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| However, other vandal accounts remain dormant, or are used to establish a usage pattern of bland and inoffensive posts, for months or even years. These are described as "sleeper" accounts. Eventually, the vandal uses the account to post something offensive, such as a blatantly racist rant, or a threat of violence against Democratic leaders. | However, other vandal accounts remain dormant, or are used to establish a usage pattern of bland and inoffensive posts, for months or even years. These are described as "sleeper" accounts. Eventually, the vandal uses the account to post something offensive, such as a blatantly racist rant, or a threat of violence against Democratic leaders. | ||
| Sean Scallon of ''Chronicles'' magazine referred to this phenomenon: "Leftists began to infiltrate the site, posting articles or posing as conservatives to act as agents provocateurs." Freepers have claims that "WyldCard," the account used to post personal details about a restaurant manager who called 911 when an underage ] ordered an alcoholic beverage, was such a "sleeper" account created by a left-wing vandal. | Sean Scallon of ''Chronicles'' magazine referred to this phenomenon: "Leftists began to infiltrate the site, posting articles or posing as conservatives to act as agents provocateurs."<ref> Scallon, ''supra.''</ref> Freepers have claims that "WyldCard," the account used to post personal details about a restaurant manager who called 911 when an underage ] ordered an alcoholic beverage, was such a "sleeper" account created by a left-wing vandal. | ||
| The use of such sleeper accounts is prohibited by Free Republic policy, but incidents such as this one are difficult to document. | The use of such sleeper accounts is prohibited by Free Republic policy, but incidents such as this one are difficult to document. | ||
Revision as of 22:58, 15 March 2007
Free Republic is a moderated Internet forum and activist site for conservatives primarily within the United States. Founded in 1996 by James C. "Jim" Robinson of Fresno, California, Free Republic calls itself "the premier on-line gathering place for independent, grass-roots conservatism on the web." According to Free Republic, as of January 2007, over 200,000 users have registered.
Official stances, and founder's 2004 statement
Official stances
Free Republic endorses:
- The repeal of the 16th and 17th amendments -- and the abolishment of federal income tax and the Internal Revenue Service.
- The repeal of all laws created by unconstitutional and extraconstitutional devices, such as Executive Order or Presidential Directive. An end to all national emergencies and a ban on the unilateral creation of law by Presidential edict.
- The repeal and abolishment of all unconstitutional federal involvement in states issues such as: crime, health, education, welfare and the environment -- including the abolishment of Social Security, Welfare, and Medicare.
- The withdrawal of the U.S. from the United Nations, and the forced removal of the U.N, its facilities and operations from U.S. soil.
- The strengthening of the military and defenses; the effective control over illegal immigration and smuggling; the paying down the national debt; and strict control over federal agencies like the CIA and the FBI.
More official stances: About Free Republic
Founder's 2004 statement
As a conservative site, Free Republic is pro-God, pro-life, pro-family, pro-Constitution, pro-Bill of Rights, pro-gun, pro-limited government, pro-private property rights, pro-limited taxes, pro-capitalism, pro-national defense, pro-freedom, and pro-America. We oppose all forms of liberalism, socialism, fascism, pacifism, totalitarianism, anarchism, government enforced atheism, abortionism, feminism, homosexualism, racism, wacko environmentalism, judicial activism, etc. We also oppose the United Nations or any other world government body that may attempt to impose its will or rule over our sovereign nation and sovereign people. We believe in defending our borders, our Constitution, and our national sovereignty.
History
Prior to founding Free Republic, Robinson had been an active participant on the Whitewater Scandal bulletin board hosted by Prodigy. Frustrated with their censorship and the fact that it was accessible only to Prodigy subscribers, Robinson decided to start his own politically-themed forum.
Free Republic gained popularity during the Clinton impeachment controversy in 1998 and 1999, a time when it was linked on the Drudge Report, when protests and write-in campaigns were organized through the website. Many were also introduced to the site through an impeachment rally in Washington, attended by around 500 participants, called the "March for Justice," broadcast live on Halloween, October 31, 1998 (a Saturday) by the C-SPAN channel. Featured speakers were Alan Keyes, Bob Barr and Larry Klayman. Other Free Republic events over the years have also been televised by C-SPAN.
During the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign, two Free Republic members worked to discredit CBS's forged memos about U.S. President George W. Bush's National Guard service.
Forums
Format and policy
Free Republic forums are open to registered users for discussion about political events, conservative principles and the elimination of government corruption and abuse. Free Republic has an official policy which requires the removal of blatantly violent, racist, or bigoted postings.
