You, Too, Can Be a Comment Commando

Ours is a stifled voice. When we wrestle down our concern at attracting the ire of those who enforce the regnant Holocaust ideology, when we take excruciating care to avoid implying that any particular group or religion might be involved in the perpetration of the lies, when we scrupulously marshal the mountains of evidence on which our positions are based … we are nonetheless censored, and where censorship happens even briefly to relent, we are excoriated and subjected to lugubrious allegations regarding our motives and even parentage.

It’s enough to make one sit back and suffer in silence. Quite rationally, most of us do just that, most of the time. That’s well and good; if we all become martyrs, our cause dies with us. But in the giant’s armor, a few inviting chinks have come to light, most of them courtesy of the Internet, and exploiting these not only provides at least a means of annoying the monster at relatively little cost and risk, but even more important, enables our voice to be heard (seen) on the computer screens of millions of people who have already demonstrated enough interest, adverse or otherwise, in our subject.

These are the Comments threads that trail after many of the innumerable articles (virtually all adverse to our own sympathies) that appear on the Internet about the Holocaust. Do you see these articles? Do you look for them? They are to be found, of course, in splendiferous profusion, but it isn’t necessary to look for them. Google will look for them for you. All you have to do is institute a Google Alert for Web articles matching keywords such as “Holocaust denial,” “revisionism,” or any of a hundred combinations of keywords you might care to install alerts for. Alerts are, like Google’s search engine, scot-free, so go at it until you can’t take any more; you obviously can cancel or even edit Alerts to your heart’s content. “Holocaust denial” will bring you a succinct list virtually every day in your e-mails.

Now, misinformed, propagandistic articles of the very-most-common sort are coming at you daily, and if you read them, two reactions are likely to occur: (a) they all pretty much seem to say the same things; and (b) you might like, here and there, to rejoin, “Hey, it isn’t (wasn’t) like that at all; it was like this!” Other dissenting reactions come to mind most-readily. At this point, the articles divide into two major categories: those that allow/provide for comments, and those that don’t. Many dedicated comment commandos eventually economize by not reading articles that offer no opportunity for comment; doing or not doing this is obviously your prerogative, and you will exercise it quite without being told you can.

As to those allowing comments, there is a further trifurcation: (a) those (like the Unz Review) that allow commentary by anyone anytime; (b) those (the majority) that require commenters to register, and thereafter log in, to comment; and (c) those that require identifying oneself as a paid subscriber to the site. This last category, unless you like paying to subscribe to sites that may or may not carry material of interest or appeal to you, you can simply relegate to the same trash heap to which you assign articles that don’t provide for comments (incidentally, many of the larger sites provide comment trails for certain classifications of articles, and do not for other classifications, such as “Opinion.”)

The first category listed above (call it “No Holds Barred”) requires no further strategizing; you can put up a display name that doesn’t reveal who you are and fire away with abandon. You should, however, enter your actual (or an actual) e-mail address, because these sites supposedly test the existence of these e­mail addresses, possibly as an anti-spam measure).

It’s Category (b) that entails a little extra effort that, if thoughtfully carried out, can open the category up for your fulminations most-invitingly. The apparent intent of the annoying registration requirement, besides reduction of spamming pollution, is a misguided desire on the part of the site operators to force commenters to reveal their true identities. Fortunately, this is easily circumvented, as no doubt it massively is by the commenting legions employed or otherwise incented by the numerous and powerful institutions that daily expend so much effort in opposing and/or silencing us. Acquiring discreet “identities” is as simple as establishing purpose-made e-mail accounts with any of the many services (e.g., Gmail) that enable you to do so, again, scot-free. Boy, isn’t capitalism great? Now you can use your e-mail address to register with sites.

