Hypocrisy’s Name is WordPress: Check Out Jane Wells’ Screed Against SOPA’s Censorship While Recalling WordPress’ Censorship Of Bare Naked Islam FOUR DAYS EARLIER
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Inside WordPress’ no doubt plush headquarters, there’s apparently hot and cold running hypocrisy on tap.
Check out this screed from WordPress honcho Jane Wells where she (quite rightly) rails against SOPA/PIPA — the efforts underway by a collection of either stupid or nefarious (or both) members of Congress to destroy the Internet as we know it by giving Eric Holder’s Justice Department the power to censor and obliterate any website that he, the Attorney General, deems offensive or in violation of this caustic new legislation.
Wells — and WordPress as a company — aggressively rail against SOPA/PIPA and state the following:
- In the U.S. our legal system maintains that the burden of proof is on the accuser, and that people are innocent until proven guilty. This tenet seems to be on the chopping block when it comes to the web if these bills pass, as companies could shut down sites based on accusation alone.
- Laws are not like lines of PHP; they are not easily reverted if someone wakes up and realizes there is a better way to do things. We should not be so quick to codify something this far-reaching.
- The people writing these laws are not the people writing the independent web, and they are not out to protect it. We have to stand up for it ourselves.
The bold emphasis on that first bullet point is mine because I want you to read that sentence again. Hell, read it a few times then come back and join me below. Now, having read how Jane Wells (personally) and WordPress (as a company) feel about the burden of proof being placed on accusers and how it’s terrible that companies could shut down websites based on accusations alone, I’d like you to think back to what happened just ten days ago when WordPress aimed an Alinsky Death Star at the WordPress-hosted site BareNakedIslam and shut it down — all because Muslims had apparently threatened physical harm to WordPress staffers if they allowed BareNakedIslam to continue speaking the truth about Islam.
For those who need a field guide to such displays of hypocrisy in the wild, let’s recap:
* Jane Wells and WordPress believe that it’s wrong to take accusations as fact and censor websites that some people complain about — but WordPress took down the site BareNakedIslam because Muslims had accused it of various untrue things and made threats of harm to staffers if the site was not eliminated.
* Jane Wells and WordPress aimed the Alinsky Death Star at BareNakedIslam based on accusation alone and chose to do what a mob of Muslims wanted despite BareNakedIslam’s factual reporting on what Islam actually stands for and is up to in the world (Hint: the site’s tagline is “It isn’t Islamophobia when they really ARE trying to kill you”).
BareNakedIslam is back up and has been renamed EndTimesToday.com — but until January 6th, 2012 it was a website hosted by WordPress (and, thus, tragically subject to the whims of WordPress and its bipolar approach to censorship). Apparently, over the last few months WordPress bowed to Muslim pressure on several occasions and shut the site down — and the site’s owner had to argue for restoration of BareNakedIslam.This back and forth ended when Wells and her colleagues told the site’s owner that she had until January 6th to move the site off WordPress entirely before WordPress deleted it completely.
Isn’t that what Jane Wells complains SOPA/PIPA would allow Eric Holder to do — to shut down websites that some people complain about or don’t like for whatever reason? Isn’t that what the screed she wrote was all about?
If WordPress doesn’t have a problem doing this to BareNakedIslam, then why does Jane Wells think SOPA/PIPA is bad? It’s like when we see Michelle Antoinette Obama complaining about other people’s obesity right before returning to the White House for another one of the 4,500-calorie meals she orders up for herself.
Jane Wells and WordPress correctly fear a future where the Left doesn’t control the Attorney General’s position and conservatives would wield the power of SOPA/PIPA and start censoring and shutting down the Left’s favorite sites like Daily Kos or DemocraticUnderground — Wells and WordPress aren’t really against censorship so much as they’re worried someone might gain the ability to censor THEM.
Wells and WordPress want to retain their own abilities to take down sites like BareNakedIslam that they don’t like, but they don’t want a future Republican Attorney General to have the ability to shut down Leftist sites on WordPress or elsewhere on the Internet.
See how that works?
