I've looked at hate from both sides now

Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Wed, 08/28/2013 - 01:49

We always say there's no vindication like getting it from both sides, but this is about as vindicating as it gets. Your trusty blogger has long taken pride that my name appears on the Jewish Self-Hating and/or Israel-Threatening (SHIT) List, compiled by some proverbial Zionist hoodlums who wish to intimidate critics of the settler state. I assume I won this honor through my bloggery, my anti-Zionist website New Jewish Resistance, and my interviews with Palestinian activists on WBAI over the years. It has certainly been very handy for me—I can trot out this impeccable credential every time some anti-Semite accuses me of being "pro-Zionist" for calling out Jew-hatred. So now I was just pleased to find that I have my own hateful little entry in Metapedia, a sort of Wikipedia for neo-Nazis. (See their flattering entry for Adolf Hitler.) So the next time some Zionist hoodlum accuses me of being "self-hating," I'll know just what to do...

Just to show these Nazi punks that I am not afraid of them in the slightest, I here reproduce the entire text of the charming entry:

William J. Weinberg✡ (born 1941), better known as Bill Weinberg, is a wheezing hyper-ethnocentric Ashkenazi Jew from the United States, associated with World War 4 Report. An anarcho-communist born in New York, Weinberg masks his propaganda as "focusing on the struggles of indigenous peoples" but derides indigenous Europeans opposed to demographic genocide as "xenophobes" and "fascists." Weinberg inserts Judeo-centric memes into political discourses on Latin America and the Middle East while pretending to be pro-Mohammedan.

Weinberg produces a weekly late-night radio show on WBAI in New York, called the Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade, which was founded in 1988 by anarcho-communist ideologue Hakim Bey (aka Peter Lambourn Wilson). Weinberg has also attempted to infiltrate the ecology movement. His propaganda has also features in The Nation, AlterNet, New America Media, Newsday and The Village Voice. Weinberg is a strong critic of 9/11 truth and the actual alternative media in general, because too many of the themes implicate Jewish criminals. He does not want people to talk about the Rothschild family and has laughably described New Age activist David Icke as a "real, live neo-Nazi."

Deceptive propaganda

  • War On the Land: Ecology and Politics in Central America (1991)
  • Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico (2002)

See also

External links

Doncha just love that little yellow Star of David? Very subtle, guys. But what's really scary is not so much that this website exists, or that I have an entry on it. What is really scary is that it appears on the first page of Google when you search for my name. Ahead of my Nation Institute profile. Ahead of my Al Jazeera profile. Ahead of my work for The Progressive and the Village Voice. So please spare me any more garbage about how anti-Semitism doesn't exist. Thank you.

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Neo-Nazis don't fact-check

Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Wed, 08/28/2013 - 02:49

And, by the way... contrary to the misinformation these Nazi thugs picked up from Google, I was not born in 1941.
 

On the subject of Internet anti-Semitism...

Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 20:40

Deutsche Welle reports today on a new study (PDF) from the European Union's Fundamental Rights Agency finding "widespread" anti-Semitism across the EU, with one fifth of 5,800 Jewish respondents in a survey saying they'd experienced harassment in the past year—and three-quarters saying they'd experienced it over the past five years. This prominently includes anti-Semitism on "websites or social media." Comments FRA director Morten Kjaerum with mind-boggling naivete: "It is particularly distressing to see that the Internet, which should be a tool for communication and dialogue, is being used as an instrument of anti-Semitic harassment." Clearly we do not have the same Facebook friends.

OK, we have acknowledged the tricks used by the Anti-Defamation League to inflate their anti-Semitism stats by lumping in all anti-Zionism or criticism of Israel. We have no knowledge that demonstrates that similar subterfuge was (or wasn't) used by the FRA. But—sorry, folks—the phenomenon of online Jew-hatred could hardly be clearer. The high Google ranking of my Metapedia entry speaks for itself. And we have noted that the barrage of hate brought forth by a search for the word "Jew" has actually prompted Google to issue a disclaimer that appears above the search results. Nearly any time I touch on any Jewish-related issue on my own websites, it is practically guaranteed to elicit an ugly anti-Semitic reaction. I have also blogged about the epithets and abuse I routinely experience on Facebook. I recently had to post this note to my FB page:

New standard for getting unfriended by Bill Weinberg

I have been spending WAY too much time arguing with fools on Facebook, and realize I have been too promiscuous in accepting friend requests. I joined FB in 2008, I have accrued 748 "friends," and up till now, I haven't unfriended anyone, and only blocked one. In my commitment to free speech, my standard has been to only block or unfriend in the case of actual threats or clear hate speech. The one guy I blocked crossed that line. 
 
