The (not so) Secret History of FreeRepublic.com
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Categories: #freerepublic Tags: Birthers, Bob Johnson, freepers, FreeRepublic.com, Jack Thompson, Jeff Gannon, Jerome Corsi, Jim Robinson, Kristinn Taylor, Lucianne Goldberg, Robert Stacy McCain, Rosana Pulido, Tony Snow
I posted at FR since 2002, but no one ever realized it because my first account was banned in 2004 during the run-up to the election. I posted as Republican_Strategist and what led to me being summarily banned was my opposition to George W. Bush based on his big spending, presciption drug coverage, and overall expansion of the Government. Nevermind the fact I was also posting threads about Kerry’s dubious military service and so forth. I was banned without warning and served a “Zot!” for daring to question George W. Bush during the election.
I joined again in late 2005 as Conservative Coulter Fan after a long cooling off period and despite my many threads including opposition to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and many other threads that attest to my ardent, conservatives views, I dared to question Palin as the candidate on June 2, 2011 with a vanity question. I said that there was a cult of personality surrounding Palin, I made the huge mistake of pointing out her allowing her daughter to carry on a sexual relation and have a child out of wedlock with Levi Johnston, and finally that she had just abandoned her post as Governor of Alaska. I ended by telling them they would hate me for it and “Let the hate begin.” And they did. Within minutes there were over 100 comments and many of them were hateful, they said I wasn’t a conservative, and before I could reply to anything…wham! One of the moderators revoked my ability to post/reply and the this is the reason given “Reason: Troll.” I wasn’t some newbie. I was a diehard conservative on both fiscal issues and social issues, but all of a sudden I’m a “troll,” because I suggested Michele Bachmann was better than an inflated celebrity…the Momma Grizzly that has some screwed up family values and can’t even finish her job as Governor, but does a bus tour and a reality show.
If they will turn on a conservative like me…they’ll turn on anyone.
Thanks for mentioning the FRAM Report in your write-up. The Society for the Prevention of Anti-Mormonism has been watching FR for a couple of years now. On January 3, 2011, I wrote about the purge of anyone on the FR site who stuck up for the Mormon religion amid the hundreds of new anti-Mormon posts each year. You might want to add that to your list of “purges” because it took out a significant number of Mormon conservatives and alienated them politically. Here’s the write-up with JimRob’s own statements about it:
http://www.examiner.com/lds-church-in-national/anti-mormon-purge-coming-on-free-republic
I just got the boot for pointing out that Palin used the conservatives to make money while leading us to believe she was running. They used the excuse that I used profanity for saying they could KMA.
IMO, FR is one of the most hateful sites on the internet. I can’t believe they haven’t been shut down. The comments regarding Mitt Romney, now that he’s the GOP frontrunner, are disgusting, so say the least. Jim Robinson should be ashamed of himself.
There are many more sites that make FR look like LoveHippyLand.com now, but I fully expect JimRob to fall in line behind Mitt when he wins the nomination and begin banning people who were screaming for Mitt’s head days before.
free republic is going off the tracks
I got banned last night in a discussion over Ron Pauls “honest Rape comment because I supported abortion in cases involving rape .I’m pro life but I despise the anti abortion crazies that insist that rape victim should carry to term as much as I do the nazis at planned parenthood ….look for another purge soon
I agree with you Kim, I am not even Mormon, but I can say that the stereotyping about Romney’s religion is absurd, when there’s plenty to be said about him as a person, and as a politician. No need to stereotype, or run some “all Mormons are evil” talk. Either way, I was banned back in 2004 for reasons I have yet to fathom, I tried again in 2006 to find some interest, but it was beginning to become honestly clear that the whole site was in a downward spiral that just couldn’t be reversed.
I figure though, that hopefully the nut by the name of Jim Rob just gets his act together, and just asks for a little unity behind whomever gets nominated, even if it’s Romney. He’s hopefully going to at least do that, like he did with Bush and McCain.
