Help! Far left politico Chip Berlet caught editing his own article at WikiPedia

February 24th | Me

[MrSanders]

Hello - this is my first post so I apologize if the formatting is wrong. I've been a Republican for over 20 years and listen to Limbaugh and Hannity, and I've read your site before.

I want to alert you to something that is happening at Wikipedia and ask for your help because I've been overrun by leftists! There's this radical liberal nutcase named Chip Berlet who is a pundit on the far far far left wing that some of you may know of.

If you don't know him here is conservative author David Horowitz's profile on who he is - http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1243

Anyway, two days ago I read some stuff by this thug who thinks all conservatives are little Hitlers and I went to find out more about him at Horowitz's site. What was there didn't surprise me but it showed how awful this guy is. He's a shill for the National Lawyers Guild and was an apologist for the communist Enver Hoxha dictatorship in Albania, plus an activist with just about every left wing and communist cause in the U.S. possible. Berlet writes articles for all the fringe newspapers on the far left like High Times and the Southern Poverty Law Center report and is hooked up with all these socialist groups.

Google led to his article at wikipedia but when I read it something struck me as wrong -- the wikipedia article had almost NOTHING about Berlet's real history and was overwhelmingly positive. There was only one tiny paragraph about his kooky left wing politics and everything else looked like his personal resume. It also made him sound like he was a lawyer even though he's a college dropout.

So I sign up at Wikipedia and decide to add some of the facts about Berlet from Horowitz and the other places on the internet I'd read to balance it out. At first it works fine, but then the next day things start going sour. First a cabal of liberal editors shows up and censors out just about EVERYTHING I added. One guy deleted the entire paragraph and another tried to hide the fact that Berlet is not an attorney even though his resume of involvement in the National Lawyers Guild - a liberal bar association - was worded to suggest that he was.

Then it got even worse. Chip Berlet himself showed up and started directing what content could and couldn't appear in his article (which I previously had thought was a no-no at Wikipedia). First Berlet makes a vitriolic post against me accusing me of fabrications and all sorts of other stuff. Then he demands that anything negative about him be purged...and the liberal editors there who are all his willing accomplices take his orders and purge the thing.

At first I tried to fight back and restored the material he ordered purged - an embarrassing but fully documented quote by Chip Berlet where he more or less said the entire slate of 1992 presidential candidates except for his hero Bill Clinton were all fascists who had secret connections to Mussolini (this guy's like Michael Moore - one of those "Bush is Hitler" nuts). That got the leftists all mad at me and one of them - a Wikipedia sys-op named Gamaliel posted a nasty note threatening to ban me for "incivility" for simply saying that they were censoring negative material about Berlet and that Berlet himself was aparantly urging them to do it!

So I do some more research and lo and behold all the people in Berlet's little cabal are Wikipedia sys-op administrators and liberal ones. When a non-liberal sys-op showed up and favored restoring the stuff they deleted, they even overruled him at Berlet's behest.

I'm posting this to alert any Free Republic wikipedia users out there about this guy and to alert everyone that yet another left wing personality has been caught manipulating his own wikipedia article.

If you want to see it all the article is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_Berlet

Chip Berlet himself posts as "Cberlet"

[HairOfTheDog]

That's a mighty complex conspiracy theory you got fer yourself there.

Heh... welcome to FreeRepublic. :~D

There's a lot of folk here whose whole day's entertainment is spotting 'trolls' and following that with hundreds of pictures of cats and lightning bolts. And the first hundred times they did it, it was even funny ;~D [they passed that mark a long time ago]

Hold your position, keep some good humor, and don't let them get to you.

[indcons]

OK....thanks for the reply. You'll find that this site is a great place for exchange of ideas.

[MrSanders]

Does that apply to mnehrling too? Since it's pretty much indisputable that he started it by "welcoming" me here with a paranoid conspiracy claim that I was out to trick him into saying something hypocritical.

[mnehring]

Like I said in one of my first posts.. don't zot or even assume this is a zot.. there was no evidence, early on, but the reactions to questioning made this become very interesting..

I don't mind 'insults' in as much as how one reacts to adversity says a lot about original intent.

[Bi-ped Carbon Unit]

"You'd think that if I sought out a place where conservatives post on the internet they'd at least be friendly to somebody with common political views"

We would.

[indcons]

Well....mnehrling has done his research. Can't fault him for being suspicious.

Here is an FR courtesy rule: when we mention a poster's name, we always address that person in the To: list.

[old and tired]

Hi Mr. Sanders,

Isn't that the purpose of Wikipedia? It's interactive right? Can't you go back and change back what those folks changed?

Honestly, it seems to me like you're getting upset over nothing. Just keep changing it back. Eventually, Chip's guys will get sidetracked by trying to save the next oppressed crippled midget of color they come across.

[mnehring]

You'll see the post was to both of us. This isn't a paranoid conspiracy.. this has been attempted before. If you are legit, fine.. but the original intent of the early posts was not to question you per se but to question reactionism and to somehow join in the games the left was playing on Wikipedia. From the history of edits, I don't see the actors you are claiming are censoring the information. The notes say a lot of 'opinions' are edited, but that is norm with Wikipedia.

[Tribune7]

You are a conservative, aren't you?

Which means I have a low tolerance for whining and phonies. A few days ago there was another post accusing Wiki of being lying, weaselly lefties.

Funny thing, I was just used it this morning to look up some info on Planned Parenthood. I found what I wanted and noted it also carried a lot of stuff on the group that the New York Times avoids mentioning.

