I almost feel like starting with the old saw “Once upon a time” except there’s nothing remotely amusing about what I’m going to write about. The facts in this matter are so outrageous, so bizarre that if they weren’t true, the story would almost certainly be considered for inclusion in Aesop or Kipling’s Just So Stories.
What is happening in the blogosphere today is the ugliest, most frightening display of political hardball I can ever remember. And the target is not some big time politician, bureaucrat, or reporter. The target doesn’t even reside in this country.
The target is a blogger who runs a small, well-written site. He goes by the nom de blog Seixon. He lives in Norway. And he is under attack from some of the left’s most hateful and spiteful mouthbreathers over his defense of one of his commenters who himself got into trouble for (to use one of the left’s favorite phrases) “speaking truth to power.”
The story is a convoluted one best told by Sexion himself. Here’s the short version, condensed quite nicely. You need to read that post in order to understand what else has been happening in the 24 hours since Seixon began to tell his story.
Ace has the super short version:
Long story short: AnonymousArmy is a poster on DailyKos. He objected to Leopold’s claim of proof of the “Rove indictment,” and pointed out stuff like, oh, the docket number he kept citing as being on the indictment wasn’t even assigned until several days after Leopold claims to have seen it.Or have been told it existed by someone who’d seen it. Whatever the hell his claim was.
AnonymousArmy, as I understand it, believed the left was putting too much faith in the claims of Joe Wilson and his pimp Larry Johnson.
Leopold began harrassing AnonymousArmy, and escalating that harrassment, and, of course, escalating that harrassment via sock-puppets.
Some of these sock-puppets were exposed, and the story was picked up by Seixon, who also began getting abused by sock-puppets.
The players on the left are both familiar and unfamiliar. Jason Leopold, the left-wing fantasist that every decent liberal in the blogosphere no longer holds in any regard whatsoever. And Larry Johnson, former CIA and State Department Counter-Terrorism official, frequent guest on cable talk shows, defender of Valerie Plame, and an internet bully.
A bully? Well, the thinly veiled threats against Sexion’s well being are among the sleaziest things I’ve ever seen posted on a blog:
Perhaps most haunting was the email I received from Larry Johnson last night. He claimed I defamed him and called him a liar. I did not defame him and he did lie to me when he said that he had answered my questions when he had in fact not done so. This was not part of the story I wrote yesterday, calling him a liar for that, I simply stated the fact that he declined to answer a set of yes/no questions I posed to him, as he responded that he had already answered them, which was false.Johnson laced the email, to a personal account of mine which I do not usually give out and which is not available through Google, with personal details about my family and me. Just like Leopold had done, Johnson repeated my mother’s name, my parents’ address, and even my birth month and year. Obviously Johnson thought this would freak me out and scare me into retracting everything. He concluded the email with:
I am willing to accept a written apology and move on. If you refuse to retract your statements about me I am prepared to ratchet this up several levels. I have not spent the last twenty years working with the U.S. military and the intelligence community to accept this kind of nonsense from a wet-nosed 24 year old coward, who is an armchair warrior but does not have the courage to enlist in the military when his country is at war.
Is that a threat, Mr. Johnson? After I responded, he fired back with this:
I know where you are living. You forget that I do work for the European Union and friends in Interpol. I’ve offered you a mature way to deal with this situation. You’re obviously too immature and inexperienced to recognize the offer for what it is. Too bad.
Seixon asks “Is Larry Johnson using his law enforcement contacts to dig up information on me to intimidate me into retracting uncomfortable facts about his involvement with peddling false allegations against a commenter at my blog?”
In addition, some commenter named John Dean who had been defending Leopold actually called Seixon’s parents at their home:
Mr. Dean called my parents home in the United States (I live in Norway). He passed himself off as someone doing research for an article, got my father to confirm some things, and also divulged that he had researched my mother and father’s activities to do with a “liberal†cause.On June 26th and June 27th, personal details about me were disclosed at Think Progress where I had been commenting frequently for the past few weeks. Think Progress management declined to remove the comments, citing the fact that the details could be found on the Internet, although this still violated their Terms of Use.
The story gets nuttier and even more bizarre with the addition of several sock puppets who have been making the rounds of the blogosphere posting on anyone’s site who comes to Seixon’s defense. I personally do not have the information to ascertain exactly who these sock puppets really are. But Sexion does.
In addition to sock puppets, there are falsified portions of emails used to “prove” Seixon’s “threats” and, most disturbing of all, there was this:
At approximately 7:00 AM Central European Time I received a phone call from a blocked number. The person on the phone told me I had written naughty things on my blog, and then laughed when I asked them who they were.“You’re a dead man.”