You forgot one other purge…
You have the anti-birther purge. Now, if you go there and say that Obama has actually proven that he’s born in the United States and dare to go against the birther paradox that has overtaken FR, you get zotted (and called an O-Bot, despite disagreeing with Obama on every issue).
Honestly, FR is basically gets out of reality quite frequently. And if you try to put reality back into the discussion, you get zotted and banned.
Now they are banning people who oppose their suicidal “I’m not voting for Romney to punish the GOP” attitudes. I had an account created in 2000 and it makes my skin crawl how self-congratulatory they all are over their super clever plan to get back at the Republicans. Dumbasses.
FR and JimRob are now anti-Bush again, too. Just par for the course.
If you check out the thread on, “Women’s Right to Vote, the Beginning of the End for America?”, you will find a great discussion about whether or not women should lose their right to vote.
I remember it because I talked about it on a women’s site a few years ago. From what I understand, a freeper named OneVike wrote an article for a blog he has where he asked if giving women the right to vote was the beginning of the end for America. Here is the index link, (“http://209.157.64.200/tag/*/index?more=2217732) I found via Google search.
You will see that it had well over 12,000 freepers view the article and over 500 comments which from what I have been told is quite a good thread for them.
You might want to list it as one of the moments that freerepublic showed it’s true colors on the rights of women. Here we are in the year 2012, and freepers think women should not be able to vote.
[…] more info on Free Republic, check out this pretty awesome blog post that sums up the history of the website, care of Politisink.com. All quotes were sourced from Free […]
FR needs to pull back sharply from the leftwingtards it’s decided to support.
Sure NSA has some problems, but what about the (supposedly former) Soviets, the Chicoms and the Germans who want us to run intelligence free in a world they seek to dominate.
Frankly, it was all over the day the first Freeper said it was important to believe that a clearly commercial spy was now an expert in the 4th amendment and all things right and holy.
There was an early scandal circa late ’99 if I recall, where the de facto #2 on FR at the time, Connie Hair aka “Clinton’s a Liar” fell for a fraud in which an pseudonymous poster named “Deep in the Hurtgen Forest” aka “DITHF” claimed to be active military, but was never any military anything at all. Doubters who were genuine military veterans were purged for not drinking that particular batch of Kool-Aid. I think there was some minor amount of money involved as well, but my memory is a bit hazy there.
I stumbled upon Free Republic years ago during President Clinton’s impeachment. I was sickened by the racist, hate-filled comments which were posted on the site with impunity and actual encouragement. I have visited the site off and on to see if it has changed in any way. It has. It’s gotten worse. I learned recently from viewing the site that the “spontaneous” demonstration in my home state against the “invasion of illegal aliens” who were among the busloads of children coming to California was, in full or in part, conducted by “freepers” who had the presence of mind to contact Greta Van Sustren before traveling to CA to waive signs and guns at six year old frightened children. They were exceptionally proud of their “patriotic” stand against these small “invaders” and suggested they were entitled to medals for “doing their duty to protect America and keeping America for the Americans.” They even posted an “After Action Report”complete with pictures of white men [of course] holding a beer can in one hand and a gun in the other. Obviously, they were very proud of what they had done. And what had they accomplished? Scared a few children and attacked a busload of school age citizens who were trying to get to school. Such brave patriots! And isn’t it strange that they received so much coverage on Fox News? It couldn’t be because they had informed that network of what they planed to do and no one at Fox sought to discourage them. Their only regret seems to be that Sean Hannity didn’t show up to cover it in person.
I was a member of that place for quite a while – going on 10yrs and was summarily dismissed,booted & zotted for a relatively simple comment . At one time during my posting there I donated $20.00,too, to keep “the site running”. I would never go back there again and never ever donate not even a dollar.