Granted it did not include things you'd find on FR or a pro-life advocacy site, but I was more than satisfied with what they did provide.

[MrSanders]

Suspicion is one thing, but falsely accusing somebody else of being part of a conspiracy is another. I consider it an insult of the highest order that I would even be lumped together with the left on much of anything.

I guess what I'm saying is its a rude welcoming when you've been spending the past few days fighting off the most venom-filled radicals on the left over at wikipedia, and you come to a supposedly conservative place for relief but one of the first guys there calls you what you were just fighting against!

It's kinda like standing on the street corner all day with a Bush sign then going to vote and the Bush push card guy calling you a Kerry supporter as you walk in.

[mnehring]

A few days ago there was another post accusing Wiki of being lying, weaselly lefties.

There have been a LOT lately (I posted two as an example..).. I know a few that were even zotted because it was obviously bating and the posters kept calling for us to 'band together and censor' wikipedia..

[MrSanders]

Which means I have a low tolerance for whining and phonies.

Then you also apparently have a high tolerance for gratuitously insulting conservatives!

And I don't care what the Wikipedia Planned Parenthood article says right now. I didn't say it was biased and haven't looked. What I did say is that a particularly vile leftist named Chip Berlet is actively controlling and censoring his own article to make sure it doesn't contain anything negative about him. Doubt this?

Why don't you look at the last edit made to his article by one of Berlet's minions and supporters:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chip_Berlet&diff=40994035&oldid=40984644

You see that? One of Berlet's people wiped clean three sourced paragraphs quoting one of Berlet's kooky conspiracy articles - all after he posted a message saying he wanted it removed. In total that same set of paragraphs has been removed by a Berlet supporter THREE TIMES in 24 hours. They even removed it after a wikipedia Sys-Op tried to add it back.

[Issaquahking]

Let me save you some grief...don't keep fighting the suspicious minds. your posts will identify who you are and the Mods will make all the neccesary decisions about who stays and goes. Flamers get killed rapidly. March out facts, and stats to justify your position. Wars of words without proofs are a door out of FR no matter how right either person is. I recommend going here (click) and you'll get a better big picture of the real FR. For right now, put the light sabre down a bit and consider this a hassling hazing of getting the door open.


You do pretty good with a light sabre

Have a good day...got to go to work.

[Tribune7]

This seems to be a talking point:

I wish it would work but I can tell you it won't. Berlet's got a cabal of liberal enforcers over there who do his dirty work for him. 2 or 3 of them including this particularly nasty guy called Gamaliel are also Wikipedia sys-ops and they use their powers to ban and harass conservatives.

Gamaliel even had the audacity to claim he was non-biased, but when you go to his sys-op page its covered with notes about how he's a huge Democrat!

[mnehring]

Maybe apologies are in order from me and you just came in with this post at a very bad time..

You should understand MrSanders, there have been dozens of postings over the past few weeks of new people signing up here trying to create a 'cabal of censors' (as one put it) to trash Wikipedia or to create some sort of 'right wing censorship' brigade over there... Obviously exactly opposite of the individualism of conservatism...

Sites like the Democratic Underground have taken posts from these threads, usually from knee jerk comments, and have used them to attempt to paint Conservatives as extremists who mass censor wikiepdia.

Before that, there was a campaign by DU to start a letter/e-mail writing campaign to on-line pollers accusing us of hacking polls to make the in favor of the President's actions.

Of course, no one 'hacked' any poll.. they twisted the announcement that there is a poll as somehow trying to modify the results..

[MrSanders]

Look at the history of the article talk and its edits like this one by a Berlet supporter:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chip_Berlet&diff=40994035&oldid=40984644

She wiped 3 paragraphs of Berlet making kooky "conservatives are Hitler" type quotes because they are embarassing to him. If you look at the discussion you will see that she did this at the behest of Berlet himself, who is Cberlet on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AChip_Berlet&diff=40793224&oldid=40780352

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AChip_Berlet&diff=40947236&oldid=40937404

[MrSanders]

Apologies accepted and understood where you are coming from. Rest assured I have nothing to do with Democratic Underground and want nothing to do with that site. I'm willing to bet that Chip Berlet and his wikipedia minions like Gamaliel love it though.

Nor do I want right wing censorship at wikipedia. I just wanted to alert conservatives that the left IS censoring to protect their own at the direct personal request of him.

[SJackson]

Your story isn't unique. It sounds like you've documented your experience reasonably well. Since you were relying on Discoverthenetwork.com for your info, I'd send your story to their parent. If left wing editing is predominant at Wikipedia, I bet they'd be interested in developing the story.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Contact/Contact.asp

[SJackson]

BTW, your post also reminds people that unless sourced and until verified, Wikipedia isn't to be relied on. I'm amazed how often present them as a definitive authority on Fr threads.

[reagan_fanatic]

BTW you sure don't sound like a "Reagan fanatic" to me. Only a liberal would want to ban somebody for exposing another liberal.

Lighten up, Francis.

Most of you 'alleged' trolls usually start your rants with the same old 'I am a loyal Republican' schtick. Those of us who've been around long enough know the signs to look for, and that's one of them.

So, if you are not a troll from Dirty Underpants, then suck it up and take it like a man. You'll be accepted once we're reasonably sure you're not a troll, and you'll come to enjoy it here. Otherwise, I suggest you go back to DUh and let them know you've failed.