Redstate, Dailykos and Summary Account Bans: Censorship Reveals Mirror of Dishonesty

By now it has become common knowledge that Redstate site founder Ben Domenech, or Augustine under his pseudonym, is a plagiarist.

The son of Doug Domenech, White House liason to the Department of the Interior, he was hired in March by the Washington Post to run a new blog called Red America. He resigned in disgrace with only a few short posts published after only three days on the job. The discovery of numerous instances of plagiarism dating back from his student newspaper days at The Flat Hat, all the way through to the Post itself, included text from a P.J. O'Roark book and numerous movie and music reviews taken from sites such as Salon.com. According to editors at The Flat Hat, of 35 articles published 10 appear to contain "suspicious" similarities to other work. Further, work published in the the professoinal publication National Review shows signs of plagiarism. This behavior looks to have extended across his entire, if brief, career until his outing at the young age of 24.

Once news of a single instance of plagiarism leaked, liberal bloggers at Dailykos and Eschaston dug through his entire publishing history, much of it online. Domenech was clearly no friend of the liberal blogging community. Prior to being hired at the Washington Post, he had posted a comments calling Correta Scott King a communist during her funeral, he had conflated the judiciary with the Ku Klux Klan, and just before his public Mea Culpa of plagiary he had blatantly lied about that fact to protect himself at the expense of everyone else at Redstate. Still, fans of Domenech at Redstate continued to support him, one of whom posted a note stating he was proud to call [Domenech] his Redstate brother.

The amazing aspect of that story is not Domenech's foibles, but that fellow site editors at Redstate defended his behavior to the point of summary account deletion for any user who publicly opposed Ben's plagiarism. They 'blammed', ejected, and threatened long-standing members with expulsion for simply saying: plagiarism is bad. Even a self-proclaimed Texas professor backed down to save his account. One wonders what his academic colleagues and students might think should they discover his identity.

Various Dailykos Front Page posters had a few things to say about the situation. They weren't very nice, of course, one even calling Domenech an asshole, while another linked his behavior to general conservative cronyism, among other ad hominem attacks. For the Dailykos crowd, any conservative writer is open to severe public criticism, just as are liberal writers harshly criticized by conservatives on Redstate, simply for their political views. The corollary to this is that one's own are never to be criticized, even when in the wrong.

In defense of Ben, Thomas, a Redstate editor, wrote these astonishing words:

I repeat: Should the entire American Left fall over dead tomorrow, I would rejoice, and order pizza to celebrate. They are not my countrymen; they are animals who happen to walk upright and make noises that approximate speech. They are below human. I look forward to seeing each and every one in Hell.

What is one to think of an editor and writer of a prominent US conservative blog who makes a statement like that in defense of something so obviously wrong as plagiarism? Should it matter that Ben is a friend and colleague? In a society with consistent ethical standards: no.

Dailykos members enjoyed their schadenfreude while watching Domenech's career rightly crumble to ruins, steadfastly claiming that such ethical abuse of power could never happen there. Liberals are above that, because it's a core liberal value to show tolerance and respect to those with differing views. Yet when an internal dispute between front page poster Darksyde and Dailykos diarist bluebeliever, who Darksyde did not reference in his diary retort, erupted over the issue of general biographical information and credentials for Front Page posters, Dailykos editors also threatened arbitrary account termination.

Darksyde is the science Front Page poster and editor at Dailykos, a user who had been selected by site founder Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, for his usually factual and accurate diaries on science. However, bluebeliever had the temerity to ask Darksyde: 'what are your credentials?' which exploded into a site-wide flame war. In fact when asked for only general information such as his occupation, his undergraduate or postgraduate studies at University, or even just his personal hobbies, Darksyde responded with an utterly paranoid rant about how the United States government had 'smoked a CIA official' and 'appointed themselves the legal right to kidnap people off the streets with no warrant or due process and ship them to third world shitholes to be tortured to death.' Yet another amazingly unreasonable statement, this time coming from a prominent liberal blogger.

Threatening arbitrary account deletion for sincerely asking the basic question: 'credentials?' seems more than an excessive response to such a simple request. Yet it was not just Darksyde who acted alone, suggesting that such arbitrary bans are site policy, not the work of an over-eager editor. Long time Front Page poster Armando immediately joined in with verbal arrows to let everyone know that one must not be disrespectful to Dailykos, or any of its star posters, lest he go on a campaign to 'strike back' at those who might 'ruin the site' with their queries... about 'credentials.' To ask such a question is a 'smear to the community' and only meant 'to cause trouble.'

Thus two site editors demanded self-censorship under threat of an arbitrary account ban for anyone who might request basic standards of academic openness, on the dubious grounds that asking such general questions would invade the privacy rights of site authors. And for those who didn't heed his warning the outcome was swift and severe. One might ask, how does this benefit the Dailykos reading audience and contributors, or provide any semblance of protection against groupthink? Is this not the very definition of imposing groupthink?

The rule appears to be on both sides of the political spectrum, at Redstate and Dailykos alike, don't offend a site editor. Defending our special people, our site blogging stars, not consistent morals and ethics, is the standing policy. The outcome being that these site stars - those editors and Front Page posters - act to maintain their public fan base at the expense of the very partisan goals they and their participants aim to achieve through blogging. The only difference between these two sites are thus the opposing ideologies they promote, not the censoring means by which they operate.

These are the two most prominent Left and Right political blogs in the United States. What kind of ethical standard does this promote in the public sphere? In serious matters of policy and academic discourse vigilance against groupthink and star fandom is everlasting, just as is freedom from a censoring authority. We ignore this truth at our peril.

[NOTE:] A prior version of this story linked to and quoted a diary posted by Armando that was, in fact, tagged as snark. The author failed to notice this fact and apologizes for the error.

Copyright ©2006 J. Maynard Gelinas.

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