What baffles me most is there is no financial accountability on that site. There are no figures released . Up to $80,000.00+ at 4 times a year is a lot of money to give to Free Republic to maintain a server (as they claim is their main expense). I could be wrong-maybe they have legal bills , I don’t know but SOMEBODY (namely that JimRob guy) is living off the backs of other people . I find that disgusting . It’s worse than taking government welfare . What a cheese factory!
Free Republic’s Jim Robinson and/or the moderators of the site do not have the know-how to treat legitimate posters IMO. I no sooner re-registered there another screen name and my new email address AND was given a password by them, they booted me off Free Republic after one post. On topic, I named several Republicans I didn’t favor, at this point, to win the presidential election in 2016. Think I named Ted Cruz as a good possibility. Oops! Was that my error? Very hard to believe that. Maybe it’s because I didn’t donate enough money. Whatever the reason, a truly conservative website owes a reason when they kick someone off. Just tell me WHY!
JR can start pulling his old stuff out of storage ~ Congress needs Hillary’s user name on FR back there in 1997/1998 when she came in making inquiries about things only FR talked about ~ in this case how do you get Two Cell Phones in one case, or have two numbers, or run things through a home area network so you don’t need to call out where you have bad service, and so on.
I think 1999 is when she fired her social secretary who probably did the keyboard stuff.
Jim Robinson, owner of freerepublic.com, has been using Google Analytics, a VERY expensive piece of software that tracks users between sites. So, if you go to Amazon.com, Jim knows you go there. It is how he knows when people go to anti-freeper sites. He gathers all kinds of information about your Internet travels, AND he reports your visits to freerepublic.com. So, Amazon.com knows someone is a freeper.
Employers also use google analytics to know if someone visits freerepublic.com or other political websites. Your political comments are no longer anonymous to your employer because Jim reports to google your visits to his website.
I got zotted in 2014 and it was a strangely disturbing experience, sort of an online human sacrifice by inbred rural sickos, where the core group got their rocks off for an hour or so posting sick and violent revenge porn. I looked up some previous zotting events and found the same weird wolf pack, from the same core group, posting the same threatening comments. Even creepier is when you consider the hardcore posters are in their 60s-70s-80s and act like it’s a cult & they’re the truly faithful.
I still go there for conservative news links and to enjoy the more level-headed comments & humor, but as somebody posted recently, a lot of the older posters have gone off their rockers and are living in their own reality. They pollute threads, post violent revenge porn, get off on gun topics, and harangue / harass serious posters about irrelevant topics or things they don’t have the slightest basic understanding of, such as contract law, free speech, religious freedom, etc. This pushes out the more thoughtful posters and the site is increasingly taken over by morons and probably quite a few schizophrenics.
I’ve been suspended multiple times for criticizing Trump and his supporters.
FR_no_more, it’s the newbies (a bunch of Trumpkins, mostly) who seem to be causing the trouble now.
Robinson has now begun another purge program.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3424005/posts
the once Free Republic is now TRUMPLAND! any Anti Trump comments will get the poster of same banned usually permanently!
http://westworldwide.businesscatalyst.com/DonnyClassic.gif
Time to update this. FR is in the middle of its biggest purge to date, including purging many of the original founding freepers who happen to still be around. This should be known as the Never Trump purge. Anyone who does not support Trump or speaks out against him are being banned. The actual bans have been well over 100 with far more than that leaving on their own free will. The old spin off site GOP Briefing Room gained several hundred of these members. FR is devolving so much due to this with no hint of rationalism for what is happening, many are speculating that Trump or one of his surrogates have been funding the site like they have been accused of buying influence at Breitbart and Gateway Pundit
Mrs Robinsons Lil Jimmy is currently purging all non TRUMP supporting posters!
if one dare say anything less that fully supportive of the Psychotic Narcissist with the preposterous combover they are unceremoniously shown the door !
Hundreds of former Freepers are now mourning the passing of a once fine forum!!
#nevernarcissus
so I’m correct… he’s living off the Freepathons?
It is creepy that Free Republic tacks its’ users (Google Analytics) and then sells that info. Very creepy.
