Pamela Geller coolly eviscerates the brutish jihad enabler Nathan Lean:
Help us keep exposing the truth about jihad and Islamic supremacism! CONTRIBUTE TO THIS CAMPAIGN HERE!
Nathan Lean is at it again, this time in the Puff Ho. Lean is a real bottom feeder, a dull-witted and violent-minded enemy of freedom who has threatened Robert Spencer repeatedly, has been arrested for shouting obscenities at a city council meeting, has called on hackers to destroy Jihad Watch, and gets a platform in mainstream media outlets including the Los Angeles Times and New York Daily News to call for restrictions on our freedom of speech.
Now he is trying to intimidate Indiegogo into shutting down our AFDI fundraiser. The core element of his case is that our ad campaigns constitute “hate,” and Indiegogo’s guidelines prohibit their allowing fundraising for hate. So Lean is trying to convince them that fighting against Islamic Jew-hatred, gender apartheid, creed apartheid, and slavery is “hate.” Considering that Lean is the Editor-In-Chief of Aslan Media, which is run by Reza Aslan, and that Aslan is a Board member of a front group for the Islamic Republic of Iran, it’s easy to see why Lean would see opposition to jihad and Islamic supremacism as “hate.”
Crowdfunding Hate: Indiegogo Profits From Anti-Muslim Campaign by Nathan Lean, Huffington Post, April 15
Indiegogo may sound like the name of a 1970s funk band, but it’s actually one of the fastest growing crowd-funding sites on the Internet. Founded in 2002 by a former Wall Street analyst, the funding platform allows inspired individuals to grow projects or personal campaigns by pooling money from donors. If you desire, you can drop a few bucks to help a startup bakery. You could also help finance new stables at a therapeutic horse ranch or sponsor an orphanage in Haiti.
Everything is fair game, as long as you play by the rules. And the rules are clear: User terms stipulate that you can’t promote hate.
Strange, then, that among those partaking in Indiegogo’s services is the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), an organization classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. They are using the platform to raise money — and lots of it — to put out another batch of their now-infamous anti-Muslim metro and bus ads. Led by bloggers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, AFDI has come under fire in recent months for waging a culture war in subway stops with ad campaigns that single out Muslims and the religion of Islam and conflate them with the actions of a fraction of extremists.
Spencer and I responded to that Big Lie in a piece we cowrote for the San Francisco Examiner: “Central to Nathan Lean’s claim that our American Freedom Defense Initiative ads spread ‘hate’ is his charge that the ads ‘suggest collective guilt on the part of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims for acts of terrorism.’ Yet nowhere do our ads suggest any such thing. Instead, they highlight real hatred and incitement to violence from influential Muslim leaders and spokesmen. Muslims and non-Muslims who abhor and oppose that hatred and incitement should be standing with us, not condemning us.”
The latest placards, which to date have raised $22K of a $50K goal, urge the cessation of aid to “Islamic countries” and feature a fierce quotation sprawled across a Palestinian flag which reads, “It’s Saturday, so massacre the Jews; on Sunday massacre the Christians.” The obvious missing group — the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims — is thought to be doing the massacring. “Our dead in the cause of Islam have taught us plenty,” the description on the group’s Indiegogo campaign page reads. “Over 20,000 jihad attacks around the world since 9/11, each with the imprimatur of a Muslim cleric, have taught us all we need to know.”
Here again, nowehere does the ad say that “the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims” are the ones who are “doing the massacring.” Lean is just making that up.
It’s that type of language that caused the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to reject the application of Geller and Spencer’s group, Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA). It’s also that type of language that the Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik digested in the summer of 2011 before he went on a shooting rampage and killed 77 youths. Breivik cited Geller and Spencer dozens of times as informing his views on Muslims and Islam. Recently, several organizations have canceled the duos speeches, including the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), a Massachusetts Diocese and a New York synagogue.
