When commenting on the Internet, have you ever been accused of being a pro-Obama propagandist paid for by George Soros? I have, lots. Here’s an example from ORYR:
You are deliberately spreading propaganda, deception, lies & misinformation. You are exposed as a paid Soros & Obama obot & fraud. Dr. C’s intentional propaganda, deception, lies & misinformation = -100 Truth & Facts = + 100. You always are a loser with your paid propaganda lies, misinformation, deception you promote.
I’ve been among the anti-birther community for approaching 5 years now, and I have never found any reason to suspect that any of the regular anti-birther cast has any connection for Soros, or gets paid for their online activity, quite the contrary, and I don’t have any evidence that this is the case with the birther side either, but …
In a new book NPR media reporter David Folkenflik discloses that Fox News’ paid PR staffers did write pseudonymous blog posts to counter negative or even neutral comments about Fox News on Internet blogs. They used various techniques to erase links back to Fox, including using untraceable broadband Internet connections and even resorted to an AOL dial-up connection to obscure their multiple accounts. A former Fox News staffer disclosed that they had personally used 100 fake accounts to plant Fox-friendly commentary.
Read more:
- Media Matters for America
- Murdoch’s World: The Last of the Old Media Empires by David Folkenflik
- “Engineered Crisis” at Obama Conspiracy Theories
Honestly, before I heard birthers talk about him, I had no idea who Soros was.
“We report, you decide”…..then we erase.
Haven’t read it yet, but I am enjoying the title of chapter 21. 😉
To be clear, Folkenflik’s book is about Murdoch’s “empire”, not just the Duchy of Ailes.
Also looking at Informing the News: The Need for Knowledge-Based Journalism … not sure there’s any new content there.
As far as the sock puppeting …. can you say ‘projection’? In order to make the accusation, you have to have conceived of the actions described in the accusation. The only people with time for sock puppeting shenanigans are the retired, independently wealthy, unemployable, under 21 … or those paid to sock puppet.
Maybe someday I’ll make on of those categories … someday!
We report what you should decide …. and you will, after we have erased your mind 😈
“Dr. C’s intentional propaganda, deception, lies & misinformation = -100 Truth & Facts = + 100.”
I suspect this is unimpeachable logic, a devastating argument … if only I could parse it! Love the failed attempts at …. ummm …. “math as language art”. Seems popular among the none-too-bright crowd.
Why on Earth would Soros care?
yep, i still don’t. nor do i know anything about saul alinsky. but according to the birthers they are in control of my income and actions.
The poor birthers cannot accept that we continue to have the facts on our side…
As to Fox News, they are a disgrace to the industry…
The accusation that anyone who disagrees with one is a paid agent of some third party is largely a product of what I have come to refer to as “Pop-Postmodernism”. Put simply it is the result of a strange misapplication of the Postmodernist idea that all sincerely held views are equally valid. Rather than using this as the philosophers intended, to affirm others while disagreeing with them, this is unconsciously altered into the proposition that all invalid views are held insincerely. In the language of theology, all heretics are insincere.
This is of course erroneous thinking, but it is incredibly widespread thinking, found on the political left and right, and among theological conservatives and liberals. Apparently Western culture is fast losing the category of “sincerely wrong” that my parents inculcated through the old couplet,
“If Moses supposes his toses are roses,
Then Moses supposes erroneously.”
It is entirely possible for a sincere person to hold a false philosophy or theology, and to say otherwise results either in one committing intellectual suicide and affirming that Hitler was right, whilst at the same time those who opposed him were right, or in adopting the entirely false view that Hitler must have been insincere because he was in the wrong. Which is of course in fact reintroducing absolute truth by a back door by arbitrarily accusing those with whom one disagrees of insincerity.
and the end result of doing that is an end to all intellectual discussion, for how can one have an intellectual discussion with those one knows to be habitually dishonest?
Yep. I’ve been accused of being an Obama “obot” paid by Alinsky… lol!
I’m more annoyed by the Fox tactic of having staffers post supportive posts than the birther complaints.
Nixon did a similar thing during his time in office…his staff cranked out supportive letters on various issues, had them flown out to Red states in Air Force planes, and mailed from there, to make it appear the “silent majority” was on his side.
Has there ever been any documented case(s) where it was proved that a third party has been paid to put a point of view on behalf of a cause? Yes people involved with scams defend scams, political parties get their PR machines to work their points across through various media but has there ever been a party with a degree of separation orchestrating a media campaign as is suggested with “Obots”?
Rupert Murdoch says every time a Faux News staffer writes a sock ppuppet commenter the Koch Brothers get a Nickel.
That’s right, Dr. Conspiracy! That’s right! Attaboy Rupert!
Back during the Clinton impeachment days I was accused by someone on Compuserve of being a paid shill for Clinton because I said that lying under oath in a civil lawsuit did not constitute high crimes and misdemeanors.
Somebody owes me a bucketful of cash.
Don’t forget that there was a report in 2011 that Premier Radio Networks paid actors to call in to their shows. Premier had a stable of actors who called their shows to provide shock value or make the hosts look good. Premier is part of the same company that syndicates Rush Limbaugh and Hannity’s shows.
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/hmm-prominent-conservative-radio-host
I’m ashamed to admit that I had never heard the name Alinsky before I became an Obot.
