Restored to Life

As most of you will know by now, Google deleted my blog for reasons on which one can only speculate. I had been blogging on Google's Blogger for some five and a half years, since April of 2004, and had never had a problem until this week, when I tried to log on to my account and was told that my account was "temporarily disabled... because of a perceived violation of either the Google Terms of Service or product-specific Terms of Service." So, what could that violation be?

Google's policy on so-called hate speech reads:

Blogger strongly believes in freedom of speech. We believe that having a variety of perspectives is an important part of what makes blogs such an exciting and diverse medium. With that said, there are certain types of content that are not allowed on Blogger. While Blogger values and safeguards political and social commentary, material that promotes hatred toward groups based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, or sexual orientation/gender identity is not allowed on Blogger.

Further, under Google's content policy, we read:

Hate Speech: We want you to use Blogger to express your opinions, even very controversial ones. But, don't cross the line by publishing hate speech. By this, we mean content that promotes hate or violence towards groups based on race, ethnicity, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, or sexual orientation/gender identity. For example, don't write a blog saying that members of Race X are criminals or advocating violence against followers of Religion Y.

"Promotes hate" is a catch-all term that allows people who are offended by something that someone writes to complain that the writer promotes "hate", and is therefore subject to deletion by Google. I've written a fair amount about human biodiversity (HBD), which was succinctly described by Malcolm Pollack as:

the radical notion that there may indeed be systematic genetic differences of various sorts between human populations, that these variations are a suitable and important topic for scientific inquiry, and that there should be no taboos against such research, or against free discussion of what research already exists.

To Malcolm's description I would add "that these variations are of great significance to society and therefore to politics, and that any politics which systematically ignores them is bound to fail to address important questions". However, my blog covered many issues besides HBD (which probably comprised a minority of content), including such topics as immigration; health, diet, and medicine; the decline of the U.S. and the West; Islam; science (most recently Climategate); finance; and in general whatever struck my fancy. In discussions around the internet, I've seen a number of conjectures as to what brought the wrath of Google down on me, which include:

• I annoyed a large drug company with my health posts, such that it brought pressure to bear on Google
• Climategate: Google itself has been accused of manipulating search results on this, so maybe they don't want bloggers discussing it
• HBD (see above)
• Islam: someone suggested to me that Muslims like to complain and that their complaints are taken seriously
• Marijuana: this had come up recently and what I wrote could have been taken by the ill-informed as advocacy
• HIV skepticism

This last one, HIV skepticism, may explain it, as I had written several posts (at least five, I think) on this topic. The journal Medical Hypotheses, edited by my friend Bruce Charlton, had come under attack for printing an article written By Peter Duesberg and others, and the group doing the attacking openly declared that they would like the journal delisted from the National Library of Medicine, Dr. Charlton sacked, and Duesberg silenced. In one of my posts I printed the abstract from Duesberg's paper and drew a comment from Dr. Duesberg as well. The flaw in my theory is that one would have to believe that a company such as Google would take seriously the notion that HIV skepticism is hate speech. But I believe it's entirely possible that they would. I've been surprised and gratified at the numerous posts and comments on the net regarding this affair and my blog, so in turn I would like to thank everyone who wrote or commented (some of the latter being anonymous) or sent me emails, as well as the anonymous commentator at Steve Sailer's who grabbed my blog from cache, made a zip file, and posted it. These include:

Malcolm Pollack, who also offered to help out with setting up a new blog and who put up with a lot of whining from me.

Half Sigma, (also here and here).

Steve Sailer

Lawrence Auster (also here and here), who generously put aside our differences of opinion.

Rick Darby, also a valued commentator at my old blog.

Al Fin

Ferdinand Bardamu

Bill Vallicella

Bruce Hall

One STDV

J, the Israeli Water Engineer

Neofusionist

I also had emails in support from Bruce G. Charlton, Michael Gilleland, Seth Roberts, Daniel, and Jim Collier. (Apologies if you wrote and I've left you out.)

Comments

[Deogolwulf]

Welcome back!

[dearieme]

We need a name for that construction that begins in the style of "Blogger strongly believes in freedom of speech" and yet undeniably implies that there is a "but" coming.

[Cornelius Troost]

Iam delighted to see you back in action because you have a high degree of credibilty and offer thoughtful, dissident thinkers the opportunity to engage one another on issues of often significant import for our nation-what's left of it!

I also hope you can retrieve your archives so we can enrich ourselves by returning to earlier comments of interest. There are some gems of wisdom tucked away amidst our less glamorous musings.

Iam reading Soviet Civilization by Andrei Sinyavsky, who discusses the NKVD and their brutal efficiency. Google has not reached for the gun yet, but the mindset is similar. Hey, not only are you still kicking, you symbolize something the Google PC fanatics despise- free thinking and the search for truth.

[Ilíon]

I had your old blog bookmarked (though, sadly, I never got around to reading it in-depth).