I was purged in 2012 for supporting Ron Paul. Had been a member since 2003. Branded a “Paulian.”
candy-o says:
July 23, 2016 at 3:21 pm
so I’m correct… he’s living off the Freepathons?
Perhaps, but I think many people live off of what people are willing to pay for or give support to, while see http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1011545/posts which is referred to in the article.
Grace and peace thru Jesus the Lord.
This summary is halfway-fair. Too knee-jerk leftist in many respects, not nearly hard enough on FR in many others.
I’ve been there for over 20 years. There have been so many purges that there is hardly anyone left who can even string together a coherent sentence. The sheer idiocy of most comments is really quite astounding.
Most of them will believe almost any crack-pot junk anyone posts. Especially really stupid stuff posted by JR, as noted above in the piece. He can say one day that he’ll never support or vote for a coke-head like GWB and 12 months later that GWB is the greatest thing since sliced bread. You can look it up, it’s all in the archives. All hail JR, the font of all wisdom.
Which is why I use it as the news clipping service it always was and no longer comment. Reading stupid comments is a waste of time and arguing with idiots is even worse.
There used to be some anti-freeper groups around who would dissect JR’s ridiculous budgets. I mean, really, 350K/year to run a text bulletin board? Who’s kidding whom? There’s plenty of free tried-and-true software out there. Buy yourself some serious hardware and bandwidth and let the pros run it. Not your idiot kid who can never be reached when his home-brew server blows up.
50K/year or so, tops. Maybe a lot less. The suckers send the other 300K/year to someones pocket, it sure ain’t needed to run that sorry excuse of a board. But, it survives because there are always new, gullible marks.
Ever notice how they ALWAYS have some sort of “unexpected” service interruption about every 3 months? Which neatly coincides with their quarterly begging, which now lasts for about 75 out of every 90 days.
That gets them going every time. Gotta have some new equipment or FR will just die, or something, even though equipment has been in every fake “budget” from the beginning of time.
The marks never learn. The milking of the marks never ends.
Thanks for this; I’m bookmarking it. I regularly post screencaps from FR to my FB page, and people still seem to think this is “harmless” fuckery. Au contraire.
Feel free to follow my regular Monday morning “Obsession with the Freeperati” posts on First Draft.
Fun for the whole family!
https://first-draft.com/category/tommy-t/
Its been since 2015…since I was allowed to post on Mrs Robinsons little Jimbos forum!
cults are cults..jimmy wants to run a cult!! it makes em feel IMPORTANT
It’s a perennial favorite in a sense. Freerepublic has chosen every wrong path every time and probably set the conservative movement back 20 years. Then when something is popular anyway, it adopts it and moves on to the next wrong position – over and over. Your worst enemies are your pretend to be friends. Free-republic is a cutout.
I don’t think the article is entirely right about alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater. I was a frequent poster on it, and one of the many interviewed for some news story or other. Robinson may have been on it briefly, but he was never one of the in crowd – the “I posted mostly on prodigy” indicates it. And people that you never knew knowing anyone that then tells you they are one of you out of the blue are what impostors, infiltrators, and the like do. Make up a story to connect.
Robinson almost immediately tried to split the group and pidgin hole it into something that could be controlled – a centrally run board instead of the p2p/federated structure usenet has. I was warned by others that was trying to do exactly that, and in retrospect, that is exactly what Robinson did. It wasn’t the only warning I received. I was told by another group after measuring the success of Twa800, that they weren’t interested in usenet and word of mouth anymore, they had found a different way (and last I heard from them). Shortly thereafter, sites like freerepublic and drudge are promoted,which act like gatekeepers that can be controlled. Decades later it’s obvious to everyone that doesn’t work- except for totalitarians.
The only way we’re going to have free speech online is to go back to p2p and federated options. Ultimately, freerepublic is about killing free grassroots voices and newborns before they grow as independent leaders. It always has been.