Re the USPTO: they rejected SIOA’s trademark because it found it “disparaging” to Muslims. We are appealing, arguing that no law-abiding Muslim could possibly be disparaged by a trademark that reflected our goal to “stop” the Muslim Brotherhood’s civilization jihad, which is what we proved that “Islamization” means. More here. As for Breivik, he himself has explained that he was actually inspired by al-Qaeda. Lean and his accomplices routinely lie about who really inspired the mad monster, exploiting him to try to destroy all opposition to the jihad. How ironic that it is jihad that was his inspiration and teacher. And regarding the cancellations, Lean holds up prior occasions when he and his friends have succeeded in smearing and defaming us to the point that frightened venues drop us as if they were strikes against us, when actually they’re only signs of his own fascism and opposition to the freedom of speech.
Erica Labovitz, Director of Strategic Programs at Indiegogo commented in an email exchange that, “The views reflected by the campaign owners are not necessarily those of Indiegogo.” That may well be the case. But it does little to explain how a campaign that singles out the followers of an entire religious faith with incendiary associations and stereotypes does not violate the company’s “no hate” policy. Would an antagonistic ad campaign directed at Jews or Catholics receive a pass too? What does Indiegogo classify as hate?
Unfortunately for Lean, they don’t classify truth or freedom fighting as “hate.” When this campaign of smears and intimidation began against Indiegogo, wrote to them asking them to stand firm and got back this note: “Thank you for your note. Indiegogo is an open platform that allows anyone, anywhere to raise money. We have checks in place to prevent fraud, and have language in our Terms of Service to protect contributions.We appreciate that you took the time to share this and will be in touch if we have any questions.”
Several activists have reached out to Indiegogo with little success. In an essay at Salon, Chris Stedman, an interfaith leader, assistant chaplain at Harvard, and author of the memoir “Faitheist,” urged the company to reconsider its support for provocative AFDI ads that pitted Muslims and gays against each other. Emails sent through the company’s website were unanswered as were tweets to company execs. Geller and Spencer’s followers, however, were more vulgar. Dozens of them bombarded Stedman with homophobic insults and slurs, while also leveling derogatory attacks at Muslims. The reaction underscored precisely the nasty consequences of AFDI’s program to cleave society into warring factions.
Stedman is one of the leading “Chickens for Colonel Sanders,” aka Gays for sharia. Breitbart slams ’em here, as do I here at The Thinker, and Spencer KO’s Stedman here.
Lean ends up by claiming that we “should be afforded” the right to free speech — all the while trying to shut us down and shut us up. But he does include contacts for Indiegogo. Use them to call, politely and calmly, for them to stand firm against this thuggery and intimidation, and to keep the AFDI fundraiser up:
Also troubling is that not only does Indiegogo offer its fundraising services to AFDI’s minority-bashing crusaders, but it also gives them a discount. As a non-profit organization, AFDI is entitled to a 25 percent reduction in platform fees. Beyond that, Indiegogo is profiting from anti-Muslim hate. The company charges a 9 percent fee on funds raised. If the group reaches their goal, Indiegogo gives 5 percent back, leaving them with a profit of 4 percent. That may not sound like a lot, but it’s a cool couple of grand to pocket from prejudicing a minority population.
AFDI should be afforded their rights to free speech, but that doesn’t mean that organizations like Indiegogo are obligated to host these campaigns. Enabling divisive and hurtful rhetoric against Muslims or any community is something that they can and should refuse to do. Indiegogo has an opportunity to be a force for good in the world, empowering those who desire to bring about positive change with the means to realizing their goals. The vilest of hate groups should not be among them — even if there is a profit involved.
You can contact Indiegogo the following ways:
On Twitter: @Indiegogo
Slava Rubin, CEO | slava@indiegogo.com | Twitter: @gogoSlava
Danae Ringelmann, Founder | danae@indiegogo.com | Twitter: @gogoDanae
Erica Labovitz, Director of Strategic Programs | erica@indiegogo.com | Twitter: @gogoErica