Is Liveleak run by racists?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Does anyone here know what the background of Liveleak.com is? I know the same people who run LiveLeak used to run Ogrish, which was never noted for its delicate sensibilities. Liveleak “features” videos which seem to come in one of two flavours: war porn videos of US troops killing brown people, and videos of black people committing crimes. The comments are nearly universally racist (the most common comments being to call black people “monkeys” and “chimps”), and the thumbs-up/down ratings seem to reflect a usership which is overtly racist. The site can’t help who its users are, but it can choose which videos to feature. The site provides a way of alerting the admin to blatantly racist messages, but in my experience they simply are never deleted.

Does anyone know anything about the owner(s) of Liveleak, or whether they have any links to the whitepower community? It’s more important than you might think, because the media keep a close on eye on Liveleak; videos of current events often show up on Liveleak first, and several people who post videos there have reported being contacted by the corporate media for permission to purchase rights to their videos for news programs. If the corporate media is getting their news from a racist site, that’s rather alarming.

2

Doing some looking, it appears that one of the owners is Hayden Hewitt (he’s listed as a “co-owner”), and I’ve not seen any evidence that he’s a racist. He seems most interested in freedom of speech/anti-censorship issues.

3

Youre reading into this your own political biases. Mystery solved. I also dislike how casually racist accusations are cast. Perhaps GQ is not the best place for such a loaded conspiratorial “question.”

4

That’s not a smoking gun in and of itself (I, myself, have an interest in free speech and anti-censorship issues), but the big guns of the whitepower and neo-Nazi community (people like Paul Fromm and Ernst Zundel almost inevitably attempt to wrap their hate in free expression activism.

5

There is certainly a factual answer as to whether the owner(s) of LiveLeak are involved in the whitepower and/or neo-Nazi community. I’m not asking for people’s opinions, I’m soliciting factual answers about the people who run the website.

6

If you really ask this question in such a nonpartisan and factual spirit, why did you start off with the phrase “war porn videos of US troops killing brown people?” I have never once in my life seen the phrase “brown people” used without some kind of political agenda. If the troops are killing Iraqis, they’re killing Iraqis. If they’re killing Afghans they’re killing Afghans. Saying “brown people” ascribes a racist motivation to the activities of US troops who are fighting for their lives in a war, and this is politically biased to begin with so don’t give us that nonsense.

7

No, no, no. You have it all wrong. When he said brown people he really meant people of color. :rolleyes:

8

Yes, I’m aware that that is a white power tactic. However, I haven’t found anything suggesting that he is. Hewitt said that he set up Liveleak as an alternative to the mainstream media, which he says is corporate biased. As he put it:

The whole idea behind the “war porn videos of US troops killing brown people” was because that sort of stuff was being censored by the US and British militaries, which were trying to control what images were made available, and what “spin” the media should put on the war.

9

Moving this to IMHO. I think that it will still get all the answers you need, and yet will allow the freedom of expression to expand answers that won’t fit in General Questions.

samclem Moderator, General Questions

10

If you think racists comments on videos make the site itself racist then I’d be interested to know what your opinions on YouTube (and by extension google) are…

11

A tiny minority of people are involved in the white power community. An even smaller number are both involved in the WP community and run major websites. This is one of those cases in which it’s incumbent on you to find evidence of some such link, rather than suggesting others need to prove no such link exists.

Incidentally, I just looked at the front page of their site, and perhaps two of the dozen or so videos there would conceivably fit your two “flavours” mentioned. The overwhelming majority don’t. If these guys are white power, they’re sure not very good at it.

12

Liveleak has no shortage of videos of white people doing stupid things.

13

I am quite familiar with liveleak as well as it’s predecessor, Ogrish. Your characterization of them is way, way off. They definitely have a lot of war footage and some of that is Americans and Brits killing Iraqis. In that category I have also seen lots of footage of IEDs killing coalition forces and Chechens killing Russians. They also show videos of Iraqis beheading American and European captives.

