The Leftist dhimmi blog Harry's Place, which dabbles dilettanishly in counter-jihad poses while seldom missing an opportunity to denigrate and defame genuine counter-jihadists, has not surprisingly signed on to the Marxist antisemite Maryam Namazie's One Law For All hit piece on me, Pamela Geller, SIOA and SIOE. Now they have published a response from one of Namazie's accomplices, Adam Barnett, responding to my initial rebuttal to their attack piece, which Barnett cowrote. My initial response is here.
The beginning of this "response," "Adam Barnett’s response to Robert Spencer," from Harry's Place, August 16, is simply bizarre, suggesting that Barnett read in my rebuttal what he wanted to see there, rather than what I actually wrote:
Following the publication of ‘Enemies Not Allies: The Far-Right’, our new report which investigates his and similar organisations, Stop Islamization of America director Robert Spencer has invited One Law for All to ‘substantiate [our] charges, or withdraw them and issue a public apology.’ One could simply recommend that Mr. Spencer read our report.
A cheap rhetorical gambit. Anyone can play that game. I could easily, and, indeed, with more justice, charge Barnett with not actually reading my rebuttal -- as you will see as you read on.
Indeed, in his ‘rebuttal’, he writes as if he has answered all of these charges before.
I have no idea what this means. If I wrote as if I had answered all of those charges before, why did I bother to answer them in this context? But obviously, I did.
It’s therefore strange that he felt the need to reply to them at ‘11:53pm’ on a Sunday night,
This is the most bizarre portion of Barnett's piece. There is something wrong with replying on a Sunday night? 11:53PM PDT Sunday night is Monday morning in London, 7:53AM, just in time for Maryam Namazie and Adam Barnett and the Harry's Place gang to be tucking in to their fried bread with baked beans and black pudding and catching up on the morning news. What could be more convenient? Or is it that as a Marxist, Barnett has no work ethic and objects to my working so late on a Sunday night?
The prosaic reason why I answered so late on a Sunday night is that I had a late meeting that evening, as I actually happen to have noted here, and after it was over I saw several emails that had come in that afternoon and evening notifying me about Namazie's hit piece. So I answered it. Is Barnett implying that I was trying to bury my rebuttal by publishing it on a Sunday night? Then why did I have it published at FrontPage today?
I really have no idea why Barnett registered this weird complaint, or why it is echoed by a commenter at Harry's. Perhaps the Marxists-Have-No-Work-Ethic explanation is indeed the most cogent.
and to attempt to smear his critics as ‘racist anti-Semites’ and ‘supporters of Jihad’.
Note the sleight of hand and dishonesty: The phrase "racist anti-Semites," although it is in quotation marks, does not appear in my piece. I do call Namazie antisemitic, with good reason, and not a "supporter of Jihad" in general but a supporter of the jihad against Israel, but Barnett by placing these phrases in quotes is being either sloppy or dishonest.
Namazie has echoed Palestinian jihadist propaganda designed to demonize and ultimately destroy Israel. As has been documented here and elsewhere on numerous occasions, the Israeli Army actually scrupulously avoids targeting civilians, while the Palestinian jihadists launch attacks from civilian areas in order to try to draw retaliatory fire that will kill civilians and that they can then use for propaganda purposes. Namazie, in echoing these Palestinian lies, is aiding and abetting the Palestinian jihad, which is inherently antisemitic, rooted in Islamic antisemitism.
Notice that Barnett doesn't rebut the charges that Namazie is antisemitic and a supporter of the jihad against Israel. He just calls them "smears," as if that suffices for rebuttal.
One could be forgiven for thinking that Mr. Spencer hoped to prevent people from reading the report for themselves.
No, one could not be forgiven for that, given the fact that I have now published a link to that report at Jihad Watch and at FrontPage.
Barnett then spends a considerable amount of time smearing SIOE; it's indicative of how weak his position is that he spends a third of a piece billed as a "response to Robert Spencer" retailing charges against an organization that I have absolutely nothing to do with. I have no role in running SIOE and no hand in formulating its positions. I have never called for or supported the mass deportation of Muslims or the banning of the Qur'an, or called all Muslims liars -- not that I accept Barnett's version of SIOE's positions. Stephen Gash of SIOE responds to Barnett and Namazie here and in the comments field at Harry's Place.
