Now-defunct GOP online sales game traded in Nazi propaganda, too
By David Neiwert Saturday Jul 18, 2009 5:00pm
John Aravosis at AmericaBlog had a great post the other day exposing an online sales scheme hatched at the Republican National Committee's website whereby you could search for goods on an "Obama Card" and come up with all kinds of goodies.
So Aravosis did searches for such words as "Jew," "Latino," "Bondage," "Escort" and "Anal" and got some very interesting responses. Many of them are hilarious, actually.
But the one that caught my attention most was the search for "Jew," which you can see above. Among its responses, as Aravosis notes, is "The Jews and Their Lies."
But in the second spot for this search is the video Jud Süß. This was the vicious anti-Semitic film created by the Nazis and used as propaganda to advance the Holocaust as it was occurring in Germany.
The other stuff is incredibly hypocritical, but this material is downright disturbing. Whoever was responsible for compiling the material for these searches had deeply questionable tastes.
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and 60's, etc etc 2000's
Jud goddamned Suess. Streicher's best film, a real smash hit in Germany in the Forties.
I wonder if they could also get Rosenberg's Myth of the Twentieth Century? That'd about make the nut.
Yeah...unfortunately the jews have brought it upon themselves to be fleeced in the future. When you see what they did in Gaza a year ago, I find no objection to whatever is called upon them.I for one will work to make sure people realize that the government of Israel is tried for war crimes.PERIOD.
As in what the Nazis did to Jews in the 1930s and 40s? "The Jews" have not brought antisemitism upon themselves. "The Jews" did not do anything in Gaza. Conflating the state of Israels criminal actions against the Palestinians with those of "the Jews" is antisemitic.
"They"? The Israeli government isn't 'all Jews.' And you're happy with whatever punishment all Jews get because of what the Israeli government did in Gaza. You're a serious hater; go join the Repugs.
You'd think that Paddy B. would have a better grasp of the Christian religion, since he claims to be one. Before forgiveness comes confession and repentance. I don't see any signs of that in this case. On the other hand, here's a quote from Paddy B.:
"Prompt death penalty would stop mass murderers
Let me tell you how I�d stop [crimes like the Honolulu gunman rampage]. If this guy was of a sound mind, prosecute him, convict him, put him in the electric chair, and send a message to the whole country within a matter of weeks: If this happens again, that�s exactly what�s going to happen to you."
Source: Interview on MSNBC�s �Equal Time� Nov 2, 1999
Maybe he just doesn't think the mass murder of Jews, Romanies, Gays, etc. is a crime. Maybe he thinks it's a good deed that deserves a medal.
If you do a search for "Jews" or "Latinos" on Amazon.com, you'll find that (for whatever reason) these exact same products come up. It's clear that the RNC just used Amazon's product search API to create the game (or whatever it was). Clumsy, and probably not the best marketing idea? Yes. But is it remotely fair to fault the RNC for the fact that Amazon's search algorithm lists these items towards the top?
One of the most basic principles of programming is that YOU as the programmer have to anticipate everything that the user might do to wreak havoc on your creation. If they decided to use Amazons search engine without testing it first to see what potential searches might bring up then shame on them. Some users might be malicious and others just clumsy or ignorant, but you as the programmer are responsible for how it reacts to input.
But we all know that attention to detail is not in their gene's.
As a programmer, I can say that that principle is largely irrelevant to this type of situation. Whoever actually executed this at the RNC implemented the feature he or she was asked to implement well, not that this was hard to do, because the feature was just a wrapper for Amazon's product search. With some exceptions (blocking certain keywords), the site did one thing, and one thing only, it searched Amazon and returned the results.
Let's consider GOP.com's other options. They could continue to use Amazon's API, and then create a filtering system on top of it. Such a system is likely to be difficult to maintain and inaccurate. It could have trouble distinguishing between hate speech and, say, David Neiwert books concerning hate speech; it could, like many web filtering products, block sex education content in addition to pornography. They could manually curate a list for every possible keyword (which would be absurd), or they could just create a list of approved items and abandon keyword search altogether. The latter would seem to defeat the (admittedly pretty difficult to figure) purpose of the project, and all of the above would be very time- and resource- intensive for what looks like to have been a small marketing project.
Or - they could make it clear that the content is provided by (a certain very widely-used) third-party product search, and that they are not responsible for the results obtained. This would be in place with current norms involving a web where content is increasingly generated by third-party services and users, rather than explicitly curated by editors.
When is forethought and product testing ever irrelevant in these situations?
While the RNC has no control over what Amazon stocks up on, they could have had the common sense to test their own product before it went online as a defense of their own political platform on their primary website - Especially since they knew it came from a third party not hired for this specific task. I mean, while I'm sure the RNC does not currently condone anti-semetic values, that lack of forethought is just downright mind-boggling.
That said, I wonder if "atheism" would have turned up as a bad word too.
what they were selling on their website. Poor Repugs--always the victims. In this case, of their own stupidity, incompetence and laziness.
How could anyone be surprised by the hatred and racism of the Right Wing, when they constantly show it everyday??
I meant the government of Israel from the beginning.As you can see I mention THE government of Israel towards the end. I have many jewish friends. Plus they are some of the most talented individuals around. It is the government of Israel (politicians) that need to be taken to THE HAGUE.
saw this at Ablog and glad to see it here, too.
If I may, I think this, from the Politico post but also mentioned at Ablog, is worth repeating here as well:
"And while the words “gay” and “vagina” are banned search terms, yielding a response of "Bad word!", homosexual will find you the book 'Loving Homosexuals as Jesus Would.'"
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