Will Beback's passive-aggressive approach, and Cberlet, just plain aggressive Options

[Herschelkrustofsky]

Get a load of this. Note how deftly Will avoids addressing the actual issue at hand.

[Merzbow]

Honestly that whole argument about that single paragraph seemed kind of pointless to me. As I made clear on the page I thought that it was already clear enough the views were King's, because the surrounding text was already scattered with "according to King" and the like. The rewrite I proposed is basically a copyedit for precision and clarity; hopefully it will get approved.

Although I am on the opposite side of the political spectrum from Chip on most issues, his published writings on LaRouche appear mostly accurate to me, and I don't see a conflict in him adding his own published stuff. Note how I say "published", not "self-published". I've spoken against other editors who try to cite their own blog posts in Wikipedia, for example; unfortunately I was ignored. This probably stems from the fact that people who do police the orthodox viewpoint on controversial issues do get cut more slack. This is probably the way it should be, since otherwise stuff like the 9/11 article space would just get devastated by those who can't get their fringe views published elsewhere; but everybody has one "orthodox" viewpoint somewhere that they take issue with, and it is painful to see slack cut there to the "other side"...

This post has been edited by Merzbow: Sat 5th April 2008, 1:01am

[Herschelkrustofsky]

Although I am on the opposite side of the political spectrum from Chip on most issues, his published writings on LaRouche appear mostly accurate to me, and I don't see a conflict in him adding his own published stuff.

The trademark technique of the Chip 'n' King team is the process of divining "hidden meanings" in their quarry's writings. LaRouche is somewhat vulnerable to this sort of thing, because his writing contains many obscure references which may tend to baffle the layman, and Chip 'n' King exploit this to insinuate that every reference to a banker, an aristocratic family, or for that matter, the U.K. or Venice, is an instance of veiled anti-Semitism. Ironically, of course, this really does trivialize anti-Semitism. It is also a technique that ought to trigger every BLP alarm at Wikipedia, regardless of whether Chip 'n' King have been published. Back in my WP days, I argued before the ArbCom that there ought to be a simple "filter" whereby Chip could quote himself only when the writing in question had appeared in a mainstream source. PRA has no editorial oversight whatsoever -- Jean Hardisty, the nominal head of the operation, will authorize anything Chip wants, no matter how bizarrely defamatory. The ArbCom took no note of my proposal.

Read the whole page. You will see Chip Berlet as one of those Star Trekish creatures who feeds on strong emotion. In Berlet's case, he needs antisemitism and homophobia and neonazis like he needs oxygen.

I agree in part, but I also think that there is a lot of calculation involved. Chip creates bogus antisemitism, homophobia etc. in part to intimidate his opponents. Notice how quickly he resorted to implying that BoodlesTheCat was antisemitic, as soon as BTC began to challenge him on the talk page. You'd be surprised how often this tactic works.

On the face of it, Chip's entire output looks like a parody of real investigative journalism. But, the big bucks from the Ford Foundation keep rolling in to PRA, so I think there is a method to the madness. Chip has learned how to exploit the residue of Political Correctness, which has largely become passé, to create a new sort of McCarthyism, for which there is clearly a market. I think that he is using Wikipedia to create a veneer of pseudo-scholarly legitimacy for himself and PRA.