For the last few years, People for the American Way's Right Wing Watch has tried to capture wingnuts of all shades in their own words. The most entertaining part is capturing the wingers on video, then posting clips on YouTube.
For most of this year, one of PFAW's favorite targets, disgraced former Navy chaplain Gordon Klingenschnmitt, has responded to the hot lights being turned on him by claiming that PFAW was infringing on his copyright by posting edited clips of his own YouTube videos. This culminated earlier this month, when YouTube disabled Right Wing Watch's YouTube account after a third copyright claim from Klingenschmitt. Well, earlier today, YouTube sided with PFAW and restored RWW's YouTube account. Until then, RWW had been using a backup account that didn't generate any complaints. The only videos that haven't been restored are a series of Klingenschmitt clips that have outstanding copyright claims, but PFAW fully expects those will be restored as well.
After the account was deleted, Klingenschmitt took a victory lap claiming that "years of defamatory RWW video archives against countless Christians have now been deleted, effectively silencing their hate-speech campaign." Never mind that these clips are indisputably fair use under copyright law.
As late as yesterday, Klingenschmitt told The Christian Post that if PFAW deletes all videos of him, he'll "forgive" them and drop the complaint. In the process, he betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of copyright law. He claimed that PFAW passed itself off as the original author of the videos on its site. No one seriously believes that PFAW is the original author of the numerous clips posted from the likes of Pat Robertson, Glenn Beck, Bryan Fischer and others. In essence, Klingenschmitt has long past moved to the point of pounding the table.
This episode comes as no surprise at all to me. As many of you know, while I was at Carolina I was deceived into joining a campus ministry that was affiliated with a church aligned with one of the more notorious dominionist/New Apostolic Reformation outfits, Every Nation. They found it acceptable not only to lie about who they really were, but also to lay the guilt-tripping on thick and hector people about becoming Christianists like them. In the years I've spoken out on them, the main response I've gotten is that I have no business speaking out against them. Several members even went as far as to falsely accuse me of sexual harassment in an attempt to silence me. So I've seen the fundamentally authoritiarian--and to my mind, borderline fascist--mentality behind the religious right first-hand.