! To make matters worse, the folks who run Detroit News hold liberal bloggers to a different standard, which means rapacious right-wingers get to ride roughshod and rampant while comments from liberals are sometimes deleted. The latest example is Libby’s post, Another 'Lone Wolf' attempts domestic terrorism, about the arrest of the would-be bomber of a Detroit mosque. Predictably, the rabble ganged up on Libby … shamelessly attributing "anti-Bush liberalism" as the motive behind the madman. In Libby's defense, I left this comment:
Libby,
I referenced your links including the Detroit News coverage of this story, and NOWHERE DO ANY OF THESE SOURCES MENTION ANYTHING about the partisan leanings of the accused. Nowhere is the name “Bush” even mentioned. Yet there are three critics below who fabricate stuff for only one purpose: To HARRASS ANY LIBERAL in this forum. Notice the same bogus claim and parallel structure in each of the following comments:

IFindThisHumorous - the guy was an anti-Bush liberal [my bold]
Sensical Thinker - he was a Bush-hating liberal [my bold]
Herb Smoker - He is a Bush Hating pot smoker just like you [my bold]

These comments confirm the impression that there are Freeper trolls who single out liberals for bullying, harassment, and ultimately persecution. I am even more shocked that your bosses who run this forum tolerate this kind of gang-up mentality, especially in the aftermath of the recent Tucson massacre. Evidently, Detroit News has learned nothing from this tragedy and continues to purvey a business-as-usual form of low-life partisanship. This is junk journalism at its worst.
A quick Google search of “anti-Islam" rhetoric retrieves 421,000 articles in 0.14 seconds, articles such as these:





Over 420,000 more just like the above; hate speech from pols and pundits such as Newt Gingrich, Martin Peretz, Patrick Buchanan, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Dick Morris, Tea Party candidate Lou Ann Zelenik, and Republican Congressman Peter King; in towns and cities from coast to coast such as New York, Gainesville, Murfreesboro, Oklahoma City, and now Detroit.

Predictably, right wing trolls crawl out of the woodwork and double down on stereotypic rhetoric … accusing all liberals of “Blood Libel” in the name of that dreaded liberal conspiracy of all conspiracies, political correctness. Character assassination, sandbox bullying, and slander - these are not free speech. We do not allow children to bully children at school; yet we tolerate this kind of bullshit from adults!  How many innocent bystanders, judges, and children will be killed on the street before the mental and moral midgets of the far right finally get the message!

6 comments:

  1. Octopus,
    I wish these far-right trolls were as outpouring of kindness, understanding, and insight into the human condition as they are with hatred, intolerance, lies, distortion, and violence. There are a lot of very sick birds out there!

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  2. i don't mind when the far right attack humans but when they gang up on the planet and deny global warming it makes my blood boil.

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  3. Lately, I've given up responding to the trolls in my town when they start their diatribe except for two words that I don't usually use. I use the words and walk away. I ascribe to advice attibuted to Mark Twain: "Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference."

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  4. Libby is my sister and I've had to stop reading her stuff over at Det News because I become so outraged at the bad behavior over there. I don't know how she puts up with it but she does keep plugging away, trying to be a voice of light in the darkness I guess.

    ReplyDelete
  5. There was a king reigned in the East:
    There, when kings will sit to feast,
    They get their fill before they think
    With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
    He gathered all that sprang to birth
    From the many-venomed earth;
    First a little, thence to more,
    He sampled all her killing store;
    And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
    Sate the king when healths went round.
    They put arsenic in his meat
    And stared aghast to watch him eat;
    They poured strychnine in his cup
    And shook to see him drink it up:
    They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
    Them it was their poison hurt.
    —I tell the tale that I heard told.
    Mithridates, he died old.

    - A. E. Housman -


    Rocky,
    If Libby can put up with this stuff for 7 years, she'll live forever.

    ReplyDelete
  6. "They put arsenic in his meat
    And stared aghast to watch him eat;
    They poured strychnine in his cup
    And shook to see him drink it up:"

    Sounds like Rasputin. The bad guys are just as durable.

    ReplyDelete

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