July 12, 2005

10:43 PM

I really object to people making a FPP which is a link to a neo-nazi site, by claiming it as a 'news' item and secondly without marking the link as a hate site. Van Gogh's murderer would 'do it again'. Best of the web? Perhaps not.
posted by quarsan to bugs at 10:43 PM (38 comments total)

I also object to people who get the category wrong. Sorry about that.
posted by quarsan at 10:43 PM on July 12, 2005

Yeah, that post is pretty poor, from the linked site's checkered past to the over the top editorializing.
posted by mathowie at 10:50 PM on July 12, 2005

The page that was referenced doesn't come off as racist to me, even if the site and followers are. It had a photo of Van Gogh dead on the ground, which is more than the BBC would show. It should have been offered as an option and the reader given fair warning.
posted by Dean Keaton at 10:59 PM on July 12, 2005

The page that was referenced doesn't come off as racist to me, even if the site and followers are.

Yeah, Tom Cruise doesn't mention Xenu, either.
posted by Space Coyote at 11:27 PM on July 12, 2005

Frankly as someone who's been spending a lot of time in the blue I'm getting a bit worried when I see a BNP link on the front page -- not to mention 3 posts in 4 days that imply that Britons somehow "asked for it" because "they're too tolerant of muslims".

MeFi doesn't appear to be headed in a very good direction IMHO.
posted by clevershark at 11:36 PM on July 12, 2005

MeFi doesn't appear to be headed in a very good direction IMHO.

Most of the people leaving comments explained why the "they asked for it" line of reasoning is bullshit.
posted by mathowie at 11:57 PM on July 12, 2005

The BNP are Nazis. Would a positive link to a KKK site stand?
posted by handee at 1:57 AM on July 13, 2005

That post is hugely offensive.
posted by influx at 2:14 AM on July 13, 2005

Yeah, this post sucked and the link suched and both should go. I don't think the photo carries the day for the page either.

"checkered past"? Matt, it's the BNP. Ku Klax Klan comparisons are entirely apt. This shouldn't get over the bar for a post if its headless corpse was shot from a catapult.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 2:44 AM on July 13, 2005

"It had a photo of Van Gogh dead on the ground, which is more than the BBC would show."

I'm glad the BBC doesn't indulge in morbid voyeurism, like other news outlets.

Anyway, linking to the BNP? The could have cut out the middle-man and linked to a passage in Mein Kampf.
posted by Navek Rednam at 3:19 AM on July 13, 2005

I was pissed yesterday, but this is just fucking scary. What the fuck is happening??

On preview: Ok it's been deleted now. Thank god for that.
posted by mr.marx at 3:30 AM on July 13, 2005

The poster should at least have flagged the fact that s/he was linking to a vile source, but I don't think there should be a blanket ban on links to hate/extremist sites. Doubt there would there have been as much fuss if the post hadn't been so totally crap in so many other ways.
posted by jack_mo at 3:34 AM on July 13, 2005

I'm guessing it's just a simple matter of matt not having known what the BNP is.
posted by bugbread at 4:01 AM on July 13, 2005

Fuck Allah.
posted by Necker at 4:45 AM on July 13, 2005

Understandable mistake, glad it's corrected. BNP aside, I'd love to see more posts with over-the-top editorializing yanked quickly. It's the only way excitable MeFites will ever learn to cut out the crap when they post to the front page.
posted by mediareport at 5:38 AM on July 13, 2005

I didn't realise it was a hate site until this thread. In retrospect, it's sort of obvious but at the time I didn't take time to look around. Just read the article and closed it.

In fact, I initially thought the picture was a police re-enactment type mock up with a dummy, so trying to figure out that took a lot of my attention I guess.

Plus, where I live BNP has a respectable presence in the big end of town. The Banque Nationale de Paris has a reasonable profile here. So subconsciously that lent it an air of respectability too.

That's my 5c worth.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 5:43 AM on July 13, 2005

I'm wondering if Necker's "Fuck Allah." statement in this thread makes meta a "hate site"... just asking....

