Free Republic Purge: Conservative Web Site Bans Giuliani Supporters

NY Observer ^ | Published: May 24, 2007 | by Rebecca Sinderbrand

[Eurotwit]

A few weeks ago – in between Hillary Clinton’s official entry into the presidential race and the first Republican primary debate of the cycle – the fiery online conservative forum Free Republic marked a decade in operation as one of the premier online forums for right-wing political discussion.

It also experienced one of the biggest internal battles to rock the site since the 2000 election of George W. Bush -- a tumultuous campaign year that nearly tore the site apart, as its founder and chief administrator first cleansed commenting ranks of Bush supporters, then, later, rallied to his support.

At the heart of the latest controversy: the fight over the conservative bona fides of Rudy Giuliani.

Over the past few weeks, chaos has reigned in the “Freeper” community as members sympathetic to the former mayor's candidacy claim to have suffered banishment from the site. They were victimized, they say, by a wave of purges designed to weed out any remaining support for the Giuliani campaign on the popular conservative web forum. Another significant chunk of commenters have migrated away from the controversial site over the action, according to a number of former site members and conservative bloggers who have been tracking the situation.

In a plaintive post on the blog “Sweetness & Light,” exiled commenter Steve Gilbert, who says he does not support the former mayor’s campaign, blasted the site’s new “anti-Giuliani, anti-abortion jihad.” Since George W. Bush was elected president, he wrote, “there haven’t been any large scale [Free Republic] purges to speak of – until now.”

The fight began one month ago, when site founder Jim Robinson posted an anti-Giuliani manifesto titled: “Giuliani as the GOP presidential nominee would be a dagger in the heart of the conservative movement.” Then the virtual ax started to swing. Longtime posters to the freewheeling discussion threads, used to serious no-holds-barred web etiquette, were still stunned by the intensity of the anti-Rudy activity; conservative blogs buzzed with the development.

“Jim Robinson has been going on a tear demonizing Rudy Giuliani, because Rudy (agreeing with the vast majority of Americans), is personally opposed to abortions on a moral level…” complained a user on the GOPUSA Web site. “Anyone who posts any support for Giuliani at the site, if it's at all forceful, will be banned.”

(“Normally, we don't allow complaints about other conservative forums,” chided the moderator, but “…because it is being discussed all over the Internet, I'll make an exception.”)

Just a few months ago, Rudy Giuliani placed second in an early Free Republic straw poll; now, his support on the site has been virtually eliminated. “After the ‘April Purge,’ I don't think there are any Rudybots left around here,” noted Free Republic commenter “upchuck” in one recent post. “And if there are, they're not posting pro-Rudy stuff :).”

The forums weren’t the only venue for the Free Republic’s new antagonism toward Mr. Giuliani, which coincided with a wave of comments expressing similar sentiments from other corners of the conservative movement. A few days after Mr. Giuliani’s equivocal Roe v. Wade comments at the Republican presidential debate on May 3, a new “STOP RUDY NOW News & Information Thread” was featured on the site, and a newly-created stand-alone category debuted via a link from the homepage: “The Giuliani Truth File.” (So far this campaign season, Mr. Giuliani is the only candidate – Republican or Democratic – to be singled out for that level of scrutiny from the Free Republic.)

Why Rudy? Why now? Some conservative bloggers and former commenters contacted for their view of the continuing controversy say they believe that site founder Jim Robinson holds ideologically middling Republicans like Mr. Giuliani responsible for the GOP’s congressional loss and current woes. (They asked that their names be kept out of this story for fear of antagonizing the famously frisky site regulars.)

Others claim that the former mayor’s top-tier status is spurring frantic site administrators into action. Finally, one popular theory holds that the Free Republic is secretly hoping for another Clinton presidency that would send its Alexa ratings soaring back to levels it hasn’t experienced since its halcyon days of the Clinton impeachment, when a since-soured relationship with blog pioneer Matt Drudge and overwhelming anti-Clinton sentiment in Republican ranks helped make Free Republic one of the hottest Web sites in the nation. It hasn't recovered that luster since the Bush administration took over.

“It’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s an observation,” said one blogger, who describes himself as a half-hearted Mitt Romney supporter. “They’ve still got a brand name that means something, but they’re not what they were in terms of real-world impact. A Hillary presidency would get them there.”

Robinson himself could not be reached for comment, but his original post laid out his case against Mr. Giuliani – a graphics-heavy presentation of some of the former mayor’s most damning moderate quotes in mainstream media venues, along with a color-coded report card tracking his less-than-doctrinaire positions on abortion, immigration, gays and guns.

