Alert CQ reader Retired Military noticed a headline at Yahoo! News this morning about the outbreak of the Sober.q virus that has dumped neo-Nazi German and English e-mail into inboxes around the world, including here at CQ. Yahoo! and/or the AP have called the Nazi material "right wing":

Computer Virus Spews Right-Wing Spam

A computer virus spewed neo-Nazi-tinged spam in English and German into inboxes over the weekend. ...

Most of these messages contain links to news stories with content that "smells of right-wing political rhetoric," said Vincent Gullotto, vice president of McAfee Inc.'s antivirus emergency response team. But a small percentage contain links to a Web site that tries to infect visiting machines with the virus, he said.

Among the many messages was one with the German subject line "60 Years of Freedom: Who's Celebrating?" referencing the end of World War II. Another read: "Honorable Action" and contained a link to the Web site of the NPD, Germany's right-wing nationalist political party. One in English carried the subject: "Dresden Bombing Is To Be Regretted Enormously," referring to the Allied attack on the German city during World War II.

Other messages warned of ethnic Mafia groups and the increase in foreigners attending German schools.

As RM asked in an e-mail to me, what if the messages supported Joseph Stalin, or contained apologias and paeans to Soviet domination of eastern Europe and the days of the gulag? What if instead of neo-Nazi propaganda, the e-mail had articles about the social progress made during Mao's Cultural Revolution? Would Yahoo! or the AP call it "liberal spam" or even "Leftist spam"? I rather doubt it; they would call it by the much more definitive description of "Communist propaganda", which would be correct.

Why, them, do they not describe this sludge in our mailboxes with the accurate term "neo-Nazi propaganda"? Could it be that Yahoo! and the AP can't tell the difference -- or perhaps that their editors see an opportunity to score a cheap shot at conservatism's expense? Both options speaks poorly of the editors at Yahoo! and/or the AP. Either they haven't the intelligence and the understanding to differentiate between conservatives and Nazis, or they want to smear mainstream conservatives whenever possible.

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» Computer Virus Spreads Nazi Spam from Outside The Beltway
A new computer virus is sending Nazi messages to people's e-mail accounts. The Associated Press associates it with the "Right Wing," a term they use to describe mainstream positions among American conservatives. Computer Virus Spews Right-Wing S... [Read More]

Tracked on May 17, 2005 10:29 AM