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A New Fascist Tactic on the Net
The far right is using a new tactic against opponents on the net.
It has been used against me (and the semi-weekly journal The Internet
Anti-Fascist). It was used against the Belgian mega-site antifa.net that
represents over 40 European groups. It was recently thrown against the
Peaceflag group.
The tactic is easy to understand.
They first forge an enormous number of posts under their opponents names,
giving the publications a salacious, often obscene, character.
They they attack their opponent for publishing such material and demand
people complain to the anti-fascist's ISP.
In my case there were some 400 forged publications; the people at Peaceflag
did not specify how many ads for porn were sent out over the Peaceflag URL.
The fascists also try to create a "straddle" (to use a military term) in
their attacks so that they can launch complaints regardless of the action
or inaction of their opponents.
To simplify, imagine that all 400 attacks share but two contents. The first
is an ostensible of pedophilia coupled with ads for young male sexual
partners; the second is a homosexual pass at the fascists themselves.
The fascists target the "pedophile," proclaiming that the sexual posts are
off-topic in political news groups, and demanding that the ISPs kill
service for people who use the net for illegal purposes.
If their victim successfully deals with this, the fascists use that to set
up the next attack. For in dealing with the libel around pedophilia, their
victim "has not denied" making passes at them.
So the second round of attacks is to denounce the ostensible sexual
harassment they're subjected to, coupled with demands that the victim's ISP
again kill the victim's service because of the constant harassment they
pretend they're under.
If people deal with both aspects of the fascist forgeries, then the third
round of attacks focuses on accusing the victim of spamming the responses.
Here the victim is informed that forged messages on usenet can be canceled
and that the victim is only using the forgeries to spam his or her own
politics. This brings about the predictable demand that people complain
about the spam to the victim's ISP.
Finally, the victim may cancel the forgeries under existing net norms. The
fascists immediately accuse the victim of issuing "forged cancels" and
demand that the ISP pull the victim's service for "abuse of the net."
Both the forgeries and the complaints are almost always run through
anonymous remailers or with the semi-anonymity of free e-mail accounts.
This exempts the forgers from any reasonable fear of defamation suits.
And, following the fascist acts described above, also permits the
rightwingers to accuse the victim of "forging himself" because he or she
"can't prove" that they didn't.
I would be especially interested in hearing from any readers if they know
of other individuals or groups who have been targeted in this fashion.
-- tallpaul (Paul Kneisel)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Editor: The Internet Anti-Fascist
http://www.anti-fascism.org
