Did a quick search this morning, and found it interesting to see how stacked against the Free State Project the Google results were… it even took me to an article I’d never seen before, which if objectively analyzed as I have ChatGPT do below, would clearly fall under the category of anti-freestater propaganda.
Here is the article I referred to above, with a neutral “Professor of Journalism” from ChatGPT explaining the anti-freestater propaganda tactics used in the article to help you better assess the truth…
- Overall Assessment
This article is advocacy journalism bordering on political propaganda, not neutral reporting. It employs selective facts, loaded language, fear framing, and narrative compression to portray the Free State Project (FSP) as a covert, extremist, and existential threat to New Hampshire rather than as a political migration movement with contested aims and internal diversity.
The piece consistently violates core journalistic principles of:
Fairness
Proportionality
Attribution
Context
Right of reply
- Framing Bias: “Hidden Agenda” and Moral Panic
The article opens and repeatedly returns to the phrase:
“neighbors moved to your state with a hidden agenda: to destroy it from the bottom up”
This is a classic moral-panic frame.
Problems:
Presupposition of malicious intent: The “agenda” is framed as destruction, not reform or dissent.
No evidence of secrecy: The FSP has a public website, public pledge, public conferences, public candidates, and decades of media coverage.
Intent is asserted, not demonstrated: No internal documents, whistleblowers, or primary sources show covert intent.
📌 In journalism, motive must be proven, not inferred from disagreement.
- Language Choices Signal Propaganda, Not Reporting
The article repeatedly uses emotionally charged and delegitimizing language:
“hijacked”
“witch-hunt” (used selectively, then minimized)
“extremify”
“abolish”
“dangerous ideological movement”
“malevolent mission”
“cancer on New Hampshire’s ideals”
“operate covertly”
“waiting for the perfect moment to strike”
These are war metaphors, not descriptive terms.
Journalism Standard:
Neutral reporting would say:
“won a vote”
“organized”
“advocates”
“proposes”
“supports”
📌 When verbs imply violence or disease, the piece is no longer informational—it is mobilizational.
- Croydon as a Symbolic Villain Narrative
The Croydon school budget vote is presented as:
intentional sabotage
moral wrongdoing
an attack on children
proof of a statewide conspiracy
Problems:
No budget context: No numbers, no alternatives, no legal process explanation.
No Free Stater quotes explaining their rationale.
No acknowledgment that town meetings are legally binding democratic processes.
The reversal is framed as “heroic resistance,” not democratic disagreement.
📌 Journalism should distinguish between outcomes we dislike and illegitimate processes. This article conflates the two.
- Absence of Right of Reply (Major Ethical Breach)
At no point does the article:
Quote a Free Stater defending their position
Quote Jason Sorens directly on education
Interview FSP leadership
Cite internal disagreement within the movement
Acknowledge libertarian diversity
This violates SPJ Code of Ethics:
“Diligently seek subjects of news coverage to allow them to respond to criticism or allegations.”
📌 This is a serious professional failure.
- Statistical Manipulation & Scale Distortion
The article argues:
“How dangerous can a group of just 10,000 ideologues be?”
Then proceeds to claim:
near-total infiltration
silent dominance
existential threat
Problems:
10,000 out of 1.4 million = 0.7% of population
Only 17 of 400 legislators identified in 2018
Yet language implies capture, control, and domination
📌 This is threat inflation, a known propaganda technique.
- Guilt by Association (Oil, ALEC, Project 2025)
The article links:
Free Staters → ALEC → Project 2025 → Big Oil
Without:
tracing authorship of specific bills
distinguishing coalition politics from control
noting that many NH legislators (of all parties) use ALEC templates
📌 This is associative smear logic: proximity equals culpability.
- Contradiction Framing as Hypocrisy (But Selectively)
The article accuses Sorens of hypocrisy for:
supporting zoning reform to increase housing
while opposing public schooling
But:
Libertarian ideology explicitly supports private provision
This is an ideological disagreement, not hypocrisy
The article assumes public schooling is a moral absolute
📌 Journalism should explain ideology, not moralize disagreement.
- Xenophobic Reversal Technique
The article compares Free Staters to:
immigrants
mass migration
ideological invaders
This mirrors nativist rhetoric the author claims to oppose.