This is what the person on the line told me right before hanging up.
The sock puppets have also made an appearance on Ace’s site, using both Seixon and Leopold/Johnson target Anonymousarmy’s names to post outrageous comments smearing the two out of control leftists:
Whoever is sock-puppeting for Leopold just happens to share Leopold’s obsessiveness in searching for references to his name on Technorati. (Have you heard this story before?)As readers of this site know, someone calling himself “Seixon” posted all of the real Seixon’s personal information in a post. And then, tonight, someone attempting to discredit AnonymousArmy posted as “AnonymousArmy” and posted this hateful screed about “Jason Jew Leopold,” outing his personal information (supposedly) with a big helping of extremely crude, KKK-level Jew-hatred.
A nasty post. But one cannot help but suspect the post was designed to aid Jason Leopold, not hurt him, by discrediting an enemy, and drawing sympathy for Leopold’s supposedly thuggish treatment by his critics.
Death threats, sock puppets, falsifying emails, more subtle threats, publishing personal information, calling one’s family – I’ve never heard or seen anything like it.
These are tactics honed during the Clinton years and were used to terrify potential witnesses in the Paula Jones case. Journalists knew about these women who were receiving phone calls in the middle of the night, whose families were being contacted, and who many reported were being followed. Jennifer Flowers had her place broken into several times. Kathleen Willey reported all kinds of harassment and veiled threats.
Journalists knew – and never reported it. They didn’t want to receive the same “treatment” from the minions of the most powerful man on earth.
In the case of Seixon, he has aroused the fury of people whose house of cards in the Plame Affair is in danger of crashing down around them. It is now clear to any fair minded observer who has been following the investigation of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that while there was definitely White House pushback against Wilson for his lies about his trip to Niger, there was never any intent for “revenge” against his campaign to discredit the President of the United States nor was their a deliberate effort to out Valerie Plame who, after all, was not a covert agent in any way, shape, or form.
In Seixon’s case, he has come up against practitioners of a special kind of sleaze – the kind that is common inside the beltway but never before seen in the blogosphere. It is a campaign of whispering, of innuendo, of threats, of casual utterances made to chill the bones. It is hardball politics of the worst sort and the cockroaches who are practicing it should have as much light shone upon them as is possible. Hence the reason for this post.
I urge you to drop by Seixons blog and show him your support by leaving him a comment. I think if I were him right about now, I’d feel awfully alone. I’m sure he’d appreciate a word from everyone.
And to the trolls, the sock puppets, the leftist lickspittles who grub around in the muck and the filth, bottom feeding with the rest of the scavengers and eaters of carrion …
Get stuffed.
UPDATE
Patterico is also disturbed:
Christ on a popsicle stick.
I don’t know Seixon, but I have an impression of him as a solid and honest guy. By contrast, Leopold has faced accusations of sock-puppetry, and Joe Lauria has described Leopold as:
a troubled young reporter with a history of drug addiction whose aggressive disregard for the rules ended up embroiling me in a bizarre escapade and raised serious questions about journalistic ethics.
The Anchoress is also troubled, seeing it as I do; unprecedented:
That, along with a few other cases of blog sock-puppetry and other things has more than made the case for me that certain parties within the blogosphere are beginning to whirrrr out of control. And that’s cause for concern, for several reasons, but mostly because when blogs become discredited, the whole “blogging community†suffers for it, and because, frankly – if this stuff doesn’t stop, someone is going to get hurt.
Too many people are beginning to fall into an “I have a blog and I’m not afraid to use it,†mentality, and that thought is morphing into an “I know where you live and where your children sleep†mentality.
She assures us that there are probably right wingers doing this kind of “off-blog” stuff but frankly, what makes the Seixon case so disturbing is the prominence of the leftists carrying it out. And I can’t see any righties of comparable standing doing the same thing.
UPDATE II 7/27
Goodnight, Larry. It was nice but I’m very happy you have to leave now. Your 6 year run as “terrorism expert” (after writing in the NYT two months before 9/11 of the “declining terrorist threat”) is over. Any news outlet that touches you with a 10 foot pole now should be called out as a facilitator of bullies.
Maybe you could join Dan Rather on Mark Cubans HDTV network?
2:09 pm
[...] That, along with a few other cases of blog sock-puppetry and other things has more than made the case for me that certain parties within the blogosphere are beginning to whirrrr out of control. And that’s cause for concern, for several reasons, but mostly because when blogs become discredited, the whole “blogging community” suffers for it, and because, frankly – if this stuff doesn’t stop, someone is going to get hurt. [...]
2:23 pm
I think this is what the Marxists refer to as “by all means necessary.”
