(WaPo) An Attack That Came Out of the Ether: Scholar Looks for First Link in Email Chain About Obama

[highplainsdem]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/27/AR2008062703781.html

Laid out before Allen, a razor-sharp, 36-year-old political theorist, was what purported to be a biographical sketch of Barack Obama that has become one of the most effective -- and baseless -- Internet attacks of the 2008 presidential season. The anonymous chain e-mail makes the false claim that Obama is concealing a radical Islamic background. By the time it reached Allen on Jan. 11, 2008, it had spread with viral efficiency for more than a year.

-snip-

But long before this, Allen had been obsessing about the origins of her e-mail at the institute, which is most famous for having been the research home of Albert Einstein. Allen studies the way voters in a democracy gather their information and act on what they learn. She was familiar, of course, with the false rumors of a secret love child that helped sink McCain's White House bid in 2000, and the Swift boat attacks that did the same to Democrat John Kerry in 2004. But the Obama e-mail was on another plane: The use of the Internet made it possible to launch anonymous attacks that could reach millions of voters in weeks or even days.

-snip-

"I started thinking, 'How does one stop it?' "

Allen set her sights on dissecting the modern version of a whisper campaign, even though experts told her it would be impossible to trace the chain e-mail to its origin. Along the way, even as her hunt grew cold, she gained valuable insight into the way political information circulates, mutates and sometimes devastates in the digital age.

Interesting article, with quite a bit to say about FR's involvement.

[blondeatlast]

1. GREAT read; I suggest everyone read the entire article. Fascinating. k&r. nt

[Pirate Smile]

2. I'm glad someone has been seriously trying to trace the sources. I thought this was an interesting

part:

"What I've come to realize is, the labor of generating an e-mail smear is divided and distributed amongst parties whose identities are secret even to each other," she says. A first group of people published articles that created the basis for the attack. A second group recirculated the claims from those articles without ever having been asked to do so. "No one coordinates the roles," Allen said. Instead the participants swim toward their goal like a school of fish -- moving on their own, but also in unison.

You first need some group to publish unscrupulous lies and then it is easy to spread them with everyone citing back to the crap publications.

There is definitely a RW source of a ton of viral e-mail crap. That was true long before Obama even came around. The same is not the case on the left although occasionally people try to do it but it is definitely not as pervasive or organized as that on the Right.

The RW chain e-mail crap of all sorts has always set off a little light bulb in my head - Rove started a direct mail hack. E-mail is just the updated version of direct mail. Am I the only one that thinks of that?

[drm604]

3. You're not the only one.

It's interesting to note that Free Republic seems to be strongly implicated in the start and spread of the email.

[murielm99]

4. If you've seen "Shut Up and Sing,"

the Dixie Chicks mention that FR was responsible for spreading the campaign against them, too.

The Southern Poverty Law Center should start doing some research on FR as a hate group. For now, their crap is politically motivated. But someday they will cross the line into hate group territory. They will start something that will leave them open for lawsuits. I can't wait.

[drm604]

5. FR and LGF.

Free Republic seems to be heavily involved in this email and other smear campaigns, and Little Green Footballs was heavily involved in the whole Dan Rather "fake documents" affair. I suspect that there is heavy involvement in both of them by Repub movers and shakers, including Karl Rove.

[DearAbby]

9. What is the progress

on Rather's lawsuit? I haven't heard anything of it lately.

[drm604]

11. I haven't been following it. n/t

[AZBlue]

6. K&R - very interesting!

Thanks for the post!!

[jbnow]

7. One of the best articles at tracking the smears

aptly entitled Smearing Obama was in The Nation magazine in March 2008
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080331/berman

[Douglas Carpenter]

8. Recommended!!! fascinating article

[MountainLaurel]

10. And very topical, if you've been reading Doonesbury this week

Kudos to her for taking on this project.

[Phred42]

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