Delfi.lt, Lithuania’s principal internet news portal, publishes on its website pseudonymously signed long comments in the format of proper news and opinion pieces. Such items, sometimes bereft of any actual author’s name (and responsibility), are thereby given the higher status of signed articles that carry the aura of an editor’s hand or editorial approval, in contrast to the free-for-all characteristic of numbered comments or talkbacks added at the end of a proper article. In other words, such items ascend to higher respectability, irrespective of Delfi.lt’s disclaimer confirming that opinion pieces represent only the writer’s views.

Such an article, seeking to elucidate ‘the bright side’ of neo-Nazi or fascist youth, appeared yesterday on Delfi.lt, signed by one ‘pievaa’ whose description includes the photograph of a young woman author.  Full English translation here.