“You do it to yourself, you do, and that’s what really hurts.” Thom Yorke, Radiohead
Recently, there was yet another exercise in gaslighting the Denman Island community initiated by DIRCS Vice President and Barnacle contributor Chris Wardman, with slander and libel targeting The Islands Grapevine (TIG) on local social media. Wardman falsely blamed TIG for some offensive graffiti that was tagged on the new cement barriers near the Community Hall. Some other amateur “sleuths” piled on to the smears with even more false accusations. And once again, the Denman Island Bullytin Board “moderators” failed to uphold their own rules.
TIG has since been contacted by people describing their experience of receiving the “GRAPENews” stickers made by DIRCS President Eli Hason. Some of these were distributed by local player Megan Rose while she boasted of their origin. The intent of the stickers was to tar and feather TIG as a “FOXNews” right wing newspaper, when our regular contributors have an obvious liberal/left bias. It’s not only ideologically insulting, it mischaracterizes our principles relating to our editorial policies. Apparently, our letters to the editor have not been sufficiently censored for the tastes of the misguided cult that has targeted us. TIG has even printed letters to the editor critical of ourselves, and we unflinchingly support a free press.
Why the cowardice and anonymity, while they complain on social media and claim to be the victims of a campaign that they themselves have been covertly manipulating? At best, it is sophomoric and gutless, and at its worst, it’s legally actionable. They are constantly slandering a local proprietor, and it’s been going on for at least 18 months. We have the entire social media history screen-grabbed and documented, and we have witness accounts. Let them attempt to deny any of it.
These self described communitarians are projecting their own lack of integrity onto others, while perversely claiming their “altruism” and then clutching their pearls of victimhood on the Denman Island Bullytin Board. By gaslighting the Denman community, they have soiled their own reputations and whatever credibility they imagined they had, while only having themselves to blame for this exposure of their hypocritical antics. They need to apologize to the entire Denman community, and to TIG, for this publicly pathological nonsense they are putting everyone through.
