First of all, there is not an extraordinary level of censorship on Free Republic. It's natural that those who get booted and have their posts removed will feel that way, but it is not an extraordinary level overall. The vast majority of FReepers have never been banned, never been suspended, never had a post pulled, and never had a moderator send them a warning message.
Those who get booted are usually posters who post racist materials, posters who post anti-Semitic materials, posters who post Holocaust denial materials, those who spread the "Protocols" nonsense propaganda, those who post Marxist propaganda and attempt to pass it off as truth, those who deal in tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, those who condemn others based on race or religion, those who condemn religion itself, those leftists who pose as conservatives or right wingers but constantly trash conservatives or conservative policy, those who call for armed revolution or other violence, those who blame America for 9-11, those who excessively bash our president, our war effort or our military, those who post excessive profanity, those who agressively engage in personal attacks, feuds and flamewars, those who register two or more accounts and use them as straw men or try to pass themselves off as different posters, those who post vulgarity or pornography, those who continually post off topic items, spammers, advertisers, trolls, liberals, anarchists, skinheads, nazis, communists, defenders of abortion, gun control, gay rights, peta people, etc, etc (Free Republic is not a liberal debating society).
In addition, people who were banned from FR for the above reasons but come back with a new account will usually get booted when detected and all of his posts removed, regardless of what he posted or whether he broke any rules under his new nom de plume.
Some of these very same repeat offenders will proclaim innocence and complain the loudest, like our friend Vallandigham here. Most of these people have swallowed the black poison pill of the darkside and are now doing all they can do to speed along the "imminent demise" of Free Republic. Some of them have registered and been banned dozens and even hundreds of times from Free Republic (no wonder they feel so mistreated and censored).
And, yes, scores of them have organized and are engaged in anti-Free Republic activities. This has been going on in the background for the last four years. These groups of the banned ones, "Great Ones" they call themselves as in "All the great ones have been banned" band together, create forums, scan FR all day long and bring back to their mouse holes little tidbits from FReeperdom and they post these little morsels on their forums, scurry around excitedly and condemn the FReeper or FReepers whose posts they find amusing. Then they proclaim "Free Republic will die at 9:30 on February 8th" and so forth.
This goes on and on until they get bored and then start feeding on each other (mainly because they love to hate, doesn't matter who, hate anyone even each other, I mean we are really dealing with the dregs of life's losers here). Soon they splinter, kill off their forum and start two or three new competing anti-Freeper forums and the cycle begins anew. And Free Republic lives on.
The most recent of these forums is the LibertyForum:
Peruse these pages. This forum is home to many banned posters and many posters who feel for one reason or another that Free Republic no longer meets their needs. That's fine. You will find on this forum unabashed racists, anti-Semites, Marxist propagandists, angry (and I mean very angry) people who bash everyone and everything, whackos, sickos, you name it. If any of our current posters think this would be their cup of tea, then I welcome you to it. Please. I'd love nothing more than to be boycotted by the denizens of these anti-Freeping forums.
Now, back to our writer, Vallandigham's complaint. This guy can't understand why he and his cohorts get banned every time they register new names on FR. Can't understand why Jim and his crazed moderators ban them over and over. I mean it's not like they've declared war on FR or anything. Quoting from some of their dialogue:
Gotcha beat on the bannings, ho ho ( Welcome Robnoel...been trying to get on your radio show, but you ain't answering my mail...):
...& a couple others I forget now, were all banned. As soon as I began bringing up the Council on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission, the Spooks & Gubm't apologist (Poohbah, CommonTator, sinkspur, bayourod, Torie, etc.) wd swarm, en-masse, on the threads, and, within minutes, I'd get the punt.
- "fargone"
- "greatspectacular"
- "sevendust"
- "kindsir"
- "gobshite"
- "whatif"
Finally gave up. Suckers is born every minute, and if the sheeple want to contribute to RimJob's new home addition or whatnot, that's their business.
Welcome, patriot!
And another answers:
Well Hey, in the last month I was banned asBut, I have an endless supply of screen names and a desire to be a thorn in those asswipe's sides for a long time to come...
- Central Scrutiniser,
- Peter Torque
- Son Raw,
- Estimated Prophet
- Dotbomb
- and Penasco
Yup, and we will watch the abuse reports pour in when they start posting, then a little comparison through our logs and, yep, a match. Damn, Robinson banned me again.
