The Downside Of The Internet
The web is a wondrous thing. I couldn't live without it. But it is not without its challenges. One of them is that
anyone can pluck anything from any source and copy it.
Even knowing the risk, imagine my surprise - nay, shock and awe -- when an article of mine appeared on the website of
that ultra-libertarian citizen journalist, David Duke.
You will no doubt remember Mr. Duke. Twenty years ago, he was America's most renowned 'white rights' advocate. He
morphed from a hooded Grand Wizard of the KKK to a button-down bigot with a seemingly bright political future.
In 1988, he ran for the Presidency, eventually appearing on the ballot in 11 states and receiving 47,047 votes. In 1989,
he narrowly won a seat in the Louisiana State Legislature. The following year, he ran against Democratic incumbent J.
Bennett Johnston for a US Senate seat. Johnston won, but Duke got 43.5 percent of the total vote and 60 percent of the
white vote. In 1991, he launched a campaign for the governorship of Louisiana.
He lost the election but again won nearly 700,000 votes. Undaunted, in 1996, he again competed in Louisiana's United
States Senate "open" primary, placing fourth among 15 candidates, with 140,910 votes, and carrying several rural
parishes. Then the government charged him with mail fraud and tax evasion for fund-raising efforts that bilked his
supporters. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison. His sentence ended in mid-May 2004.
My encounter with Mr. Duke started with a Google search for an article about home-grown terrorism I had written for the
InterPress News Service. The search turned up Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph and a virtual rogue's gallery of other
miscreants.
One of them was David Duke's "European American Home Page". (http://www.davidduke.com/ ).
There I found an article entitled, "Roots of Anti-Gentilism Run Deep, Jewish Poll Reveals!" by David Duke.
That came as a big surprise to me, because my article was about a poll of anti-Semitic attitudes in the US conducted by
the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). (The poll found that nearly 35 million U.S. citizens - 14 percent of the adult
population - hold 'strong' anti-Semitic beliefs.")
Mr. Duke seized on one of the survey's findings: 33 percent of U.S. citizens believe Jews are more loyal to Israel than
the United States.
Duke reproduced the headline on my article -- "Poll finds that Roots of Anti-Semitism Run Deep by William Fisher,
Interpress Service News Agency, April 25, 2005" - and then wrote:
"The ADL claims that it is anti-Semitic and prejudiced to believe that Jews are generally more loyal to Israel than the
United States."
Obviously warming to his subject, Duke then quotes an article by a Jewish-American leader recalling his boyhood and his
pride in the achievements of the State of Israel.
In fact, says Mr. Duke, "the ADL survey is itself as 'anti-Gentile' as it purports that 33 percent of non-Jews are
'anti-Semitic' for saying that they believed Jews were more loyal to Israel than America. In truth the numbers who
believe that are probably far above 50 percent, for few in America will dare admit to a pollster that they think Jews
are disloyal. For branding a third of our people with the hateful term 'anti-Semitic', for simply acknowledging a fact
that is easily proven and easily verifiable by Jewish leaders themselves, is a vicious libel against our people."
Our people? I guess he means Aryans. Or maybe Aliens.
Undeterred by inconvenient facts, Duke concludes, "The Jewish supremacist beat goes on!"
And so, lamentably, does Mr. Duke, who is rumored to be contemplating a run for Congress!
Which reminds me that the downside of the Internet is that it is the unforgiving test I know of for one's faith in the
First Amendment.
*************
Please click on the link below. THE WORLD ACCORDING TO BILL FISHER (http://billfisher.blogspot.com/)