BitChute ex Wiki
BitChute is a
video hosting service that uses
peer-to-peer
Web
Torrent technology.[2]
It was founded as a way to avoid content rules that are enforced [ to
suppress Free Speech - Editor ] on
platforms like
YouTube,[2]
and some creators who have been banned or had their channels "demonetized"
(barred from receiving advertising revenue) on YouTube have migrated to
BitChute.[3]
The platform accommodates
far-right individuals and
conspiracy theorists[8];
the Southern Poverty Law Center
accuses the site of hosting "hate-fueled material".[9]
History
The company was launched by Ray Vahey in January 2017.[4]
It is based on the peer-to-peer WebTorrent system, a
JavaScript torrenting program that can run in a
web
browser. Users who watch a video also
seed it.[3]
BitChute does not rely on advertising, and users can send payments to video
creators directly.[10]
In November 2018 BitChute was banned from
PayPal.[11][12]
Alex
Jones, the
Proud
Boys,
Tommy Robinson, and several
anti-fascists were also banned at the same time.[11]
In January 2019, BitChute announced in a post on
#Gab that they would move their domains over to #Epik,
a small domain registrar known for accepting the registration of websites
that host far-right content.[9][13]
Epik ex Wiki
Epik is an
ICANN-accredited
domain registrar and
web hosting company[1]
known for providing services to websites that host
far-right,
Neo-Nazi, and other
extremist content as well as those that sell illegal drugs and
counterfeit medications.[8]
It has been described by
Vice as "a safe haven for the extreme right" because of its
willingness to host websites that have been shut down by other web hosts.[5]
Rob Monster ex Wiki
Robert W. Monster (born 1966 or 1967) is an American technology
executive and the founder and
chief executive officer of #Epik, a
domain registrar and
web host known for providing services to websites with
far-right content.[2][3]
He has received media attention in relation to Epik, particularly
surrounding the company's decision to register the far-right social media
network
#Gab, about which he has been outspoken. He has also received attention
for controversial statements, including some in which he has promoted
various
conspiracy theories and some which have been described by
HuffPost
and the
Southern Poverty Law Center as espousing
anti-Semitic or
white nationalist sentiments.[2][4]
Gab ex Rationalwiki
Gab.ai is a social network website founded in Austin,
Texas in August 2016 by CEO Andrew Torba as a "free
speech" alternative to
Facebook and
Twitter. Apparently, the website was founded in response to Facebook
employees suppressing
conservative™™ articles (according to Torba, though those in the
reality-based community might disagree)[2]
and because of the "entirely left-leaning Big Social monopoly" by mainstream
social media platforms.[3]
Despite its initially innocuous appearance and its good intentions, such as
its "people and free speech first" policy, the website has, not surprisingly
(see 8chan,
another free speech Internet experiment), become a refuge for
cranks,
conspiracy theorists,
alt-righters,
white supremacists,
white nationalists,
Neo-Nazis,
anti-Semites,
internet trolls,
Islamophobes,
terrorists/extremists, denialists (Holocaust,
Obama birther and
climate change) and other unsavory creatures of the web. Gab has since
become the dumping ground for all things banned from Twitter and not in a
good way. Until 2018, the logo of the website was a frog (which screamed
Pepe the Frog, though Torba denies the connection, claiming that it was
inspired from Bible verses Exodus 8:1–12 and Psalms 78:45.). The website is
one of the several outlets that form the
alt-tech.