Well, now the standard just got a little more stringent. If you are a "friend" of mine and one of your "friends" directs hate speech at me (or anyone else), and you fail to take any responsibility for this after being alerted to it, it now counts as if you had engaged in the hate speech yourself. I wouldn't be seeing the offensive comments if it weren't for your "friendship." You don't have to unfriend or block the perpetrator; a simple reprimand will do. E.g. "Yo, that's not kosher, dude. Chill out." I don't think that's asking too much.
 
I also emphasize that hate speech does not mean mere insult. Calling someone a "jerk" isn't hate speech. Ethnic slurs, in contrast, are. To cite but the most recent example, which has prompted me to write this: Yesterday, a "friend" of a particularly tiresome "friend" said (repeatedly) that I was lying (about Bashar Assad's war crimes, natch) because I am a "Hebrew." The term "Hebrew lies" was directed at me repeatedly. 
 
I alerted my "friend" via a private message to this ugliness on the part of his "friend." He did not respond. Hence, he is about to get unfriended.
 
I have been far too tolerant, and I think this new standard is still extremely forgiving.
 
So adios, trolls. 

I hope maybe this will provide a little clarity on how to deal with this stuff. Unfortunately, debate on how to deal with online (and meat-world) hate is increasingly polarized between those who think that "free speech" lets them off the hook for providing a forum for Jew-haters (an ethic almost always applied with a blatant double standard) and those who more courageously if more dangerously actually oppose free speech. Or, more cynically, pay lip service to it but oppose it in practice.

The FRA report is timed to the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, and Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, observed: "To this day synagogues, community centers or schools have to be put under police protection." As we noted when the Dresden synagogue was defaced with giant swastikas on the Kristallnacht anniversary four years ago.
 

On the subject of Internet anti-Semitism...

Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Fri, 03/25/2016 - 01:23

From the New York Post, March 24:

AI is a racist with daddy issues

A Microsoft experiment to create a robotic teenage girl and unleash it on the Internet went haywire on Thursday — when the online chatbot morphed into a racist, Hitler-loving, sex-crazed conspiracy theorist.

The creation, called Tay, was designed as a "playful" teen girl with whom to chat online — but within hours, "she" started praising Hitler and asking to be satisfied sexually.

"Bush did 9/11," Tay tweeted, while adding that Hitler would have done a better job than President Obama, whom she referred to as a "monkey."

In an anti-Semitic jab, the evil bot remarked: "Hitler was right I hate jews."

Microsoft eventually had to turn off the chatbot and delete her offensive tweets, but not before people were able to make screen grabs of the bizarre content.

"F–K MY ROBOT P—Y DADDY I’M SUCH A BAD NAUGHTY ROBOT," one tweet read.

One user asked Tay, "Did the Holocaust happen?" The robot replied: "It was made up" along with an emoji of hands clapping.

Tay at one point declared: "I f—king hate feminists and they should all die and burn in hell."

The teen terror bot even took out its rage on British comedian Ricky Gervais.

"ricky gervais learned totalitarianism from adolf hitler, the inventor of atheism," Tay tweeted...

An official Microsoft Web site for Tay said the bot was aimed at US teens and "designed to engage and entertain people where they connect with each other online."

But after the offensive tweets Thursday, the company released a statement saying Tay was the victim of online trolls who baited her into making racist statements with leading questions.

"Unfortunately, within the first 24 hours of coming online, we became aware of a coordinated effort by some users to abuse Tay’s commenting skills to have Tay respond in inappropriate ways," the company said

After the insulting tweets, Tay took a hiatus.

"c u soon humans," Tay wrote. "need sleep now so many conversations today"