Trolls, Thread jacks, Dezinformatsia and 2010
It’s one thing to have open and free discussion. But at a certain point you have to recognize that what some participants are doing are not engaging in discussion. That’s not their point. They are here to divert, distract, discredit and disrupt.
That is their purpose. These bad actors are known as Internet Trolls.
Andrew Breitbart’s post, Online activists on the right, unite!, has called attention to a problem almost every conservative blogger experiences: Trolls who plant inflammatory comments to make the blog appear racist or sexist or some other “ist” or who post such long comments that they try to take over the blog and make it their own.
Much of Mr. Obama’s vaunted online strategy involved utilizing “Internet trolls” to invade enemy lines under false names and trying to derail discussion. In the real world, that’s called “vandalism.” But in a political movement that embraces “graffiti” as avant-garde art , that’s business as usual. It relishes the ability to destroy other people’s property in pursuit of electoral victory.
Hugh Hewitt’s popular site shut off its comments section because of the success of these obnoxious invaders. Breitbart.com polices nonpartisan newswire stories for such obviously coordinated attacks. Other right-leaning sites such as Instapundit and National Review Online refuse to allow comments, knowing better than to flirt with the online activist left.
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Uninvited Democratic activists are on a mission to demoralize the enemy - us. They want to ensure that President Obama is not subject to the same coordinated, facts-be-damned, multimedia takedown they employed over eight long years to destroy the presidency - and the humanity - of George W. Bush.
Political leftists play for keeps. They are willing to lie, perform deceptive acts in a coordinated fashion and do so in a wicked way - all in the pursuit of victory. Moral relativism is alive and well in the land of Hope and Change and its Web-savvy youth brigade expresses its “idealism” in a most cynical fashion.
Americans are currently facing a broad range of assaults on our culture, our economic freedoms, the threatened placement of a racist Leftist on our Supreme Court, legislation which would have the effect of criminalizing Christianity and making dissent a felony, renewed calls for so-called Assault Weapons bans, Amnesty for huge numbers of foreign nationals here on American soil, nuclear proliferation by madmen, and we here on SAB are devoting four pages of discussion to illegal lawn mowing.
We are being diverted. We have a job to do and we can no longer allow ourselves to be led around by the nose.
Understand this, trolling is not accidental and it does have a purpose, and we—by playing the bull to some Leftards’s red cape—are being diverted from any effective discussion / action in preparation for the 2010 elections.
As much as I love a good-free-for-all discussion, David Axelrod’s Astroturf troll army isn’t interested in discussion; they’re paid, full-time political propagandists, and they’re not going to use my bandwidth to spread their message. (I let our designated liberal hall monitor Young4Eyes slide, because he’s so clear about his commitments that he doesn’t fool anyone.)
Waaay back in the day—more than a dozen years ago, before there were blogs—I had some interesting experiences with these “false-flag” trolls who claim to be the exact opposite of the leftist scum they are, and who engage in such familiar tricks as:
* Inciting participants in discussions to try to get them to say things that can then be quoted as evidence of “hate,” etc.
* Derogating as futile or self-defeating the projects being planned in the discussion; or
* Fomenting dissent by suggesting that organizers of a volunteer effort are secretly profiting from the project, or that leaders aren’t really committed to the common cause.
Some of you newbies may not realize it, but these troll tricks are merely updated online versions of the tactics the Communist Party used in its decades-long subversion campaign. Breitbart and most other conservatives won’t say this in so many words, because it sounds like McCarthyesque conspiracy theory, but it’s nonetheless true: If you want to understand how the American Left operates, you need to spend time studying how the old CPUSA operated.
Even more so than Marxist ideology itself, Ronald Reagan said, it was the dishonesty of CPUSA tactics, which he encountered as the leader of the Screen Actors Guild in the ‘40, that turned him from a “bleeding heart” liberal into a fierce anti-Communist. Honorable causes do not routinely resort to dishonorable tactics, and the despicable ends-justify-the-means behavior of the Reds convinced Reagan that their ends—their supposedly “idealistic” objectives—were anything but honorable.
Ever heard of the “diamond pattern”? CPUSA operatives used this tactic to control meetings (of labor unions, etc.) back in the day. Send four operatives to the meeting, stationing one at the front of the room, one at the rear, and one each on the left and right sides of the midpoint of the room. When one operative stands up to make his point, the other three are like, “Yeah, he’s right!” This creates the appearance of support throughout the room, in order to bring bandwagon psychology into play.
That tactic, and many others out of the old CPUSA playbook (which such Obama mentors as Saul Alinsky and Frank Marshall knew by heart), have been adapted to the Internet by the Left. And, of course, attempting to thwart these tactics—one must ju-jitsu the Left by employing their own tactics against them—requires studying their methodology like a Korean engineer studying the latest Mercedes design.
Few things are more important in warfare than IFF: Identify Friend or Foe. The same is true in political combat. If your antagonist is able to convince you he’s “on your side” when he’s actually on the other side, he will exploit that deception to demoralize and defeat you. These false-flag “conservative” trolls are trying to exploit flaws in IFF systems on the Right. Beware.
What is Dezinformatsia?
the means by which the Reds suppressed dissident movements while feeding the West false information through operatives and front groups that claimed to be independent or even anti-communist “Everyone who has worked in the field of countering Soviet disinformation either learned it from her or learned it from someone who learned it from her,” says veteran Soviet intelligence expert Herbert Romerstein.
My humble suggestion to the readership here are the following:
1) Look at what we must do NOW to lay the foundation to a successful 2010 election.
2) Seek out and post points for discussion that are relevant and geared towards: a) immediate defense against what Obama and the Leftist-controlled Congress are doing now; and b) strategies, tactics and otherwise relevant topics for retaking Congress in 2010.
3) In the course of discussions, be cognizant when you are being bated and the topic under discussion is being diverted into the weeds, and the original topic—- important to restoring American rule in 2010—- is left to founder.
Simply that.
