If you have spent any time on the internet in the world of politics, you have heard of FreeRepublic.com. A right wing message board that boasts one of the largest memberships and pageviews of any right wing website. It is its own self-contained community that has a long history of ups and downs. Many times members of FreeRepublic.com have influenced real world events, and their notoriety have made them a powerful block in right wing circles. Even if the right wing circles don’t want to acknowledge exactly what is being said by the various Freepers.
So what exactly is FreeRepublic.com? How did it get started? What have they done? this article attempts to answer those questions by giving a timeline overview of the history of FreeRepublic.com. We use publicly available messages, both from FreeRepublic.com and external sources (members, ex-members, bitter ex-members, news reports, and enemies) FR has done A LOT of stuff. This is in no ways a complete list of everything they have accomplished or a complete history. Most major events are mentioned, as well as many minor events, some listed just as examples of the state of the FR forums at the time. Some of the sources are more dodgy than others, even history on the FR boards themselves are whitewashed and purged at times. But it is a good rough draft, and revisions are welcome in the comments section.