Indy Media Watch

Regular readers will know I seldom trawl through the 'hidden posts' on Indymedia sites as it would be unfair on the few moderators who do act responsibly by hiding/deleting the excrement which pollutes their sites.

Via my referrer logs however, I came across this post on BC Indymedia which might explain part of the (ahem) recent issues on the site.

Does anybody edit this site? And if so, how does the blatant antisemitism of comments like this one -- "Jewish culture is so steeped in unethical values, such as racism, supremacism, materialism, separativeness" -- fit into that editorial scheme?

An excellent question, before the article was hidden. Some of the comments in the ensuing discussion are very interesting. First, the usual conspiracies are rolled out:

Zionists are taking over this news wire - The hatefull (sic) and ultra-violent Zionists have taken over this news wire, and flooded it with Zionist hate literature designed to villify (sic) and slander all the Muslims and Arabs of the world, and even denigrate peace activists like Rachel Corrie and the Christian Peacekeepers Team. The perpetrators of this hate campaign should be investigated and reported to the police, and they should be banned from posting further on this site.

Okey dokey. More sensible responses follow:

The Open Publishing standard of Indymedia gives IMC site editors the freedom to hide racist posts -- that is, racist posts like the ones of yours they've already hidden.

You're perfectly free in this country to make racist generalizations. It's not illegal. And BC Indybay is perfectly free to remove them from the site _because_ they are racist generalizations, even if you try to dress them up as "cultural commentary."

In the meantime, you also end up reinforcing my case -- that the most obsessive anti-Israel posters on BC Indymedia also happen to hate the Jews, and -- when sufficiently goaded -- forget to wrap their antisemitism in the "I'm just an anti-Zionist" disguise by which they try to inject their antisemitism into public discourse.

Let me make it completely clear what I'm saying. Is criticizing Israel or Israeli policy inherently antisemitic? No. But there are forms of criticism which _are_ inherently antisemitic, and this is the kind of stuff you indulge in continually. The kind where you say "Well, so 'Protocols' is internationally known to be an antisemitic fraud, but I'm talking about the Zionists *wink wink* not the Jews *wink wink*." The kind where you say, that Hitler guy, he was surely on to something when it came to the Jews (although of course killing them is bad *wink wink*). The kind where you say, "It's never fair to generalize racially, of course, but the Jews are a dishonest and bigoted and racist, aren't they."
...
Now it's up to the BC Indymedia editors. Now they know that the zio-guy who zio-goes around zio-condemning the Zionists as "more evil than Hitler and the communists combined" is, once you look at him a little more closely, simply a Jew-hating racist who routinely spews his antisemitic hate in BC Indymedia under the aegis of "cultural commentary about Zionism" except when you forget the fig "anti-Zionism" fig leaf and let your true agenda show.

Naturally this throws fuel onto the fire of conspiracies:

Also, has there been any investigation into the recent Spook Infestation here? Could you, perhaps, look at how many sources of the Spook Droppings there really are, and where they are originating?

Oh right... Spooks. Of course... That same comment, gets reposted about half a dozen times and starts to resemble a child who has just thrown his toys out of the cot. He gets called on it:

Isn't it just so typical of these guys that, if you dare blow the whistle on the rantings of a racist antisemite, the only imaginable explanation they can come up with is that you're actually a SEEEE-cret Agent of the Great Jew Conspiracy?

He responds, by posting it again.

Then the conspiracies get a little more original:

Lets be fair, if you are going to investigate one side then investigate the other. I have strong suspicion that Isalmic funds are being used to post huge amounts of anti-israeli and anti-western propaganda on this site.

This gets addressed by someone I assume to be a moderator:

I can't prove it based on anything that I _know_ as a sysadmin of this site, but based on my experience working for a multi-national public relations firm during the first Gulf War ('93), I can confidently state that there are people who are paid to monitor as well as post propaganda to the web. Some of them may even be Muslims!

Who is really surprised by this?

I am! In the past I have been accused by braindead antisemites of being a secret agent who gets paid to do this.

You know what? It sounds like a great idea. If anyone deserves money to hang around Indymedia it should be me. I'm so poor I can't even afford a tip-jar on the site. I'd put the money towards screen-wipes after viewing some of the articles I've seen in the time I've been doing this.

Any Black Agencies wishing to sponsor my work, feel free to contact me via your secret Zionist Mind Control Rays. I won't be wearing any tinfoil on my head this Thursday afternoon, probably around lunchtime.