UPDATE 4: MEDIA ATTACK AGAINST ANTI-NWO ACTIVISM
Democratic Underground has a good post from a forum participant about Neiwert – his writing for the Soros-funded Media Matters outfit, known to be close to the Democracy Alliance and other wealthy liberals close to Hillary Clinton, and the rants of his readers:
“This is the same guy that scribbled the “Al Qaida says you can buy unregulated machine guns at gun shows, and I believe them” article. Then quoted a gun control advocate, not a police armor or ATF firearms expert, but an unnamed GCA on how easy it is to convert a semi auto to a full auto. In other words, he couldn’t hack it at a high school newspaper. Now he is back with this shit. What was even worse, was that he copy and pasted other peoples’ stuff, or they plagiarized his because they read the same. That was only last spring.
[Lila: at the bottom of this post I have another quote from Reason magazine about Neiwart’s journalism]
[Neiwert]”A number of state legislatures in the Interior West in recent years, reflecting their deeply conservative constituencies, have tried to outdo each other in promoting gun rights within their boundaries — almost always at the behest of far-right gun factions.”
For example, what laws is he talking about? Other than liberalizing concealed carry laws like everyone else, what is he talking about? Other than maybe this:
http://helenair.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/new-gu…But those guns (if they exist) can never leave the state. Oh yeah, signed by the same guy who wants to set up a single payer system in Montana.
[Neiwert] including a recent bill giving sheriffs the right to arrest federal agents.
So, where can I find more on this? So far, it looks like it was introduced but went nowhere. Outside of the OP, I only see places like World Nut Daily and various black helicopter spotter type sites.
[Neiwert]: This post is written as part of the Media Matters Gun Facts fellowship. The purpose of the fellowship is to further Media Matters’ mission to comprehensively monitor, analyze, and correct conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Some of the worst misinformation occurs around the issue of guns, gun violence, and extremism; the fellowship program is designed to fight this misinformation with facts.
In other words, this is part of the $400K the Joyce Foundation gave MM to write disinformation. It is at the bottom of Neiwert’s article. IMHO, the most dishonest and hypocritical thing I have seen.Here are some of the comments from Neiwert’s post. Who can spot the bigotry here?
[Comment on Neiwert post] Fuck Montana. If we had any kind of real democracy, these fascist, racist asshats would be nothing but the side-show that their inbred lifestyles make them out to be…[Comment on Neiwert post] If your typical Montanan is anything like your average southern redneck, they afford their guns by letting their wives and children go without decent food, clothing, healthcare, education, Hey, these guys know what’s really important. Personally, I say let ’em have all the guns they want. Maybe they’ll get into a good ol fashioned Hatfields and McCoys type war and shoot each other.
Media Matters has been keeping a very close eye on Alex Jones, the 9-11 truth movement, and anti-NWO activism in general, as you can see by this list of articles at their site.
Again, what that suggests is that the Neiwert attack on Ron Paul is part of a larger effort to suppress anti-NWO and 9-11 truth, and has little legitimate basis.
Update 3 – THE ULTIMATE RACISM OF WAR
Will Grigg gives you a glimpse of the extremism that really matters – not some offensive words in an old commercial newsletter, but a drone strike that burns the face off a four year old girl and leaves her for dead in a trash bin.
Update 2: CONSPIRACY THEORIES
Neiwert goes by the handle Spudboy on some internet forums like Fray, a forum attached to Slate magazine. Digging into Spudboy’s comments, it seems he’s been following around Patriot group and anti-NWO people for a while. And his prime concern is not to get rid of them. He thinks that, like the poor, we’re always going to have them. What worries him is that the mainstream might start accepting them.
Here’s a quote from one forum, themote.info:
436. spudboy – Aug. 7, 1999 – 12:25 PM PT
Arky: I think you give a nice summary of my central concern. I’m not really worried about the crackpots and their theories — they have always been with us and always will be. I’m more concerned by the level of circulation and widespread acceptance that their ideas are getting, among people who really should know better. What the hell ever happened to common sense?”
Spudboy is a fan of Paul Krugman and Michael Kinsley, who apparently used to publish articles at Slate magazine. Might that explain the animosity toward Dr. Paul a bit more?
Krugman, after all, is a favorite punching bag at Lew Rockwell and at the EconomicPolicyJournal.
Perhaps it’s not Paul’s “racism” that really bothers Neiwert. It’s Paul’s economics. After all, in the Fray thread linked above, Neiwert writes that there’s nothing to fear in Patriot and militia rhetoric, unless it turns violent. Dr. Paul is rather evidently against violence.
