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Huffington Post’s Christopher Mathias uses SPLC hit list of foes of jihad terror to smear Bannon

Nov 16, 2016 10:04 am By Robert Spencer

In its frenzy to destroy President-elect Trump, the bought-and-paid-for establishment propaganda media is now lying openly and outright, smearing Trump’s chief strategist and senior counselor, Steve Bannon, as a white supremacist and anti-Semite. But even though the self-appointed arbiters of acceptable opinion have been screaming their lies about Bannon everywhere for several days now, Trump shows no sign of bowing to their will and firing Bannon. So now Huffington Post smear artist Christopher Mathias has tried another tack, attempting to destroy Bannon by association with foes of jihad terror: Pamela Geller, Frank Gaffney, and me.

The HuffPo should seriously consider docking Mathias’ pay, as this particular hit piece is extremely lazy work. For the most part, he simply repeats Southern Poverty Law Center talking points to which I responded point-by-point here. The only charge he adds in that the SPLC doesn’t include is the hoary old falsehood that I inspired Norwegian psychopath Anders Breivik to commit mass murder; you can find the truth about that here (scroll down).

The point of this piece is to intimidate Bannon and/or Trump into not daring to have any dealing with the likes of us, but to continue the Obama administration policy of entrusting counterterror operations to collaborators, fellow travelers, infiltrators, dunces, and useful idiots. It manifests the Huffington Post’s deep and growing anxiety as its editors and writers slowly begin to realize that Trump and Bannon are unlikely to succumb to this kind of pressure.

Mathias’ hit piece includes this: “Asked what he thinks it’s important for Bannon to know as he begins his new role in the White House, Spencer said he would tell Bannon ‘that forces such as the Huffington Post and its allies will stop at nothing to discredit and destroy him.'” Mathias’ lack of any capacity for self-reflection is embarrassing: his article here is a compelling illustration of the truth of what I said.

christopher-mathias

“The Anti-Muslim Extremists Steve Bannon Thinks Are Experts On Islam,” by Christopher Mathias, Huffington Post, November 15, 2016:

Steve Bannon, whom President-elect Donald Trump chose this week as his chief strategist and senior counselor, has a history of claiming that certain anti-Muslim extremists are in fact experts on Islam.

Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News ― a site that regularly airs white nationalist viewpoints ― used to host a Sirius XM radio show called “Breitbart News Daily.” According to a September report from Mother Jones and the Nation Institute’s Investigative Fund, Bannon conducted dozens of interviews with anti-Muslim extremists on the show in the past year. These guests offered paranoid accusations and false conspiracy theories about Muslims, all of which went unchallenged by Bannon.

During these interviews, Bannon often praised his guests as esteemed experts on a religion they hate….

Robert Spencer

Robert Spencer, who runs the anti-Muslim website Jihad Watch and co-founded the American Freedom Defense Initiative with Geller, appeared on Bannon’s show twice. Bannon called Spencer “one of the top two or three experts in the world on this great war we are fighting against fundamental Islam.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center, on the other hand, says Spencer “is entirely self-taught in the study of Islam, he has partnered with a woman [Geller] known as one of the least reasoned enemies of Islam in the country, and he is given to the same kinds of extravagant, and often provably false, claims that characterize most Muslim-bashers.”

Spencer once wrote that “traditional Islam itself is not moderate or peaceful. It is the only major world religion with a developed doctrine and tradition of warfare against unbelievers.”

Last year he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that a “core principle” of Islam is “the idea of emigrating to a new place to conquer and Islamize it, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing.” He added that “Shariah enclaves” will “inevitably grow and continue to grow until, finally, that’s all there is.”

He once said that freedom of religion doesn’t necessarily apply to Islam because Islam “impinges upon our freedoms.”

He once said it’s “absurd” to think of Islam as “a religion of peace that’s been hijacked by a tiny minority.”

And he once asserted that “80% of the mosques in the United States are actually controlled by extremists.”

Spencer’s writings were cited 162 times by Breivik, the Norwegian anti-Muslim terrorist.

Reached for comment, Spencer said he’d be “happy to be of service” to Bannon in the White House, and said the SPLC’s characterization of him as belonging to a hate group was “base calumny and malicious defamation.”

“All my work is in defense of the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and the equality of rights of all people before the law,” Spencer wrote in an email. “The SPLC is the real hate group, smearing and defaming those whose views differ from their hard-Left line, and endangering our lives by providing a hit list to genuine ‘extremists.’”

He also rejected the SPLC’s description of him as an “extremist,” saying it’s a word used to refer to terrorists.

“I have not… ever beheaded anyone, flown a plane into a building, called for any violence, or approved of any violence against innocent people,” he said. “The SPLC is simply a propaganda organ to discredit the foes of its well-heeled benefactors.”