Well many of you are receiving these emails or FReepmails, so please, go visit their sites. If you are the kind that finds them attractive, by all means, stay and enjoy yourself. I'm sure FR will manage somehow without you.
Well, they've reported and I've reported, you decide.
"Thanks [name of one of our best FR posters omitted], You can forward any e-mails you get from StopCensoringUs@hotmail.com (or any of the other communications nodes that we have outside of FR) to [name omitted of a great poster banned yesterday]. Among the reasons for this back channel of communication are to help folks like [name omitted]: a)find new and other forums on the Internet where their fine writing can be effective (like LibertyForum.org and LibertyPost), and; b)learn how to defeat the censorship mechanisms at FR to get back onto the forum, and; c)give them a big thank you for their work on behalf of free speech for patriots; and d)get them to give us more good ideas and leads drawn from their hard work.
Each of us will naturally develop our own little, average, big, or huge "circle" of fellow patriots who know and trust us as reliable communicators. That's natural, easy, and more powerful than centralizing ourselves. And that way we don't get stuck with any of us having to agree all the time with any one of us. That's the dead end than Robinson has driven FR into.
By trying to scare or chill good folks on FR into toeing his line, Robinson is really closing off the energy and future of FR. Let me share this little obvious "secret" with you: the more Robinson censors our folks the more he BUILDS INTEREST in what we have to say! Thank you JR! Keep it up! You can't win as a censor on the wide-open Internet. If you attempt to censor us you GIVE US the free gift of white-hot interest in our forbidden writings. And if you stop censoring us...then we've also won, since that's our goal - to be heard on an open forum. Maybe at some point Robinson will drop his ego long enough to realize that we don't even care personally about him....all we care about is free speech for patriot writers.
As far as Robinson's concerned, as the guy who owns one of the printing presses, all we're going to do is make him somewhat rich if he keeps censoring us, and really rich if he stops. Thanks for some of the best posts on FR ever, Vallandigham P.S. We need to spread info on how JR tracks our identities. I'm only a half-ass techie. We need some real pro's to share with us ways to get around whatever cookies, or IP address recognizers, or other red flags that prevent us from getting back in to post after we've been banned. Some of my methods are working. Other things I try fail. But one way or another I get back in. Even if I have to spend a small amount of dough on extra IP services (which I do).
Anybody who'd like to know more about what StopCensoringUs and friends are doing about the oppressive level of censorship at FR can e-mail anytime confidentially to: StopCensoringUs@hotmail.com.
Keep up the good work, Vallandigham"
That makes a total of six of these type of emails: four from Vallandigham and two from some brave genius known as "anonymous." I thought you might be interested.
Let's see.....Posted at 6:42 AM Eastern....that would be 3:42 AM Pacific Time.....
Jim, do you EVER sleep?
Many Thanks for all your wonderful work!
What a shabby little paragraph this is.
I prefer to think of Free Republic as a particularly jolly tavern. The barkeep has a responsibility to keep breakage to a minimum, and eject any particularly obnoxious patron who can't hold their liquor. I like it here, and should I decide otherwise, I hope to have the class to leave graciously.
Thanks for all that you do.
...I'm still here.
Thank you, Jim. : )
Ooh! I'm ahead of the curve, then, having had a post yanked and gotten a warning message. It was an unfailingly polite and well-reasoned message, though, so perhaps it doesn't count.
I certainly have posted comments on here that would have been 'censored' by many, many more websites. A person who accuses FreeRepublic of censorship is simply not grounded in reality.
Anyway, with that one exception, in all the years I'ver been here, that was the only time I felt the system was abused........And as any of you who know me, I have not been shy expressing an opinion.
And for those of you who want to know the Detective's first name.....I will answer you in a private reply
Gee, what a blow to my self estemm to find out I'm not highly regarded by this bunch.
But occasionally I find a seemingly unoffensive thread, read it, and attempt to post a comment, only to find "This thread has been deleted" or similar message.
On occasion I sure wonder why.
Perhaps it should say: "This thread has been deleted due to copyright issues," or "due to xxxx" whatver xxxx may be. In other words, I think a reason for pulling a thread might help--at least innocent bystanders who land in the middle of the train wreck and don't have a clue as to why.
--Boris