As for conspiracy theories, from what I read on these old threads, Neiwert sounds like he’s kind of fascinated by them.
At least, he seems to have read many of them with some relish (“It’s wild!” he writes about “Behold A Pale Horse,” by William Cooper).
The Fray forums discuss conspiracy theories, pretending not to find them plausible, a common form of dissembling among journalists who want to retain their mainstream credibility while still plagiarizing ideas and connections from more daring and original writers.
Last point. Whom does spudboy quote when he wants to discredit conspiracizing? That old chestnut, Richard Hofstadter? No. He quotes right-wing anti-Islamicist theorist, Daniel Pipes, who has since then suggested, conspiratorially, that Obama was once a Muslim:
“80. spudboy – May 16, 1998 – 1:45 PM PDT
I think the following passage from David Greenberg’s Slate article is important for consideration in any discussion of the Masons and conspiratorial beliefs (it’s a nice distillation of scholarly research on the subject):
“Modern conspiracism is almost a thousand years old. Pipes, in a book called Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From, pinpoints the Crusades of the 11th century–the wars waged by Europe’s Christians on the Muslims who controlled Palestine–as its first mass outbreak. To legitimize their attacks, Crusaders demonized their Muslim foes–not hard to do, since the Muslims had a competing empire and religion of vast size and power. But Europe’s Jews, too, had to be converted or killed. How to justify the eradication of a weak and numerically insignificant group? The Crusaders convinced themselves the Jews were a secret cabal with insidious powers, out to destroy Christendom.
“Besides this anti-Semitism, Pipes identifies a second, related strain in Western conspiracist thought: fear of secret societies. This variety focused on small groups (other than Jews) whose rituals seemed mysterious and whose beliefs seemed threatening to Christianity. Masons–professional stonecutters–were the earliest targets. Since medieval times, masons had devised confidential phrases and handshakes to recognize fellow craftsmen and protect their trade secrets from outsiders. During the Enlightenment, their guilds became clubs for discussing the new liberal ideas of deism and toleration (and also came to include nonstonecutters as members). Religious authorities feared that, within their lodges, the Masons, too, were plotting Christianity’s doom. … (cont’d)
81. spudboy – May 16, 1998 – 1:46 PM PDT
… “Pipes contends these two strains of conspiracism co-existed and intermingled over the years, giving rise to various fantasies of global schemes. Typically, these fantasies have centered on such staples as the Bavarian Illuminati (a Masonlike order founded in 1776), the Rothschilds (a Jewish banking family of the 18th century) and, later, the Council on Foreign Relations (a bunch of foreign-policy wonks who meet on East 68th Street).”
In other words, Kurt, modern-day conspiratorial thinking is ultimately descended from the reactionarism of the status quo, particularly during the Enlightenment, in resisting most of the innovations that we have since come to think of as democratic society.”
Reading this, one suspects it’s not conspiracizing that bothers either Neiwert or Pipes so much as the target, in this case, the New World Order….
In other words, conspiracies about Islam and Muslims (by Mr. Pipes) are harmless….even though they result in world-wide wars and surveillance.
But conspiracies about the New World Order (by Mr. Paul) that fight against world-wide wars and surveillance are dangerously radical.
It all depends on whose ox is being gored.
Seems to me that Mr. Neiwert protests too much…
Update 1 SHODDY SCHOLARSHIP
In an excellent piece at Reason Magazine blog on the extreme denunciations of extremism, Michael Moynihan shows how flimsy is some of the scholarship on which David Neiwert based his book “Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right”.
The book cites the popular quote from Sinclair Lewis about fascism coming to America wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. It was republished widely on the net in an image superimposing the quote on a picture of Sarah Palin.
Turns out Lewis never wrote it. Neiwert just cited it as if he’d got it from Sinclair Lewis, when all he did was just pick it up from the net.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Patterico.com points to a rant by one of David Neiwert’s fellow travelers that is many times more dangerous than anything Ron Paul allegedly wrote/allowed to be written/might have subscribed to/possibly still subscribes to.
[By the way, I wonder if Neiwert has time to tear himself away from those old newsletters and figure out if this face off from OccupyWallStreet – which he endorses – is also “racist” and “hateful?” ]
Mr. Neiwert, hunter of non-existent evil in Ron Paul and professional race-monger, misses the very real, very contemporary statement made below by one of his friends. I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure it crosses the line of legally protected speech.