As for your disageements with Auster, I thought them amusing, in a very noir way. To be more precise, I found some of his whinging about certain aspects of it noirly amusing -- I made no attempt to understand which of you was "right," and so I have no opinion. I'm glad he was able to set aside those differences to support you in this transition.

[generic commenter]

It is very good to see you back. Google has become what they tried to urge each other against, namely evil.

[James P]

So who owns TypePad, and what are their terms of service?

Better back up at least weekly, just to be safe.

[DRW]

Welcome back. I hope to see the archives available again soon. Lots of important info there, particularly on a variety of health topics!

[Kilroy Montgomery]

I'm glad to see that you're back up and running. I am curious however: will you archive you old posts from the previous blog? Did you not archive your material "at home"? Thankfully, I printed the entire page from the thread about Auster's position on Conservatism and Christianity only days before your blog was "disappeared".

[jay]

Welcome back.

[randolph_and_mortimer_duke]

http://mangans.blogspot.com/

Old site works for me.

[OneSTDV]

Your old blog is back up right now.

So I guess you can shut this one down.

[Ferdinand Bardamu]

Cool new digs, Dennis. Thanks for the plug.

[Anon]

um...yr old blog seems to be back, Dennis

[randolph_and_mortimer_duke]

http://mangans.blogspot.com/

[stari_momak]

Great to see you back -- I didn't do anything to help, other than post at Steve's (after someone else had, too, as you know Steve moderates and posts comments in batches). By time I checked back it seemed that an army of volunteers -- okay, a couple -- were well on the case.

I do have to say this is bizarre -- I am sure I have seen blogspot blogs where you actually have to click through a warning to get to the content -- so it doesn't seem that Google is too prone to censorship. Their search engine certainly isn't. I wonder if there is anyway your account could have been hacked.

OTOH, perhaps you were perceived as dangerous because your comments are intelligent -- whereas the typical idiot 'haters' can be left of because they are haters.

[Chris]

Hey Dennis, glad you're back.

[puissanceblanc]

If I had to guess I'd say one of those things probably got someone to complain, which drew scrutiny, but it's probably one of the comments talking about secession or potential doomsday scenarios that did you in.

[Francis]

Glad you're back, Mr. Mangan.

[Jaz]

Welcome back. Always remember, Google's motto is "Don't Be Evil."

[rob]

Hey Mangan, glad you're back.

[miles]

Congrats on finding a new carrier, and to start things off "right" *pun very much intended*, have you heard that Senator Bob Corker's pretty daughter got carjacked in D.C.? Ripped out of her car by the neck, and was unconscious for a few seconds? Yep.

Two suspects are in custody, but no more is being said about them. So lets get the blog started off very politically incorrectly and speculate about the suspects sex and ethnicity. I for one bet they are not white males. Take that google, you bunch of pinkos. : )

[Audacious Epigone]

Has your old blogger site been unblocked? I'm having no trouble viewing it, although the last post is from late November. Are you just no longer able to log in?

[Steve Johnson]

Welcome back.

Google has reanimated your previous blog. Guess you can go back there as google is clearly trustworthy.

[Stopped Clock]

Did you give Blogger your real name and address when you signed up? In the past, they allowed anonymous signup, but nowadays they require you to confirm with a cell phone SMS message that you are who you say you are. (Though, this is meant more as a means to disable people from having two accounts rather than to tie any particular account to a real name and address.)

[Stopped Clock]

Never mind, I see that your name is your real name and that you'
re not afraid to give that out.

[Malcolm Pollack]

Yes! Good to see you on the air again, Dennis.

[intemperate anglo man]

Oddly, the blogspot site appears to be back up.

http://mangans.blogspot.com/

[eh]

Nice to see you back.

I'll repeat a question I asked previously on HalfSigma: Who owns the *content* of your previous blog? I can understand that Google, for their own reasons, might decide not to publish your content. But I think it would be pretty shitty if all of that content, i.e. your earlier blog posts, was lost.

Did you ever get a direct, personal answer from Google support? I mean, from a real person. I did get such an answer when, a few years ago, my Hotmail account was deleted in the same way: poof, gone. I sent an email to support asking why, and someone replied 'terms of service violation', but they would say no more than that, i.e. they would not confirm that someone complained (which must have happened), and of course who had complained.

[eh]

Also, I know a link to a zipped HTML cache/archive/snapshot of your earlier/Google blog (including the full archive?) was posted in the comments of both Sailer's and HalfSigma's blog. Did you see that? I wonder if that would be of any use, e.g. to restore your content/archive here.

[Breeze]

Welcome back. I had never heard of your blog before it was suspended. Perhaps the old adage 'there is no such thing as bad publicity' may ring true for you. Secondly, climategate (which is a stupid term) is being censored by Google. It is a corporation and I wonder how much of a controlling interest someone like Al Gore has in it. If you want an example of Google's censorship type 'climategate' into the search bar and notice that it does not autocomplete (but it used to) despite having over 2 million hit results, which is more than enough for it to show up as an autocomplete.