2:48 pm
Seixon (note spelling) has apparently been the victim of mistaken identity by Leopold et al. But because of this mistaken identity, these people have managed to expose themselves for what they are.
I wouldn’t expect to see much out of Leopold in the future, at least not in any significant way. Johnson has managed to make himself a bit more irrelevant in all of this too. The behaviors being exhibited in all of this are just amazing. How embarrassing.
4:39 pm
Wow… how naked these leftists have become! They have exposed just how ugly they really are.
One thing is certain – as the blogs of good people have exposed the crimes of the MSM, they will also expose the crimes of unhinged individuals like these.
This won’t harm the reputation of blogs, it will destroy the political aspirations of those who hope to proper by such crime… because this kind of stuff IS criminal.
4:46 pm
Things have sure changed, eh? Funny to see the right whining about the very tactics they’ve employed so often in the past.
I guess that is the sort of thing that happens when people discover they are no longer on the winning side.
Have a kleenex, ladies.
5:34 pm
Shocking. Leftists lashing out. It’s so predictably boring. Like we haven’t seen all this before.
If the Nazis proved anything, anything at all, it’s that all notions of superiority are born from an inferiority complex. After WWI, the Germans were pummeled by the rest of Europe. Their economy was ruined; hyperinflation was rampant. They were denigrated, excoriated and made to feel inferior. And out of that morass came Hitler with his notions of Aryan superiority to feed off the frustrations of the embittered masses. And witness how he lashed out.
The same thing is happening on the Left today. They can’t win an election anywhere, except in the Northeast and on the West Coast (and even those holdouts are perilous). All their policies, hopes and dreams are being pushed by the wayside as the entire country shifts to the center-right. Their academic frauds have been exposed and are now ridiculed. Their political leaders have become a national joke. And their claim to power—which is all they ever aspired to in the first place—is now tenuous at best.
No wonder they feel inferior. And out of this morass comes the Daily Kos, with his pretence to intellectual superiority. It’s no surprise they’re all lashing out—they’re losing and they know it.
This will all end the same way WWII ended, with the National Socialists utterly defeated and humiliated. The sad thing is though that a lot of people are likely to get hurt along the way.
7:12 pm
Paddy,
Can you give any examples that center right bloggers are engaging in that’s comparable to the tactics of the left. I mean you come on a center right blog and comment wanting a fight but you can’t even set it up on your first post? If you think exposing sock puppets of prominent bloggers is the same as making threats to a bloggers kid, I think you may in fact need to understand your own projection. Please don’t get me wrong, if some right wing blogger threatens someone I would condemn that tactic too. Maybe if you spent more time on lefty blogs you could change minds of the unhinged.But then again…perception is only reset once someone of your political desire is in office. Good luck!
8:01 pm
Jiggity Jig: I was thinking more along the persistant smears against the previous president, William Clinton. Smears launched by such now disgraced Republican crooks as Tom DeLay, Karl “Traitor” Rove and Newt Gingrich.
I mean honestly, does anyone really give a shit about obscure crybaby bloggers when there are so many more interesting things to discuss?
And while I’m certain that you will not shed a tear over the raft of lies set sail by your heroes against Clinton, even a “center right” person such as yourself certainly cannot countenance some of the vicous slander that was launched against John McCain in South Carolina during the 2000 primary election there.
Authored, I believe, by Karl Rove?
Now I can understand your need to drastically narrow the focus here. And let’s face it, most so-called “center right” bloggers are just wanna be imitators of President Bush’s political henchmen. Let’s try and look at the big picture, OK?
But don’t get me wrong. Your teary attempts at martyrdom here are truly touching. Really.
8:09 pm
Rick,
I am sure you probably already have heard about this thing but since we both live in Illinois…
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/bigbox.html
The above is just the start IF the Democrats get back in power nationally. It’s absolutely CRAZY
I wouldn’t blame Walmart and Target for pulling out altogether. What a freaking mess!
Carol
8:47 pm
Paddy,
Just what I thought. Your rant has nothing to do with this post. We all get it – you hate Bush, Republicans, Rove…whatever. I thought you were serious but I was wrong. Nice touch with the tears stuff…real mature and ever so thought provoking. We’ll you’ve really given me a lot to consider.
10:12 pm
Jiggity: Like I said, I can understand your desperate need to narrow the discussion. There are just so many considerations you cannot afford to have brought into this chat given the absurd premises you’ve constructed your puerile little plea for sympathy upon. Anonymous hate posts are hardly something new to the internet. Been to USENET lately?
Oh, and as far as hating Bush, it the opinion of the vast majority of American citizens that the man is a complete and utter failure. Despite the Marlboro Man cowboy get-ups.
http://americanresearchgroup.com/economy
Have a pompous evening.
