"A Rose by Any Other Name..."

Followers of this blog know that the name that I use here, Thomas Rowley, is a pseudonym. Blogs that are singular efforts devoted to exposing racists, anti-Semites and the like often are posted anonymously for reasons that often have to do with safety. I learned that lesson early on when another blogger who was identifiable and assisted in exposing the deep ties of the Second Vermont Republic to the racist, white supremacist League of the South was attacked by the SVR chairman, Thomas H. Naylor, at his job. Naylor sought to end that blogger's employment and healthcare for his family.

As things heated up for the SVR crowd because of the exposure of their ties to bigots and for their having provided a platform at their various websites for the writings of racists, conspiracists, segregationists, anti-Semites, misogynists and homophobes, so did their anger come to a boil. One of the leaders urged that crimes be committed against those that exposed them. Another sought to normalize their group by demanding that they be debated at a venue of their choice and using a moderator who'd been secretly associated with their leadership for years. Despite those and other efforts, the SVR leadership never came close to successfully refuting a single fact presented here and at other blogs. Most of the links that I have provided to their posts no longer work because of a more than year long effort by the SVR leadership to purge their websites of the evidence. Thankfully, the screen caps all remain.

I mention the above to give some context to a recent incident regarding the efforts of racists and anti-Semites to reveal the identity of one similarly successful blogger who I've mentioned here a number of times. He/she goes by the name Spelunker. A New Yorker who uses the pseudonym BoyHowdy and is a sustaining member of the hate website Stormfront.org mistakenly identified a supposedly Jewish journalist as being Spelunker. Stormfront posters have been tied to more than 100 murders so this is no little matter. Online haters like the website Occidental Dissent ran with the Stormfront misinformation that you can read about here. So consumed with the notion that they could "out" the identity of Spelunker the haters failed to notice that they lacked one element - facts. Apparently, thinking that a purportedly Jewish journalist looked as they would imagine that their nemesis Spelunker might look was all that the haters needed to dox him. Despite denials by Spelunker and others, the haters remained convinced that they had their man. I'd even pointed out to them that they lacked "incontrovertible evidence" but that didn't matter.

This week the story took a decidedly ironic turn. Stormfront's supposed outer of Spelunker, the pseudonymous BoyHowdy, was himself outed in a damning exposé published by the Southern Poverty Law Center. BoyHowdy is in fact a Manhattan Web designer named Robert H. DePasquale and his cyber target was erroneously identified as Jewish, although DePasquale's supporters could agree that the target looked Jewish, whatever the fuck that means. SPLC reports,

"His victim, who asked not to be identified, told the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) he is not Spelunker, just someone who is now caught up in the vindictive and racist underworld of Stormfront. Spelunker, who has not revealed his identity to the SPLC, also said that the journalist is not him."

It gets better. According to the respected anti-fascist website One People's Project, in 2013 DePasquale ran for the NJ U.S. Senate seat vacated by the death of Frank Lautenberg. Although he his a NY resident, DePasquale claimed NJ residency by using the Butler, NJ post office box of the racist American Freedom Party. You couldn't make shit like this up. Read the One People's Project report outing DePasquale here.

Spelunker has demanded that the racist nutters take down their erroneous information but I don't think we should be holding our collective breaths for that for long.

UPDATE: 4:30 PM I posted a comment at the Occidental Dissent hatesite today on their "Who Is Spelunker?" post suggesting that they update their post correcting the erroneous information about who Spelunker is and the comment wasn't approved, natch. And so the lie of the racist Brad Griffin, aka Wallace Hunter, and son-in-law to the racist founder of the Council of Conservative Citizens Gordon Baum lives on.

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