Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Breitbart promoted the work of an illegal website that smeared immigrants, harassed journalists...
...and had neo-Nazi tiesDecember 14, 2017 7:55 AM EST
Breitbart used the site’s flawed data to bolster xenophobic content that blamed Sweden's immigrants for rape
For months, Breitbart has used the work of an anonymously run Swedish website that illegally published questionable crime data in order to fearmonger about an alleged wave of crime and rape committed by immigrants. Even after the now-defunct website, which was also publishing journalists’ personal information, was reported to the Swedish authorities for illegally disseminating personal data, Breitbart continued to promote its findings.
Breitbart has promoted methodologically flawed findings from the now-defunct website, GangRapeSweden.com, several times over the past year, using the data to bolster its arguments about migrant crime. Gangrapesweden.com was an anonymously administered Swedish website that published detailed, sensitive records related to violent crimes, particularly rape, by over 83,000 individuals in Sweden between 2004 and 2014. The neo-Nazi site Nordfront took credit for delivering the data, which was allegedly verified and which purported to show a disproportionate level of crime by “non-Swedish” individuals. The site’s method for deciding whether a perpetrator was Swedish or non-Swedish was based solely on the individual’s name.
In addition to disclosing sensitive records linked to criminal offenses, GangRapeSweden.com played a role in a coordinated campaign to harass progressive Swedish journalists. In September, the website doxxed, or published names and personal contact information of, 14 members of Jagärhär, an anti-harassment website administered by Swedish journalists, leading to threats and racist and homophobic attacks on the site’s members. Sweden Democrats, Sweden’s far-right nationalist party with ties to neo-Nazism, promoted the campaign on a local chapter of its official Facebook page, but later deleted the post.
The site had been in operation since at least March 2017, but translated some of the content into English only recently. On December 1, it added additional information and made the information searchable. Three days later, a Swedish Holocaust-denier and pseudo-journalist who refers to himself as Peter Sweden drew attention to the posted records in a tweet, an image of which ended up on the message board 8chan’s “politically incorrect” board along with a suggestion that users “archive everything.” 8chan is notorious for its racist commentary and politically motivated harassment campaigns.
...
For months, Breitbart has used the work of an anonymously run Swedish website that illegally published questionable crime data in order to fearmonger about an alleged wave of crime and rape committed by immigrants. Even after the now-defunct website, which was also publishing journalists’ personal information, was reported to the Swedish authorities for illegally disseminating personal data, Breitbart continued to promote its findings.
Breitbart has promoted methodologically flawed findings from the now-defunct website, GangRapeSweden.com, several times over the past year, using the data to bolster its arguments about migrant crime. Gangrapesweden.com was an anonymously administered Swedish website that published detailed, sensitive records related to violent crimes, particularly rape, by over 83,000 individuals in Sweden between 2004 and 2014. The neo-Nazi site Nordfront took credit for delivering the data, which was allegedly verified and which purported to show a disproportionate level of crime by “non-Swedish” individuals. The site’s method for deciding whether a perpetrator was Swedish or non-Swedish was based solely on the individual’s name.
In addition to disclosing sensitive records linked to criminal offenses, GangRapeSweden.com played a role in a coordinated campaign to harass progressive Swedish journalists. In September, the website doxxed, or published names and personal contact information of, 14 members of Jagärhär, an anti-harassment website administered by Swedish journalists, leading to threats and racist and homophobic attacks on the site’s members. Sweden Democrats, Sweden’s far-right nationalist party with ties to neo-Nazism, promoted the campaign on a local chapter of its official Facebook page, but later deleted the post.
The site had been in operation since at least March 2017, but translated some of the content into English only recently. On December 1, it added additional information and made the information searchable. Three days later, a Swedish Holocaust-denier and pseudo-journalist who refers to himself as Peter Sweden drew attention to the posted records in a tweet, an image of which ended up on the message board 8chan’s “politically incorrect” board along with a suggestion that users “archive everything.” 8chan is notorious for its racist commentary and politically motivated harassment campaigns.
...
https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/12/14/breitbart-promoted-work-illegal-website-smeared-immigrants-harassed-journalists-and-had-neo-nazi/218841
Linked today on the SPLC's Hatewatch blog.
