Evidence emerges suggesting "Crash the Teaparty" website hosted by former GOP Senate candidate

[Bjorn Against]

Last night I posted a thread detailing my own research into what appears to be yet another right-wing hoax. Jason Levin's "Crash the Tea Party" website has gotten a lot of attention on the right-wing blogs in recent days and yesterday it was picked up by the AP and other major news outlets. No one knows much of anything about who Jason Levin is and it does not appear the so-called "nationwide network" of progressives aiming to infiltrate tea party rallies holding racist signs even exists. I was not the only person who was suspicious about the story and today Greg Correll posted some new info on his blog at Salon.com. Yesterday I had found domain information for Levin on Free Republic but I thought it was irrelevant, well Correll did some more digging and he found some information that Free Republic left out:

I explored ARIN IP data for the site domain. Now it gets very interesting.

IP Address: 66.96.130.99 (ARIN & RIPE IP search)
IP Location: US(UNITED STATES)-NEW YORK-NEW YORK
DMOZ no listings
Y! Directory: see listings
Data as of: 23-Apr-2008

66.96.130.99 is enduranceinternational.com

CEO? "Steven "Steve" Sydness (born c. 1956) is a politician and businessman who was a North Dakota Republican Party candidate for one of North Dakota's United States Senate seats in 1992, and is the current CEO of the Endurance International Group in Massachusetts.<1>" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Sydness.

He is also on the board of a conservative Christian Science school.

Endurance also hosts this site: Eastside Republican Club and many others, including some Christian sites--but interestingly, no progressive or liberal sites. And they do NOT list the "crashers" site in their complete C license listings.

Why should they want to hide it, if "Levin" is just some schmo who paid to host his site there?

http://open.salon.com/blog/greg_correll/2010/04/13/right-wing_hoax

It looks like Correll may have just found the most damning piece of evidence yet to prove the Associated Press swallowed yet another right-wing hoax hook line and sinker, let's hope this gets some traction.

[creeksneakers2]

1. He's a real person

TPM interviewed him.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/04/inside-man-how-a-prankster-plans-to-destroy-the-tea-party-movement.php?ref=fpb

[Bjorn Against]

2. I never said he wasn't a real person, but that does not mean he is the person he is portrayed as

I normally think TPM is a pretty good site, but they appear to have fallen for the hoax as well.

[HipChick]

3. I agree..think you nailed it 100%..

[dem mba]

7. I am with you on this

I think sources are reporting this prematurely. I have not heard of any of the so-called other 65 leaders of the counter-tea party movement mentioned by name, city or anything else.

I have heard of only ONE person being sourced, Jason Levin, in two articles about this, on the AP and on TPM.

I suspect Levin is simply a great viral marketer and PR man. We can only speculate on his motives. Way more reporting needs to be done on this. Especially with the information you sourced.

Great job so far Bjorn.

[creeksneakers2]

12. He's now identified and has been interviewed on TV

He has a record of blog posts on the net. Your source now admits he was wrong. Sorry.

[farmersdaughter]

13. Well...

A lot of sites like blogger.com allow you to fill in the date for your blog posts. It's really not that hard to 'fake' the date of a post or an entire blog for that matter.

crashtheteaparty.org is a site set up to take the heat off racist Republicans (posing as tea party members) who are using the tea party movement to gain more independent voters. Republicans will do anything to keep those votes and give aid and comfort to their racist, grammar challenged members. The site is FAKE.

Thanks so much to the author of this thread (and I apologize to the DU members for the lack of intro/diving right in)! I KNEW when I first read about this site that it was just too freaking convenient.

[Maru Kitteh]

14. *thumbsup* - Welcome to DU!

[farmersdaughter]

16. Thank you!

I read here all the time...but whenever I get ready to sign up and post something, somebody else here beats me to it!

[Mojeoux]

15. I am

so abashed.

I thought it was real. I didn't want to go and act fake racist or any thing

but to be in a group that was "crashing their party," with the truth.

I know you can't out yell bullies, so I thought it would be nice to be with like minded people because the Tea baggers are scary.

I added and then un-added with disgust the "mad-hatter" deal on face-book.

This is 301

[farmersdaughter]

17. If I didn't run a website (for my family)

I would believe it too. Unless you've used blogger software that forces you to enter the date, you wouldn't know. I'm just glad you guys here are actually investigating it. Too bad our media no longer finds that kind of thing necessary.

If you or any other Democrat (or Progressive or Independent) attends one of these rallies to counter-protest, PLEASE be safe. These people are really, really dangerous. Just a little a$$vice from the newb!

[mattomjoe]

4. This "Crash" business seems really fishy to me

especially since this has spread like wildfire all of a sudden.

Jason Levin?

Who???

All I know is, when I first hear about something like this and it's coming from a conservative source, my bullshit meter starts acting up.

Hoax or no hoax, either way it should fuel the paranoia already at fever pitch in these tea parties.

Can't wait for "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" to unfold....

[buszwell]

5. It doesn't even have to be real,

the tea baggers are going to rip each other to shreds either way. One hell of job by Corell though...

[Enrique]

8. no they're not

they're just going to carry their racist signs and now they can say it wasn't us, it was the infiltrators.

[starroute]

6. Here's a blog that dug out some stuff Levin wrote in 2008

The blogger who came up with Levin's "Manifesto" from 2008 calls him a "fascist libertarian." I wouldn't go that far -- he sounds more like somebody who swallowed too much Robert Heinlein and never fully digested it. But either way, he's scarcely a progressive.

http://www.verumserum.com/?p=13938

What I managed to find is Levin’s personal blog on Blogger, which unfortunately (if not surprisingly) seems to have been recently blocked from public view. Equally regrettable, the site is also excluded from Google’s web caching feature so it is impossible to view any full pages on his site.

However, by using the partial text results from this Google search, along with a Digg post, and some guesswork on key words, I’ve been able to uncover the gist of a blog post of Levin’s from May 2008 entitled “My Personal Political Manifesto”. It’s organized into ten statements of belief. Here are the partial segments I was able to uncover ...

5. Which brings us to war and the death penalty…I believe that there are some truly evil motherfuckers on this planet who deserve to die. I do not condone attacking a country that had nothing to do with 911, nor do I condone interventionist foreign policy. If Saddam was so evil, why haven’t we attacked Kim Jong il? That crazy sonofabitch has nukes!!! Unless someone physically attacks us here on American soil (ala pearl harbor) we should not go to war. But if we do go to war, we need to kick as much ass as is humanly possible. Kill, Maim, Torture, take the gloves way the fuck off! That is how you wage War. This of course, should only be used as a last resort. I also have no moral or ethical problem with the death penalty. The only reason I don’t support the death penalty is that I truly believe the judicial system in its current form is too inept to hand down such an such an irreversible punishment.

6. Which is why I believe citizenship should be earned. Either through military service, public works service, or foreign service (peacecorp, drs. without borders etc.). Only then should you have the right to vote, sit on a jury, or hold public office. Perhaps if these privileges were earned, they would finally be respected.

[dem mba]

9. you know, whoever he is, I think some good may come of it

Late Update: Dave Weigel reports on FreedomWorks' plan to expose infiltrators like Levin and capture them on video at the Tax Day rallies on Thursday. The group is taking Levin's plan -- and the possibility of other infiltrators -- pretty seriously, and is planning to point out and confront anyone with a "racist or offensive" sign at a rally on Thursday.




Um, guys? You should have been doing that since Day 1.

[pnorman]

10. K & R the above posting!!!!

n/t

[Xenotime]

11. If this is true, we should be able to file criminal charges...

or at least sue.