March 16, 2007

by Bill Levinson

MoveOn.org argues that the vicious hate speech that were posted by its Action Forum members does not make MoveOn itself a hate group, because the hate speech does not represent official MoveOn.org policy toward Jews, Catholics, Evangelical Christians, or Black people. A strong argument can be made, however, that MoveOn.org’s welcoming such hate speech in a forum over which it exercised editorial control does in fact make it a hate organization. Wikipedia provides the following definition:

A hate group is an organized group or movement that advocates hate, hostility, or violence towards members of a race, ethnicity, religion, gender or other designated sector of society, or that supports and publishes assertions and argumentation characteristic of hate groups without necessarily explicitly advocating such hate or violence that otherwise characterize hate groups.

According to the second portion of the definition, MoveOn.org has proven itself a hate group beyond any reasonable doubt.

How, one might ask, can we call MoveOn.org a hate organization when it itself published only one Official Bulletin item that could be construed as anti-Semitic (“Jews with divided loyalties”) and one piece of anti-Catholic hate (the following derogatory cartoon of Pope Benedict waving a gavel in front of the U.S. Supreme Court)?

MoveOn.org’s derogatory portrayal of Pope Benedict
Compare to the following “Catholics control everything” cartoon by 19th century cartoonist Thomas Nast:

Two officially-sanctioned pieces of hate speech do not necessarily make MoveOn.org a hate organization, even though individual gaffes by Trent Lott (praising former segregationist Strom Thurmond) have been enough to damage or destroy political careers. The problem is the widespread hate speech on MoveOn.org’s Action Forum.

MoveOn.org argues that it should not be held responsible for the content of a forum at which, so it says, anyone can register and post. It argued, in fact, that shadowy right-wing operatives posted the racist and bigoted remarks to damage MoveOn’s reputation. On its surface, this argument seems valid. Newsgroups like soc.culture.israel are obviously not anti-Semitic even though they are frequented by trolls who post anti-Semitic remarks on a regular basis. Newsgroups are not, however, subject to editorial control, and no one is responsible for their content.

Suppose that we own a large piece of property (symbolizing an Internet discussion forum) on which all people can state their opinions. The only people who will be kicked out (banned from the forum) are those who make illegal threats of violence, or engage in fraud. This is pretty typical of Internet newsgroups, where the only way to get in trouble–possibly with the law and/or one’s own service provider–is to post spam or illegal threats against another person. Under these conditions, if a group of bigots in sheets and hoods shows up and burns a cross in my yard while talking about how Negroes are no good, this does not make us a racist.

Now suppose, however, that a group of Black people and decent white people are holding up signs that proclaim how the Klan is no good. If we order them off our land while allowing the Klan to remain, it is pretty obvious what we are even if we ourselves do not wear a sheet. And this is exactly what MoveOn.org did.

CyberLaw ™ is owned by California attorney Jonathan Rosenoer. The Web page cites a libel lawsuit in which a lawsuit against Prodigy was allowed to go forward because of Prodigy’s exercise of editorial control over its bulletin boards’ content. This is exactly the same reasoning that applies to MoveOn.org’s exercise of editorial control over its Action Forum. Bracketed comments are ours.

The court explains,

“A distributor or deliverer of defamatory material is considered a passive conduit and will not be found liable in the absence of fault. [This is MoveOn’s argument.] However, a newspaper, for example, is more than a passive receptacle or conduit for news, comment and advertising. The choice of material to go into a newspaper and the decisions made as to the content of the paper constitute the exercise of editorial control and judgment, and with this editorial control comes increased liability.” (Citations omitted.)

In other words, once the owner of a newsgroup or something like MoveOn’s Action Forum begins to exercise editorial control by deciding what is and is not appropriate for that forum, the owner becomes at least partly responsible for that content. The following speaks for itself:

From: Jan Mel Poller [E-mail given to MoveOn.org, deleted for privacy here]
Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2004 10:19 AM
To: ‘info “at” moveon.org’ [@ replaced with "at" for posting on the Internet, to thwart address harvesters]
Subject: Liberals and the left

I doubt that you will read this or pass it on to your leaders, but it is worth a try.

