"Take your shit elsewhere" Markos says. Yeah, that'll help us in 2014.
"Go the fuck away" he says in another diary. Yeah, that'll bring people running to the Progressive movement.
People who Criticize Police and Election Boards are not the same as Moon Truthers
The progressive movement is not monolithic. It thrives when it lets in people of many different viewpoints. People who support Obama and those who criticize him. Those who support Occupy and those who criticize them. Those who are related to cops, work in the justice system, and like cops; and those who think we're on the slow road to a police state. People on the coasts who think nothing shady happened in the 2004 election, and people in the midwest who think something shady happened and the will of Ohio voters were not carried out.
I am the Daily Kos user Broke and Unemployed. I was banned in a "purge" in November of last year because I thought that equating people who think that GOP run governments are not counting our votes correctly with moon truthers is wrong. Saying the moon landing was staged or 9/11 is an inside jobs is Conspiracy Theory. Saying that the 2004 election was rigged (there is some proof that suggests this) or that the GOP will do anything to win including suppressing votes, or that Homeland Security was helping cities (with "Democratic" mayors!) plan attacks against Occupy camps (which has now been proven) is not.
Disappearing Progressives
I've been monitoring banned accounts since my Broke and Unemployed account was banned. Very often, Kos chooses to ban users who have written hundreds of diaries for free for his website. I made a twitter account trying to find these banned users. You know what I found? Most of them disappear from the Internet and stop writing progressive blogs and doing progressive things elsewhere as well. Some of them write a few blogs somewhere else, then eventually stop. There are some notable exceptions, but it seems that when Kos chooses to ban a prolific diarist, that person disappears from the Progressive movement.
Being told to "take your shit elsewhere" does sting. I helped with OFA in 2012 and Democrats in previous years, but I haven't done anything to help Democrats since Kos decided to ban me. And when the Portage County Democratic Party calls me, I'll tell them "Democratic leaders have told me to 'take my shit elsewhere'. So I did."
I'll still vote for Democrats, and I have plans to get a group together to do voter registration drives on my own. But when the most influential Democratic blog site on the web thinks it's more important to exert its all-knowing authority than to bring people into the progressive big tent, that is a huge huge problem.
What happens at Daily Kos has ramifications in the real world.
Well played, Sir.
Why am I outing my zombie account? Not because Daily Kos admins discovered it, but because self-proclaimed diary police Mets102 and Weatherdude saw that Hubbard Squash and Broke and Unemployed were both married men in their 30's who live in Portage County, Ohio. 140,000 people live in my county so that doesn't prove anything. But when they whine to Daily Kos admins that "He's a zoooommmmmbbbiiiiieee!!!!!", they will check the IP addresses and find that yes, I am a zombie.
Anyone out there who was unfairly banned from Dkos, I encourage you to make a Zombie account. It's easy. Just use a different IP address for the first few weeks. After that you can fly under the radar, and in a few months you'll have TU status again. That's what I'll be doing, starting the zombie process again. I was knowingly sloppy about it, "Not very gourd at this" as weatherdude says. Really I wanted to see what I could get away with. I didn't count on so many people would be actively hunting zombie accounts.
So congrats, Mets. You've succeeded once more in making the Democratic Party more pure, free of Dirty Freaking Hippy occupiers and people who think spying on Americans is wrong and Ohioans whose will was not carried out by our electoral system in 2004. I guess Ohio is just a bunch of dumb hillbillies to you until you need us to elect your candidates. You driving people away is doing soooo much to bring in Progressives, we're gonna ROCK 2014, right?
Right?
I'll be Back!
Anyways, I'll be starting the zombie process over again shortly, and I'll be more careful this time. In a few months I'll be a TU again, and post more comments and diaries.
I had to write this in a hurry because I'm on borrowed time. My zombie account has been discovered and will be banned at any time. There's probably lots of typos in here.
This isn't a GBCW. Kos can choose to ban me or not to ban me. This is our movement. Our rules. Without thousands of great diarists, Daily Kos would just be some dude's website, rotting in obscurity.
Hopefully one day that Progressive movement will embrace a big tent strategy and can actually start making meaningful gains. Until then, I worry about what will happen in 2014. But hey, you told me and others to take our shit elsewhere, so apparently you have some grand plan to defeat the destructive GOP without us or something.
Follow me on Twitter at @BannedByKos
See you in another life, brother.