The Internet Smear War From the Left

Andrew Breitbart has written a piece at the Washington Times on the organized internet war against conservative opinion:

A digital war has broken out, and the conservative movement is losing. Read the comment sections of right-leaning blogs, news sites and social forums, and the evidence is there in ugly abundance. Internet hooligans are spewing their talking points to thwart the dissent of the newly-out-of-power.

We must not let that go unanswered.

Uninvited Democratic activists are on a mission to demoralize the enemy - us. They want to ensure that President Obama is not subject to the same coordinated, facts-be-damned, multimedia takedown they employed over eight long years to destroy the presidency - and the humanity - of George W. Bush.

Political leftists play for keeps. They are willing to lie, perform deceptive acts in a coordinated fashion and do so in a wicked way - all in the pursuit of victory. Moral relativism is alive and well in the land of Hope and Change and its Web-savvy youth brigade expresses its "idealism" in a most cynical fashion.

The ends justify the means for them - now more than ever.

Much of Mr. Obama's vaunted online strategy involved utilizing "Internet trolls" to invade enemy lines under false names and trying to derail discussion. In the real world, that's called "vandalism." But in a political movement that embraces "graffiti" as avant-garde art , that's business as usual. It relishes the ability to destroy other people's property in pursuit of electoral victory.

Hugh Hewitt's popular site shut off its comments section because of the success of these obnoxious invaders. Breitbart.com polices nonpartisan newswire stories for such obviously coordinated attacks. Other right-leaning sites such as Instapundit and National Review Online refuse to allow comments, knowing better than to flirt with the online activist left.

During the Clinton impeachment scandal, a new group out of California called MoveOn.org employed a plan to get its members to dial into right-leaning talk radio shows with scripted talking points falsely claiming that they were Republicans. They said they would never vote for the GOP again if the case against Bill Clinton was pursued.

They're known as "seminar callers" on Rush's show. Folks who have attended the seminars that teach them how to mislead call screeners to get on the air. Almost all are stopped, but occasionally one makes it to the air but quickly becomes obvious.

As far as the war on conservative blogs goes, my site (unfortunately) isn't big enough to attract a lot of attention from the left, but I do see them from time to time. Since I monitor the Google search terms used to find HolyCoast, I'll periodically see someone searching for blog stories on some controversial matter and then posting a lengthy, obviously pre-written comment supporting the lefty policy of the day.

Since those are such obvious spin attempts I usually just delete them. If they want to write a liberal thesis they can get their own blogs.

This isn't about honest debate, it's about propaganda and attempts to create false smears against conservative voices. The big blogs can't take the time to monitor all comments for potentially actionable statements. I can.

You can read the rest of Breitbart's column here.