Robinson, it should be noted, famously blasted George W. Bush’s presidential candidacy back in 2000, before a dramatic late-campaign about-face that saw him emerge as one of the GOP ticket’s biggest supporters. But whether or not Free Republic experiences a similar election-year shift this cycle, the site’s current campaign is spreading a dangerous primary-season meme of Rudy Giuliani as big-city liberal – and turning one of the most influential web forums in conservatism into an exclusive gathering place for those who share that view.

[Tijeras_Slim]

I was in college when the whole Jonestown thing happened. We had a party where me mixed grape koolaid and everclear in trash cans.

See, I’ve been a disturbed individual for almost 30 years.

[Eurotwit]

Great to see you back Travis...

Forget about the past, there still is a future to fight for.

Cheers,

Euro.

[MeanWestTexan]

With the exception of “Zeroisanumber” and “areafiftyone” I don’t recognize one of them.

[MeanWestTexan]

“Hildy opused in April, but account still active, just not posting.”

Good. Hildy is one of my favorite posters here.

[MeanWestTexan]

LOL.

[BykrBayb]

I hope you haven’t changed much in the last year. I always enjoyed your posts. Glad you’re back!

[The_Eaglet]

That kinda leaves out the interest on the debt and Chinese ownership of our Government debt. It's pay me now or pay me later. We are today's guardians of the nation's future unless, of course, we are only greedy for ourselves.

That is a good point. The debt issue should not be overlooked.

[Travis McGee]

Thanks, it’s good to be back.

[bootless]

Hey there, Travis. So nice to see you!

[Travis McGee]

Ditto!

[beaversmom]

ping

[JillValentine]

They're a strange bunch, aren't they? I can't think of another candidate who has such a worshipful, strange, cult following.

They snarl like a pack of wolves if you suggest that their god is less than perfect.

And it appears they have no sense of humor at all.

Perhaps the Mothership will come for them soon. ;-)

Sad that they have to be like that. I'm for Fred Thompson, but I realize he has flaws just like everyone else. The Paul-bots can't take the slightest criticism of their unwashed and holy prophet.

[dbehsman]

I’m not sure what word you are referring to, but FR hardly bars vulger language or bans people for using it. a five second google search returns about 600 posts that have not been deleted. Here are just a few from the first search page.

You posted 15 links to various Free Republic threads. I went to look at all of them. Here they are in order.

1. This one deals with rap lyrics from six and a half years ago. The person who posted it was banned or closed their account over five years ago. I don't think you can rightfully accuse someone posting an example of a rap song as "using foul language", they are quoting verbatim.
2. This one is another case of someone quoting a rap song. It's about six months old, and the poster in this case was just simply quoting.
3. This one is an example of someone quoting a posting at the end of a news article on another site. It's a couple of weeks old.
4. This next one is about six years old. A Freeper posted an article written by what appears to be a left wing wacko (I did not have time to read the entire thing). The original article employed a couple of foul words which the poster asterisked out. He missed one. Not a very impressive example.
5. This one was from a couple of weeks ago, and yes, this one would be a fair example of using foul language. The sentence that the Freeper said was "But what the **** is wrong with the American populace ....". The poster should not have written it, but it was not a personal attack against another Freeper.
6. This one is over a month ago, and again the foul language belongs to rap music lyrics.
7. This next one is three years old, and it is quoting the dictionary definition of the origin of the F-word, after someone else complained about a show using foul language.
8. This one is about two years old. The original article contained a quote form Bette Midler who used the F word. A Freeper quoted Bette's quote from the article and replied to it. The Admin Moderator later edited the quote in the article, but must have missed the post.
9. This one is three years old, and it is an article about a bunch of moonbats who wrote some terrible things about Jews. An article about a bunch of uncontrollable left wing wackos writing terrible things.
10. This one is five years old, and yes it is an overboard response to someone else.
11. This one is an article from over two years ago, which contained a quote in it from an unhinged left wing moonbat.
12. This is an article from about a year ago, and contains quote from Chris Hitchens.
13. This one is an opinion piece written by a Marine who was complaining about the left wing anti-war wackos and the news media. Maybe there should have been a warning about the language in the thread title.
14. This one is an article and is three years old. It contains a quote from a person using the F-word.
15. This one is a year old. I didn't take time to read through it all, because it is a relatively long posting. It looks like someone posted a piece of fiction or a short story, and in it the F-word is used once.

In total, 13 of the examples of foul language were quotations from other writers. Two of the bad words originated from the Freepers themselves. Three of the posts were quotations of rap music lyrics, six of the posts were quotations of left wing wackos, one of the posts was the dictionary definition of the F-word. The example from number ten should probably be pulled, regardless that it is five years old.

