Harry's Place links to fascists go viral!

This is very rushed because I need to go out but I must put a marker on this before the toads at Harry's Place start tampering with their post. I'll provide more links later.

A few weeks ago David T ran a post at Harry's Place pretending that my co-blogger, Gabriel Ash, had linked approvingly to an antisemitic site called ziopedia. He had done no such thing. He had linked to ziopedia in order to condemn an article at the only site where it could be found. It was a typical smear originating with an anonymous ultra-zionist blogger calling himself Modernity Blog and making its way to Engage. As I recall Engage picked up on the smear and much fun was had by the on-line zionist-in-denial community until a chap calling himself Bob from Brockley realised that Engage and HP were stooping pretty low by even their own appalling standards and so he pointed out what they all knew anyway, which was that Gabriel was condemning not approving of an article and that they too provide links for sites they disapprove of.

So the zios in denial (they mostly claim to be non or even anti-zionists) back peddled and settled on the idea that he still shouldn't have linked to ziopedia. Ok fine.

But what's this? The top post right now at Harry's Place is a smear of Hugo Chavez by trying to link him the UK neo-nazi outfit, the British National Party. I won't link to their site but it's easy to find and it often bears more than a passing resemblance to Harry's Place. Well, a leading light (or should that be leading white?) at the BNP is a chap called Lee Barnes and he had a post on his blog (again I won't link) about how Hugo Chavez gets a bad press and how the BNP gets a bad press so Mr Barnes approves of the way that Chavez takes on the press. So according to the loons at Harrys Place this means that Chavez and the BNP are some kind of bedfellows. It apparently doesn't occur to them that islamophobia and militarism give HP more in common with the BNP than anything Chavez might have in common with either.

But that's not the point of the post. HP monitors its guest posts closely for departure from the party line. Hasbara Buster did a post there spoofing South African history and they panicked and ran a denunciatory post straight after it (actually it was two). The Chavez/BNP thing is a guest post by an Edmund Standing and it links to the blog of Brit neo-nazi Lee Barnes. Now where is David T to denounce the guest? Where is David Hirsh? Where is Modernity Blog? Where is Bob from Brockley to calm them down when they get carried away?

Nowhere, it seems. Now is it a big deal to link to neo-nazis? Gabriel had to provide the link to the only place where the article he was criticising could be found. But according to the HP faithful that wasn't good enough. But it is different in the case of Harry's Place. It really is different because if you look at the post very soon and check the right hand side margin you might just see the following advert:

Sir Oswald Mosley
[I broke the link - unlike HP. I don't want to promote Oswald Moseleyabilia]

Mosley Books, CDs, T-Shirts, Mugs Huge range of Right Wing books DVDs

So not only has Harry's Place linked to a neo-nazi website whilst condemning others for the same thing, they have also managed to generate publicity for the original Brit nazi group the British Union of Fascists and its leader, Sir Oswald Moseley and possibly income for fascists.

Now see what being a bunch of hypocritical liars does for a blogging team. Again I ask, where is Modernity Blog? where is David T? where is Shachtman? where is Alf Green? I won't ask where is Bob from Brockley again. I'm sure his voice of calm reason will be heard just as soon as the apoplexy breaks out among his friends.

There are various lessons here about hypocrisy and dishonesty and why both should be avoided but more specifically, if you are clumsy with links you shouldn't run google ads because your links to fascists might just go viral.