The League of Craven Anonymous Delaware Bloggers

The title of my post is a riff on a former anti-troll site called The League of Anonymous Cowards. 

 

A conservative blog site comprised of numerous anonymous bloggers has been much consumed with me lately.  Delaware 2006 has posted articles speculating about the identity of my sources and now two rather lengthy posts are up about previous my threats to out two anonymous bloggers both of whom write for Delaware 2006 (link & link). 

 

I plead guilty.  I threatened the anonymous blogger “Hube” because of his repeated suggestions that I am anti-Semitic, a charge he could never prove and in fact retracted in an e-mail and later on in a post after I threatened to expose him.  I also threatened to expose the blogger Delathought (DT) because of his repeated harassment of me on Delaware Watch and for driving readers away from posting on my website.  He also sent me an e-mail that seemed unhinged. I tried to ban him several times, but he had as many IP addresses as I had toes and he kept appearing.  I encouraged him to trash me to his heat’s content at his blog, but he wouldn’t stop.  His harassment and anonymity made me believe he was an internet troll.  The conservative hero La Shawn Barber (Hube at Colossus of Rhodey has a link to his site) agrees with me:

 

Disagreeing with a post is not trolling. My definition of a troll is someone who disagrees with a post but attacks me personally in his response… (If you think I’m being too sensitive about that, ask yourselves if you’d put up with ad hominem for its own sake, especially from anonymous cowards).

 

Challenging assertions, offering contrary evidence, etc., is not trolling, but when the commenter/e-mailer writes something gratuitous and inflammatory about me or other commenters, that’s trolling. Additionally, if I ask someone not to comment on the blog anymore and they continue to try, that’s trolling. (link)

 

The writers at Delaware 2006 point out correctly that I hold a broad interpretation of the first amendment.  They also point out correctly that they don’t.  They further point out that I have spoken favorably of anonymous speech and said the anonymity of speakers should be honored in some cases.  But it’s here that the writers at Delaware 2006 blunder logically.

 

Having a broad interpretation of free speech doesn’t entail that I must hold to a broad protection of the anonymity of anonymous writers. 

 

Allow me to illustrate: I support an anonymous writer right to call me an anti-Semite publicly when I best him in an argument, but I also support my right to out the person publicly who makes the slander (for reasons described below).   The anonymous writer’s choice to write anonymously doesn’t create an obligation on me to inhibit my free speech about him, especially when his lying about me.  Nothing could be more obvious.

 

Therefore, I hold the following about anonymous bloggers:

 

1.    Anonymous political blogging is fine as long as the blogger confines himself to information in the public domain.  But when an anonymous blogger claims to know information that is not in the public domain and expects to have the same credibility as someone who blogs under his name, then the anonymous blogger’s assertions should only be met with uproarious laughter.  Anyone can lie behind a mask but not as easily face-to-face.

 

2.    Anonymous blogging is fine, but when people use it to commit libel w/ impunity by hiding behind their anonymity, then such persons' names should be revealed so that others can determine if the blogger is trustworthy, a known confabulator, or a person with a vested interest in spreading the libel (that is a big one, as it turns out).  Exposing liars is a good thing.  We need more of it.

 

I used to have links to some of the writers on Delaware 2006 but have taken them down.  This apparently has caused some hurt feelings with the writers at the site. 

 

I took most of their links down, all except Politakid and Paul Smith Jr.  I kept links to their sites because they are not anonymous and/or their posts don’t contain libels.  Besides, I like reading their sites.

 

I took two of the sites down because I read the writers’ claims in a discussion thread at DelaThought (now erased from the site) that the principal reason why they write anonymously is to protect their families from harm.  I was revolted by their ludicrous and improbable claim about potential harm.  Knowing the smears that often appear in their posts, it seemed obvious to me they were merely using their spouses and children as a pretext to cover their libels, defamations, and smears about their perceived enemies.  It sickened me to see their pseudonyms when I opened my site.