11:13 pm
is it almost time for 24 to start again?
1:42 am
If the threat stuff is real, it’s bad. And wrong.
However, I have listened to Rush (Clinton had Vince Foster Killed) Savage (they are vermin), Killer Coulter (death to my enemies) and MM (lists personal info on the web of her opponents) say or endorse the same violent stuff for years.
All this crap needs to stop on both sides.
America is at war. People who try to divide Americans in a time of war are actually giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
6:18 am
This Is Just This Kind Of Thing …
... that makes me think about giving up blogging. Not because I fear becoming involved in such threats, but I find myself disgusted by such deranged insanity, and wondering whether I want to be associated with it even peripherally.In Seixon’s
6:50 am
Oh, my God, I can’t believe anyone would actually threaten someone’s kids, parents or the blogger. This is so typical of the rabid left.
Mr. dean, larry johnson, leopald all have mental problems and I don’t take that position lightly. Sure I joke around and have a nick-name for everyone in Congress and the Senate but as far a THREAT, lets get real here.
I will send Seixon my support and the left in making Americans look like loons to this nice guy.
Paddy, please stay away from this site and go on back over to kos and code pinkie and set up at lunch date with mama sheenut, oh, and by the way Paddy, have a nice day.
7:35 am
Drewsmom: It has been almost five years since 9-11, and under the leadership of the current president Osama bin Laden not only continues to exist, but to kill Americans as well.
You have so very much to be proud of.
10:35 am
Paddy,
Do you have examples of right of center bloggers threatening left of center bloggers? Or did you have a pertinent point that somehow got lost in your orgy of BDSpalooza?
10:39 am
Once again the left totally misses the point and puts themselves in the position of defending reprehensible acts because of their hate.
10:50 am
Sweetie – Well let’s see, there is Rush Limbaugh, ‘Little Awful Annie’ Coulter, Mikey Savage, Bill ‘Happy Hands’O’Really. Nice folks all, and certainly an inspiration to middle-aged shut-ins everywhere.
The hate that has regurgitated from the cake holes of these demagogues over the last ten years would fill the New York sewer system to overflowing.
As far as “center right” bloggers, who in their right mind would read that pack of wannabes? Life is too short to spend time reading the inane babblings of the Rush Limbaugh Mini-Me squad.
11:49 am
So, Paddy, that would be a “no,” then?
1:46 pm
Paddy O’Shea,
I think the majority of America does not hate Bush. The polls are based on whether of not he is doing a good job not if he is a mediocre job or if he destroying the country. It is whether or not he is doing a good job.
Rick,
Wasn’t there an instance with Michelle Malkin posting addresses of people. Or was it the other way around. Her address and information was posted on a blog. I think it happened with the last year.
1:50 pm
Sven:
Malkin published the telephone numbers of some college kids at UC Santa Barbara (I think) who sent out a press release about their protests against the army recruiting at a job fair. The idiot kids gave out their home numbers in the press release – available on the internet – for which Michelle was skewered.
4:59 pm
Paddy O’Shea, you have an anger problem. You don’t need a new Democrat in the White House. You need counseling.
Course, I might be wrong. You might simply be a pompous ass.
6:59 pm
Paddywagon—don’t think I can’t name some moonbat dems,
mama sheenut sheehan, michael, lard ass consiracpy moore, alex, leave the USA baldwin, babs, totally ignorant, streisand with little posed picture with a big fat rose on her blog.
Give me a break.
You DO NEED COUNSELING in order to obain a brain TO THINK WITH.
Take coffeecannan with ya.
10:12 pm
Yall, now LOONY larry johnson is sending me emails and they are repugnant and vile. I went his site and blogged my opinion on John Bolton’s nomination and the need for a strong man to have that position and I made the mistake of disagreeing with this moonbat on a few other issues. He sent me emails calling me a cu*t, a dumbass, a person that is jail making license plates and a woman who diddles her man. Well, I emailed him back and said thanks, I had printed the emails and would send them to various TV outlets, both right and left and I thought chrissie matthews on hardball would like to know what kind of guest had has on his show.
I need your advice Rick and fellow bloggers, who should I send these to, I want to expose this guy but I made him aware I will not be threatened and I indeed have heard he has threatened, or should I just drop it? I am a soon to be a divorced Mom of a 15 year old and I would hate to put my child at risk as this guy is a real nutjob.
PLZ let me get some feedback here guys.
12:27 pm
[...] Johnson Has Lost It! Jump to Comments Larry Johnson, one of the nastiest and childish of the internet bullies, is back and angrier thanever. [...]