Anyway, I look forward to reading your blog starting from now.

Good luck

[Paul]

You seem to be back up again at http://mangans.blogspot.com/, with the Nov 30 Global Warmers post at the top.

[Alkibiades]

goodto see you back up.

[David Ross]

Hey, me too, dude. I found out about you from Mr Auster, who didn't like your posts much; and then about three days later I find you got banned. It was one major WTF moment.

Not that my blog is all THAT popular; but I did notify the LGF bannees at Table 9, and some of them commented that they read your blog. I feel like I should have done more, but I wasn't sure what.

Anyway I am glad you are back.

[bgc]

Welcome back.

[eh]

Good grief, the other comments are correct: your old blog is back up, seemingly in its entirety.

What a shambles Google is.

[Jaz]

1. "Dennis Mangan" is just a pseudonym for "Thor the Angry Pillager" who likes Nordic metal bands. Sorry to blow your cover, Thor.

2. As of now, I can type in "clim" in Google's search, and the first suggestion is "climate gate scandal". From the looks of it, Beelzebub's minions over there have been collared. For the moment. How soon we will forget the cloven hoof we plainly saw!

[Martin B]

I am glad to see the Duke of Alba once again presiding in his rightful place.

Welcome back, Dennis.

[generic commenter]

I hope the above comments about going back to Google were said in jest. Clearly they are unreliable, and even if this hadn't happened it also sacrifices our privacy to have our blog reading habits recorded by Google. They record everything, and link it to our IP addresses, they never delete, and they have many kinds of user behavior (searches, blog reading, blog posting, gmail, etc.) across which they can track an IP's behavior.

I recommend importing your old blog contents into this Typepad blog and staying here. You can also keep the old blog where it is so that old links to it still work.

[Kristor]

I'm glad you're back up, Dennis. You add a lot to the discourse. Good luck with integrating the old site with this one - I hope that works out.

[Martin B]

There's a story circulating now about an incident on AirTran Flight 297 on Nov. 17th.

Here is a Fox News story about it posted on Nov. 18th.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,575558,00.html

Here are some reports about the flight relayed by a couple of passengers on the flight:

http://www.melissaclouthier.com/2009/12/02/another-terrorist-dry-run/

I'm sure that whatever happened, the reliable news media and the TSA have things well in hand.

[jesse helms think-alike]

Congratulations on getting back online. It would have been a pity had you been silenced permanently. There is no reason for anyone to submit to Google's capricious rules when a domain and web hosting can be had for a few hundred dollars a year. I'm happy to see that you and Auster are on better terms. He's the one who led me to your blog.

[Andrew E.]

This is good news. Your blog is usually the second one I check in on each day (after VFR of course!).

[Ravis]

Nice to see you back, but this MUST be pursued further. We must know what happened, whether it was an intentional silencing or not. The sudden reappearance of the blog only makes it more Orwellian. Are they reinforcing their point that they and they alone control speech? They can take it away or restore it, without explanation, any time they choose.

We need a Bill of Rights for the internet. Procedures must be put in place. Laws passed. Lawsuits filed. This was a warning, chilling in its effect. The Do No Evilers are tightening their grip on the culture and must be resisted.

[Van Wijk]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVS3WNt7yRU

[Mencius Moldbug]

I was among the many, I'm sure, who put "feedback" into Google's "search quality" form. Welcome back!

[Seamus]

Wow. It's like your old blog was abducted by aliens, then returned after they had finished probing it. Or kidnapped from its vacation spot in Macedonia and whisked off to Afghanistan for "enhanced interrogation," and after Google discovered that the blog wasn't really a terrorist, they brought it back and dumped it off on a road in Albania, hoping that everyone would pretend nothing was amiss. (Naah, that could never happen.)

[sestamibi]

Deogolwulf said:

"We need a name for that construction that begins in the style of "Blogger strongly believes in freedom of speech" and yet undeniably implies that there is a "but" coming."

We have one. It's called "hypocrisy".

[M Johansson]

Welcome back. I would like to inform you that about the same time the same thing happened to Politiskt inkorrekt (political incorrect), the biggest swedish realist blog, hosted on a Word Press server. This is the message Politiskt inkorrekt recieved from WordPress:

Warning: We have a concern about some of the content on your blog. Please click here to contact us as soon as possible to resolve the issue and re-enable posting.

Politiskt inkorrekt newly declared they had 1.2 Million hits in November alone. Sweden is a country with only nine Million people. Politiskt inkorrekt http://politisktinkorrekt.info/wordpress/ primarily publishes name and picture of convicted criminals, which are increasingly of middle eastern descent, something which Swedish news sources don't do.

[tommy]

Welcome back, Dennis.

[M Johansson]

I discovered many examples of bad English in my post. Feel free to correct them. Politiskt Inkorrekt translates into Politically incorrect, because "politiskt" is an adverb.

"...name and picture of convicted criminals WHO increasingly are of Middle Eastern descent."