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Robert Spencer in FrontPage: Obama: Against Free Speech Before He Was For It

Dec 22, 2014 11:39 pm By Robert Spencer

obama4In FrontPage I discuss the latest champion of free speech: Barack Obama, of all people — and why his defense of this right rings hollow:

As far as Barack Obama is concerned, Sony was wrong to capitulate to threats from North Korean hackers and pull the movie The Interview. “I wish they had spoken to me first,” said the free speech champion. “I would have told them do not get into a pattern in which you’re intimidated by these kinds of criminal attacks.”

Remember: this is the same man who said this at the United Nations on September 25, 2012.  “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”

Why did he say this? Because he was blaming a video about Muhammad for the murderous jihad attacks on September 11, 2012 in Benghazi. In that same speech, he called the video “crude and disgusting” and said: “I know there are some who ask why we don’t just ban such a video. And the answer is enshrined in our laws: Our Constitution protects the right to practice free speech.”

Yet this was just empty verbiage. Before he made that speech, the Obama White House asked Google to remove the Muhammad video from YouTube. In fact, this was one of the first things the White House did, even as the Benghazi jihad attack was still going on. ABC News reported that “a still-classified State Department e-mail says that one of the first responses from the White House to the Benghazi attack was to contact YouTube to warn of the “ramifications” of allowing the posting of an anti-Islamic video, according to Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The memo suggests that even as the attack was still underway — and before the CIA began the process of compiling talking points on its analysis of what happened — the White House believed it was in retaliation for a “controversial video.”

And it didn’t just believe this – it acted upon this belief. An email circulated among Obama Administration officials while the attack was still going on, entitled, “Update on Response to actions – Libya,” stated: “White House is reaching out to U-Tube [sic] to advice ramification of the posting of the Pastor Jon video.”

So the first thing Obama did in response to the Benghazi jihad attack was move to restrict the freedom of speech, and protect Muslims from material that some of them found offensive. Google refused this preposterous and unconstitutional request on free speech grounds, although later a court ordered the video removed.

In those days, Obama never warned anyone not to “get into a pattern in which you’re intimidated by these kinds of criminal attacks.”

Indeed, the most ominous aspect of the Benghazi jihad attack for the long term health of the United States as a free society was the Obama Administration’s desire to blame it all on our freedom of speech. Obama’s declaration that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam” was essentially a call for the U.S. to censor itself and voluntarily restrict our freedom of speech so as not to say anything that offends Muslims.

Yet restriction of the freedom of speech creates a protected class (whichever group cannot be criticized), thereby destroying the principle of equality of rights for all people before the law, and paves the way for tyranny by making it possible to criminalize dissent.

But now that a free speech case doesn’t have to do with outraged Muslims, Obama is suddenly a champion of free expression. This isn’t about endangering people, either: the North Koreans are just as capable of going on a bloody rampage as Islamic jihadists are.

For whatever reason, Obama shows a strange solicitude for the sensibilities of Muslims that he doesn’t appear interested in offering to the North Koreans. And as long as he opposes the freedom of speech in any context, his support for it in any other context rings hollow.

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, free speech Tagged With: Benghazi, North Korea, Sony, The Interview


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Comments

  1. Don McKellar says

    Dec 23, 2014 at 1:39 am

    This should be a question asked of all candidates in the future presidential runnings for party pick and then in the actual presidential debates. In fact it MUST be asked:

    “President Obama was vocal in standing up for free speech in light of the Sony Pictures and North Korea issue, but two years earlier his administration stood against free speech and requested that Google remove the Mohammad movie video, and Obama said: “The future shall not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” If you were to become president, would you make the same statements and actions? If so, how would you justify the difference? If you would not, then why not?”

  2. Gardener says

    Dec 23, 2014 at 6:02 am

    I don’t think his solicitude is strange by any means. His father is a Muslim and he was raised in Indonesia surrounded by Islamic imagery and culture in a non-threatening form. He thinks he’s doing a good thing by protecting Muslims from “bigots”. Just like many other social justice warriors, he has managed to blind himself to reality in his fervor to protect perceived victims. He clearly believes or at least has believed that the problems of the Muslim world stem from a sense of inferiority and that that sense of inferiority is caused by the history of Western colonialism. This is, of course, a misunderstanding on his part, but it also explains his mindset.

