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I have visited the Freepers every day for years, and I've seen a pattern to their fund-raising that I think reveals who their "real' supporteers actually are. Ostensibly, they are funded by freewill donations from their members, but I personally think that ended long ago, if it ever existed in the first place. But back when Free Republic was young and sassy, it had plenty of well-heeled posters and it was easy to believe -- then -- that donations from these posters kept the site going.
But two things have happened since then.
(1) The Republicans took notice of Free Republic and saw how they could use it to manipulate public discourse. Anyone who doubts this need only think back to the Dan Rather-AWOL papers story. That whole forgery story was promulgated and disseminated by Freepers. They got it on the air and kept it there. And I think the GOP was counting on them to do just that. Believe me, the GOP knows all about Free Republic. Many rightwing luminaries do or have posted on Free Republic. Tony Snow, Mark Levin, Lucianne Goldberg, among many others, were all Freepers in good standing at one time. FOX News has had Freepers on as interview guests. If you know what to look for, you see Free Republic LOTS of places. My point is that the Republicans are VERY AWARE of Free Republic and recognize it as the propaganda tool it has so well proven to be.
(2) But even as Free Republic grew, so did the internal divisions among its posters. Wingnuts demand absolute obedience to their own individul POV. Otherwise, they might actually be mistaken about something, and that thought is too horrible for a wingnut to contemplate. Inevitably, wingnuts eventually disagree on specifics of one kind and another. When they do, their only reaction is the same reaction they have to foreign policy crises -- Bomb them! Kill them! Silence them forever! The subsequent 'flame wars' and Rimjob's paranoid need to ban any poster who doesn't toe the wingnut line have greatly reduced Free Republic's population and influence. There aren't nearly as members as there once were, and those that have stayed are not the prosperous reactionaries the original bunch was. Consequently, it is my considered belief that Free Republic no longer gets its funding from free-will donations of its membership. I am absolutely convinced that the Republican Party, in some 'deniable' way, is what is keeping the Freepers afloat. Why? Because Free Republic is still a very useful propaganda tool, full of enthusiastic volunteers who are convinced of the utter righteousness of their cause.
The Freepers are having a fund-raising drive right now. They have been for weeks. At present, their donations are creeping along at about the rate you'd expect from an enthusiastic member-supported website -- about 30% of their overall goal. At this rate, they won't attain that goals for months, if ever. But you just watch. Sometime within the next two weeks, the needle on the Freeper donation meter is going to LEAP ahead by 50-60 or more percent, virtually overnight. I have seen this same thing happen a dozen times now, and it can't be an accident or coincidence. At some point in every Freeper donation drive, when the fund-raising is sputtering, SOMEBODY makes a huge donation overnight -- enough, usually, to fund the website all by itself for a while. Whoever it is who makes that last-minute donation(s) is who is REALLY supporting Free Republic.
I think it's the Republicans.
I'd be shocked if it wasn't.
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