The Double Identity Of An "Anti-Semitic" Commenter

[Segami]

Smearing a Progressive Website to Support Israel

Like many other news websites, Common Dreams has been plagued by inflammatory anti-Semitic comments following its stories. But on Common Dreams these posts have been so frequent and intense they have driven away donors from a nonprofit dependent on reader generosity. A Common Dreams investigation has discovered that more than a thousand of these damaging comments over the past two years were written with a deceptive purpose by a Jewish Harvard graduate in his thirties who was irritated by the website's discussion of issues involving Israel.


His intricate campaign, which he has admitted to Common Dreams, included posting comments by a screen name, "JewishProgressive," whose purpose was to draw attention to and denounce the anti-Semitic comments that he had written under many other screen names. The deception was many-layered. At one point he had one of his characters charge that the anti-Semitic comments and the criticism of the anti-Semitic comments must be written by "internet trolls who have been known to impersonate anti-Semites in order to then double-back and accuse others of supporting anti-Semitism"--exactly what he was doing. (Trolls are posters who foment discord.)


The impersonation, this character wrote, must be part of an "elaborate Hasbara setup," referring to an Israeli international public-relations campaign. When Common Dreams finally confronted the man behind the deceptive posting, he denied that he himself was involved with Hasbara. His posting on Common Dreams illustrates the susceptibility of website comment threads to massive manipulation. As another illustration, he even audaciously tricked the white-supremacist Vanguard News Network, posing as "DeShawn S. Williams," a "Pro-White/Black, anti-jew." On Vanguard, where this African-American persona posted more than 1,400 times, he encouraged the malevolence of Frazier Glenn Miller, the neo-Nazi accused of killing three people whom he believed were Jews outside a Jewish community center and retirement home in Kansas in April. The character Williams was engaged in a comment thread more than 200 times with Miller, whose screen name was Rounder.


In a Vanguard post under the Williams screen name the commenter asked rhetorically, "Are left wing folks finally waking up to the jew?" He then referred the Vanguard online community to a thread of anti-Semitic comments on Common Dreams--most of which he had written himself under several screen names. A typical DeShawn Williams comment might include: "Israel is a stain on the world that needs to be expunged once and for all." Or: "The jews are the most racist people on earth. Just look at their Talmud. They consider the 'goyim' (non-jews) to be cattle whose only purpose on earth is to serve them." But on Common Dreams, DeShawn S. Williams was only one among dozens of screen-name characters this poster created. They seemed to be in competition to revile Jews. Here's how "HamBaconEggs," the site's most prolific anti-Semitic persona, began a conversation last October:




A few posts later the HamBaconEggs character was taken to task for his hatred of Jews by the JewishProgressive character, who responded to another (sincere) poster who had pointed out the anti-Semitism :





cont'


http://www.commondreams.org/hambaconeggs

[MohRokTah]

1. Wow, that's some next level trolling shit!

[Segami]

2. "...It was during their daily efforts to block objectionable commenters..

....from using the site that the Common Dreams staff got an inkling that significant manipulation was going on.

The website's executive director, Craig Brown, was personally appalled at the anti-Semitic comments--and had a financial motivation to block these commenters. One generous funder had told him, he said, referring to the stream of anti-Semitism, "I gave you five thousand dollars last year, but I'm not doing it again."

"We've had hundreds of donors say similar things," Brown added. "People are right to be offended by the anti-Semitism, and it has a serious impact on our reputation and our fundraising." But when Common Dreams tried to block DeShawn, HamBaconEggs, et al, they kept coming back...."

[xchrom]

3. du rec.

[leftstreet]

4. DURec

[stranger81]

5. How many similar trolls are commenting on DU, I wonder? [n/t]

[MineralMan]

6. Many things on the Internet are not what they seem.

And in many areas, I'm sure. Spotting the fakes isn't easy, but suspicions are easy.

[tblue37]

14. Remember the Peter Steinberg cartoon:

On the internet nobody knows you're a dog.

[MineralMan]

17. Yup. And half of the 13 year old girls in chat rooms

are cops. The other half are child molesters. The real 13 year old girls are texting each other.

[Dems to Win]

7. This makes me angry and sad

Common Dreams is a great site run by wonderful people. They shouldn't have to deal with such a jerk.

[MynameisBlarney]

12. Raw Story was plagued a particularly virulent troll for a couple of years

with the ability to create sock puppet accounts at will.

I think he was either finally blocked for good, or he lost interest.

Now we have a slew of new trolls, but they're much easier to spot.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

8. K&R. nt

[ReRe]

9. Trolling 401 n/t

[JEB]

10. K&R for exposure.

[Comrade Grumpy]

11. Well, what do you know?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

13. This isn't so much trolling as jerking off.

[tblue37]

15. That jerk must not have a life. nt

[Jefferson23]

16. Recommend. n/t

[Jack Rabbit]

18. This reminds me of an internet rumor I heard about two posters on the I/P forum

I won't name either, but the rumor is that the two posters were one and the same person.

One, who was a thorn in my side when I moderated that forum, was borderline anti-Semite. I almost banned him and probably should have; I remember removing his posts on a regular basis. I think he's the one I warned about using Holocaust-denier David Irving's website as a source. He was banned not long after I stopped moderated I/P in 2003.

The other, who first appeared a short time after I stopped moderating I/P, was an ultra-Zionist who thought settlements in occupied territory were fine and dandy, that there was nothing to discuss about any moral equivalency between Israeli and Palestinian differences, that torturing Palestinian prisoners was just a "pragmatic" thing to do and that Joe Lieberman would make a good President (this was during the 2004 primaries). He was also banned, but I can't remember exactly when.

If true, then I can't say how this fellow really felt about the issues discussed on the forum. No one can assume that he wasn't pulling DU's leg right from the start. The last I heard of this matter, I was sent a link to a pro-Israeli website where many veterans of the I/P forum congregated; apparently, they had just heard the same rumor themselves and were discussing it in various stages of disbelief.

For my part, I have no reason to either believe or disbelieve the rumor. I find the idea amusing and must admit a grudging admiration for this fellow's ability to create a character out of whole cloth.

[thucythucy]

19. Can the owners of the web site file a lawsuit?

I mean, this guy cost them thousands of dollars in lost fundraising, not to mention the time and expense of finally tracking him down.

[malaise]

20. Nothing surprises me anymore

What a trolling mess.

[Segami]

21. Yup. Its really the World Of Oz.