    Obama and others like him never stop to consider how preposterous it is to make a statement like “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam”. The statement in its context implies that mindless violence in response to any slight, real or perceived, at Muhammad is somehow legitimate. People like Obama really should treat Muhammad as a fictional character before making any kind of statement. “The future must not belong to those who slander Scrooge McDuck”. If it doesn’t make sense to say that, then it doesn’t make sense to say it about Muhammad.

    There also has to be an expectation of reasonability that is applied to all people including Muslims. Violence should not be tolerated, and hurt feelings cannot excuse violence. The leaders of the free world must stop treating Muslims as misbehaving children and indulging their tantrums. The problem is simply that the strive for social justice blinds many people to reality. It is gratifying to think you are protecting the innocent from monsters, but in reality Obama and his ilk are protecting monsters from the innocent. Every age has its stupidity, and this is the stupidity of our age. I do believe a change will come, and there are already signs of it in the way mainstream discourse has evolved in the West since the rise of the Islamic State.

  3. Truth says

    Dec 23, 2014 at 6:28 am

    Don’t trust Obama.

  4. Angemon says

    Dec 23, 2014 at 6:52 am

    “I wish they had spoken to me first,” said the free speech champion. “I would have told them do not get into a pattern in which you’re intimidated by these kinds of criminal attacks.”

    Empty boasts from a wannabe though guy wanting to act gangsta. He’d sing another tune if Sony had actually spoke with him.

  5. duh_swami says

    Dec 23, 2014 at 6:53 am

    ‘The future must not belong to…’ Is an advocacy for the sharia death penalty for blasphemy. What is the most sure way the slanderer will have no future?
    This is not only a slap in the face of free speech, it borders on treason.

  6. Jay Boo says

    Dec 23, 2014 at 7:30 am

    Integrity???
    Don’t believe the name
    Leftist organizations hide their true agenda.
    You won’t find out about Islamic financed Universities here
    The following link suggests that right wing financing is a — “Crusade”
    Why is it politically correct to call that a “Crusade”
    Shouldn’t we call Islamic finance at universities a “Jihad” then
    Fair is fair
    (The Center for Public Integrity) website
    http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/03/27/14497/inside-koch-brothers-campus-crusade

  7. Judi says

    Dec 23, 2014 at 7:47 am

    So he interrupted his golf game to make this stupid statement I presume?

  8. duh_swami says

    Dec 23, 2014 at 8:46 am

    ‘Another Man Who Knew Too Much’…The assassination of an Ambassador…The Movie…A black ops production. All the ingredients are there for a first class TV drama…But don’t worry it’s a despicable movie…we know that because Hillary and Rasool Obama said so….

  9. Robert says

    Dec 23, 2014 at 10:28 am

    The end results, if allowed to continue is exactly what Geert Wilders identifies.
    http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/geert-wilders/talking-about-the-moroccan-issue-is-not-a-crime/

  10. Salah says

    Dec 23, 2014 at 11:14 am

    “Yet restriction of the freedom of speech creates a protected class (whichever group cannot be criticized), thereby destroying the principle of equality of rights for all people before the law, and paves the way for tyranny by making it possible to criminalize dissent.”

    Unfortunately, most of us in the West think we can defeat tyranny through “free and fair elections.” WE CAN’T. Force is the ONLY way to deal with a tyrant.

    There are two ways to forcibly remove a tyrant from office:
    1- A peaceful but massive popular uprising.
    2- A civil war.

    The Egyptian people chose the first. And tyrants were peaceably defeated.

    http://crossmuslims.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-end-of-muslim-brotherhood.html

  11. Kepha says

    Dec 23, 2014 at 12:15 pm

    I wonder how much Sony contributed to Democratic candidates, including the O?

    My take is that the O’s attacks on free speech were a case of testing the waters to see how much the American people would take.

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