The
Antifascist struggle on the Internet First: what's the Internet?
Since you're surfing it right now, you probably have an idea what the Internet is,...
But first
of all it is and stays a huge network of computers.
This has consequences concerning your
privacy.
Having an 8-charakter, quasi-random password protection for your e-mail account
might give you the false idee of privacy.
All correspondence you have on the Internet by
e-mail should be considered public knowledge.
If you send e-mail to someone else. The
e-mail message is transferred from one computer to another until it reaches the destination computer.
Your message is transferred in plain text format. This means that it's possible there's one or more
computer between the sender and the receiver that's instructed to make copies of mails containing
certain 'hot' words, certain sequences of charakters (like e-mail adresses), a combination of
words,...
Therefor it's technically possible for the Pentagon to get copies from mails send
to "hiworld@dds.nl" from within the US (the adress of the Antifascist Web), if they somehow managed
to control all the connections from the US to the outside.
I don't have any evidence concerning
one or more intelligence services that attempt such activity.
I'm just saying it's possible if
they wanted to.
Isn't there anything we can do about that?
Yes: the use of PGP (Pretty
Good Privacy). They claim to be using a method without a backdoor for the intelligence services. One
disadvantage: the person you're sending the PGP-encripted message to, needs to be a PGP user as
well.
Because the source code of PGP is publicly available on the Internet, everybody familiar
with programming can check on his own if their claim is true. The
encription method is based on the mathematical basis to be unable to resolve a huge number in it's
primenumber-components fastly. This, however isn't proven mathematical yet (allthough one thinks it's
true).
It'd be great if it was implemented in e-mail programs, but at this moment it still is
difficult to use and set up.
Would the intelligence service want to look at our
mail?
Therefor one should look from a different perspective at the Internet. Meeting
fellow Antifascists on the Internet, 'talking' with them on this big computer network, can give the
same false idea as with making a telephone call. Wiretapping Antifascists, Communists, Peace
Activists, Black Rights Activists, Anti-Imperialists,... happens by 'intelligence services' and
everyone that can classify himselve in one of those categories should be aware of that. Mumia Abu
Jamal was wiretapped when he was just a kid, long before he became minister of information of the
Black Panter Party.
The fact that this happens alone, also shows the real charakter of the state
and her organisations.
For more about the 'intelligence services real face: click here.
Countermeasures can be taken by using public phones, by using
own means of communications,...
This counts even more for using electronic mail because
wiretapping a phone is a workintensive occupation. Scanning mail can be done by a computer without
the need of voice recognition, searching for 'hot' words or certain charakter combinations.
Possibilities
The Internet cannot be used as a mean of communication for
confidentional information.
On the other hand, the Internet opens oppertunities for 'alternative
media', it can be spread without any printing and distribution costs and might reach more people.
The Antifascist Info-Bulletin for example, every issue again shows what the 'mainstream media' is hiding. If the mainstream media would have reported sooner about the hungerstrike against the prison-regime in Turkey, no Antifascists would have died. Even more, if they wouldn't report about a 'democratic' Turkey, but tell the truth and call Turkey fascist, this would lead to much pressure on the Turkish state (here you can find out more about Turkey).
The people that receive the e-zine don't only get to know the truth about what's going on in the world, when they'll think about it, they'll discover the real face of the 'mainstream media'.They see it this time, and they'll keep seeing it,...
They'll want to know why and ask themselves: Who does gain by this?. They'll discover the answer: the US arm industry, the oil industry,... in other words: the few big capitalists in the world, and those in the US and Germany in particular. They'll realise that the 'mainstream media' isn't just influenced by the ow-so-very-rich, that it isn't just controlled by them, but that it's owned by them!
Because of this potential 'dangerous' side of the Internet for the ow-so-very-rich (bourgeosie), they want to restrict it. Might this be the reason why the media makes such a big fuss about porn on the Internet?
In the future, the bourgeosie will try to restrict free speech on the Internet. Will it be unther the pretext of fighting porn, terrorism, drugs or copyright violations?
Source: Antifascist Info-Bulletin
Date: Sun, 12 May 1996 13:14:56 GMT From: tallpaul
PATTERNS OF PAST NAZI PROPAGANDA AND THEIR RELEVANCE FOR TODAY'S INTERNET
by tallpaul@nyc.pipeline.com
Cybernazi campaigns for "rec.music.white-power" and against "soc.politics.marxism" saw many examples
of disinformation occur. Some, like that from "Skipper's Hammer" came from individuals. Others were
reports, widely spread, of "thousands" of illegal spams by antifascists. Many people who were new to
politics (and the history of fascism) were confused by these actions. Their understanding was made
more difficult by the ahistoricism to antihistoricism of right wing forces on the internet.
