Gary² and the Chipster: the bullying! the lying! Options

[Piperdown]

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=158758673

Cliffb reverted as "sockpuppet of banned user". Nevermind that a quick wikipedia review of Cliffb's editing reveals no such thing.

Samiharris is out of control.

Good thing tag teamer Gary...er...um...Mantanmoreland is there to revert, so "samiharris" doesn't get a 3RR.

[Kato]

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=158758673

Cliffb reverted as "sockpuppet of banned user". Nevermind that a quick wikipedia review of Cliffb's editing reveals no such thing.

Samiharris is out of control.

Good thing tag teamer Gary...er...um...Mantanmoreland is there to revert, so "samiharris" doesn't get a 3RR.

You're right. This is deeply corrupt and something needs to be done. Like... yesterday. Once someone like Cliffb gets reverted as a Wordbomb sock puppet by stooges, then the situation has clearly gone way too far.

I haven't paid much attention to this business, but it is obvious now that Mantanmoreland, who as far as we know is still protected by shadowy admins at WP, is given carte blanche to manipulate the public's perception of naked short selling via the use of wikipedia. Why? I'd like to know.

Somey recently concluded that Gary Weiss was largely the reason the Review exists. Weiss and Chip Berlet, who is also given special protection on WP for reasons that have never been explained, have debased any ideals other WP editors might have had when they embarked on editing. Of course, we all know the name of the high profile female Canadian admin who implemented this duel protection racket. Again, why? I don't know.

Attempts to rfc these situations, and bring them to eyes of "the community" have been immediately deleted and silenced. See this and this if you don't believe it. Why? I don't know.

[Somey]

Somey recently concluded that Gary Weiss was largely the reason the Review exists.

I wouldn't go quite that far - WR was started before Weiss even appeared on Wikipedia, from what I gather. What I would say is that the combined influence of Weiss and Berlet has been so disruptive and divisive - and these two people are extremely good at that, probably better than any of us here could ever hope to be - that the need to expose their malfeasance, for the good of Wikipedia and the collaborative web in general, has led to WR's being branded an enemy site. After all, don't forget that when WR first started, Erik Moeller himself was a regular poster. Even Dave Gerard posted here a few times... Not that most of us really miss those guys, of course. But their accounts are still active!

Weiss and Chip Berlet, who is also given special protection on WP for reasons that have never been explained, have debased any ideals other WP editors might have had when they embarked on editing.

At one point I had a theory which suggested that the folks in the SlimVirgin "cabal" felt that Berlet was useful because he was a leftist with a penchant for bashing other leftists. So, if they wanted to make a POV assertion somewhere in favor of, say, Israeli militarism, and include citations showing support from both "left" and right, they simply had to ask the ol' Chipster to write something up - and presto-bingo, a ready-made reliable source! And if they wanted to bash someone like Noam Chomsky for the same reason, Chip would be up for that too. In return, Chip's personal bio would always read like hagiography, in spite of the efforts of folks like Nobs et al to inject non-hagiographic (to say the least?) material.

I know it sounds a little elaborate, even for them... but if Berlet actively offered his services in that area, then who would they have been to refuse?

[Kato]

At one point I had a theory which suggested that the folks in the SlimVirgin "cabal" felt that Berlet was useful because he was a leftist with a penchant for bashing other leftists. So, if they wanted to make a POV assertion somewhere in favor of, say, Israeli militarism, and include citations showing support from both "left" and right, they simply had to ask the ol' Chipster to write something up - and presto-bingo, a ready-made reliable source! And if they wanted to bash someone like Noam Chomsky for the same reason, Chip would be up for that too. In return, Chip's personal bio would always read like hagiography, in spite of the efforts of folks like Nobs et al to inject non-hagiographic (to say the least?) material.

I know it sounds a little elaborate, even for them... but if Berlet actively offered his services in that area, then who would they have been to refuse?

