Help! The Taliban ate my face! ( archive.ph )

Herbert F. (84) has been in a Taliban dungeon in Kabul for six months: the right-wing extremist blogger from Vienna had traveled to the Islamist country in the Hindu Kush despite warnings. He had wanted to show that, contrary to the opinion of experts, Afghanistan was a safe country of origin and that refugees could be deported there without hesitation - and proved the exact opposite.

cheese_greater ,

Its a tough but fair punishment. I advise he takes it

echodot ,

No somehow all of this is the liberals fault. You can bet in it

cheese_greater ,

I mean, give me TWO non-nitpicky ways it isnt?! /s

rentar42 ,

(Edit: this was meant as a reply to an apparently now-deleted (?) comment about why he deserves the anonymity of having his last name abbreviated).

He deserves it for the same reason a single mother raising a kid that gets involved in an armed robbery deserves it: basic human rights.

The idea of those is that they are universal and you'd have to have a very good reason to supersede them. If they are not universal, then they are just "suggestions" and then we end up with exactly the kind of society that this guy wanted.

And yes, being a major political actor is a good reason to lose that anonymity (which is also how it's handled in European media, there is no reporting on Angela M. or Emmanuel M.).

But this guy is a not a public figure in any reasonable sense any more. He's a stupid old guy that was one of the founding members of a extreme-right splinter party of a right-wing popular party in 1967. That party was banned in 1988. So it (and he) has not been relevant to anything for 35 years. He tried to become relevant with this stunt, fucked around and found out.

In fact, reporting on his full name is probably what he wants: publicity is what he was attempting to achieve, but anonymity is what he deserves (both as a basic human right and as punishment IMO).

cheese_greater ,

Is he charged with a crime or did he do a stupid international venture that is a continuation on the theme of his ridiculous political movement? Do leaders of racist boomer political movements deserve anonymity? Why couldn't he keep it confined to VierChan?

Edit: were it the case that his privacy was of primacy, why did it explicilty link him to his little "movement"?

rentar42 ,

Is he charged with a crime

Apparently by the Taliban, yes.

But in Europe that is not sufficient to lose the right to anonymity (and it shouldn't be, it's incredibly easy to get charged, no matter whether anything bad happened).

Do leaders of racist boomer political movements deserve anonymity?

He isn't a leader of anything. Hasn't ever been (even when he was a founding member, he wasn't the leader).

He is a nobody (as he should be). And as such he deserves anonymity, yes. Just because he tried to change himself back into no-a-nobody doesn't mean he has succeeded.

Why couldn’t he keep it confined to VierChan?

Nazis are gonna Nazi.

Edit regarding your edit: yeah, that seems pretty fishy. I don't think they should have mentioned it, but with enough inside knowledge you'd probably find him by just "84 year old right-wing extremist blogger from Austria". That is (fortunately) not a huge population. I suspect (and this is purely speculation) that the authors don't think he deserves anonymity (so they include enough information to find out who it is), but do think they shouldn't "advertise" his cause (so they make it easy to ignore who he is). Similar to how media outlets in the US have finally decided to not publish the names of mass shooters: there is very little public benefit in publishing it and a very real risk of it encouraging others.

cheese_greater ,

How is his lastname a single letter?

rentar42 ,

In case you're not joking: It's very common in Europe to abbreviate the last name of non-public figures when reporting on them. So it's a kind of anonymization.

On the other hand: that guy was the founding member of a party, so could be argued to be a (minor) public figure. But I guess this specific report is not directly tied to that "work" of his, so it could be considered in the private sphere.

xkforce ,

Dude pretty much literally drank the koolaid

cheese_greater ,

Whats a more old-timey koolaid?

Skua ,

Kool aid powder has been on sale for nearly 100 years, I think it already is the old-time version of itself

cheese_greater ,

God, this place is so great. The crap I learn here XD

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