Finally, even alternatively, a step to gain further convenience in registering at the sites that impose the requirement to do so on commenters: social media. Maybe you already have a Facebook account, for keeping abreast of friends, relatives, enemies, whomever. Maybe you use that account to help all of them keep up with you. Either way, this account, if you have it, names you accurately, perhaps displays one or more pictures of you, and gives forth any amount of other information that could be used against you by social-injustice warriors (SIWs). But when you encounter registration/login requirements posed by the sites we’ve been discussing, you will note that you are invited to register by using a social-media service where you already have an account; not just Facebook, but Google, Yahoo, Disqus and others. If you establish one or more “dummy” (so to call them ) accounts with these services, you can register with the annoying sites on which you wish to comment with little more than a click and a heartbeat or two of waiting, instead of keying in your e-mail address and a password. The name of your commenter will be that which you have installed on the social-media site you chose. If you’re content with only one “layer” of anonymity, you can even put your own (only) e-mail address into these sites.

Some social-media sites, like Disqus, provide a means of making your display name a hyperlink to a site of your choice (it displays in a color, rather than just black like the others). Guess which site I’ve installed for my own name. That’s right! http://www.codoh.com! You could, too, of course. Not only that, all comments can contain URLs such as my favorite, and many of them automatically convert your entry of a valid URL to a hyperlink, the way my word processor does. It just gets better and better!

Once you’re “in” on the site carrying an interesting article with comment thread, you will (again) encounter two types of comment threads: those that enable “voting” on existing comments, and those that don’t. Naturally, someone seeking to have his voice heard will find the “voting” sites more-gratifying, though one can still lodge one’s own comments (including rebuttals) on the other sites. Sites allowing voting are again of two types: those allowing down-voting and those allowing only up-voting (agreement/approval). Again, obviously, those allowing greater latitude for reaction are more attractive, other factors being equal.  Something to note regarding articles (and there will be many) for which “Comments Are Closed”: you can, of course, read comments that were made before the thread was closed (there are many reasons, including silencing us, why sites close comments on certain articles). On some closed threads, you can’t even vote, but on others, I’ve found that, if you’ve logged in successfully (see above), you still can vote on comments you favor or perhaps even disfavor.

I’ve been a Comment Commando for years at this point (it’s neither landed me in jail nor made me one nickel); it’s not quite my hobby, but it certainly provides me a lot of entertainment, and fulfillment. You might be able to access a trail of my comments on Disqus; I know Disqus accumulates such trails. But here, you can access my comments of the last few years on the Unz Review. You’ll find the theme across them pretty consistent. You can also access the articles I was commenting on, any comments made in reply to my comments, and even the entire comments thread (by others) attached to the articles.

Commenting, a much-more-immediate offspring of what in newspapers and magazines was the “Letters to the Editor” column, is, as I’ve tried to show, a whole, wonderful world not only of self-expression, but of access to the self-expression of others who’ve read (one hopes) the same article, even the occasional opponent who manages to muster respectable, not to say respectful, argument against your own viewpoint. The Comments threads are often more-informative than the articles to which they are appended, and almost always more-entertaining.

And since virtually all comment threads provide a “Reply” function that you’ll find very useful, you’ll also find that others, opponents and allies alike, will use the Reply function on your comments. This can be the most-immediately gratifying feature of the entire activity, and here, personally, I have in mind hostile replies more-so than supportive ones. The hostile replies typically contain such risible frothing-at-the-mouth that I have come to savor the ones that occasionally offer some hitherto-not-seen form of calumny to spew in place of anything resembling intelligent argument. I sometimes feel such replies to my comments ultimately provide the best support there could be for the point of view I originally expressed in my own comment. Do arrange to be able to track Replies to your own comments; many sites provide various means, as do the social-media services discussed above, most-notably Disqus.

Don’t discredit our cause by yielding to any impulse you might occasionally experience to fall to the level so often occupied by our detractors. Try not to discredit groups or their advocates except where the linkage to whatever you’re complaining about is both unquestionable and indispensable. And where you must involve groups, do so as charitably and discriminatingly (in a good way) as you can. And above all, never engage in name-calling; do not criticize—only correct. We are, intellectually, better than they in every way. Always let that shine through, but never claim it explicitly. If your comment won’t carry your argument, ultimately, it’s your audience’s fault, not yours.