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"

[Pippin]

Welcome to FR MrSanders! :o)

[mnehring]

MrSanders & everyone,

Back to the issue at hand- the leftist brown shirts (yes I said it..) You should just sit back and laugh.. Although the left loves to throw the term 'fascist' at the Right at every turn, this is really just a reflection of what fascism actually was and operated.

::rant on::
What you see is a perfect reflection of how the left has strong fascist tendencies. The left is quick to band together and censor anything that deviates from their reality, even expressions of their own words.

It is the left who always makes legal attempts to censor expression of religion, mostly through court cases. You never hear the Right, even the Religious Right, taking a Buddhist temple to court to block a public speech from the Dali Lama, yet this is a common strategy by the left against those evil Christians…

The left are the ones that throw pies at open, public speeches by those on the right.

The left is always trying to create an e-krystalnaught, acting the victim while actually being the instigators.

::rant off::
Let them continue to show their true colors. If you post facts (sourced of course)- especially their own words, and a group of leftist brown shirts attack, then you’ve won… We don’t win the war of ideas by mob tactics, we win them with better ideas and facts…

The history of edits are there for all to see.

[Tribune7]

Good advice.

[IllumiNaughtyByNature]

I will presume that you included me in the post regarding my defining of wikipedia of being edited by people with agendas, you are correct. Both Conservatives and Liberals edit it with intent. There is nothing wrong with that, I just make sure that I am aware that anything I read there is fact checked. Which sounds like what you do. FReep On!

[Tribune7]

:-)

[IllumiNaughtyByNature]

I am glad we agree.

[Tribune7]

We do. If you were here (and female and attractive) I'd hug you!

[IllumiNaughtyByNature]

If you were here I'm not (and female I'm not and attractiveMy wife thinks i am) I'd hug you!you won't! :o)

high-five to you. But I'm glad we agree. Happy FReepin'

[Tribune7]

dittos :-)

[fanfan]

It means In Before The Zot.

It means you are still here, and haven't been banned as a troll.

Welcome to Free Republic.

;-)

[MotleyGirl70]

IBTZ

Oh, shut up with that crap!

[Tribune7]

Oh, shut up yourself!

[MrSanders]

Hi all- if anyone wants further proof that I'm not part of some leftist conspiracy just take a look at what's transpired at Wikipedia.

One of the liberal Queen Bees over there is this nasty rude little leftist lady named Slim Virgin. She's uber-naziesque in the way she controls articles on Wikipedia and reverts back to the leftist version with NO DISCUSSION every time any conservative makes a change she doesn't personally approve. And since she's a leftist she doesn't approve any of them -- just deletes.

It looks as if she either lurks here or has a sleeper account and saw it when I was complaining about the liberals on Free Republic. She had the audacity to make a not so veiled reference to this thread and included it with an attempt to censor me from editing Chip Berlet's article (and probably any on any liberal for that matter) at all!

She's also working tag team with Gamaliel - the leftist who started this whole mess.

See for yourself:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AChip_Berlet&diff=41569738&oldid=41564197

[indcons]

Thanks for the ping, Mr. Sanders. Wikipedia is an unreliable source for political topics; I use every once in a while but am very careful to cross check everything I read there.

[Tribune7]

When I read the Berlet article I cannot get excited about claims to leftist conspiracies.

The article makes it clear that Berlet is some kind of hardcore lefty and that's what it's supposed to do.

The Wiki mods would be nuts, btw, to allow defamatory disputable info to remain on the page.

[MrSanders]

What exactly is defamatory and disputable about Berlet there?

[Tribune7]

OK, here's what your complaints were:

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!

Here is what I just gleaned from Wiki

Berlet is a former vice-president of the National Lawyers Guild, a body described as pro-communist by conservative critics . . . He also became an active shop steward with the National Lawyers' Guild, a liberal bar association.

. . ..Berlet attended the University of Denver for three years, where he majored in sociology with a journalism minor. He left the university in 1971 to work as an alternative journalist. Berlet did not complete his degree.

And I note there is a whole section devoted to criticism from Horowitz

Now, if you got the new stuff in, good job. Seriously. But if they left out a quote or two that you wanted in, I can't get too hot about it and you shouldn't either.