I venture to say that most of us, at one time or another, have been accused of being paid operatives. I have so many times I lost count. Mark Gillar accused me of it some time back.
My take on it simple. There people who are so deluded on this and other topics that they cannot fathom the possibility that they are wrong. And since what they see is so obvious to them, they believe everyone else must see it and believe it too. Ergo, we must be lying. The only incentive we would have to lie is that were are being paid.
It is the same set of beliefs that leads them to say, with no proof whatsoever, that judges have been either bought or threatened.
On WND several times I was accused of being a paid Obot. I would always say that I am indeed paid to make pro-Obama comments, that I make $343.50 per week, the checks come from BarackObama LLC., a division of Soroscorp, and that the checks are signed by Marian Robinson.
On one of those horrible Jerome Corsi threads about Ann Dunham, I was banned from WND for saying that Barbara Bush liked to dress up like the guy on the Quaker Oats box for sex sessions with H. W.
Me neither.
Please do not take offense if I do not go back to one my seminary textbooks to find some response. I am just to tired for that.
These are people who have live an insulated life in a homogeneous community (or very little community) and have spent the last 15 years listening to nothing but talk radio and Fox News. The idea that somebody could have a different opinion on their own, without payment or incentive from the “powers,” is completely foreign to them.
have you read this?
Inside the Fox News lie machine: I fact-checked Sean Hannity on Obamacare
“I tracked down Hannity’s guests, one by one, and did my own telephone interviews with them.”
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/18/inside_the_fox_news_lie_machine_i_fact_checked_sean_hannity_on_obamacare/
You mean you haven’t picked up your check yet?!? I’ve been getting mine for five years. Not only that, my work was deemed essential to national security and I kept receiving checks all through the shutdown. Honestly, without this income support I could not have afforded my 50 foot yacht and my Porsche Cayenne. I thought all of you were getting paid like me. 🙂
No direct cash for me from Soros, instead I took the share option plans and am currently hold an increasing number of great strike options with
FEMA-Camp-4-U Construction “Make ’em large…Make ’em Small, tailored for YOU!”
Shackles-R-Us,,,”When only the shinyest cuffs will do!”
UN Sable Choppers…”Black as an Obot’s soul”
Chemtrail Distributers…”The finest spray,,,the greatest denial”
Caliphate Enterprises…”We spread the word….OUR WORD!”
666 LLC…” If it’s good enough for his Satanic Majesty, it’s good enough for you”
And the best riser of the last 4 quarters
Beast Electronics..” We chip ’em, we track ’em, we microwave ’em, Genocide on a half shell, you know it makes sense”
I probably shouldn’t have taken my pay in Iraqi dinars, but I’m sure they’ll be exploding in value any. day. now.
Close maybe.
Back in late August 2013, the Harvard University School of Public Health published a series of literature review papers, (summary here), discussing the relationship of guns to homicide.
On the same day, the conservative blogosphere was bombarded with discussion of another paper from ‘Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy’, originally published in 2009 (here), that found that there was no relationship between guns and violence. The only thing is that this Journal has absolutely nothing to do with Harvard University, it is actually the official journal of the “Federalist Society“. It was founded by a couple of Harvard Law students, but has zero affiliation with the University.
There can be no doubt that the ConWeblogs picked up on the 4 year old story, and attempted to use the title of the faux-Harvard journal to flood the search engines and ‘hide’ the real story. The fact that so many ConWeblogs picked up on it and spread it like wildfire points to a “conspiracy” to me 😎 .
This is not an exageration, Google “harvard gun violence study”. Miraculously as I write this the legitimate paper is number 1 on the list (perhaps Mr. Google has fiddled it?). The next bazillion are the reports on the non-Harvard Harvard.
This is just one example, but I ‘expect’ it happens regularly. I am looking for more examples, from any side of a discussion before I actually commit to the thesis. I know that cons pushing magic perpetual motion magnetic motors do it.
And there is this: The dark world of search engine manipulation
The reflex “you disagree with me, so you must be a paid agent of Soros” is ideentical to that which led certain persons to brand the Boston Marathon bombing as a “False Flag Attack” when there was no flag! An unhealthy desire for certainty at the expense of truth. That is to say, the certainty of their own worldview would be disturbed by the reality of people who sincerely disagreed with them, or of events that did not fit into that worldview.
Of course radio stations have been planting callers since the year dot.
To a certain extent it’s a version of the psychology of the fanatic, that one’s opponent is not only wrong, but demonic. With Soros acting as a secular stand-in for Old Nick in this case, of course.
You have to remember that true believers think that everyone thinks like them and is really on their side, and the only reason they face opposition among ordinary people is because they are being intimidated, bought, or blackmailed, by the nefarious conspirators. True believers think that if they just show the facts to their interlocutors, the veil will come off the eyes, and the masses will spontaneously rally around them, charging to the cause, like an Eisenstein movie or a proletarian novel.
I gotta ask…what do they do when you tell them you’ve been “paid off?”
I remember one time, about seven years ago, on the James Randi forum, in some discussion, I mentioned my work with homeland security folks, and within minutes, there was a panic-stricken discussion thread about me on “Stormfront,” suggesting that I was among the government plants and moles sent to infiltrate their own website. One guy said I probably “changed the ice packs in the urinals” at Homeland Security. The paranoia was beautiful to behold.