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Geller/Spencer: Norway, Free Speech, and the Counterjihad

Aug 8, 2011 5:21 am By Robert Spencer

As the mainstream media and its Islamic supremacist allies continue to demonize us, no one is interested in giving us a fair hearing — no one, that is, except the estimable Thomas Lifson of The American Thinker. We submitted this piece to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the New York Post, National Review, the American Spectator, the London Spectator, the Guardian, and the Wall Street Journal. No dice. The New York Times and the Washington Post have published any number of articles defaming us, as has the Guardian, but let us have a say? No way.

“Norway, Free Speech, and the Counterjihad,” by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer in the American Thinker, August 8:

Ever since the heinous murders in Norway, we have been subjected to an unrelenting campaign of vilification. It appears that the Norway mass murderer Anders Breivik cited us, along with John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Barack Obama and a host of others, in his lengthy cut-and-paste manifesto; despite that manifesto’s ideological incoherence, his citations of our work have led to an international campaign to blame us for the massacre. The New York Times, NBC, the BBC, CNN, the Washington Post, many European publications, and a host of others have claimed that we are responsible for creating a climate of “hate” in which a Breivik was inevitable. This is not only false, but such charges against us challenge fundamental principles of the freedom of speech.

We submitted this present article defending ourselves to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the New York Post, National Review, the American Spectator, the London Spectator, the Guardian, and the Wall Street Journal. Most ignored the submission altogether; National Review and the New York Post were the only ones who bothered to inform us that they were turning down the piece. The mainstream media was ready and eager to demonize us, but not so willing to give us a fair hearing and a chance to rebut their false charges.

In the first place, the claim that we are engaged in focusing hatred upon or engaged in demonizing any group is false. In fact, it is more true of our opponents’ attacks on our own work than it is of anything we have said or done. We stand and have always stood against the evil of using violence for political and religious goals, and against all political and religious fanaticism. We stand and have always stood against the use of violence to advance any political agenda. We have stood consistently and still stand for the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and the equality of rights of all people before the law. Anyone who sincerely upholds and wishes to defend those principles, whatever his creed or background, we count as an ally.

Those who claim that we have incited hatred that leads to violence are using an argument that can be used against themselves. Critics of American and NATO foreign policy should note that there have been numerous terror attacks committed by people who oppose that foreign policy. Are such critics responsible for creating a climate of hatred that led such people to commit terror attacks? In the 1960s, the Ku Klux Klan blamed Martin Luther King, Jr. for the Watts riots. King was steadfastly nonviolent, but he agreed with the political perspectives of the rioters. Was he then responsible for creating a climate of hatred that led to the riots? Was his righteous cause delegimitized by the fact that some departed from his express wishes and resorted to violence?…

There is more.

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Filed Under: free speech, journalistic bias, Useful idiots


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