that was totally different

charles:

to insinuate that a comment like "the Muslim rats need to be exterminated" would ever have been allowed here is extremely disingenuous.

of course, who could prove otherwise, seeing as how he deleted all of those comments immediately as they appeared? all at once the day after issuing his "why i left the right" post.

prior to that, they were tolerated - encouraged even - and despite charles' effort to revise the history on this (the viewing of comments prior to 2009 is blocked to unregistered users), the specific text of the sort of commentary charles encouraged at his site still exists in some places, and it indeed matches and surpasses "exterminate muslim rats":

(link and link)

* "IMHO, they should go house to house interrogating every Muslim about what they know and when they knew it. And then kick every last one of them who is there illegally out of the country. And then decide if any of the rest of them deserve to stay. Now, if only Israel would do the same thing after its terror attacks.... "

* "Can we eradicate Islam now, please?"

* "If there are no Arabs there are no attacks. How many more need be sacrificed?"

* "It is now time to force muslims to make a choice: Live peacefully or die. I prefer the latter."

* "We need to stop fucking with these people and kill every one involved. I mean anyone with prior knowledge, anyone who payed for it, and anyone who supported it. Regardless of nationality."

* "If its Islamic it will probably blow up. All Islamic get full body searches with VERY high intensity X-rays ."

* "The best way to deliver those high intensity x-rays is through some W76 warheads at around 100 kt a piece. It will be easier to give a full body search after that."

* "Britain should END ALL ISLAMIC IMMIGRATION NOW....Continuing to welcome the enemy into your country is insane."

* "subhumans, first time on 2 feet...round em all up, every friggin' last one of them...unfortunately, I still think it will take even more violence from the Arabs before the West wakes up and goes savage on em"

* "Martyring Muslims doesn't seem to make much of a difference to the fanatics. What is needed is to take their human capital out their hands - their children. No more warped children, no more jihadis. "

...

# "How can these vermin have a country? How can these vermin be allowed to live?"

# "Vermin love the Slime, and they will hate any attempt to clean up the mess. Our house had become terribly infested with horrible filth. It is to be expected that the creatures living on dirt would resist and fight back. But that is all the more reason to bring to successful completion the cleanup process."

# "Our superiority, militarily and morally, to these vermin is so overwhelming that it would go without saying, were it not for the daily shrieking of the... press."

# "I really don't consider it killing. It's simply [the] extermination of vermin, diseased vermin..."

# "I've been fond of transfer of these subhuman[s] for a while. Perhaps something more like targeted genocide... will become necessary."

# "If every subhuman piece of excrement in the... camp dies slowly and painfully of starvation, I'll have a great [holiday]!"

...which is why this thread is so entertaining. especially in light of this thread:

“Conservative” bloggers, please take note! Glenn Greenwald expects you to be aware of what every right-wing blogger is writing every single second of every day. And if you see something offensive to Glenn Greenwald, you’d better condemn it right away!

Or else you’re a hypocrite or something.

P.S.: this thread also provides a context:

These are (by coincidence I’m sure) the exact same comments cherry-picked by Glenn Greenwald (aka Socky Sockpuppet) in his latest smear job. At least you could do your own cherry-picking, Arianna.

She has one point; extreme comments are not found exclusively on the left. And that’s why there is a very clear disclaimer posted at every LGF comments page, explaining that these comments are only the opinions of the commenters, not of LGF, and that if a comment remains posted here, it in no way indicates approval.

...

And what Arianna’s attacks are supposed to cover up: the Huffington Post carried out a massive purge of assassination-advocating posts, after the spotlight shined on them. More than 400 posts were deleted in one topic on Dick Cheney. Some remnants, and complaints from deleted moonbats, can still be found...

seriously, i have to stop now. this could go on forever.

UPDATE: one more snippet of context...

Most of the hateful content that’s been brought out recently by media has appeared in Daily Kos “diaries.” Diary posts at Daily Kos are not comments; they’re blog posts, by registered users, they’re monitored, and each diary generates its own thread of comments.

And you won’t find a single page of comments at Daily Kos that contains a disclaimer, to explicitly point out that comments are the responsibility of the poster, not representative of the views of the owner.

At LGF, you’ll find such a disclaimer at the top of every page of comments.

Kos wants it both ways; he wants to claim this huge army of readers when it makes him look powerful, but disavow them when they embarrass him.