Free Republic

Free Republic is an American Internet forum and activist site for conservatives. It bills itself as "the premier online gathering place for independent, grass-roots conservatism on the web."

Free Republic logo

Free Republic logo

Origins and funding

Free Republic was founded in 1996 by Jim Robinson of Fresno, California as a non-commercial, limited liability company. The site gained popularity during the President Clinton impeachment controversy when protests and write-in campaigns were organized on it.

The site is funded by donations requested through "Freepathons." These fundraising events occur each quarter, and raise sufficient funds to support Free Republic's founder and staff. Some members of Free Republic have questioned whether the funds raised in these "Freepathons" have been spent in an appropriate manner. Many of those who have raised such questions have been subsequently banned from the site.

The current Freepathon (October 2005) is requesting $72,000 for the next three months. This is in addition to the regular monthly donations from its members, and the relatively minor income from sales of Free Republic-branded merchandise.

Format

Free Republic's content consists largely of news stories and opinion pieces posted by its active user base, and discussion of these pieces by the users. Users generally post the full text of news stories. This caused controversy due to the apparent copyright violation, which led to a lawsuit whose settlement is discussed below.

Specific terminology

The Free Republic subculture developed several specific expressions:

• Freeper is an active member of the Free Republic site.
• Freep is an event organized by a local Free Republic chapter. Freeps are often presented as responses to protests by various left-wing groups. Freepers, as Free Republic's active users are called, will assemble at some point with signs and banners, generally designed and hand-drawn by individual members. See Social Organization and Events.
• Freeping is most often the participation in a Freep. For example, if a Freep was organized because of an appearance by Bill Clinton, a Freeper would say they were going to Freep Bill Clinton. Afterwards, one would say Bill Clinton was Freeped. In some cases, freeping is the act of directing the members to collectively vote in an online poll, with the aim of significantly affecting its outcome. See Manipulating polls. However, these could just be consdered online freeps.
• Freepathon is a quarterly fundraising event, aimed to collect donations for running the site and raise sufficient funds to support Free Republic's founder and staff.
• Freeploader is a noun used by those at the Free Republic website to address those who may not have donated to the site. Many posters at Free Republic who do donate do not make their donations known as they prefer to donate privately. It has become a source of irritation to some freepers that this practice has begun, as some freepers do not have the financial means to donate, or as mentioned, wish to do so anonymously.

Social organization and events

Freepers counter-protest at an anti-war demonstration at Arlington National Cemetery on October 2, 2004.

There are local chapters within Free Republic which are organized through ping lists (see below), e-mail, and Free Republic mail.

The more active chapters organize live protests, which they call "Freeps." Often these are counter protests, as responses to protests by groups who they oppose. "Freepers," as Free Republic's active users are called, will assemble at a predetermined location with signs and banners which are generally designed and hand-drawn by individual members.

Board users

Like most Internet message forums, anyone can easily register as a user. Free Republic refers to its users as "members," but the site is free, with no fixed membership structure or dues. Users of Free Republic organize themselves in ad hoc groups to plan local gatherings and events (see discussion above).

There is a member directory, but like most Internet forums nearly everyone has an anonymous username. Few users divulge their true identities in their online profiles.

All user accounts include an intra-site mail feature that can send, receive and store private messages to other users, without the use of external personal e-mail.

Members can alert each other to articles, posts, or ongoing disucssions of mutual interest via "ping lists," lists of users interested in a certain subjects. Members can also ping each other individually, and can use a second features, an alert window, to be alerted with a sound when somone replies to one of their posts.

Alexa, a company that ranks the Internet's 100,000 most visited sites, and measures their traffic in users per million, estimates that Free Republic reaches approximately five to six hundred users per million each day, and ranks at number 1,560 of all sites. Comparitively, by Alexa's estimation, Wikipedia.org reaches 11 to 12 thousand per million each day and ranks at 53, Yahoo reaches 300,000 and ranks at no. 1, and Google reaches 220,000 and ranks at no. 3. Visits at Free Republic tend to spike sharply upward during election seasons and when news breaks which captures its users' intererst.

Discussion

Members post articles from news sources and then discuss them with subsequent replies to the original post, and to each other. Comments posted by users of Free Republic are often insults directed at liberal political figures, institutions, ideology, liberals in general, and the media. Most of the comments are short, with some posts of longer length and substance.

The Free Republic community is largely united on certain political staples of the conservative movement, including having a strong dislike for former President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Clinton, and opposing gun control, abortion, and what it considers to be "the gay agenda," particularly same-sex marriage. Freepers are often called to vote en masse in off-site online polls, and there is a daily prayer for Bush.

On some issues, however, the Free Republic membership is divided. Three main groups can be observed on the forum: neoconservatives, paleoconservatives, and libertarians, with neoconservatism being represented in the large majority of posts. Divisive issues include evolution, immigration control, free trade, state v individual rights, and the legalization of soft drugs.