Free Republic has over 200,000 registered users. In the ten plus years that Free Republic has been around, over 1,800,000 threads have been posted . The amount of individual responses must run in the five to ten million range. In all of that time with all of that material, you said that Google found around 600 examples of foul language being used that slipped past the mods. If the fifteen examples that you posted are accurately representative of foul language that has been left on Free Republic, then I think we're doing pretty fine. One of those posts should probably be pulled, but the majority of them are quotes from other people or articles. I don't think your charge of posters "using bad language" really works. It's usually rare when it does happen, and usually the mods pull the stuff off.

[dbehsman]

Sounds like a double standard to me, too. Personally, RA was egged on by others cruising to ban people. I’ve seen profanity by other members and they were never banned or suspended.

The rules apply to members, and Radio is no longer a member. There is no double standard. I've had posts pulled, just like Radio did. The only one who was out to get Radio was himself. There was no conspiracy.

[dbehsman]

One other thing, why are you pinging RA? He can’t get pings.

Habit. I was told that whenever a post contains something about a Freeper, it is standard to automatically ping the person in question. Also IF hell actually does freeze over, and Radio decides to come back or is invited back, then I would think that the old pings would register in his "My Comments" page. I figured it would be better to err on the safe side.

[dbehsman]

If dbehsman wasn’t trying to taunt RA, he wouldn’t be putting RadioAstronomer in the ping list for every post he makes while trashing him.

It's not a taunt, however I can see how a person could interpret it as such. Please see my post #1395.

They can make every excuse they want to...just makes them look smaller.

Every time some people want to make a martyr out of Radio, I think it is right to respond.

[dbehsman]

For the benefit of the individual with the Involuntary Micuration Problem ...

Wow, that's a really impressive long word for wetting the pants. It would have been even more impressive if it would have been spelled correctly. Hint: Involuntary Micturition Problem

For the benefit of the individual with the Involuntary Micuration Problem on this thread, and for the lurkers, I hereby offer a sample of the late great FReeper RadioAstronomer's contribution to the intellectual excellence of FreeRepublic:

Yeah, it's such a loss. (/sarcasm)

And what do we have in the way of examples of the persistent bedwetter's intellectual contributions, for comparison?

But because RadioAstronomer used a naughty word in a private FReepmail, he is deemed "unworthy" to be on FR. In view of RA's prodigious intellectual prowess, I can understand why his interlocutor wet himself at the prospect of trying to argue with him.

Are you accusing trussell or js1138 of being bed wetters? Why are you pinging them?

[dbehsman]

FR better get cracking if it plans to expunge the "F" word. A google search reveals that FR has never banned the word or made more than a token effort to reduce its usage.

I think I already satisfactorily answered this charge in my previous post. I think you're reaching for a complaint.

What's really funny is, that if an acceptable (to FR) conservative gets the nomination, he will run from this site with all the speed and agility of Tony Snow. No one with a public life could survive being associated with this site.

Perhaps Tony Snow requested that his posts be removed and his account canceled. There ARE some people in the media who might take one of his posts out of context and try to manufacture an outrage. If no one in public life can survive being associated with this site (according to you), then why are you here? Would you be embarrassed if it was discovered by your coworkers and friends that you're associated with Free Republic? There is nothing wrong with Free Republic, except what your trying to make out of it.

FR has always had kooks, but at least it once had variety and once had a smattering of educated and talented posters.

If you're not happy, I think the answer for you would be self evident. There are other sites to join.

[dbehsman]

Massive and overwhelming rebuttal to THIS comment in reply #1002 of this thread:

"Radio is gone, and I'm glad. He contributed nothing of any real worth."

Longshadow, if you're going to talk about me, I would appreciate it if you would ping me. It's rude at best and pretty cowardly at worst to not do so.

Perhaps I should have rephrased that sentence.

Radio is gone, and I'm glad. He contributed nothing of any real worth to the schiavo threads.

Happy now?

[dbehsman]

There has been a sea change in FR, and support for the military and respect for FReeper veterans has declined.

I haven't seen it. If you can't back that up, I would say that is a terrible slander against Free Republic. What about all of those "Support the Troops" rallies? Where those just figments of everybody's imaginations? What about the counter protests against the anti-war moonbats? Who do you think helped organize, announce and plan those?

There is an existing post on another thread that demeans a FReeper in Iraq. No one commented on it, even after it was pointed out to the mods.

Have you notified Jim? I find it impossible that he would tolerate something like that. If Jim doesn't know about it, how can he do anything about it?

There was a time when FR would not tolerate disrespect for active military members, particularly when the dispute was simply over which Republicans could be supported over Hillary Clinton in a general election.

I think that still pretty much stands.