Asked what he thinks it’s important for Bannon to know as he begins his new role in the White House, Spencer said he would tell Bannon “that forces such as the Huffington Post and its allies will stop at nothing to discredit and destroy him.”

“They’ve shown already by smearing him as a white supremacist and an anti-Semite that they will stoop to any lie, fabricate any charge, no matter how outlandish, in their mad quest to destroy any and all opposition to the policies they favor,” he said….

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Filed Under: "Islamophobia", Featured, journalistic bias, Useful idiots Tagged With: Christopher Mathias, Huffington Post


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Comments

  1. john spielman says

    Nov 16, 2016 at 10:13 am

    let these heathens rage! as the Bible says. the Truth about evil islam and its god allah, who is Satan of the Bible. God will ultimately bring them all to an awful end

  2. eduardo odraude says

    Nov 16, 2016 at 10:25 am

    Muhammad affirms that those who do not follow him will be slaughtered
    LINK: Page 222 (326 in the Arabic) of the earliest Muslim biography of Muhammad:

    Abu jahl said to them: “Muhammad alleges that if you follow him you will be kings of the Arabs and the Persians. Then after death you will be raised to gardens like those of the Jordan. But if you do not follow him you will be slaughtered, and when you are raised from the dead you will be burned in the fire of hell.” The apostle [Muhammad] came out to them with a handful of dust saying: “I do say that.”

  3. Angemon says

    Nov 16, 2016 at 10:35 am

    Here is an excerpt of Mr. Bannon’s interview of Mr. Spencer:

    https://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/07/video-robert-spencer-on-breitbart-the-complete-infidels-guide-to-iran

  4. eduardo odraude says

    Nov 16, 2016 at 10:36 am

    Christopher Mathias is definitely strange, to judge by his article at Huff Post. How can someone be so clueless? Is he clueless, or is he bought? Really bizarre.

    • eduardo odraude says

      Nov 16, 2016 at 10:44 am

      I guess Mathias is like Walter Duranty, the NYT journalist who was praised by Stalin, denied the mass starvation happening in the Soviet Union, and reported Soviet propaganda uncritically as news.

    • judy says

      Nov 17, 2016 at 11:58 am

      Chris is a PAID PIMP for ATT bought out the Huff and Puff post. When the crazy’s come for him or his bldg. watch him blame the Christians or anyone else

  5. Don McKellar says

    Nov 16, 2016 at 10:47 am

    The MSM meltdown is highly amusing. I picked up the complete news channel package on my cable box the day after Trump was elected and it has been AMAZING television! CNN, MSNBC — they’re going crazy. Stark, raving bonkers. Rachel Maddow had a meltdown one day, tears in her eyes as she glowered at the camera, Matthews on “hardball” has been completely flabbergasted, not sure what the hell he wants to say most of the time, all these left-fascist mouthpiece politicians like Elizabeth Warren making all these demands, Harry Reid bouncing off the walls and spewing lies about Bannon, the lunacy is all in high-pitch! One ridiculous lie after another as they become more and more desperate! That one about Trump trying to get top secret clearance for all his children while they run his companies was so completely preposterous I couldn’t believe they’d take it seriously — and yet it drove through a whole news cycle with all these “experts” weighing in! I must say that this Huffington Post piece is hugely disappointing — in the fevered pitch of MSM that is the President Trump era, the Huffington Post is going to have to step up its game. They need a left-fascist version of Alex Jones or something.

    I can only imagine the huge smile on Trump’s face as he takes it all in high above in Trump Tower.

    • G says

      Nov 16, 2016 at 12:13 pm

      Here, in the UK, the BBC condemn DT almost every other sentence at every opportunity. Four or maybe five weeks ago, at the time (pre election) when it was suggested that our Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson had approached Obama to discuss whether joint military action in Syria was feasible, Sarah Montague, a Presenter on the BBC’s ‘Flagship’ early morning news programme, ‘Today’, said, “there’s not likely to be any decision until the new President – Hilary Clinton – is sworn in……”. The BBC has an absolute distaste for those who do not vote in accordance with their political point of view which is left/liberal multiculturalist, pro-Islam, homosexual/transgender. They’re still smarting over Brexit. A joy to behold!
      Go! Donald, Go! Many right thinking Brits will support you in your efforts to halt the liberal/left madness spreading through the World!

      • Judi says

        Nov 16, 2016 at 2:44 pm

        Not just the BBC, Channel 4 are just as guilty. They cannot find one nice thing to say about him. I don’t recall this bias when Odumbo was elected.

  6. Tom Thumb says

    Nov 16, 2016 at 11:06 am

    The Southern Poverty Law Center is the enemy of the United States of America.

