Andrew Breitbart's 'electronic brownshirts'

Amy Goodman is an award-winning broadcast journalist, columnist, investigative reporter and author. She is the principal host of Democracy Now!, an independent global news programme broadcast daily on radio, television and the internet. Her most recent book is a collection of her weekly columns, Breaking the Sound Barrier (2009)

Judy Ancel, a Kansas City, Missouri, professor, and her St Louis colleague were teaching a labour history class together this spring semester. Little did they know, video recordings of the class were making their way into the thriving sub rosa world of rightwing attack video editing, twisting their words in a way that resulted in the loss of one of the professors' jobs amid a wave of intimidation and death threats. Fortunately, reason and solid facts prevailed, and the videos ultimately were exposed for what they are: fraudulent, deceptive, sloppily edited hit pieces.

Rightwing media personality Andrew Breitbart is the forceful advocate of the slew of deceptively edited videos that target and smear progressive individuals and institutions. He promoted the videos that purported to catch employees of the community organisation Acorn assisting a couple in setting up a prostitution ring. He showcased the edited video of Shirley Sherrod, an African American employee of the US department of agriculture, which completely convoluted her speech, making her appear to admit to discriminating against a white farmer. She was fired as a result of the cooked-up controversy. Similar video attacks have been waged against Planned Parenthood.

Judy Ancel has been the director of the University of Missouri-Kansas City's institute for labour studies since 1988. Using a live video link, she co-teaches a course on the history of the labour movement with Professor Don Giljum, who teaches at University of Missouri-St Louis. The course comprises seven day-long, interactive sessions throughout the semester. They are video-recorded and made available through a password-protected system to students registered in the class....