Free Republic does not seek to be a board that represents all political viewpoints: it is a meeting point for those to the right of the political center in America, and articles posted which contain unwelcome (usually liberal) views are customarily ridiculed and tagged with the words BARF ALERT after the headline. The "BARF ALERT" has two purposes: to warn readers in advance of an opinion running counter to the prevailing perspective of the site's intended audience, and to protect the poster by distancing him- or herself from those views. Another common term is ZOT! which refers to the banning of a user for posting unwelcome material. The moderators often remove or ban posters who criticize Israel, the Iraq or Afghanistan war, etc., from its discussion boards. Material criticising the administration of President George W. Bush from a left-wing perspective is typically not permitted. However, ample examples exist of criticism of the President and Congress for not being sufficiently conservative or living up to the group's ideals. Some left-wingers have been allowed on the Free Republic board, but this is at management's discretion. Often users are labeled trolls and banned from Free Republic. Generally, the amount of latitude one has to express his views expands significantly as he becomes better known on the site, establishes relationships with other users, and provides evidence of adhering to the rules and stated goals of the site and its owner.

Many consider the site to contain hateful speech regarding certain groups of people, such as liberals, homosexuals, and Muslims. For this reason, the site is blocked by several leading child-protection filters.

Famously, Free Republic, along with Conservative Underground and other conservative web sites participated in the cyberstalking and physical staking of voters rights advocate Andy Stephenson while he was dying of cancer. "FR" members spread the lie that Andy Stephenson did not have cancer, and interfered in the fundraising for his operation and later with the medicaid benefits for his aftercare and terminal hospital care. See:

• The Stalking of Andy Stephenson by Beth Ferrari
• Seattle Weekly: "Cancerous Campaign - Voter activist Andy Stephenson fights charges he faked his illness—from his hospital bed."
• Seattle Weekly: "A Fight To The End"
• Seattle Weekly: "Internet Martyr - The life and cruel death of Andy Stephenson."
• "Conservative Underground: BUM FIGHTS was Andy Wars"
• "Conservative Undergorund: the OFFICIAL Andy thread part 1"
• "Conservative Undergorund: the OFFICIAL Andy thread part 2"
• "Conservative Undergorund: the OFFICIAL Andy thread part 2 - WILL PITT RESPONDS"
• "Conservative Undergorund: the OFFICIAL Andy thread part 3 - Questions"
• "Andy Resource Center"

Manipulating polls

The manipulation of online polls by Free Republic's members is a common practice. It involves posting a message thread directing members to vote en masse in an online poll and including a link to the poll, particularly those on television network or newspaper websites, with the intended goal of significantly affecting the final outcome. Known as "freeping" a poll, the practice is not unique to the Free Republic forums and is employed by many other activist websites of all political stripes.

Notoriety during 2004 Presidential campaign

Free Republic is credited in helping to break "Rathergate," the controversy surrounding CBS News' use of allegedly forged documents during the 2004 US presidential campaign. Nineteen minutes after its broadcast began, Free Republic poster TankerKC questioned the documents on-line, stating they were "not in the style that we used when I came into the USAF." Another poster, Buckhead (later identified as Atlanta attorney Harry W. MacDougald, who received national media attention), made an on-line observation that the documents were in a proportionally spaced font, and stated, "these documents are forgeries," less than four hours after CBS broke the story [1]. He ended his "Post 47" on that thread with the words, "This should be pursued aggressively." The following morning, Scott Johnson, a co-author of the Internet blog Power Line [2], received an e-mail which "...quoted from and linked to [the] post." He published the quote and a link to the Free Republic thread, saying, "'Hey, anybody else out there among our readers have any information about this?' Well, that opened the floodgates." The discussion quickly spread across the Internet, and eventually to the Drudge Report and the Associated Press. The original thread can still be viewed at Free Republic; however, it has been locked for archival purposes.

Also during that campaign, Jerome Corsi, co-author of the controversial and influential book Unfit for Command, apologized in the national media for racist, homophobic, and anti-Islam comments, as well as slurs made against liberal political figures, that he made on Free Republic under the user name "jrlc." The posts were discovered and made public by Media Matters for America, a liberal website [3]. Concerning the remarks, Corsi said, "I don't stand by any of those comments and I apologize if they offended anybody," and, "...the politically incorrect humor I posted on this site is evidently not funny to everyone. Detractors should have interviewed my dog. No matter how I frame a comment, "Chico" has yet to laugh." Subsequently, John O'Neill, the book's other co-author, attempted to distance himself from Corsi and attempted to downplay Corsi's involvement in the writing of the book.

Lawsuit and settlement

Because it has been a practice of Free Republic to allow its users to copy and paste copyrighted news stories in their entirety to its discussion boards, Free Republic was sued by The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. (Reuters and The Wall Street Journal were part of the original consortium threatening legal action, but they dropped out before the lawsuit was filed.) The tort complaint of $1,000,000 was filed in the 9th District Circuit Court. Many members view the lawsuit as an unsuccessful conspiracy by a "liberal media" to stifle the organization; founder Robinson referred to the suit as "a life and death struggle with elements of the socialist propaganda machine."