- SIOA’s leaders have surpassed SIOE’s defence of war criminal Radovan Karadzic, (which included offering justifications for his actions), by defending Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, denying Serbian atrocities including the Srebrenica genocide, publishing the work of professional apologists for the Milosevic project, and in Spencer’s case working on an institutional level with such people to oppose an independent Kosovo.
Actually, Pamela Geller posted a piece that said quite clearly: “I am not defending Radovan Karadzic...” And also, Geller has never defended Milosevic at all; she has only expressed skepticism about some of the claims made about Serbian concentration camps – a skepticism that many journalists and historians share. It's the same thing with my "working on an institutional level with such people to oppose an independent Kosovo" -- I have written that an independent Kosovo would be a jihad base in Europe, and that is what it is already proving to be. Given that Namazie so credulously accepts Palestinian jihad propaganda, it isn't surprising that her associate Barnett would decry those who don't accept Balkan jihad propaganda; but to equate skepticism with support for Serbian war crimes is the tactic of a smear artist, not an honest analyst.
Also, Stephen Gash has sent me this:
I take exception to this piece of wilful misinterpretation and flagrant hypocrisy:-Quote: “SIOA’s leaders have surpassed SIOE’s defence of war criminal Radovan Karadzic, (which included offering justifications for his actions), by defending Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, denying Serbian atrocities including the Srebrenica genocide, publishing the work of professional apologists for the Milosevic project, and in Spencer’s case working on an institutional level with such people to oppose an independent Kosovo.”
Firstly, SIOE’s ironically entitled article “The extraordinary rendition of Radovan Karadzic” complained that Karadzic would not get a fair trial and had indeed already been condemned by both Western and Muslim media before his trial had even started. One Law for All’s claim about “justifying Karadzic’s actions” clearly confirms SIOE’s complaint. Justifying the need for a fair trial is justifying his actions?
Secondly, it’s a bit rich to criticise SIOE for its “justifications” for Karadzic’s actions (800 years of Serbian history would not be allowed in Karadzic’s defence) then to mention an “independent Kosovo” as if this had nothing to do with Serbian history.
If this is One Law for All’s notion of justice, it begs the question what “One Law” are they campaigning for exactly?
It is certain that many of One Law for All’s supporters consider the Iraq War to have been started on a false premise (by saying this One Law for All will no doubt assert that SIOE claims the war was started on a true premise such is the way communists manipulate other’s statements). They may be interested to know that some Germans, at least, consider that the bombing of Serbia began with a lie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjP_9LOyBuk Documentary in 5 parts
Back to Barnett:
Ms. Geller has gone so far as to say that Bosnian Muslims killed themselves in order to ‘manipulate media coverage’, and refers to the 1995 genocide as a ‘propaganda lie’ which was ‘manufactured [by] the international community’ as part of ‘the ongoing blood libel against the Christian Serbs’. (p.42-43, 53-54 and here)
This sounds absurd, and Barnett wants it to: he had to lie about Pamela Geller's statements in order to create the absurdity. Did she actually say that "Bosnian Muslims killed themselves in order to ‘manipulate media coverage’"? Of course not. If you look at the actual post to which Barnett is referring, you will see that Geller is not saying that Bosnian Muslims committed suicide in order to manipulate media coverage, but killed their own in order to create the illusion of Serb attacks on civilians and thereby manipulate media coverage. The Palestinians do that, so why wouldn't jihadists in the Balkans? But of course, Namazie retails that Palestinian propaganda, so it is not surprising that her colleague would be a stooge for the jihad in the Balkans as well.
This is presumably what Mr. Spencer means when he writes of SIOA’s ‘opposition to the jihad in the Balkans and skepticism (sic) about some of the charges made of Serbian war crimes.’
"Sic"? Apparently Adam Barnett is so parochial and ignorant that he doesn't know that skepticism is the correct American spelling of the word. He is even more of a dim bulb than I thought.
- SIOA’s leadership has supported, defended and praised the English Defence League, (without equivocation until recently), and has promoted their events, published their statements and attacked their critics. (p.55-59)
Regarding the EDL we have always been consistent: we support them insofar as they reject racism, neofascism, antisemitism, etc., and root out such people from their ranks. When Barnett says "without equivocation until recently," he is simply lying, as our support has always come with that caveat, as it does for all groups and all individuals anywhere and everywhere.
