Free Republic

Thursday, January 21, 2016 Trolling is the New Politics Posted by Daniel Greenfield Your classic troll was an amoral sociopath or played one on the internet. His only cause was his own amusement. He advocated horrible and contradictory causes because it amused him to infuriate people. If he could get an entire group howling for his blood, he won. If an outraged media reported on his antics, he was a prince among trolls. Chaos and absurdity were his only agendas. But eventually the trolls who did it for the "Lulz" gave way to the "Moralfags" sincere trolls who were sincerely...

To some he was an Islamist extremist, to others a radical feminist, to others a neo-Nazi. These are all online identities that seem to have belonged to Joshua Goldberg - but in reality he was none of these things. They were simply online aliases used to whip up ideological hatred, with seemingly dangerous and even violent real-world consequences. In reality he lives in Florida, spent huge amounts of time online - and has now been arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). SNIP It seems Goldberg wasn't just posing as a racist neo-Nazi. Earlier this year an Australian journalist,...

A MAN who claimed to be an Australian-based jihadist terrorist and encouraged attacks on local Jews has been exposed as an online troll who is in fact a young Jewish-American. The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force swooped on Joshua Ryne Goldberg’s Florida home, where the 20-year-old lived with his parents, early Thursday, US time, after a joint investigation with the Australian Federal Police into his online activities supporting Islamic State. Mr Goldberg, under the persona “Australi Witness”, had ... boasted about inspiring the May 3 attacks on the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest in Garland, Texas, where two mujahideen were...

It is safe to say that “Joshua Ryne Goldberg” is a convert to Islam. How did he get the idea that his new religion called for mass murder of those who don’t believe in it? Why are the peaceful aspects of Islam that are so obvious to John Kerry and David Cameron and the U.S. Catholic bishops so hard for people like Joshua Ryne Goldberg to find, while the violent passages that Kerry and Cameron and the bishops are sure do not exist call out so insistently to young men like Goldberg?

Readers grieve for Josh with tributes, prayers, and questions You may be interested to learn that Web site publishers can see the key words you enter in the Google searches that link you to us. Since yesterday, site visits from all 50 states and over 20 foreign countries reveal that you are wondering, “How did Joshua Goldberg die?” In response to your unspoken inquiries, I can only tell you that he sustained fatal injuries in a fall; no other specifics have been made public. The major New York and Washington newspapers have not even mentioned his death on their Web...

Joshua J. Goldberg (1967-2011*) quietly played nurseryman to scores of talented writers and citizen reporters. He gave us a rich soil to plant our blogs, then watered and weeded BlogsLucianneLoves.com (BLL) until our sites sprouted roots and branches, and blossomed with fruit. Josh was a Johnny Appleseed for conservative American blogs. His tragic death was reported today. John Chapman, a.k.a. Johnny Appleseed, did not, as many people believe, plant apple trees by tossing seeds hither and yon. He actually started nurseries where sapling apple trees were nurtured until they could be sold to people who wanted to grow their own...

Tragic news about Joshua Goldberg,Lucianne Goldberg's son. She worked tirelessly to bring the Clinton's to justice and now has a blog site called Lucianne.com Here is what she wrote: To my Dear, Loyal, Funny, Smart, Patriotic Ldotters: It is with a heavy heart and more pain that anyone should endure that we announce the death this week of our beloved Editor-in-Chief, Joshua J. Goldberg. He was my son, Jonah's brother, Chantal's husband and friend to scores of people throughout his young life. It was a tragic fall that killed him. He suffered no pain and is in God's arms. There...

Since it’s out there on the web, I thought I should acknowledge the sad news here. My older — and only — brother passed away this week. He hurt himself terribly in an accident and he died at the hospital a few days later. He was 43. I received word in Israel and raced home in time to say goodbye. His wife, Chantal, and I were there at the end. He felt no pain. I can’t say the same for anybody else in my family.