📌 Using migration fear tropes while condemning others for them is rhetorically manipulative and ethically inconsistent.
- Violence Claims Without Evidence
The article asserts:
“they also have a track record of silencing critics with violent threats”
Yet provides:
no cases
no citations
no police reports
no named victims
📌 This is potentially defamatory without sourcing.
- Binary Moral Worldview
The article presents:
Granite Staters = authentic, unified, virtuous
Free Staters = foreign, covert, extremist
This erases:
NH libertarian history
intra-state disagreement
NH’s long tradition of radical localism
overlap between FSP and native residents
📌 Journalism should reveal complexity, not flatten it.
- Conclusion: What This Article Is—and Is Not
This article is:
An opinionated polemic
A mobilization piece
A warning narrative
A political call to action
This article is not:
Neutral reporting
Balanced analysis
Investigative journalism
Ethical adversarial journalism
Final Grade (Journalism School)
Reporting: C-
Ethics: D
Rhetorical Effectiveness: A-
Fairness & Balance: F
Eric catches up with Carla Gericke—President Emeritus and current Board Chair of the Free State Project—to talk about the movement’s growth and direction. They dive into why Free Staters are increasingly recognized as the best neighbors in New Hampshire, despite critics’ attempts to paint them otherwise. Carla shares insights on building local resilience, expanding liberty culture, and strengthening community networks across the state. They also discuss upcoming events, new initiatives, and the importance of mobilizing independent-minded Granite Staters. If you’re curious about life in the Free State or how liberty is being built on the ground, this is an episode you won’t want to miss.
“Portsmouth, NH
If a historic New England holiday is your style, then the seaside town of Portsmouth, NH, will light you up!
Highlights of its Vintage Christmas celebration include an annual Candlelight Stroll at Strawberry Banke Museum where you can explore 350-plus years of seasonal and holiday traditions surrounded by costumed role-players and hundreds of lanterns illuminating the historic Puddle Dock neighborhood. Tours of decorated furnished homes from 1795 to the 1950s are also available. And that’s just the start of the celebratory activities in the area.
“Portsmouth at Christmastime? Literally irresistible. If you want to feel like you’ve stepped straight into a Christmas rom-com, this is your set piece,” says Carla Gericke, a New Hampshire agent with Porcupine Real Estate.
‘The cobblestone streets, the golden glow of lights strung overhead, the giant Christmas trees in Market Square, the artisanal shops dressed to the nines, the restaurants humming with live jazz and fresh oysters—it all conspires to charm you.'”
Read more at Realtor.com…
Sometimes, I am looking for a quick solution to a problem–like someone asked for a head shot, and I think, Oh, I’ll just pull that from online, and then I Google myself, and then I’m like, Huh, WTF is dat!?! Here are a few of those…
Granite Grok Micro-Interview:
From a few years ago, but I give a shout out to Porcupine Real Estate, Ian Underwood and Bare , Granite Grok, and the Free State Project in THIS VIDEO.
The Leader of Sons of Liberty During the Second American Civil War?!?
The Fire Rises Wiki is a collaborative wiki with the goal of informing and documenting the Hearts of Iron 4 mod The Fire Rises and its submods.
International article from Switzerland: The American Libertarian movement aligns nudists, gun lovers, vaccine skeptics, and enemies of the state…
In 2023, NZZ came to PorcFest: American libertarians want to establish their own state in New Hampshire. Every year, thousands of supporters meet at the Porcupine Freedom Festival to discuss progress. But are their ideas of freedom just another form of authoritarianism?
“The ecstatic pessimist Carla Gericke
The same goes for Carla Gericke. The 52-year-old is a lawyer, real estate dealer, author of «The Ecstatic Pessimist» and former president of the Free State Project. She moved from New York’s Chinatown to New Hampshire in 2008. She likes the fact that one doesn’t have to pay income or wealth taxes here and that the state has only 1.3 million inhabitants. For her,libertarian philosophy can be summed up with the words: «Do not hurt anyone, do not take anything away from anyone.»
Gericke grew up in South Africa. «I’ve always been a rebel,» she says. «When you grow up in a repressive apartheid state and you are a bit awake, you inevitably begin to question what is given.» This skeptical attitude remains, even if one is somewhere else, she says. Out of outrage at injustice, she became a lawyer, and in 1996 she won a green card in the lottery and came to the United States.
