Dr Mega (left) and Stephen Schwartz (right), paid shills or merely educated bigots?
Have agents of Serbia’s Radical Party or perhaps renegade elements of the Serbian Intelligence Service successfully penetrated the US right-wing media establishment to conduct False Flag Operations against legitimate critics of Serbia?
Sometimes it seems that way.
It appears that someone is successfully seeding trolls, shills, stooges and others agents into various media outlets, apparently with instructions to publish anti-Serb diatribes that are so obviously riddled with lies and exaggerations that they undermine legitimate efforts to address Serbian chauvinism.
The first of these (apparent) stooges that I came across was one Stephen (Suleiman) Schwartz, ostensibly a middle aged “scholar” and convert to Islam (from Judaism).
I discovered one of his an anti-Serb hate pieces in Pajamas Media which prompted me to write a comprehensive response on my blog which eventually led to my being offered an opportunity to debunk him in Pajamas Media itself.
“Three fingers in your ass”
Today I found another Serbophobe stooge, this time operating under the name Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis (no joke, but henceforth I will call him Dr Mega).
Dr Mega is apparently an “Orientalist, Historian, Political Scientist and author of 12 books”. Like Schwartz, Dr Mega is a middle aged convert to Islam and self-described “scholar”. Someone forwarded me one of his recent articles - “The Unrepented Serb: Epitome of Chauvinist Danger” - which turns out to one of the most risible Serb-baiting pieces of racist hate wrtiting that I have read since, well, since Stephen Schwartz’s cartoonish attack on Serbs in Pajamas Media.
I was going to debunk Dr Mega’s diatribe too, but there is no need. It is self-advertising rubbish that is riddled with obvious absurdities, contradictions and lies. But that is not my only reason for not wasting any time debunking him. There is no point. I don’t believe Dr Mega is really waging Jihad against Serbs and I don’t think he even believes his own articles. I suspect that Dr Mega is nothing but a paid provocateur, for hire race-baiter in the employ of advertising networks or possibly an intelligence service somewhere.
Now I do not actually know anything about Dr Mega apart from what he has said about himself, so this is just speculation, but his behavior fits the profile.
A paid provocateur writes deliberately offensive material, usually disguised as journalism or commentary, which is designed to bait and infuriate a target community for the purpose of driving traffic - outraged members of the target community - to advert laden websites where their page impressions and occasional click-throughs make big bucks for the operators.
A hint to this being Dr Mega’s motive and possibly his real profession lies in the publisher of his hate piece, America Chronicle, which is ostensibly a low-rent news magazine but in fact it is just a front for Ultio LLC, a commercial affiliate and advertising network. Other sites in the network include California Chronicle and several pseudo-brands, all of them either reposting syndicated content or hosting bait articles like Dr Mega’s piece.
Sites like that have a simple business model: post outrageous and controversial content to drive traffic to your adverts. Their modus operandus? You simply select a target community (often an embattled ethnic group), pay people like Dr Mega to slander them, then wait for the outraged visitors come surging in as news of the slander travels through ethnic communities.
One example from an Ultio LLC site is a bogus field poll posted on a high traffic republican forum claiming that a political candidate was a right-wing extremist. In another example Ethiopian history was falsified to bait the Ethiopian community into visiting the site (and its adverts).
This baiting is a disgusting and cynical practice.
The best policy regarding trolls in general is to ignore them. It is doubly true of paid shills and provocateurs working for marketing and advertising companies.
If you believe that the publisher is in any way a decent operation, then make sure you send a short note to the editor or managing board to register your protest. You might remind them that hate speech is illegal and warn them that you will flag their site to authorities and their advertisers.
In the case of American Chronicle and its sister sites, simply report them to Google Adsense for gross violations of policy. Google Adsense prohibits sites that have content that contains “racial intolerance, or advocacy against any individual, group, or organization”.
To anonymously submit your notification of a Google Adsense terms of use violation (e.g. racism against Serbs) simply click on the “Ads by Google” on any of the sites’ adverts, then click “Report a violation” and if the reason is hate speech, select “Website” and “Other”. Put a link to the article in the comment field and note that it constitutes hate speech. If the offending site’s Adsense account is suspended, they are out of business.
If you or your community are baited, go over to the site. Read the diatribe if you must. Then hit back smartly by hitting the baiters where it hurts, in their pockets.
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