Michael Savage's website attacked

A little while back, talk show host Michael Savage had to endure an attack on his character when the British government associated him with terrorists and other criminals and banned him from traveling to the U.K. But on Saturday, August 22 the attack — or at least an attack — was brought to his own shores when a computer hacker damaged his website by sneaking into its server through a feedback portal, forcing technicians to shut it down for nearly an hour.

The attack came on the heels of sharp criticism leveled at the U.K. by Savage over its release of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, prompting the host to speculate that the British government might have ordered the hacking effort in retaliation. Drew Zahn writes of Savage’s suspicions at WorldNetDaily.com:

"Why on the day of the worldwide furor over the release of the Lockerbie Bomber by [British Prime Minister] Gordon Brown would Michael Savage's website be hacked?" the radio host posited. "We cannot say who did this, but would it not be a possibility that the Brits themselves ordered this hack-attack?

"Why?" Savage asked WND. "Because the evidence that they placed me on this list with real murderers and terrorists was a political favor to some Islamic nation can be found in the recently discovered e-mails, hidden until now by the Gordon Brown government. Their own e-mail chain on banning Savage states, 'There is no evidence of Savage advocating or inciting violence,' yet, by including Savage on this banned list it would 'help provide a balance of types of exclusion cases,' in other words, the list would not only contain radical Muslims but also a white male conservative."

Whoever orchestrated the attack, it makes MichaelSavage.com the latest in a long line of traditionalist websites victimized by hacker intrusion. The Daily Telegraph, Glenn Reynold’s site Instapundit.com, HughHewitt.com, PowerLine.com, JihadWatch.com and Bill O’Reilly’s website were all victims, just to name a handful (Michelle Malkin discussed how 27 traditionalist Hosting Matters blogs were simultaneously taken down here). Additionally, NewsWithViews.com, which publishes my work, seems to have been attacked more than once. In fact, just earlier this year I received a phone call from its publisher informing me that the site’s email account was being targeted and that I’d have to contact them via a different address.

And it seems as if cyber attacks are right out of the left’s playbook. In fact, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (USDHS) issued a report in January of this year stating that left-wing extremists were likely to increase the use of such attacks during the next decade. Moreover, the left’s strange Islamist bedfellows use this tactic quite liberally as well, as evidenced by a 2008 attack on a Dutch hosting company that affected more than 200 websites; it followed in the wake of anti-Islamist commentary such as that in Dutch politician Geert Wilder’s movie Fitna. I should also mention that the attack on JihadWatch.com was traced back to Turkey, and one of the intrusions Malkin cited originated with computers in Saudi Arabia.

In light of this history, it wouldn’t surprise me if the attack on Savage’s site was the handiwork of Islamists, perhaps in a Muslim country, perhaps in Britain. And what we can know for sure is that if Islamists are not the culprit, their leftist facilitators likely are.

Whatever the case, cyber attacks are far from harmless. They are a type of virtual vandalism that causes the target to incur reparative costs. Moreover, there is also the possibility that if such costs become too high for a hosting company, it might refuse to host the targeted site, which would cause the webpage to disappear from the Internet until it was able to find hosting services elsewhere.

Now, harking back the USDHS report, it isn’t surprising that the left would have no compunction about using cyber attacks. And we cannot truly appreciate the threat posed by the left unless we understand why.

The left is morally relativistic at its core, meaning, its members generally don’t believe in Absolute Moral Truth. Because of this, there is nothing to govern their agenda except for their own desires, their own feelings. That is to say, a person who understands that we are meant to govern ourselves with that eternal, unchanging moral yardstick called Truth realizes that the end does not justify the means. Sure, he isn’t perfect, but he understands that he cannot just “follow his heart,” that his emotions aren’t the arbiters of reality. This is why Saul “the Red” Alinsky instructed his followers to force their adversaries (that means traditionalists) to live up to their own principles. You see, he understood that we actually have some.

But the left proceeds largely unencumbered by morality. Whatever helps them achieve their immediate goal — instituting faux marriage, inuring people to abortion, stifling anti-Islamist dissent or whatever it may be — is justifiable in their universe. Their “values” originate from within and change with the winds of convenience. Thus, while traditionalists fight abiding by Queensbury Rules, their enemies proceed no holds barred.

Of course, we can never take this leaf out of the left’s book, as it would require a complete abandonment of morality. But we also have to be careful that we don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.

Know thy enemy.