Asked about the many gunmen at Porc Festival, Gericke, whose hobbies are yoga and shooting, says it’s worth remembering that there are many guns in New Hampshire, but the state ranks the lowest in gun-related deaths in America, only 0.9 per 100,000 people. California however, with the strictest gun laws in the United States, has an average of 6.1 gun-related deaths per 100,000 inhabitants.
In the end, isn’t libertarian aversion to taxes simply selfish and antisocial – the ideology of rich people who only look out for themselves? «It is more that the current system is unfair,» she says. «Only the wealthy can afford a good education and health care in the U.S., and the police are primarily targeting the poor. Is the current school curriculum up to date? In the age of the internet, should teachers be the gatekeepers of knowledge and continue to break the will of students and demand obedience?» She also doesn’t have an ideal solution, but feels that alternatives to the ruling institutions must be considered, more choices and a free market with incentives – that is, with diversity, breaking the monopoly of bureaucratic institutions.
In 2010, she faced a 7-year prison sentence for filming an officer who stopped her car for a police check. What is now commonplace thanks to smartphones was still a novelty at the time. After a long battle with the authorities, she was finally acquitted in a spectacular court case in 2014.
Dressed only with a weapon
Gericke generally advocates decentralization, which is why she is also working towards the secession of New Hampshire. «The U.S. will fall apart like the British Empire,» she says. Gericke, who hitchhiked through Africa and Asia for a long time, is a refreshingly creative, spontaneous, vibrant woman who simply wants to be free. Any dogma is alien to her and she sees the Free State Project as a playground, an experimental field.
Many others, however, alienate with their fanatical or freaky nature; they do a disservice to the advocacy of self-responsibility and anti-paternalism. This also includes people in the movement who talk in authoritarian terms, but claim to advocate freedom. For example, 38-year-old Jeremy Kauffman is a tech entrepreneur who launched the blockchain-based network LBRY to share documents and movies, making him one of the remarkably many libertarians in the internet and crypto scene. Last year, he ran unsuccessfully for a U.S. Senate seat. With his eloquent manner, he is ubiquitous at the lectures and panels at the Porc Festival. At first glance he seems likeable, open and intelligent; but for years he has been irritating others with statements that don’t fit the propagated love of freedom.
At first glance he seems likeable, open and intelligent; but for years he has been irritating others with statements that don’t fit the propagated love of freedom…” READ MORE…
NH Progressive Jon Hopwood inadvertently makes me sound like the coolest ancap alive in THIS HIT PIECE…
Beef tongue… YUM! The verdict is in: delicious. Amazing how one bite can time-travel you. Suddenly I’m in Pretoria, it’s a hot Christmas Day, and I’m mildly annoyed that I have to stop doing somersaults into the pool just to eat. Back then, lunch was cold cuts and mustard, Ma and Pa with their beers, the grownups laughing in the shade while the kids cannonballed and shrieked.
Beef tongue tastes like thick-cut roast beef — meaty, hearty, comforting — but not wild or gamey. If you’ve never had it, I suspect it’s not because it’s unworthy, but because smart chefs make sure they get it first.
Thanks to the incredible work at The Content Factory, I was included with real estate experts Jan Ryan, Broker Owner of RE/MAX Direct in San Diego County, CA, and Rebecca Hidalgo, CEO/Designated Broker at Integrity All Stars Realty in Chandler, AZ in The Spruce with this article, Real Estate Agents Agree: This One Home Feature Always Sells a Home Faster.
My quote:
Carla Gericke, Realtor at Porcupine Real Estate in New Hampshire, says natural light is of utmost importance to her clients, especially since winters in the area can feel long, dark, and dreary.
“When you walk into a sun-drenched kitchen or a living room with south-facing windows with a prospective buyer, you can practically watch their shoulders drop,” she says. “Light impacts mood, productivity, and even health, so homes that maximize daylight feel instantly more inviting and uplifting.”
Buyers are often looking for big windows, open layouts that don’t block the sun, and an orientation that captures morning and afternoon light.
So if you’ve been considering replacing your windows or removing that old, overgrown tree blocking the light from your home, now might be a good time to do it.