If you can ever intuitively know just one thing about the Left it’s that Leftists are almost all hypocrites at their core; the second thing you must learn is that they COUNT ON no one calling them out on this and rubbing their faces in this shameless hypocrisy.
Leftists at WordPress will gleefully obliterate a site they don’t like such as BareNakedIslam and claim nothing was wrong with doing that…but then yowl loudly when they fear someone or something is coming to do the same thing to the Leftist sites they adore.
“Don’t you eat McDonald’s or give your kids any fries…but while you’re up, boil me some lobsters in a bunch of butter and get me some of those Kobe beef ribs I love to dip in Hollandaise, you know how I like to do” — Michelle Antoinette Obama, promoting her “Let’s Move” campaign against other people’s obesity.
“Censorship is wrong and no one should have the ability to shut down a website because someone complained about it…but it’s okay that we shut down BareNakedIslam because Muslims threatened to behead us if we didn’t” — Jane Wells and the staff of WordPress justifying their own act of censorship on January 6th, 2012.
CLASSIC.
© 2012, Kevin DuJan. All rights reserved.
Also Recommended:
- Bare Naked Islam has a New Home
- An Open Letter to Andrew Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, and Others: Please Help Bare Naked Islam Rebuild After Deletion By WordPress.com
- WordPress Shuts Down “BareNakedIslam” After the CAIR Bears Threaten Violence Against WordPress Staff
- Jane Fonda’s past comes back to haunt.
- A Note on Comments: Moving to Registrations Via WordPress
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You make a really excellent point. I knew WP was arguing against SOPA, but I hadn't really put two and two together regarding their treatment of Bare Naked Islam.
I do find it ironic, and all too common, that liberals tend to think that censorship is terrible, UNLESS they are the ones doing the censoring. THEN it's considered "noble".
WOW! Thank you. HillBuzz's support of BNI though the past few weeks is appreciated more than you know. The site is up at endtimestoday.com as noted, but it should switch over to the name barenakedislam.com in the next day or two.
I will post this article on my website today
Thanks again.
BONNI
Thank You Kiven ! Defender of truth and freedom . Your thought and words stir to action.
Great to see support for BNI, this site is truly needed!!!!
Hi there. I think you misunderstand the relationship between WordPress/WordPress.org (the open source project, a downloadable application you can get for free at WordPress.org and then host yourself somewhere else, built largely by volunteers) and WordPress.com (a hosted service owned by Automattic that is a commercial entity providing both free blog hosting and paid upgrades that run on top of the WordPress multisite software). They are separate entities. Separate leadership teams, separate support forums, etc. The fact that the "WordPress" name is used by both is a constant source of confusion for people, but there you have it.
My statement was on WordPress.org, where I am the ux/community lead.
The controversy you reference is related to WordPress.com, where I am not, and so I generally cannot speak to the decisions made there.
I am employed by Automattic, but I get donated to work on .org, not .com, so I was not even aware of the suspension issues you're talking about until now.
So, while I'm sure there are plenty of instances of hypocrisy in my life, you've got the facts a bit mixed up in your article.
Jane –
It’s a cop-out on your part to hide behind that lame “.com vs. .org” excuse.
The article you wrote railing against the censorship is clearly being promoted on WordPress.com — and both WordPress.com and WordPress.org use the same branding, making them indistinguishable to the public.
It would be like an executive at Coca Cola saying “I have nothing to do with any hypocrisy that Diet Coke products engage in because I drink only regular Coke”.
The truth is, the people behind WordPress made the decision to obliterate the WordPress-hosted site Bare Naked Islam…and then four days later you went on a public tear about how wrong it would be for SOPA/PIPA to be able to obliterate websites.
Before you post a screed against such acts, maybe you should check to see if WordPress has engaged in the obliteration of a website for political reasons — you know, like four days before you decided you were so committed to the fight against censorship.
You seem like a very nice person and are clearly very talented — but you’re a hypocrite. I do appreciate your writing in though. Now, it would be great if you addressed the Bare Naked Islam issue with whomever it is at WordPress you think was most responsible for its obliteration.