IDEOLOGICAL PROFILING: Five Ways to Spot Leftist Infiltrators on Your Blog

Ever since Soros hatchet-man David Brock opened his MediaMatters.org smear site in May 2004, he has been actively recruiting what he calls a “corps of media activists.”

Mr. Brock is a bit vague on the full range of tactics employed by these “media activists,” but anyone who runs a conservative blog or message board these days has a pretty good inkling of the sorts of methods at their disposal.

We have all experienced “bandwidth blocking” by hordes of leftist trolls, be they agents of Mr. Brock’s Media Matters Action Network or some other likeminded “(c)4” non-profit group.

For obvious reasons, these media activists do not identify themselves as such when they invade our blogs, but alert moderators quickly become adept at detecting them. Here are five ways to spot leftist infiltrators when they begin posting comments on your blog:

1. CONSERVATIVE PRETENSIONS
Many announce that they are conservatives, just before launching into an impassioned and often vulgar diatribe against Ann Coulter.

2. PHONY CHRISTIAN CANT
Quite a few claim to be Christians and salt their posts with Biblical quotes, only to give themselves away by making silly mistakes such as mixing up Protestant and Catholic terminology, punctuating every other sentence with some out-of-context reference to damnation and hellfire, posting distinctly un-Christian exhortations to mob violence against certain racial, ethnic or religious minorities and, of course, railing obsessively against Ann Coulter’s miniskirts.

3. TRANSNATIONAL ORIGINS
Our uninvited visitors often slip sporadically into British or Canadian spelling, idioms or slang. Run their IP addresses through a locator, and you’ll find out why.

4. McCAINIAC RHETORIC
A goodly number express admiration for Republican Senator John McCain, whom they laud for standing nobly above the partisan fray.

5. SELECTIVE PATRIOTISM
Most say they supported the invasion of Afghanistan with all their hearts, minds and souls, singing “God Bless America” with each new daisy cutter blast announced on CNN, but now they suddenly find themselves nauseated, ashamed, viscerally repulsed and filled with blind, seething rage over the invasion of Iraq.

Call it ideological profiling. It’s an art, not a science. Not every commentator on your blog who exhibits one or more of these characteristics can be categorically ID’d as a “media activist,” but when it starts getting up into that three-out-of-five or four-out-of-five range, well, you might want to review their registration status.

For more on “media activism” in the age of David Brock, see Andrew Walden’s illuminating post below, “Media Matters: Moonbat Enforcers.”

by Richard Poe
August 30, 2005 08:04 PM ET

Cross-posted from MoonbatCentral.com 08.30.05