Co-director Pamela Geller’s web log has featured conspiratorial articles regarding the President of America’s religion, his family, his sexual history, and the circumstances of his birth, and has likened his ‘stealth jihad on the White House’ to ‘an SS officer getting elected president during WW II’. (p.52-53)
Pamela Geller's criticisms of Obama are well documented in the book The Post-American Presidency -- substantiated with over 400 footnotes. Pointing out Obama's failures and nefarious alliances is not racism; her criticisms are accurate. Everything she wrote in that book has come to pass: Obama is busy earning his place in American history as our worst president. Pamela Geller never wrote about Obama's sexual history, but made an offhand statement in response to an oft-repeated rumor after Sarah Palin had been abused and lied about by the media for the umpteenth time. Here again, Barnett is lying in order to paint a dishonest picture of Geller's work.
In 2010, Robert Spencer defended his and Geller’s ‘colleague’ Joseph John Jay, who had recommended the ‘wholesale slaughter’ of Muslim civilians, including children, on the grounds that he had been ‘misinterpreted’. Spencer maintains this still, and Ms. Geller has recommended Jay’s writings as recently as July 2011. (p.51-51)
Here is where I wonder if Barnett, while charging me with not reading his smear piece, did not read my rebuttal. In it, I reported that "John Jay does not actually have any role in or position with SIOA, but be that as it may, the report is lying about him. In reality, he has written, in his inimitable fashion, 'i do not advocate carte blanche killing one’s liberal relative, nor all muslims. to assert differently is a lie.'"
I could go on, but I ought to address Mr. Spencer’s direct challenge regarding a quote of his which we included. Here is the quote, published on his Jihad Watch site in 2005: ‘there is no distinction in the American Muslim community between peaceful Muslims and jihadists. While Americans prefer to imagine that the vast majority of American Muslims are civic-minded patriots who accept wholeheartedly the parameters of American pluralism, this proposition has actually never been proven.’Writing today, Spencer claims ‘what [he] meant was there is no institutional distinction, so jihadis move freely in Muslim circles among those who oppose them and claim to do so’. However, when asked by a commenter on the original article in 2005 ‘how distinctions can be made’, Spencer replied: ‘That’s simple. Let American Muslims renounce all attachment to violent Jihad and Sharia, refuse all aid from Sharia states (chiefly Saudi Arabia), and cooperate fully with anti-terror efforts aimed at rooting jihadists out of American mosques.’ (p.52) Having thus identified all Muslims as suspects who are guilty until proven innocent, Spencer does not specify how to treat Muslims who do not ‘cooperate fully’, or who fail to make the prescribed disassociations. But based on his record and the company he keeps, I’m glad we’ll never have to find out what it might entail.
This vicious little smear is, in fact, entirely baseless. There is nothing sinister about calling upon Muslims or anyone else to obey the laws of this country, and his insinuation that some terrible evil must be what I have in mind for those who do not comply is not substantiated and cannot be substantiated by a single scrap of evidence from anything I have ever written. In my first rebuttal piece, I noted two of many instances in which I affirmed that Muslims in the U.S. are innocent until proven guilty (contrary to the explicit claim of his report); Barnett doesn't mention that. In the last chapter of my 2008 book Stealth Jihad I make a number of recommendations for what can be done about the problem of stealth jihad and Islamization -- none of which involve anything but working through legal channels to enforce existing laws.
So Barnett's vicious insinuation only masks the fact that he has absolutely nothing to go on. I knew Harry's Place was full of clueless and complicit Leftist dhimmis, but even they should be ashamed of running a piece that contains a libel of that order.
I think this meets Mr. Spencer’s challenge, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to bring all of this to people’s attention. I’m not sure how one squares the above with the claim that SIOA ‘stand[s] for the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and equality of rights for all people’. Perhaps Mr. Spencer will enlighten us.
Done. Now will Adam Barnett have the decency to retract and apologize, both for his report's smears and his new ones? I doubt it. After all, Namazie yesterday responded to my request for a retraction by saying: "This is politics. Yours is far-Right; why not own up to it. Much more respectable!" In other words, "I don't like your politics, so I feel free to lie about you." And lie she does, as does Barnett.
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Ironic that Harry's Place motto is "Liberty, if it means anything, is the right to tell people what they don't want to hear."
Apparently, they would like to deny Spencer's liberty, however truthful.