Influencing polls
Media web sites, including newspapers, television networks, and America Online, run occasional "polls" that do not use the sampling methods of formal opinion polls but instead invite everyone to respond. Some Free Republic forum messages, usually captioned "FReep this poll!", urge Free Republic members to vote en masse in these polls. "Whenever a poll is posted on Free Republic.com, everybody goes and votes the right way, and there's nothing wrong with that," says Marinelle Thompson, FReeper and founder of gun rights group Second Amendment Sisters. "We just do it for a laugh. It doesn't really mean anything." The voting can have an impact, "Online polls are silly -- everybody knows that," says liberal political analyst William Rivers Pitt, "But it can have a real effect if it's brought out as news that actually means something." The polls can also be manipulated said Vlae Kershner, SF Gate News Director (and poll writer), "People are finding a way of getting around our system that only allows one vote, and they're voting hundreds of times. It's not thousands of people voting one way; it's one or two people voting hundreds of times."
'Leftist ... agents provocateurs'
The Freepers have maintained that members of rival left-wing talkboards such as Democratic Underground have frequently established accounts at Free Republic for inappropriate purposes. Often such an account is immediately banned by Free Republic moderators, since the first posts from the account are argumentative and critical of the prevailing Freeper beliefs.
Leftists began to infiltrate the site, posting articles or posing as conservatives to act as agents provocateurs.. — Sean Scallon in Chronicles magazine, speaking about left-wing vandalism at Free Republic.
However, other vandal accounts remain dormant, or are used to establish a usage pattern of bland and inoffensive posts, for months or even years. These are described as "sleeper" accounts. Eventually, the vandal uses the account to post something offensive, such as a blatantly racist rant, or a threat of violence against Democratic leaders.
Sean Scallon of Chronicles magazine referred to this phenomenon: "Leftists began to infiltrate the site, posting articles or posing as conservatives to act as agents provocateurs." Freepers have claims that "WyldCard," the account used to post personal details about a restaurant manager who called 911 when an underage Jenna Bush ordered an alcoholic beverage, was such a "sleeper" account created by a left-wing vandal.
The use of such sleeper accounts is prohibited by Free Republic policy, but incidents such as this one are difficult to document.
Social organization and events
There are local chapters within Free Republic, organized through ping lists, e-mail, and Free Republic mail.
Some are only "ping list" groups, members who include their names in a list to be "pinged" on news articles of a certain nature. Some cover Presidential events (daily picture, prayer and speech threads), some focus on conservative principles such as the exercise of Second Amendment rights, or the right-to-life movement, or opposing homosexual activism.
The more active chapters organize live protests, which they call "Freeps." Often these are counter protests, responses to protests by opposition groups.
At the original Freep in 2001 a number of Freepers paid $20 each to attend a conference at which conservative politicians and others spoke regarding issues such as; the rights of man, the problems with the news media, and striper lakes. The evening concluded with a presentation, from the South Carolina Secretary of State Jim Miles, of a Confederate flag flown from the South Carolina statehouse, to Bob Johnson, from Los Angeles, for spearheading the Free Republic Network.
In 2005, Free Republic helped to organize and stage a 'Freep' in Washington, D.C. to show support for the troops and in opposition to the antiwar protest of September 24, 2005.b Free Republic also started staging counter-protests at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington in opposition to the antiwar group Code Pink. Walter Reed is home to many soldiers recuperating from serious injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Free Republic Inaugural Ball
In January 2005, Free Republic hosted an Inaugural Ball at the Washington Plaza Hotel to celebrate the reelection of President Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney and to honor the men and women serving in the United States Armed Forces. The event featured then Arkansas Republican Governor Mike Huckabee and his rock and roll band called Capitol Offense.
Political influence
Free Republic posters, notably "TankerKC" (later identified as active Air Force officer Paul Boley) and "Buckhead" (later identified as Atlanta GOP lawyer Harry W. MacDougald) contributed, along with members of the blogs Powerline and Little Green Footballs, to breaking "Memogate," the controversy surrounding CBS News' use of questionable documents during the 2004 US presidential campaign.
It's scary how much power they do have. They can take down someone singlehandedly and I don't think Americans are aware of that.. — Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, speaking about Free Republic.
Buckhead is believed to be the first Internet user to post evidence that the memos were forged. His post on Free Republic, mentioning the memos' proportional spacing and other telltale signs of possible forgery, was made during the CBS News broadcast. The discussion spread across the Internet via blogs (attributing Free Republic) and the Drudge Report (attributing the Powerline blog, which credited Buckhead at Free Republic). The Associated Press later picked it up. This resulted in the early retirement of Dan Rather, and the resignations of Mary Mapes and three other news division executives at CBS. According to Ivor Tossell of the Globe and Mail, Free Republic "was central to the network of websites that uncovered the forged memos about Bush's Vietnam service that appeared on CBS News and ultimately cost Dan Rather his job."
