Neal Rauhauser was a speaker at the 2010 Netroots Nation conference
“I’ve been all over Patterico for the last several weeks, as he looks to be a pretty good candidate for the planner/operator behind Weinergate . . .”
— Neal Rauhauser (“Stranded Wind”), Daily Kos, “Weinergate Perps Pay Dearly,”July 27, 2011
“Frey is often at the center of questionable activity, lending undue legitimacy to things that border on criminality . . . I have long felt that he was misusing his position and abusing the public’s trust, and these logs presented me a chance to file a formal complaint.”
— Neal Rauhauser, “Pat Frey – Safe, At Least For Now,” Sept. 21, 2012
Why did Neal Rauhauser become obsessed with Patrick “Patterico” Frey? Well, Patterico had done valuable work writing about the Anthony Weiner cybersex scandal, but you see that he assumed an inordinately large significance in Rauhauser’s mind. Why?
Long story short: It’s the day job, stupid.
It seems that once Rauhauser learned that Patterico works for the L.A. County District Attorney’s office — which was not a secret, by the way — this offered what must have seemed to Neal a chance at an easy “win”: He would get Patterico fired, and this scalp on his belt would then become the symbolic trophy that certified Rauhauser’s vindication.
Neal was Patient Zero in the epidemic of Weiner Truther madness on the kook fringe of the Left. Rauhauser had convinced himself (and staked his credibility on the claim) that Weiner was the victim of a heinous conspiracy.
“Congressman Weiner was stalked and set up by a Christian Infowar Militia cell based largely in Oklahoma City,” Rauhauser wrote at Daily Kos under his “Stranded Wind” alias on June 4, 2011.
Looking at the elements of that accusation — “Christian,” “Militia” and “Oklahoma City” — you have a tight cluster of right-wing demons, calculated to inspire Fear and Loathing in the hearts of the type of liberal who, as soon as Gabby Giffords was shot, leaped to the conclusion that her killer must have been a deranged Tea Party extremist. (Jared Lee Loughner was, in fact, a psychotic 9/11 Truther obsessed with the cult conspiracy film Zeitgeist.) This is where we arrive at a basic point of debate about Neal Rauhauser: Crazy or Evil?
That is to say, in examining his behavior, we are forced to consider two alternative explanations:
A. He’s crazy. Rauhauser seriously believes the lunatic conspiracy theories he promulgates online.
or
B. He’s evil. Rauhauser is a vicious cynic, who creates elaborate fictions carefully calculated to appeal to the kook-fringe types, thus enabling him to manipulate them for his own selfish and malevolent purposes.
Of course, we cannot rule out the hybrid theory:
C. He’s both crazy and evil.
At some basic cognitive level, Rauhauser appears aware that his conspiracy theories are ludicrously false. There are times when the cynicism is so apparent — e.g., Neal’s manipulation of his gullible Twitter defender (and devoted Weiner Truther) “Occupy Rebellion” — that it seems obvious that he knows it’s all nonsense.
So that would seem to support the “evil” theory, but the “crazy” explanation is bolstered by Rauhauser’s strange persistence in his obsessive pursuit of certain targets. More than two years after the 2010 TwitterGate scandal, for example, Rauhauser still continues to lash out compulsively at “Zapem,” the woman whose research did so much to expose Rauhauser’s role in that bizarre episode.
No rational person would continue pursuing her in the same mad way Don Quixote pursued windmills, as Rauhauser has done. And I think that Ladd Ehlinger Jr. came closest to identifying the exact nature of Rauhauser’s madness:
[Rauahsuer’s behavior] displays a breathtaking lack of human empathy. He thinks of people as playthings to be toyed with. By categorizing them as “trolls” he can do to them whatever he wishes, and creates all sorts of elaborate games to entrap them. His revelry in their misery is quite apparent, justified by dehumanizing those he manipulates.
In other words, Neal Rauhauser is a sadistic sociopath who enjoys inflicting suffering on others, for whom he is incapable of feeling empathy. Furthermore — and I’ll ask readers with psychological training to tell me how common this is — Rauhauser’s sociopathic tendencies are closely associated with narcissistic grandiosity and paranoia.
He is a sort of cyber-serial killer, stalking prey on the Internet, seeking to inflict on them virtual torture and destruction.
Rauhauser thinks of his evil acts as heroic, avenging the wrongs he alleges have been done by the dehumanized scapegoats whom he alternately diminishes (as insignificant “trolls,” etc.) and magnifies as dangerous enemies, as suits his selfish purposes. And so we go back to the WeinerGate scandal and the beginnings of Neal’s obsession with Patrick Frey. Patterico was targeted in multiple July 2011 posts by Rauhauser (“Stranded Wind”) on Daily Kos:
Unlike some other of Rauhauser’s targets, Patterico has the kind of day job where such defamatory accusations can cause him real harm. Although his supervisors seem to understand that the false accusations against Patterico are just psychological side-effects of Rauhauser’s conspiratorial fixation — Patterico is never going to get fired because of this crap — being the target of an obsessive cyberstalker’s repeated attacks is nonetheless harmful and annoying.
Furthermore, the rational (evil, not crazy) side of Rauhauser’s mind functions well enough to inform him that his target’s ability to retaliate is impeded by the very fact that Patterico has a day job with serious responsibilities.
Whereas Neal can spend all day every day smearing Patterico, Patterico cannot turn around and do the same to Rauhauser. And while Neal has been able to incite his own basement-dwelling troll army (including “Occupy Rebellion,” among others) to parrot his smears against Patterico and other targets, Patterico’s potential allies are for the most part responsible job-holding professionals who would think it unseemly to spend time refuting the crazy-evil lies of such an odious and obscure person as Neal Rauhauser.
The advantages enjoyed by Rauhauser in such a situation — what we might term assymetric online warfare — are not neglible, and his sadistic personality delights in nothing so much as the cruel exploitation of such an advantage. Crazy evil is like that.
