MSM dictation, trolling the troll, and misinformation all in one fascinating story
by digby
So you’ve undoubtedly heard about the internet troll named Joshua Goldberg who took all kinds of identities online to harass people he didn’t like and otherwise create havoc, allegedly in the name of defending free speech. He came to the attention of American authorities after Australian investigative journalists unmasked him and told the Australian authorities about his fake identity as an Australian jihadist. The FBI arrested him last week for passing on information about bomb building online.
I linked to this article in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday in which the whole story is laid out in fascinating detail.
Guess how the American media reported this?
Here’s the CNN story, dutifully repeating it exactly as dictated by the authorities no doubt:
His communications were conversational and his instructions specific, federal authorities claim.
Here’s how to make a pipe bomb, he allegedly wrote. Here’s how to make it deadlier, by adding shrapnel dipped in rat poison. And here’s where to have it explode — at a 9/11 commemoration event in Kansas City, Missouri.
None of the above came to be. And the man who federal authorities allege tried to make it happen — by offering advice online to someone who was actually an FBI informant — is now behind bars.
Joshua Ryne Goldberg of Orange Park, Florida, has been charged with distribution of information relating to explosive, destructive devices and weapons of mass destruction, U.S. Attorney A. Lee Bentley III of the Middle District of Florida said Thursday in a news release.
This is an amazing story of internet identity, investigative journalism, ideological cross-currents and the phenomenon of trolling. It is also about someone who played with some very dangerous fire and got himself badly burned by taking his trolling into the volatile area of online jihadism, which is as dumb as it gets.
What it is not is a glorious tale of American shoe leather investigators tracking down terrorists and stopping them before they can kill us all in our beds. Not by a long shot.
And yet … there are the headlines, you can see them for yourselves. There have been many such headlines over the years. And very often they add up to much less than meets the eye. In this case there is a real story there albeit not the one the FBI wants to tell since they clearly did not have a handle on this foolish young man from Florida who pretended to be a member of ISIS. Evidently they didn’t have a clue until the journalists went to the Australian Federal POlice and they notified the Americans.
Not that the FBI didn’t take full credit for tracking him down. They did:
The FBI said it became aware of him through Twitter messages under the Australi Witness handle that encouraged attacks “with your weapons, bombs or knives” on the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest in Garland, Texas, before they happened in May. Two men did attack, but didn’t get into the building after being shot to death by police.
Authorities tied a June post from “Australi Witness” to an ISIS-related website in which he boasted of “inspiring the attacks in Garland” and having “successfully encouraged (two people in Los Angeles and Melbourne, Australia) to carry out jihad in their respective cities.”
“Both of these mujahideen will, using guns, shoot up local synagogues when the maximum amount of Jews are praying,” the post said. “The entire thing was my idea, and I helped them every step of the way.”
He goes on to claim he lives in Perth, Australia, and has “a vast network of mujahideen around the world. And I will continue to inspire and coordinate jihad attacks around the world.”
So, what happened here was that reporters did the investigation and went to the authorities in Australia to show that this alleged ISIS member was some 20 year old internet troll in Florida.The Australian authorities went to the FBI which instigated a sting to get him to share bomb making materials so they could arrest him on terrorism charges — and then take credit for the big investigation and arrest.
None of this is to say that Goldberg isn’t truly a blight on humanity. He may have even been implicated in that Pamela Geller shooting in Florida, egging the so-called jihadi’s on and then calling them martyrs in his fake ISIS persona. This was a “free speech” event after all, which was his crusade, so the ultimate trolling tactic would be to instigate violence to prove the point. In fact, there’s good reason to believe that Geller got exactly what she was hoping for.
But this is also yet another case of the cops sending in an “informant” to coerce someone with bad ideas into doing something that will allow them to arrest him or her. One might even call it trolling.
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