https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Ryne_Goldberg

Thank you! I was wondering about the context

It's always an attempted murderer and arsonist on here, these days.

It's insane that he pretended to be terrorists of Islamist, feminist, white supremacist, and Zionist origins, but the only one any government cared about in any way was the Islamist terrorists persona. It's also insane that he was convicted of being an Islamist terrorist when it's clear that he wasn't an Islamist because they knew about all the personas.

If he didn't do anything criminal under those other personas, what would they prosecute him for? Most of his activities were just not crimes, but covered under free speech; giving someone bomb-making instructions in the belief that he's actually going to commit terrorist attacks is not.

If indeed.... We should always give the state the benefit of the doubt when they're obviously being extremely racist right guys?

Goldberg was also active on Twitter, Reddit, Disqus and others under the username MoonMetropolis,[7] a "free speech absolutist" who was involved with the Gamergate controversy. He would frequently use this persona to criticize the works of his other personas such as anti-free speech activist Tanya Cohen, arguing against points that he himself had made.[38]

Sums up a lot of modern political discourse pretty well imo. This kind of person, making disingenuous arguments against themselves, maybe for some reasons but mostly because they are insane.

In 2015, he wrote an article titled 'Yes, Diversity is About Getting Rid of White People (and That's a Good Thing)' attributing it to a fake author named "Emily Goldstein". The article was later retweeted by Elon Musk.

Crazy to think about the butterfly effect and how much societal damage one person can cause...

Australi Witness passed specific[22] information on the manufacture of a bomb targeting a September 11 memorial event in Kansas City, Missouri, to an FBI informant, who was posing as a Muslim extremist.

We can't say how much of this deal was set up by the government and how much was his initiative. If this was a Honeypot and they caught a mentally ill man from it the question is are they running similar set ups for other "extremist" groups. If they're just targeting Islamic groups then that shows some racism.

It’s like the weird bit from Ender’s Game where his siblings become internet trolls pretending to be in opposition to each other, except within one guy, within one house.

I'm lost why this is funny? Cause he never left his parent's house? Sounds like what a typical POS troll does?

Not to mention they could have set up the trap for ANY of his personas and it would have worked the same. Creating fake crime just to put people in jail.

You don't find it funny to think of the FBI setting up surveillance on someone that seemed dangerous enough to be worth monitoring but it was all for naught because they were just watching a front door for over 14 hours a day?

To me there's definitely an element of irony there both in terms of the troll's life being a little bit pathetic compared to their personas and in terms of the FBI seeming like this ultra serious organisation but being rendered ineffective by virtue of someone just intensely doing nothing for a long time.

It's such along punchline, tho =/

Yet the FBI don't surveil Musk. I mean, even before Patel rendered it the Homer Simpson of alphabet agencies.

Isn't this entrapment? I learned about it on The Wire

yeah it's fascinating that Card foresaw this kind of social influencing while being a very odd (religious conservative and game developer fiction writer) mix, but then he went wacko:

Card described an alternative future in which President Barack Obama ruled as a "Hitler- or Stalin-style dictator" with his own national police force of young unemployed men; Obama and his wife Michelle would have amended the U.S. Constitution to allow presidents to remain in power for life, as in Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and Nazi Germany.

Comedy loves a long puchline.

Yeah, most of what the FBI does is entrapment. They use the dumbest excuses to get away with it.

Truly the easiest job in the world, you invent crimes then arrest other people for them!

Yeah, Card turning into a nutter turned me off his work and recomemding it.

So close, except that it's Trump who has created his own private police force comprised of unemployed men and is trying to stay president for life.

Every conservative accusation really is a confession.

Tactical never-going-outside

Oh. Uh.... I thought it was supposed to be funny in the "me_irl" way....

Yeah, projection is common among conservative types.

I think it works on that level too 😏

If Lemmy is indicative of the left political spectrum, we can conclude that projection is common among humans in general.

Yes humans do it in general, but you find a lot more do it for a lot more who trend politically right.

Same. I hate that Ender's Game was the first book I couldn't put down as a teenager.

I guess one truly can find diamonds among turds.

Partly agree about liking him as an author. He can pound sand because of bis politics, for sure. He is pretty much a one trick pony. The majority of his lead characters are all child messiahs or some variant of child with special powers. Heck, one of them (Earthfall) is pretty much a character ripoff of Joseph and his cloak of many colors in the bible. So after reading a few of his books you’ve kinda seen them all.

That said, I really liked the Ender series, as well as The Redemption of Christopher Columbus.