27 October 2004
EDITORIAL Jeff Sharlet: The Revealer made a mistake. Writing for our “Today” column a few days ago, I said that the wildly popular blog Little Green Footballs actually merited the much misused slur of “Nazi.” I stand by that.

My mistake was that I relied on a selection of quotes from LGF compiled by “Mr. Spock” on Dr. Menlo, “Little Green Footballs? or Late German Fascists?” — without reading the fine print. Yes, the quoted remarks — referring to Palestinians and other Muslims with terms like “subhuman,” and “vermin,” and, in one instance, calling for genocide — come from the comments, not the main text. So I’ve been spending some time skimming through LGF’s archives. It’s hard to read more than a few hundred words without coming across an equation of Islam with terrorism, or a reference to all Muslims as “barbaric,” or worse. The comments are, indeed, much worse, a nearly uninterrupted stream of ignorant invective: “These asshats portray themselves in a negative light. They emit negative light. They are the religion of darkness and death”; “they are animals”; “such was the deranged mind of Muhammed!!”

I tried to respond to LGF’s outrage at my characterization at LGF, but commenting is only permitted to registered users, and no users are being registered. It’s a closed circuit. This is what I wrote:

When I discovered that the two comments I quoted were from comments, I wondered if I’d made a mistake. Then I read your defense of the term “vermin” based on the murder of a five-year-old girl. Fine — if you’re ready to call Israelis “vermin” for the same crime.

I’m not. “Vermin” is a term that does not apply to whole peoples, unless your prone to the pathetic racialist thinking made most famous by the Nazis.

You suggest that I’ve revealed something about my own hatred by calling a “pro-Israel, pro-Jewish” blog neo-Nazi. That’s about as intellectually sound as suggesting that I don’t like Nazis because their uniforms are ugly. My problem with you isn’t that you’re pro-Israel, or pro-Jewish, positions I share; it’s that you’re anti-human. Hamas could barely ask for a better recruiting tool.

I’m Jewish. I grew up the sole Jewish kid in a working class Catholic town, and fought throughout my childhood, literally, against anti-Semites. There was no help from adults — the police chief was among the bastards. You know what LGF reminds me of? Those guys.