Further information: Killian documents authenticity issuesDuring the 2004 U.S. Elections, Jerome Corsi, a Swift Boat Vet and co-author of the book Unfit for Command that attacked the Vietnam war record of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry apologized in the national media for comments that he made on Free Republic under the user name "jrlc." The posts were discovered and made public by Media Matters for America..
White House Press Secretary and former Fox News commentator Tony Snow was an active poster on the forum before he accepted his position with the Bush administration, at which time all his posts and his account were deleted. Many of the posts have been archived and show that Snow was not afraid to 'mix it up' with the outspoken Freepers who sometimes disagreed with his political philosophy.
The band Dixie Chicks and lead singer Natalie Maines claim that Free Republic was instrumental in fueling a boycott of their music which was organized by some former fans and radio stations after Maines made anti-Bush comments in 2003. In their documentary Shut Up and Sing as well as in interviews, the Dixie Chicks have often mentioned Free Republic in reference to the boycott.
Kristinn Taylor of Free Republic's D.C. chapter attended the screening of the film hosted by the liberal advocacy group Center for American Progress. He was invited to join in a discussion after the screening and complimented the director on the film.
Further information: Dixie chicks § Political controversyControversial aspects
Ivor Tossell of the Canadian Globe and Mail called Free Republic "the worst site on the Internet, political-rhetoric division" and "an exercise in political extremism that, despite being something of an anthropological train wreck, keeps popping up square in the mainstream."
Free Republic has also been criticized for the actions of a small minority of members who posted death threats against former President Clinton and threats against the owners of a restaurant who notified authorities when an underage Jenna Bush attempted to purchase liquor illegally at the establishment. Salon.com's Jeff Stein observed in 1999 that: " swelling number of haters have turned up the volume of death threats, gay-bashing, name-calling and conspiracy theories tying the father of Republican front-runner George W. Bush to drug-dealing by the CIA." Threats and other policy-violating posts have been removed by Robinson when brought to his attention. He says that the site has had to "delete relatively few posts" over time for violations of its "no-violence" policy despite Free Republic's popularity and ease of registration.
Free Republic's registration process has since been altered and now new registrants are subjected to having their first post(s) moderated before being allowed full posting privileges.
Copyright lawsuit
Further information: L.A. Times v. Free RepublicFree Republic generally allowed its members to post copyrighted news stories in entirety to its forum, regardless of whether permission had been granted by content owners, until the site was sued in 1998 by The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times for copyright infringement. The newspapers eventually prevailed in the courts. The case, often cited when arguing cyberlaw, is called L.A. Times v. Free Republic. Free Republic members called the lawsuit a conspiracy by the "liberal media" to "stifle" the organization, and Robinson referred to the suit as "a life and death struggle with elements of the socialist propaganda machine."
References
- Free Republic Home
- About Free Republic
- Freerepublic.com - Founder's 2004 statement
- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1777166/posts;"About Free Republic", Fetched 12/30/2006
- ^ Tossell, Ivor "Free Republic: glass ant farm for zealots Cite error: The named reference "Tossell" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- Freerepublic.com - Registration
- Freerepublic.com - Guidelines
- "FReep This"
- Scallon, Sean. "Letter from the Upper Midwest: Blizzard" Chronicles, December 2002.
- Scallon, supra.
- Pein, Corey. "Blog-Gate." Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 2005.
- Wallsten, Peter. "Blogger alleging CBS memos as frauds is GOP lawyer." Los Angeles Times, 18 September 2004.
- Pein, supra.
- Haysen, Kirsten. "Not Ready to Make Nice." Adelaide Now, October 7, 2006. Retrieved February 4, 2007.
- " '60 Minutes' Documents on Bush Might Be Fake." Drudge Report Archives. (Retrieved February 5, 2007.)
- Dobbs, Michael, and Allen, Mike. "Some Question Authenticity of Papers on Bush." The Washington Post, September 10, 2004.
- Anti-Kerry book author sorry for slurs USA Today. 8/10/2004
- "A poster crosses the line on Free Republic forum". Salon.com. Feb. 9, 2001.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - "Free for all at Free Republic". Salon.com. July 13, 1999.
- "The jihad against Chuy's". Salon.com. June 6, 2006. Retrieved 2006-12-11.
External links
- Official website
- Stein, Jeff. "Free-for-all at Free Republic: Lucianne Goldberg, Matt Drudge and other friends abandon the Clinton-bashing Web site over its attacks on George W. Bush" Salon, 13 July 1999.
- Lauerman, Kerry. "They're here, they're mad, get used to it." Salon, 24 June 2001.
- York, Anthony. "Free Republic defends Salon." Salon, 18 July 2001.