Sad, sad world that we live in....
posted by HuronBob at 7:15 AM on July 13, 2005

Necker's "Fuck Allah." statement

Shameful conduct indeed.
posted by realcountrymusic at 7:48 AM on July 13, 2005

Hey, at least Necker didn't mention using a thorny thirty-inch cock.
posted by soyjoy at 8:00 AM on July 13, 2005

Flag it.
Ignore it.
Move on.
posted by NinjaPirate at 8:01 AM on July 13, 2005

Fuck Allah.

Fuck Dios.
posted by Space Coyote at 8:02 AM on July 13, 2005

Sigh

To be a little more comprehensive: Fuck Allah, Fuck Jesus, Fuck Ganesh, Fuck Gaia, Fuck Bob, and fuck all the various invisible sky ghosts, the illusions of which are making humanity look like a planet of rubes.


Oh, the shame.
posted by dhoyt at 8:03 AM on July 13, 2005

I didn't like the framing of the post very much either, as I tried to make clear in-thread. However, I do think the storys is FPP-worthy, in part because of my Dutch background, in part because of the broader themes of terrorism and islamic extremism. I have tried to pad the subject a bit and have made a new post. Hope it fares a bit better.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 8:04 AM on July 13, 2005

Oh and Dean Keaton, I didn't get the chance to reply in-thread before it closed but I just wanted to add that though I understand your interest for the picture because you had not seen it before, I (and many people in Holland with me) am sick to death of it for over-exposure. Compare, for example, all those news stories in the U.S. that are tangentially related to terrorism being accompanied by a picture of the WTC tumbling. I acknowledge that this is a stretch, but I think you see the point.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 8:13 AM on July 13, 2005

That thread was deleted. To quote:

This post was deleted for the following reason: link to white power site, over the top editorializing

It's clear that "over the top editorializing" belongs in the comments (and on Metatalk), not the FPPs, but I'm a little disturbed about deleting a link because it went to the British National Party -- not because I like or agree with what the BNP has to say, mind you.

It seems now that applying fairness, logic and consistency means Mefi must now forbid links to The Nation of Islam or its newspaper The Final Call because they're "black power", roughly analagous to the BNP (though Farrakhan's toned the rhetoric down a bit in the past few years the ideology is still in place). Then of course one couldn't link to Zionist web sites because they're "jew power". When could it end? Every site that says or implies "Our group is really special!" would be banned from Metafilter -- and/or there'll be endless wrangling over whether to ban e.g. the Presbyterian Church for "christian power" (i.e. "salvation comes only through Christ").

And going by people saying "I find that offensive!" is a bad idea. I myself find plaid sneakers offensive, for pete's sake. And as for the picture of a corpse, last winter's "doggy dildos" FPP didn't get deleted.

Of course, Metafilter is basically the private property of Matt & Jessamyn and they can delete whatever they like; deity trumps principles every time.
posted by davy at 8:25 AM on July 13, 2005

It's not the sources per se, it's the way they are framed, introduced, and/or presented. I personally wouldn't have minded the original post if the BNP link (as much as I detest the BNP) was counterbalanced by a link to a different source.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 8:41 AM on July 13, 2005

Dhoyt, please leave Bob out-a this.
Bob only wants to sell you the fastest acting, freshest tasting salvation on the market.
posted by Balisong at 8:46 AM on July 13, 2005

Dhoyt, please leave Bob out-a this.

{statement retracted} ;)
posted by dhoyt at 8:47 AM on July 13, 2005

I agree that there were plenty of other sources to choose from, searching Google News using just the last name of the killer and the killed just got me about 400 hits, but still: why counterbalance a link to the BNP if we're not also supposed to counterbalance a link to salon.com, expatica.com or the Washington Post?
posted by davy at 9:24 AM on July 13, 2005

Well, because the BNP are Fascists. Not sure if salon.com, expatica.com or the Washington Post is fascist, although some might argue they are.