The other category is people doing stupid things. They have videos of people of all races committing crimes, beating each other up and falling down drunk.

There is no evidence that the ownership have a racist slant.

14

There’s probably a lot of US POV Iraqi war-porn, just because a lot of US soldiers have video cameras, while most Iraqi people probably don’t.

15

I’d have to agree with Smash. While they may not be racist, they’re definitely biased. They allow blatantly hateful racist comments towards minorities to stay on their site, even when reported. Try spinning the comments the other way. You’ll get banned quick. Took me 4 hours, and only 4 negative comments. Not even really degrading comments either.

16

Okay, first video I clicked on today, this is what I found:

For those who don’t want to view the video, it’s apparently a Pakistani student at a university walking through a glass automatic door, shattering it. Now read the comments and observe how many “thumbs up” these comments get. Examples:

What was he thinking? An automatic door is witchcraft, voodoo, and an offense to Allah.

Posted 5 hours ago by “ST0N3PONY”

rofl, he is a taliban student? They dont have doors on caves.

Posted 5 hours ago by “jenva”

ROFL OMFG I CANT STOP LAUGHING!!! Some one should edit the video with crappy music the insurgents use and put the insurgent logos on it and say the door was an infidel and it was attacked by a would be suicide battering ram lol

Posted 5 hours ago by “dragon4040”

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He was tryin to do a suicide run on the door. ALLAH BILLAH AAAAAH! CRASH BOOM BANG!

Automatic doors are a new thing for pakis,since they are only recently adapting to new technology(haram). This is a totally new concept for them to grab.

I wonder what he would do if he sees a naked woman.

Posted 5 hours ago by “dushyantxx”

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Looks like he was attempting insurance fraud.

Either that, or too much time in the sand got to him.

Posted 5 hours ago by “SpizyChicken”

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Typical Muslim dumb****

Posted 5 hours ago by “pete_187”

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I laughed so hard!~!, Still after looking thru his cave index on his knee he still found no answer to a class door. Taliban at there best university, god help the goats!!!

Posted 4 hours ago by “Sasnz”

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Pakistani got a little to in a hurry go run America for a hi-techie job

Posted 4 hours ago by “InTheBuilding”

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Well what do u expect from a guy coming from village…obviously he didn’t knew what electrical doors are…!

Posted 4 hours ago by “hummer101”

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Confirm, muslims are sub-humans.

Posted 4 hours ago by “MilikoSS”

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Maybe he had no concept of electric control and thought it was allah controlled.

Posted 4 hours ago by “modperl”

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We have a saying here in England, ‘Stupid Paki Bastaxd’

Posted 3 hours ago by “gray3287”

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And that’s just on the first couple of pages of comments. All of these comments have plenty of up-thumbs. It goes on in that vein from there. Check back in a day or two and see how many of these comments have been deleted: none. If Liveleak isn’t run by racists, they certainly do a good job of attracting them, and an ever better job at tolerating them.

17

Why in the blue blazes would a site run by free speech advocates delete comments posted on its videos?

18

Is this actually a bad thing? I like my racists and bigots out in the open where their views can be ridiculed.

19

Because apparently only some people’s free speech is what must be protected. Free speech from the other side must be deleted immediately.

Actually, I think that most of those over the top comments are from 4chan type trolls who don’t really believe what they are writing.

20

If your question was, “Is Liveleak visited by a lot of racists?” you’d almost certainly get a different answer.

I just watched a Youtube video about Carlos Mencia, and the homophobia was overwhelming in the comments section–but that doesn’t indicate that Youtube is run by homophobes.

Nor do I think it’s especially interesting that they tolerate racists. They appear to be extremely tolerant in their comments section, figuring it’s not their business to regulate what people say. As an anarchist, can’t you respect that point of view? They’re essentially trying to create a commons without an authority within it. If you want the racists not to be tolerated, it’s not up to the authorities to make that happen: it’s up to you and your companions to do so. Don’t cede the moral responsibility to them.