I am an old time Liberal, dating back to the Truman era. I am deeply disturbed by some of the anti-liberal views espoused in many forums on line, in college campuses and in the news media.

Liberalism always fought for truth and against censorship. I was told by a Muslim woman that she was against terrorism, Saddam, Arafat and the rest of the Jihad leaders. However, her posts were not allowed to appear here. At the same time, Nouris strongly anti-Israel posts, not to mention rod Hutchinson’s anti-Semitic post are allowed to appear.

You tolerated [censored?] my posts, which challenged support for Jihadist terrorism and supported Israel and the spread of democracy throughout the world (including the Arab world), have all been removed. I am no longer allowed to post.

It speaks for itself. When Mr. Poller posted pro-Israel material, his postings were deleted and his ability to post was disabled. Our experience was similar, with regard to criticisms of the anti-Semitic racist Al Sharpton and the hate speech. On the other hand, the anti-Israel material and the hate speech was allowed to stand. Examples include the use of “Jew” as an epithet, as in “Jew Lieberman,” “Why are the Jews so Jew-y?” and “whining, arrogant Jew” (Tom Lantos). This is but the tip of the iceberg, as shown by the following highlights of anti-Christian hate speech from the Action Forum that we have on file.

Especially the modern day human educated since the early eighties when the Catholics were allowed to steal our education money for their pedophile creating private schools.

But until the priests are hounded down and arrested like the baby rapers they are, the neverending cycle will continue. You want to throw a monkey wrench in both political parties? Call for the arrest and immediate incarceration of the Catholic Pedophiles of America.

The vicitm class will expand until you too can be jailed for ridiculously minor offenses while the Catholics are raping your children.

And the Supreme Court is packed with Opus Dei Catholics who support a monarchy…

If the Catholics and Southern Baptists can gang up on the rest of America to further their plans for world domination. Then a group of highly trained espionage experts shouldn’t have a problem organising the attacks of 9/11. [19 out of 21 Action Forum participants voted to AGREE with this]

Not content with publishing (under editorial control) anti-Catholic hate that could have come from 19th century cartoonist Thomas Nast, 19th-century Know-Nothings, or the Ku Klux Klan, MoveOn.org went on to post genuine blood libels of Jews and evangelical Christians.

Massacre in Gaza http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/am/publish/article_18657.shtml
By Khalid Amayreh Jun 11, 2006, 14:52
The heart-rending scenes of the Bahr al-Sudaniya massacre in Gaza on Friday, 9 June, shows the Israeli army as it really is, a reptile-Nazi-like army of thugs, hoodlums, and common criminals, not unlike the Gestapo, SS and Wehrmacht.
… Massacres, after all, have always been Israel’s modus operandi. Israel itself inaugurated its birth with “holy massacres” as Talmudic sages would tell us.
In truth, Zionists have committed more massacres per capita than any other people on earth since Adam and Eve. In fact, one can safely say that wanton killings and massacres are piece and parcel of being Zionist.
This murderous cannibalism doesn’t come out of the blue. Today in Israel, school curricula are dominated by the Talmud, especially a specific Talmudic text called Shulhan Aruch. In this text, Jews are commanded to slaughter non-Jews who are viewed more or less as animals or at least lesser human beings.

10 out of 13 MoveOn.org Action Forum members agreed that the Talmud is a “hateful scripture” and Israel is run by “Judeo-Nazis.”

[Another post, with a blood libel of Evangelical Christians; 9 of 11 MoveOn.org people voted to agree]
As an Evangelical Christian, the president is doing his part to hasten armageddon, as evidenced by his middle-east policies. He would like nothing more than full scale war between the Jews, Christians and Muslims, as has been prophesisied in the Bible. Also keep in mind that the Evangelicals have no great love for the Baptists or the Catholics, many of whom the president managed to kill in New Orleans.

This makes MoveOn.org entirely responsible for the content of its Action Forum. Per the Wikipedia definition of a hate group as one, “that supports and publishes assertions and argumentation characteristic of hate groups without necessarily explicitly advocating such hate or violence that otherwise characterize hate groups,” MoveOn.org is a proven hate organization, and we have every right in the world to demand that figures like Barack Obama disassociate themselves from it the way Ronald Reagan denounced the Ku Klux Klan.