The website has 835,000 users; however, on the bright side, as of 2019,
it only has 19,526 active user accounts.[4]
Gab ex Wiki
Gab is an English-language
social media website known for its
far-right user base.[8]
The site has been widely described as a "safe haven"[9]
for extremists including
neo-Nazis,
white supremacists, and the
alt-right.[10]
The site was launched in 2017 and claimed to have almost 1,000,000
registered user accounts by July 2019.[11]
It primarily attracts far-right and alt-right users who have been banned
from other social networks.[12][13][14]
The platform populace is mainly populated by users who are "conservative,
male, and Caucasian".[15]
As of 2018, the site's most-followed users included high-profile far-right
figures such as
Richard B. Spencer,
Mike Cernovich, and
Alex
Jones.[13][15]
Gab recognizes far-right websites such as
Breitbart News a and
InfoWars
as competitors, according to a March 2018 financial filing.[16][17]
Gab claims to stand for free speech and individual liberty;[a][19][20]
though these claims have been criticized for being a shield of the alt-right
ecosystem.[13][15]
Antisemitism is a prominent part of the site's content
and the platform itself has engaged in anti-Semitic commentary.[16][24]
The site gained extensive public scrutiny following the
Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in October 2018, as Robert Gregory Bowers,
the sole suspect, posted a message on Gab indicating an immediate intent to
do harm before the shooting;[25][24]][10]
After a backlash from hosting providers, Gab briefly went offline.[26][27]
In February 2019, Gab launched Dissenter, a
browser extension and website that allows Gab users to make comments on
content hosted on any website[28][29]
via an overlay visible only to those logged into Dissenter or using the
extension,[30]
and thus bypass their individual moderation practices.[29]
In April 2019, Dissenter was removed from the
Firefox Add-ons website and the
Chrome Web Store for violation of their policies.[31]
In July 2019, Gab switched its software infrastructure to a
fork of
Mastodon, a
free and open-source social network platform. Mastodon released a
statement in protest, denouncing Gab as trying to monetize racism under
claims of free speech.[32]
Moses Hess ex Wiki
Moses (Moshe) Hess (January or June 21, 1812 – April 6,
1875) was a French-Jewish philosopher and a founder of
Labor Zionism. His socialist theories, predicated on racial struggle,
led to conflict with
Karl
Marx and
Friedrich Engels.[1]
As a devoted
Spinozist, Hess was profoundly influenced by
Spinoza's life and philosophy.[2][3]
Biography
Moses (Moshe) Hess was born in
Bonn, which
was under French rule at the time. In his French-language birth certificate,
his name is given as "Moïse"; he was named after his maternal grandfather.[4][verification
needed] His father was an ordained rabbi, but never
practiced this profession[5].
Hess received a Jewish religious education from his grandfather, and later
studied philosophy at the
University of Bonn, but never graduated.
He married a poor Catholic seamstress, Sibylle Pesch, "in order to
redress the injustice perpetrated by society". Although they remained
happily married until Hess' death[6],
Sibylle may have had an affair with Friedrich Engels while he was smuggling
her from Belgium to France to be reunited with her husband. The incident may
have precipitated Hess' split from the Communist movement[7].
Hess was an early proponent of
socialism, and a precursor to what would later be called
Zionism.
As correspondent for the
Rheinische Zeitung, a radical newspaper founded by liberal Rhenish
businessmen, he lived in Paris. He was a friend and collaborator of
Karl
Marx (who also worked on the
Rheinische Zeitung) and
Friedrich Engels.[8]
Hess introduced Engels, the future famous communist, to the
communism of the early 1840s.[8]
But Marx and Engels would become well known for their fickle and
pugnacious approach to fellow socialists who showed insufficient agreement
with their own form of socialism. By the late 1840s, they had fallen out
with Hess.[8]
They mocked him, first behind his back and later openly. The work of Hess
was also criticized in part of
The German Ideology by Marx and Engels.[9]
Hess fled to
Belgium and
Switzerland temporarily following the suppression of the
1848 commune. He would also go abroad during the
Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71.
Hess died in Paris in 1875. As he requested, he was buried in the Jewish
cemetery of
Cologne. In 1961 he was re-interred in the
Kinneret Cemetery in Israel along with other
Socialist-Zionists such as
Nachman Syrkin,
Ber Borochov, and
Berl Katznelson.
Moshav
Kfar
Hess was named in his honour.
Views and Opinions
Hess became reluctant to base all history on economic causes and
class struggle (as Marx and Engels did), and he came to see the struggle
of races, or nationalities, as the prime factor of history.
According to George Litcheim, Hess, who differed from Marx on a number of
issues, still testified in a letter to
Alexander Herzen that what he and Herzen were writing about "resembles a
neat sketch drawn on paper, whereas Marx's judgment upon these events
[European upheavals] is as it were engraved with iron force in the rock of
time" (Paraphrased by George Lichtheim, A Short History of Socialism,
1971 p. 80).
From 1861 to 1863 he lived in Germany, where he became acquainted with
the rising tide of German
anti-Semitism. It was then that he reverted to his Jewish name Moses
(after apparently going by Moritz Hess)[10]
in protest against
Jewish assimilation. He published
Rome and Jerusalem in 1862. Hess interprets history as a circle of
race and national struggles. He contemplated the rise of
Italian nationalism and the German reaction to it, and from this he
arrived at the idea of Jewish national revival, and at his prescient
understanding that the Germans would not be tolerant of the national
aspirations of others and would be particularly intolerant of the Jews. His
book calls for the establishment of a Jewish socialist commonwealth in
Palestine, in line with the emerging national movements in Europe and as the
only way to respond to anti-Semitism and assert Jewish identity in the modern
world.