Actually, the link says more about the person who posted it, rather than anything really "best of web." Maybe it should have stood to placate the orgy of Fairness, within the site as a whole. Who knows, does anyone have an opposing point of view?
posted by gsb at 10:00 AM on July 13, 2005

So gsb, you imply links to Fascist sites should not be allowed. What about links to Communist, Zionist, Muslim fundamentalist, pro-Khmer Rouge or US Patriot sites? Should we have a longer view and include apologists for the pre-Columbian Aztecs? Shall we sort through this short list and say why each item is better or not better than Fascist ones? If so, what criteria would we be using? "Who gets the worst press these days according to a careful Google search?", maybe? What about "who's got the hottest uniforms?" Or maybe we'll tally up the numbers their adherents have killed and (as in horse racing or the Olympics) awarding the Top Three a permanent no-no?

And why "extremists" (as in "Fascists are extreme right") and not comparatively "nice, mainstream" sites that still manage to offend a lot of folks? Why not the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, which still goes beyond "N***** Heaven" to segregate its blacks into their very own spin-off?
posted by davy at 12:34 PM on July 13, 2005

Oh, and how does one placate a hot XXX sex party?
posted by davy at 12:35 PM on July 13, 2005

nice reductio ad tedium
posted by fleacircus at 1:45 PM on July 13, 2005

Shameful conduct indeed.

Oh, you dorks take everything so seriously.
posted by Necker at 2:36 PM on July 13, 2005

reductio ad tedium

Ooh, I like that.
posted by mediareport at 2:51 PM on July 13, 2005

>So gsb, you imply links....

I did not imply anything but if you need clarification, because liberty and freedom is a *good* thing, I said:

Actually, the link says more about the person who posted it, rather than anything really "best of web." Maybe it should have stood to placate the orgy of Fairness, within the site as a whole. Who knows, does anyone have an opposing point of view?

To wit, is there a reason why the link says nothing about the person who posted it, or perhaps it's OK because there's a projected unfairness, OR perhaps one should read a comment and think about the idea behind it without needing any kind of fuckwit implication.

ONCE AGAIN for the implication impaired, saying: "the link says something about the person who posted it" is a better commentary than a deletion... or is it?
posted by gsb at 3:27 PM on July 13, 2005

Alright gsb, my bad. I've been having a bad brain day. DOES IT SHOW??!?!? So forget it was supposed to be a reply to you.

I still think it was clever in places, and made a good point or two, nevertheless.

As far as what the now-deleted FPP says about the person who posted it, I'd say s/he/it might have posted a link to the first such article s/he/it ran across instead of finding one of the thousands of sites carrying very similar articles to link to that won't bunch up so many people's panties. Self-preservation, mainly: hasn't this person seen the crap ParisParamus takes around here?

An opposing point of view? To what, the relatively innocuous article or the relatively innocuous website that was posted on? Over in the Blue's comments on a similar thread people are already doing a Mefi-standard job of discussing this refreshingly honest albeit humanly deficient killer, and why anybody'd bother discussing the BNP in any length is beyond me. I'm also wondering how the Wikipedia article on the BNP has escaped being called out for violation of Wikipedia's "Neutral Point of View" policy: see, e.g., the first sentence of the BNP article's "History and overview" section.

Or maybe you mean that someone might rebut that first poster's claim that (to paraphrase, badly I'm sure, from memory) "the worst thing that can happen to him is a long and comfortable life in prison"? I don't know about the Netherlands, but here in the US he would have a rough time if they put him with the general population: from what I was made to understand about the Prison Scene (which sounded so grim at best that I decided early on never to go to prison), he'd have to buddy up with his fellow Muslim extremist convicts and beg them to never let him out of their sight. (Do prisoners mistreat and kill one another in Dutch prisons?) Based on what I know of our prisons, if I was Bouyeri I'd pray Allah for a quick and painless death.

Or am I missing something again, gsb?
posted by davy at 9:14 PM on July 13, 2005

>I still think it was clever in places, and made a good point or two, nevertheless.

I read your comment, but for some reason this statement stood out more than anything else. I guess in this kind of environment there's a real tension between the ability to appear 'clever in places' and making 'a good point or two'. Where making a cogent point is better, and I'm sure we've all been guilty of this lapse.
posted by gsb at 11:00 PM on July 13, 2005