Online terrorism
By: Saloua Charfi
The Tunisian network on Facebook looked like a country that was devastated by a terrorist attack. For some people, this was September 11on the internet. Some cyber terrorists had declared “online jihad” against those who have opinions that are different from theirs, and deleted 200 profiles within a week.
The victims are known for their intensive activity: well-known journalists, famous artists, and above all, human rights activists who denounce the misogynistic speech of some Arabic TV channels.
These virtual death squads announced that “laymen, atheists, homosexuals, feminists, fans of former President Bourguiba, those who claim being of Berber origins, the Tunisian Jews group, those who advocate sexual freedom and those who call for normalization with Israel, must disappear from the internet.”
The perpetrators of the attack claim to be “acting in the name of God and the homeland”. They created two groups named “electric chair” and “insecticide”; these names are chilling and reminiscent of the Nazi cremation furnaces and gas chambers.
The Nazi connotation of their speech does not stop there, as they also claim to attack “profiles of those who are detrimental to the Muslim, Arab and heterosexual Tunisia”.
An internet user says ironically: “Today, just like in Germany during the reign of Hitler where one should had been a good Aryan, in Tunisia of these illuminati, one should be a good Arab and Muslim Tunisian”.
One of their slogans is borrowed from a famous saying of Hitler that they apply to their opponents: “We could have killed all the atheists, but we left some dogs alive for people to know why we exterminated them”.
To disable a profile on Facebook, it is enough to have a large group denounce it as a fake profile or accuse its owner of racism, proselytism or incitement to hatred; this results in the suspension of the profile in question without any verification. Therefore, this group is taking advantage of a loophole in Facebook’s system.
Tunisians who used to believe that Facebook was a means of expression and debate have just discovered that the internet is not a remedy against blinkered thinking.
For now, the “jihadists” have managed to reduce the scope of communication. How long before they physically assault those who do not think like them?
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Your Comments
commentsAnonymous About over 2 years ago
No to intellectual terrorism.. Yes to freedom of expression..
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Anonymous About over 2 years ago
The Fly-Tox pump pictured above the article reveals the identity of the hijackers of Facebook. I mentioned earlier the reaction of a henchman of Ben Ali on 10-7-2009 to my post criticizing the censorship of Facebook in Tunisia. He addressed me as ‘you, mosquito’, and informed me that ‘during hot periods, there are powerful tools for getting rid of me without spending a lot of money’. Everyone knows that in almost every home in Tunisia, Fly-Tox pumps are a must during summer. Everyone also knows that the regime’s henchmen describe critics as mosquitoes and dogs. Why did they parody Obama’s “Yes We Can” this time? Is it because of the trip to the United States of Ben Ali’s Foreign Minister, Kamel Morjane? Did he need an ‘incident’ to convince the Americans that his boss is also leading a ‘combat’ to save civilization? Saloua Charfi, a communication professor in charge of training the regime’s journalists, mentioned the Nazis. Yes, the Nazi regime was also a master in provocation: the Reichstag incident and the invasion of Poland among others. On February 27, 1933, the German parliament or Reichstag was burned. Just one month earlier, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Reich by the President Hindenburg. Hitler immediately exploited the incident to obtain from the President an emergency legislation repealing civil liberties. Mentally handicapped, Marinus van der Lubbe was charged with the incident and guillotined. In 1980, an American prosecutor of the Nuremberg Tribunal had quashed the Nazi judgment for being a forgery. In 2008, the German Federal Prosecutor judged the verdict as being illegal because it was based on unfair orders of the Nazis. Goebbels would
have sponsored the incident.
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