The cybernazis have announced they are not giving up or even reducing their activities in cyberspace.
It is thus beneficial for antifascists to have at least a brief understanding of past fascist
patterns of disinformation to better understand how fascist propaganda and dirty tricks function
today.
THE REICHSTAG FIRE
The Nazis, with a minority of the popular vote, convince German President Hindenburg to appoint
Hitler to form a government. The German Reichstag [Parliament] building burns and Hitler accuses the
German Communist Party of arson as a signal to start a communist revolution. During the manufactured
hysteria Hitler gains dictatorial powers.
CRYSTAL NIGHT
The Nazis begin the next stage of their anti-Jewish campaign by mobilizing their thugs to smash
Jewish shops in a campaign known as Crystal Night from the broken glass left in the streets. The
shopkeepers, reasonably, file insurance claims. The Jews are then accused of smashing their own
shops in order to "defraud" German businesses. The Jews, collectively, are accessed a penalty of one
billion Deutsche Marks to reimburse the insurance companies.
_NACHT UND NEBEL_ (NIGHT AND FOG)
The Nazis secretly decide that major opponents of their regime are not to be formally arrested and
formally tried in any way that would permit a legal defense and the mobilization of popular
resistance. Instead, in a decision that preceded the Latin and South American death squads of today,
the Nazi opponents were simply to "disappear" into the night and fog.
SEXUAL MOLESTATION IN THE DANZIG CORRIDOR
Shortly before the Nazi invasion of Poland, the German newspapers ran hysterical stories. As Toland
put it, "... Ribbentrop warned Warsaw that Polish outrages against the German minority were becoming
intolerable. This pronouncement was followed by a press campaign with Goering's newspaper, _Die
Zeitung_, charging that German women and children were being molested in Polish streets...." (Of
course Nazis aren't the only group to use "molestation" as a political issue; the recent C.D.A.
featured the need to control the internet to prevent "kiddie porn.")
ARSON IN THE DANZIG CORRIDOR
Immediately before the Nazi invasion the German newspapers ran headlines on how the Poles had torched
German houses in the Danzig Corridor. (This is of special interest to internet people who read
"news.groups" where many of the arguments on "rec.music.white-power" occurred. To observers in the
Danzig Corridor, the Nazi journalists who wrote the arson stories must have appeared "clueless." So
also the "news.groups" observers who saw the cybernazi propaganda developed and similarly pronounced
the writers "clueless." Both groups would have missed the fact that the propaganda was not written
for either set of observers who knew the truth, but for people *outside* the Corridor and the news
group who did not.)
THE LAST DAY OF AUGUST, 1939
The immediate Nazi disinformation campaign that formally "started" WW II is of such interest as to
let Toland describe it himself.
"At 4 PM the executive order to begin the invasion was confirmed; troops and equipment began moving
up to forward positions near the frontier. Simultaneously special orders were transmitted to a
secret German unit on the Polish border by the chief of the SS Security Service. Reinhard Heydrich
had concocted a diabolical scheme -- Operation Himmler -- to give Hitler a perfect excuse for
launching his attack. SD detachments disguised as Polish soldiers and guerrillas would create
incidents along the border the night before the invasion. In exactly four hours they were to attack
a forestry station, destroy a German customs building, and, most important, briefly occupy the German
radio station at Gleiwitz. After shouting anti-German slogans into the microphone the `Poles' would
retreat, leaving behind a number of dead bodies as proof that a fight had taken place. The bodies
presented no problem. Heydrich had already selected the victims -- they were called `canned goods' --
from concentration camps." [pp. 776-777]
SUMMARY
Nazi disinformation techniques thus served three roles:
1) They mobilized Nazi and proto-Nazi support;
2) They provided conservative non-Nazis with a motive to support Nazi activity. ("I hate war but I'm
supporting the Nazi invasion of Poland to teach the Poles not to attack other countries." "I'd never
vote for `rec.music.white-power' but I'm voting for it to teach antinazi spammers they can't
manipulate me.")
3) They paralyzed center political elements. ("Are the accounts of atrocities against the Jews true
stories or Jewish propaganda to get the U.S. involved in the war? We really don't know and until we
do we shouldn't do anything." "Was the Joe Fraud spam against `rec.music.white-power' a nazi spam or
an antinazi spam? We can't do anything until we figure it out.") While the paralyzed liberals
discussed, the Nazis acted.
Frequently point three was the most important for furthering Nazi ends. That was true in Europe in
1939 and it is true on the internet today.
* * * * *
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