The Blog Wars

Over the past several months, we’ve been watching the right-wing blogosphere, particularly the anti-every-Muslim bloggers, at war with each other. The first major shot was fired by Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, who reacted with alarm when he saw his compatriots turning more and more towards an alliance with neo-Nazis and various fascist groups.  This brought Charles to the realization that it’s not fair to lump all people in with each other and condemn all Muslims for the extremist acts of a (relative) few. It also brought Charles to strongly condemn the alliances with neo-Nazis, White Supremacists and fascists.  We have watched the strongest alliance with the afore mentioned being formed by Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs, both of which have been exposed extensively on our Chasing Evil site. 

Now, as Charles Johnson holds steady in his rejection of hate-mongering, we see more and more former hate-mongers coming to the realization that Charles is right, that using alliances with such parties as Vlaams Belang, Phillipe DeWinter, Geert Wilders, Paul Belein, and their ilk, will show the world that they (Spencer, Geller and company) are just as hate filled, just as biased, just as racist the worst that evil can offer.

As their former allies condemn them, we hear a deafening silence from Spencer, Geller and company. It would be nice to think that they are taking time to examine their conscience, but based on their years of spewing hatred, I would be very surprised to see that they have consciences left – I suspect they were sold along with their souls.

Here is part of an article recently published by Bruce Bawer, and republished in full at the Little Green Footballs site, where you can read the entire article. 

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/33593_Bruce_Bawer_on_the_Anti-Jihad_Meltdown

Bruce Bawer on the 'Anti-Jihad' Meltdown

OPINION | Wed, May 6, 2009 at 1:30:06 pm PDT

Bruce Bawer, author of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within and Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom, has issued an unequivocal denunciation of the so-called “anti-jihad” bloggers and writers who are advocating alliances with European fascist parties such as Belgium’s Vlaams Belang. With Bruce’s permission, I’m reprinting his whole post here:

Thursday, May 6, 2009, 9:28 P.M. CET:  Recently, Andrew Sullivan posted a link to an article about Charles Johnson, the celebrated blogger who has distanced himself from many other anti-jihadists and called them “a bunch of kooks.”  Though it grieves me to say so, and though I’ve hoped that things would somehow turn around, Charles is, alas, not whistling Dixie: I can testify that in the last couple of years some significant, and lamentable, shifts have taken place on the anti-jihad front.  Writers and bloggers whom, not very long ago, I would unhesitatingly have described as staunch defenders of liberal values against Islamofascist intolerance have more recently said and done things that have dismayed me, and that, in many cases, have compelled me to re-examine my view of them.

Once upon a time, these people made a point of distancing themselves from far-right European parties such as Belgium’s Vlaams Belang – whose most prominent Internet voice, Paul Belien, has declared himself to be fighting for “Judeo-Christian morality” not only against jihadist Islam but also against “secular humanism.”  Belien has made no secret of his contempt for gay people and for the idea that they deserve human rights as much as anyone else.  Now, however, many of the anti-jihadist writers who once firmly rejected Vlaams Belang have come to embrace it wholeheartedly.  In fact, for reasons unknown to me, this regional party in one of Europe’s smallest countries appears to have become, for a number of anti-jihadist writers on both sides of the Atlantic, nothing short of a litmus test: in their eyes, it seems, if you’re not willing to genuflect to VB, you’re not a real anti-jihadist.

I happen to be aware of this new state of affairs because during the last year or so I’ve been scolded by a number of respected and accomplished writers for refusing to make nice with Vlaams Belang.  Some of them have done this gently, pleadingly; others, who once addressed me with civility and respect as a fellow independent writer, have taken a harsh and hectoring, and in two or three cases even a condescending and bullying tone with me, as if they’re the bosses of some political machine and I’m an irksome underling who’s deviating from the party line.  The shift is, frankly, breathtaking.  Some of these writers have admitted privately that VB is bad news but argue that the party is nonetheless a valuable ally in the struggle against the Islamization of Europe, just as Stalin was a useful partner in the war on Hitler; others insist vehemently that Belien & co. are terrific folks, and claim that their checkered reputation is entirely the work of Charles Johnson.  Never mind that other right-wing European parties, such as Norway’s Progress Party, have explicitly distanced themselves from VB; never mind that in 2006 Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a far more well informed student of Benelux politics than any of VB’s eager new boosters, called VB “a racist, anti-Semitic, extremist party that is unkind to women” and earlier today, while acknowledging that “the party has adjusted its rhetoric and seems to have dropped its anti-Semitic stance,” told me in an e-mail that “it’s very difficult to know whether this [adjustment] is genuine or political pragmatism.”

Read the entire article at:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/33593_Bruce_Bawer_on_the_Anti-Jihad_Meltdown