In a negotiated settlement, Free Republic agreed to remove the posted articles from the sites listed in the complaint, and paid these two newspapers $5,000 each. Neither party was awarded any damages, legal fees or costs. Today, other publishers, such as Condé Nast Publications, have joined The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times in objecting to the posting of entire copyrighted articles. Users now post excerpts from such publishers (as allowed by fair use), and the site filters submissions against a watchlist of "banned" sources, by request of their webmaster or as a result of the lawsuit, as a precaution against future lawsuits.

Jim Robinson

Jim Robinson (born 1945) is the founder and primary owner of the site. He is a computer programmer and served in the United States Navy as an electrician from 1965 to 1969. He formed Free Republic in 1996 and is currently semi-retired due to muscular dystrophy. His son, John Robinson, also a computer programmer, is heavily involved in running the site and writing its software.

In 2001, Robinson received the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award from the National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA), an organization which describes itself as "the Republican Wing of the Republican Party." Previous recipients of the award were Congressman Bob Barr and former FBI agent Gary Aldrich.

Immigration rift

Robinson has taken informal positions in favor of George W. Bush's amnesty program for illegal immigration, causing a substantial rift in the membership of the site. The difference of opinion has allegedly resulted in Robinson's decision to ban several hundred posters and the resignation of many others.[4] Critics on the right, such as VDARE have likened Robinson's activities to political purges and suggest that he screens new members of the site who take a differing position on immigration from his own.[5] Robinson is also said to engage in censorship of articles that criticize illegal immigration.

The subject of illegal immigration had been a contentious one over the last few years, and many vitriolic conversations had occurred on the subject. This antagonized many long-time users. As a result, it may have been necessary to censor the immigration topic because the alternative would be to watch the forum tear itself apart.

Alleged financial impropriety

Free Republic's finances and Robinson's involvement with them have long been the subject of Internet criticisms. The website is allegedly run on quarterly fundraiser drives that reportedly collect as much as $100,000 from member contributions. Many critics on sites such as Clown Posse,Liberty Post and Democratic Underground, as well as former Free Republic posters who have since fallen out with the site, have expressed suspicion with the site's fundraising and Robinson's activities. Frequent allegations of financial impropriety include the claim that Robinson uses member donations as a source of substantial personal income. One frequent allegation suggests that Robinson used money collected for Free Republics operations to purchase a large recreational vehicle for his personal use.

According to Salon.com, "Robinson has also been accused of raising funds online and not accounting for how he's used them." He was rumored at one time to be receiving a six-figure consulting fee from a now-defunct online streaming radio venture "while crying poverty" on Free Republic "and begging for donations." As Salon notes, "No one beyond Robinson really knows how much money has been taken in or spent. He refuses to release a financial statement, and declined any comment to Salon News on his finances." [6]

Robinson has responded to these allegations on the site by saying that he does, in fact, make a living via Free Republic, and its operation takes a considerable amount of time and energy. He frequently states that if members do not value Free Republic sufficiently, it would shut down if it did not provide him with needed revenues.

The amount of money requested in the quarterly "freepathons" has varied significantly over the years, mainly as a result of legal costs going up and down. As a result of his settlement of the legal cases mentioned above, operating costs have dropped, and the amount of money he has requested has dropped in concert.

Expressions of suspicion, criticisms, and rumors notwithstanding, no illegal acts have been documented, and no criminal charges have ever been proven against Free Republic or Robinson.

Influence

Free Republic has spawned a number of other, similar sites in other countries - predominantly English-speaking western countries. The most successful of these has been Free Dominion, in Canada.

See also

• Killian documents

External links

• Official website
• Statement by the founder of Free Republic
• Pitt, William Rivers. "God Sees The Freepers." Editorial. Truthout: 9 June 2001.
• Pitt, William Rivers. "God Still Sees The Freepers." Editorial. Truthout: 12 June 2001.
• Niman, Michael I. "Disturbing the Peace: Creepy 'FReepers' Target Activists." ArtVoice: 13 March 2003.
• Stein, Jeff. "Free-for-all at Free Republic: Lucianne Goldberg, Matt Drudge and other friends abandon the Clinton-bashing Web site over its attacks on George W. Bush Salon, 13 July 1999.
• DUmmie FUnnies a popular satirical thread about Democratic Underground
• Comments made by Jerome Corsi on Free Republic
• Jim Robinson Profile
• Critical article about Robinson by an ex-freeper
• FreeRepublic Archive at VDARE
• Video of a Freep
• FreeRepublic.com Original FR thread with Buckhead's "Post 47" regarding Rathergate
• PowerLingBlog credits Buckhead for its story
• EnterStageRight.com lays out timeline of Buckhead and Rathergate
• Journalism.nyu.edu on source verification, Dan Rather, and CBS
• History of FR by Jim Robinson