[T]here’s still time to prove that you’re not passive, pathetic serfs. That’s right Americans, here’s your chance to prove that you’re not slaves, that you won’t just sit there and take it when they steal from you. We know who stole everything from you. They don’t even hide—they’re all over the TV networks, bragging, strutting, laughing at you. We know where they work, and we know what they look like. They’re literally asking for it. Shouldn’t you, Americans, with your guns and your high and mighty talk about how you protect your rights and your property and your families—shouldn’t you, like, do something? They’re responsible for throwing you out of work, out of your house, bankrupting your retirement, destroying your life and your family and everything you’ve worked for. And they don’t even hide it! So, what’re you gonna do about it? Sit there and complain? Call another fucking rightwing radio talkshow and kvetch like an old Jewish grandmother? Do you have any fucking balls left at all?
There are so many deserving targets out there—or rather, let’s call them “opportunities” out there to prove that you’re not the world’s biggest suckers and most passive, pathetic slaves that the planet has ever hosted. I’ll give you one, a real shocker. Her name is Betsy McCaughey . . .
[Ames proceeds to explain that McCaughey opposes socialized medicine — although the way Ames puts it is: “BETSY MCCAUGHEY WANTS TO KILL YOU IN ORDER TO ENRICH HERSELF.”]
So, here is what I’m going to ask readers: DOES ANYONE KNOW WHERE BETSY MCCAUGHEY LIVES? DOES ANYONE KNOW HER HOME ADDRESS? If you do, please send it to us and we’ll publish it. Then Americans can prove to Russians that they are not slaves, they do not sit back passively and allow themselves to be killed by vampires like McCaughey. Americans fight back, right? We’ll see. Send your information on her address to: ames@exiledonline.com
Patterico also quotes a comment on Ames’s post:
Timmy, don’t be such a pansy. What all decent people want to see right now is these rich fucks being dragged out of their mansions by a mob, shitting and pissing themselves with terror, then being shot with their blood and brains blasting over the snow. Then watching it again and again on Youtube with your mates. Fuck criminal charges. Preach on, Brother Mark.
Comment #27:
Drag her into the streets and burn her. Once everyone sees one of them “getting it,”
[Lila: Who is “them”? What has Betsy McCaughey got to do with the Wall Street heist enabled by the Federal Reserve?]
the other 60,000 who lost their jobs the other week can get to work on the rest of em.
[Lila: Who’s “the rest of ’em”? White Christian women? Rich people in general, by whatever definition of rich is the standard at the moment? Anyone who has a 401K? Anyone who irritates Neiwert?]
Patterico suggests that the only “eliminationist rhetoric” really in play is the one emanating from the left.
My Comment
So where is David Neiwert or Abe Foxman or Chip Berlet when there’s an actual incitement to violence, with published threats directed at a named individual?
Where are they?
Scrabbling around to come up with some twenty year old newsletters that predict exactly this kind of race war.
They’re communist agitators.
Agitprop is what the leftist media does best. They’d be out of a job if they weren’t allowed to do it.
What’s even more true is that there’s a good reason why Mr. Neiwert has to distance himself from Mr. Paul. To most establishment liberals, he’s just as conspiracy-minded as he claims Paul is. So the only way to distinguish his views from Paul’s is to clamor that Paul’s a racist. It eliminates the threat that the Ron Paul campaign presents to the leftist vote-base.
It’s only good politics..
Dean’s World, a liberal blog, wrote in 2004:
“Back in May, a really creepy obsessive named Dave Neiwert, well known for lunatic fringe conspiracy theories, decided to insinuate that your host (Dean Esmay) is a secret Nazi sympathizer. Or at least a fascist at heart, though my dark desires are hidden to anyone but clever brave scribblers such as himself, anyway.
Now such accusations are nothing new. If you ever read Niewert’s materials (no links for him–attention is what people like him crave and I won’t give it to him, although if you follow some of my links below you can find his strange site if you really want to), you can see that he is of the exact same mindset as people like Lyndon LaRouche, the white supremacists who believe we live under a Zionist Occupation Government, the Holocaust Revisionists, and creeps like Michael Moore. Just take a whole jumble of seemingly related facts, slap it all together, and come to vile, hateful conclusions based on your own paranoia. It’s classic Conspiracy Theory reasoning. You can read a pretty good dissection of the mindset in Richard Hofstadter’s The Paranoid Style In American Politics or in Daniel Pipes’ Conspiracy: How The Paranoid Style Flourishes And Where It Comes From. You can see how Niewert’s long, intricately reasoned nonsense is a textbook case of the Conspiracy Theorist mindset. Niewert’d get along great with the LaRouchies, or those who think that the Freemasons control world events.”
So, David Neiwert protests too much. In political terms, Neiwert’s crew at CrooksandLiars is competing with Paul for the same anti-establishment vote.
That’s really what’s going on here….