Besides my fascination with Illinois Politics, I dabble in following hate sites and the such. This was true even before the infamous Earl Holt post, but one of the things that has boggled my mind is the respect that Little Green Footballs gets from a large number of other bloggers.
Go look around in comments for a bit and I think you’ll see what I mean. Pretty nasty stuff. Now someone has come up with a quiz comparing statements on LGF to late German Fascists. I was able to figure out the correct source of hatred 64% of the time. To see some other results check out Tim Lambert’s quiz score thingy. I did better than Brad DeLong and Tim, but I don’t know whether that is good or not.
Apparently the whole deal has caused some sort of uproar and in a twist of bizarreness, Matt Yglesias has been accused of anti-semitism. The irony here is that Matt is, in fact, Jewish.
Now, in no way am I comparing the low-lifes at LGF to Nazis. Nazis were actually effective evildoers, not dorks pretending to be tough guys on the web.
Arch,
I rarely read LGF anymore – not because of “hate” but because of the dreary sameness — not in his main points, but the sheer repetition of the unpleasent truth of much of what he posts about. That said, I think most by far of the “hate” is in what Charles links to, not his comments which I don’t find hateful. To be sure some of his commenters are beyond the pale, but as a progressive don’t you believe in free speech? You even posted Earl’s sickening rants yourself! Does that make you a hate site?
Why does LGF get under the skins of the left? I’ve come across hate at similar levels in the comments at leftist sites like Kos or Eschaton as at LGF. Strong partisans attract even stronger partisans. Is it his strong pro-Israel stance that clashes with the left’s strong anti-Israel stance?
And I find analogies to Nazi’s offensive when the person being compared hasn’t seized power of a country, ruled through terror, launched attacks against neighboring countries, and commited genocide of groups and otherwise slaughtered millions. In fact, I tend to feel that such invalid comparisons are a form of hatespeech its own right. Now I realize you aren’t making that comparison, but you are linking to such a site.
====To be sure some of his commenters are beyond the pale, but as a progressive don’t you believe in free speech? You even posted Earl’s sickening rants yourself! Does that make you a hate site?
How does criticizing content have anything to do with censorship. He can say what he wants and I can criticize it as hate speech.
Matt Hale hasn’t ruled a country either, but I have no problem comparing him to Nazis because he is one. LGF’s little site of hatred operates on the same thing. Those quotes aren’t terribly unusual and they are quite clear in making genocide seem reasonable.
The challenge to anyone who thinks LGF is reasonable is to think about someone who spent all of their time dredging up every bad thing any group does and then equating the entire group to those members. We wouldn’t accept it with Christians from the 3rd World. I certainly don’t equate Opus Dei Fascists in Latin America running death squads with all Catholics. Why should I do the same with all Muslims?
Perhaps I wasn’t clear. If you go to LGF and don’t read the comments, what you find are links to stories that demonstrate a significant swath of the islamic world hates Jews, that Europe has a similar but lesser problem, and that the UN doesn’t live up to its ideals. Does LGF mock and sneer at the people he doesn’t like? Certainly, along with a great number of the partisan web sites around — including lots you link to (and lots I link to). Do I think he would be better served letting the links talk for themselves? Yes, but it isn’t my blog.
The hate you find are in the links Charles Johnson finds, not what he writes – just like when you posted Earl’s email, you were exposing pre-existing hate. My point is that I don’t see a difference in exposing the Earl Holts of the world and the depth of Jew hatred in the Islamic world like LGF. Bigotry is bigotry, whether it comes from Matt Hale or state sponsored imams or UN conferences.
Does this mean that I think every moslem is a jew hating fanatic who wants nothing more than to wipe Israel off the face of the earth? No. But virulent anti-semitism is open, widespread, and official policy in many majority moslem countries while the Earl Holts and Matt Hales are despised members of a twilight fringe who are openly mocked here.
In the open comments at LGF, anybody can post what they like. Different people post some very hateful comments. This happens in a lot of places, not just LGF. Some people will get rid of hateful comments – personally I feel that a person’s blog is their own and they can delete comments and ban posters however they want — but others feel that communication should be open and unmoderated to be consistent with free speech. Charles Johnson is one of those people.
Does LGF attract some hateful people? Sure. Does that mean the LGF is a hate site? I don’t think so; by that reckoning, a lot of popular sites are hate sites.
Hope I’m clearer.
The real problem is the proprietor of LGF cleanses almost all anti-Bush rants from the comments section, but allows the hate stuff to remain. If he didn’t delete any posts, his position would be much more defensible.
What disturbs me about LGF is that the general theme of the comments is that there is no solution to the coming war with the “Islamofascists” other than the complete destruction of a significant chunk of the Muslim world. One cannot negotiate or mediate with them because they are “animals” with sub-human intelligence. Thus, the US must rid the civilized world of such a menace.
niceguy,
I hadn’t heard anything about removing anti-Bush rants from LGF. If he removes anti-Bush because it’s anti-Bush but leaves the “kill them all” kind of posts he has a real problem IMHO.
Clor,
Not that I’ve read every comment in every thread, but I don’t think that’s the general theme. Certain commenters do advance that idea, but I wouldn’t say general theme.
Just to get information, I picked this post about Mubarak at random. I don’t see any problems with the post itself. I then went through the then 92 comments and found 17 that I would classify as objectionable as either to hate, inappropriate use of Nazi, or general bigotry (as in “Tell you what, when the muslims quit trying to kill, enslave or convert every infidel, then maybe I’ll give a damn about what the “Arab street” thinks. “): 7,11,13,16,18,29,30,46,50,51,63,69,70, and 82. That’s just under 20%. Not a majority, but certainly a significant fraction — and one of the reasons I don’t bother with the comments anymore when I do follow a link there.
I think I see your point Kevin, but I think there are two issues. One is the quite common deletion of comments from others. If Johnson is worried about what appears in comments that seems strange.
The other is the larger issue of what is Johnson doing? I find the strange focus of everything bad in the Arab and Muslim worlds to be much like Earl actually. Instead of focusing on the very real problems in those worlds in context, Johnson seems to think there is nothing else. It is like listening to the Right at Night to me. Now, some groups might just focus on such problems like a human rights group, but they would put it into a context of something other than crushing an entire area of the world. That he has weird nicknames for his frequent commenters and seems to bait them only makes it worse.
It is true that in Johnson’s case I can’t see what is in his heart, but it certainly seems like just about every other hate site I read.
Islam is a cancer of the world. The actions of the islamic terrorists proove this. What also prooves this is that not one so called major peaful islamic group takes a stand against terror. (/11 prooves islam is hateful towards mankind. it is time for the world to stand as one against thes animals ….
Which is more useless, the hate spam or the porn spam?