From: Rich Graves <llurch@networking.stanford.edu>
Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 15:21:33 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: FYA: "The ANOREV INTERCEPTS" [Usenet censorship] (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.GUL.3.93.960523200054.22413c-100000@Networking.Stanford.EDU>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Sometimes I amaze even myself, or whoever people think I am. This was
written by Tallpaul, everyone's favorite anti-fascist activist.

-rich

            INFORMATIONAL FOLLOWUP TO INTERNET NEWS GROUPS
                        "rec.music.white-power"
                        "soc.politics.marxism"
                    "talk.politics.natl-socialism"

Because of the role I played in the campaign to get people to VOTE NO
on "rec.music.white-power" many people have sent me e-mail asking about
the vote results on several political news groups on the internet. The
following is the latest data available as posted in the official USENET
news group called "news.groups".

1. "rec.music.white-power" (RMW-P)

Today, May 21 at 04:46 GMT, the vote taker Michael Handler posted a
message to "news groups" that read:

"I have completed the tabulation of the rec.music.white-power vote, and
submitted the results to David Lawrence. They should be posted shortly.

"I will comment more on the subject, including regarding the delay in
the posting of the results, once the results have been posted to
news.announce.newgroups."

The battle over RMW-P was perhaps the most intensive in the history of
the internet and informal earlier reports indicated the raw vote broke
the all-time internet record by a factor of two. The results of the
vote, whatever they are and however they were counted, promises to be
equally if not more controversial, particularly because of the two+
month delay between the vote deadline and the announcement of the
results.

I will inform all of you what the vote is as soon as it is posted.

2. "soc.politics.marxism"

Yesterday, May 20 at 22:12 (GMT -04:00), the vote taker Brennan Price
posted a message to "news groups" announcing that the group passed the
vote 355 to 106.

There is now a formal five-day waiting period for people to
comment/protest/etc. on how the vote was counted, the method(s) used to
invalidate ballots, and so forth.

I will also keep you informed of how this discussion unfolds.

3. "talk.politics.natl-socialism" (TPN-S)

R. Graves was the original proponent of TPN-S. He had opposed the
earlier RMW-P group but on technical, not political reasons, and he
does, as he once put it, "not consider [himself] anti-racist." Rather
Graves opposition centered on whether the nazi news group had
demonstrated sufficient interest as a music group, whether it had been
properly proposed in terms of proper USENET/uunet electronic paperwork
at the like.

His version of the Kleim proposal for a nazi group was designed, in
part, to straighten out this paperwork.

Highly skilled technically, Graves seems quite clueless about the
nature of fascism as a political tendency off the internet in the real
world. He has opposed individual cybernazi dirty tricks in cyberspace,
including some first-class technical tracking of cybernazis using
anonymity and other devices to hide their identities. On the other
hand, he has announced, for example, that there are only some one-to-
two thousand hardened nazis in the entire world.

Before the vote on SPM was announced, Graves stated he was "thinking of
dropping" his proposal for the nazi group on the grounds (among others)
that even the cybernazis themselves showed little interest in it.

However, today at 00:35 (GMT -7:00) he posted to "news.groups" under
the subject line "Going forward with talk.politics.natl-socialism after
all" that:

"The recent 60 Minutes interview with Dr. William Pierce, in which Mike
Wallace was obviously uninformed about the person with whom he was
speaking, has reestablished the need, as far as I am concerned, for a
public forum dedicated to the discussion of national socialist
movements. With Milton Kleim's permission, I will list him as an
official co-proponent on the third RFD, for which I believe we just
barely have time."

Kleim accepted almost immediately.

Graves's new view threatens additional ominous organizing by cybernazis
on the net as they go for an additional news group even before the
results of their previous organizing effort is announced.

Nor does Graves's reason for going ahead seem particularly convincing.
A search of the internet reveals only four mentions of Dr. William
Pierce in recent times. One of them is by Graves himself a week or so
before the Wallace interview. The other three were all responses to the
interview. Nor does it seem likely that Mike Wallace or his staff will
be avid readers of Graves's proposed TPN-S. Graves's decision also
comes immediately after the statement that the votes on the earlier
cybernazi proposal RMW-P were counted.

It is possible that Graves's genuinely changed his mind (as did Milton
Kleim) independently of the success of SPM and the vote on RMW-P. But
one wonders how many will be convinced that this is the case versus the
number that will see Graves's reference to Pierce/Wallace as more
rationalization than reason.

Still, until Graves's third version of the proposal is written and
posted there seems little to be gained by any formal speculation on his
motives or those of the cybernazis. Nor, until the vote on RMW-P is
announced does it seem beneficial for new people to closely follow the
post-announcement followups to "news.groups."

I and others will be closely monitoring the group and will keep you
informed of what is happening, what we think the significance is, and
our thinking on how best to support, oppose, or avoid it.

The short time line is uncertain. (Thus I am not even getting this
ready to mail until I have again checked the group when I next log on.)
But for political activists it promises to be an "interesting" summer
and fall.

--tallpaul@nyc.pipeline.com

Post Script to New Readers: This series of letters originated with what
a few of us jokingly call the ANOREV INTERCEPTS. I returned to the
internet in September 1995 after a long absence. Various technical
people who were anti-fascist but not activists had been following
cybernazi organizing attempts in cyberspace. They had assembled a
series of documents and analyses of the nazis, and, knowing that I was
an antifascist activist sent me copies. (Some years ago Anglo/US
intelligence intercepted and decoded some detailed material from Soviet
intelligence that was code-worded VERONA. ANOREV is just that word
spelled backwards.) The ANOREV material proved to be highly accurate.
Based on this, I started the series called "This computer kills
fascists," posting material to friends and other net activists.