That would certainly explain this monstrous addition to the "encyclopedia" from New Anti-Semitism, where Berlet is quoted on 4 paragraphs at the beginning of perhaps WP's most controversial article. Slim made 1,835 edits to that article, Jayjg a further 950. And it was their collective need to smear a whole political class that set off the "Israeli Apartheid" multi-article chain reaction that was to be Jayjg's ruin. It also provoked the Allegations of State Terrorism in the United States fiasco as well, as editors furious with the exploits of SV and co got revenge on chosen targets. So just the volume of shame these people have inflicted on WP knows no bounds.

New Anti-Semitism

Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, an American research group that tracks the far right, writes that, during the early 1980s, isolationists on the far right made overtures to anti-war activists on the left to join forces against government policies in areas where they shared concerns,[18] mainly civil liberties, opposition to U.S. military intervention overseas, and opposition to U.S. support for Israel.[19] [20]

Berlet argues that as they interacted, some of the classic right-wing anti-Semitic scapegoating conspiracy theories began to seep into progressive circles, [19] including stories about how a "New World Order", also called the "Shadow Government" or "The Octopus," [18] was manipulating world governments. Berlet writes that antisemitic conspiracism [21] was "peddled aggressively" by right-wing groups, and that the left adopted the rhetoric, which Berlet argues was made possible by the left's lack of knowledge of the history of fascism and its use of "scapegoating, reductionist and simplistic solutions, demagoguery, and a conspiracy theory of history." [19]

Toward the end of 1990, as the movement against the Gulf War began to build, Berlet writes that a number of far-right and antisemitic groups sought out alliances with left-wing anti-war coalitions, who began to speak openly about a "Jewish lobby" that was encouraging the United States to invade the Middle East. This idea morphed into conspiracy theories about a "Zionist-occupied government" (ZOG), which Berlet writes is the modern incarnation of the antisemitic hoax, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. [18] Berlet adds: "It is important to recognize that as a whole the antiwar movement overwhelmingly rejected these overtures by the political right, while recognizing that the attempt reflected a larger ongoing problem." He cites the example of Wisconsin anti-war activist Alan Ruff, who appeared on a panel in Verona to discuss the Gulf War. Also on the panel on the anti-war side was another local activist, Emmanuel Branch. "Suddenly I heard Branch saying the war was the result of a Zionist banking conspiracy," said Ruff. "I found myself squeezed between pro-war hawks and this anti-Jewish nut, it destroyed the ability of those of us who opposed the war to make our point." [19]

Berlet writes that "promotion of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories by the Christic Institute, the Pacifica Radio network, and scores of alternative radio stations, has created a large audience, especially on the West Coast, that gullibly accepts undocumented anti-government assertions alongside scrupulous documented research, with little ability to tell the two apart," and warns his fellow activists on the left to "be very careful to examine the backgrounds and ideologies of those groups with which we seek to build coalitions." [19]

[jorge]

Berlet argues that as they interacted, some of the classic right-wing anti-Semitic scapegoating conspiracy theories began to seep into progressive circles, [19] including stories about how a "New World Order", also called the "Shadow Government" or "The Octopus," [18] was manipulating world governments. Berlet writes that antisemitic conspiracism [21] was "peddled aggressively" by right-wing groups, and that the left adopted the rhetoric, which Berlet argues was made possible by the left's lack of knowledge of the history of fascism and its use of "scapegoating, reductionist and simplistic solutions, demagoguery, and a conspiracy theory of history." [19]

Berlet is absolutely full of crap. He is the one dreaming up conspiracy theories to try and explain why people on the left have dared to criticise Israel. There is a simple reason for that, in that they no longer fall for the propaganda that some of the left once fell for i.e. that Israel was a wonderful socialist paradise where everyone could live in wondrous harmony on the kibbutz, along with the other "comfort fact" that the Palestinians were just Arabs who came from somewhere else and therefore had no real right to live there so it was OK to kill them/take their land etc.

[Emperor]

Berlet is absolutely full of crap. He is the one dreaming up conspiracy theories to try and explain why people on the left have dared to criticise Israel. There is a simple reason for that, in that they no longer fall for the propaganda that some of the left once fell for i.e. that Israel was a wonderful socialist paradise where everyone could live in wondrous harmony on the kibbutz, along with the other "comfort fact" that the Palestinians were just Arabs who came from somewhere else and therefore had no real right to live there so it was OK to kill them/take their land etc.

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