    • Oliver says

      Nov 16, 2016 at 11:43 am

      I had read a few years back that the SPLC only hired white lawyers and white executives. Don’t know if true now

    • judy says

      Nov 17, 2016 at 12:02 pm

      Southern Poverty Center Unable to put down the word” Law” are LIARS most of the time. Head was on TV and even looks evil. Good at stirring up trouble. How much tax $ do they get from us?

  7. Jack Diamond says

    Nov 16, 2016 at 11:32 am

    And Trump has reportedly brought Frank Gaffney (of “The Muslim Brotherhood in America” series) on as an advisor. So, he has no aversion to “notorious Islamophobes” (SPLC). “Gaffney told radio show Breitbart News Daily that one of Trump’s most important tasks will be “stopping, designating, rolling up the Muslim Brotherhood in America as the terrorist organization it is.”

    “It’s going to be vital to everything else he’s trying to do. We’ve got to stop taking counsel from them, direction from them, and allowing them to operate in our midst subversively, and that’s what’s been going on for some fifty years now,” he said.

    http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/306301-reports-trump-team-brings-on-adviser-known-for-anti-islam

    The victimology is just beginning. As for Mathias, he mocks RS’s claims about Islam as if they are self-evidently absurd, “extravagant and often provably false” (for instance?), relying on the (willful) ignorance of his audience about the teachings and tenets of Islam and the facts on the ground. Which is to say every assertion is provably true and matters of established doctrine. Going after the MB (“rounding up Muslims”) will be compared to the Holocaust by the likes of the HuffPo, not to mention all their friends in high places. Keith Ellison will even start to cry.

    • Shmooviyet says

      Nov 16, 2016 at 12:34 pm

      The Gaffney news is terrific– these are precisely the men Trump needs, so he can begin to “find out what’s going on” and will never repeat Bush’s RoP tripe.

      “Keith Ellison will even start to cry.”
      An ugly sight, but I’d pay to see it again.

    • billybob says

      Nov 16, 2016 at 7:16 pm

      The Muslim Brotherhood and all their offshoots such as CAIR and the student’s associations need to be humbled and made to “feel themselves subdued”.

  8. Jay Boo says

    Nov 16, 2016 at 11:45 am

    Stroking the Circle Jerk

    One unreliable source uses another as PROOF of their truth.

  9. G says

    Nov 16, 2016 at 11:54 am

    No need to defend your position Mr Spencer. If anyone questions anyone’s authority to discuss or debate The Cult of Submission, Islam, I always refer them to the Quaran of which a number of copies are freely available on the internet. Simply reading that document and the hate speech it contains will be more than enough to convince the sceptical of what Islam is all about.

  10. Mac-101 says

    Nov 16, 2016 at 12:00 pm

    The most amusing thing is that THEY are doing ALL they can to paint Bannon and Trump as Anti-Semites when the proof is that these two will be the most pro Israel US officials to have power since the creation of Israel. Since that hasn’t worked, now he is an Islamophobe. They’ll keep throwing stinky stuff against the wall till THEY can git the stuff to stick!

  11. Shmooviyet says

    Nov 16, 2016 at 12:15 pm

    Well– for once, they found an accurate source of information about islam.
    Unfortunately the majority of loyal readers won’t bother to look further into RS’s “claims” for themselves.

  12. Wellington says

    Nov 16, 2016 at 12:38 pm

    Just one more example that mendacity and Leftism go hand-in-hand, rather as does mendacity and Islam. Thus it is fitting for this reason (there are of course others) that Leftism and Islam are allies, though what the leftists don’t get is that Islam will eventually be only too willing to destroy Leftism if it gets the chance since for Islam all that eventually matters is Islam. Leftists, for whatever stupid reasons, don’t get this. Well, fitting again since leftists don’t get a lot of things. Living in Leftworld truly does terrible things to the mind. And so, of course, does Muslimthink.

  13. Westman says

    Nov 16, 2016 at 1:41 pm

    Even though Christopher Mathias has made some distorted attacks on Mr. Spencer, a person unfamiliar with Islam’s militant ideology may be intrigued by the article to learn more. Certainly the half nation who voted for Trump are not fans of the SPLC or Huff-n-Puff-Po. A few leftists may wake up and open the door of the left’s echo chamber for some fresh air.

    The sense of panic by the world’s Roman Circus attendees is palpable since learning POTUS-elect Trump is coming to Foggy Bottom. They point to his past “mistakes”, which many of them share, in an abortive effort to assuage their own earned sense of discomfort for the changes that will be required and discomfort for the judgement that has come upon their unworkable values.

    Foreign leaders say they will educate the President-elect into their corrupt ways, Good luck with that. A wise administration will use Mr. Spencer for consultation and send CAIR and the SPLC a writ of divorce.

    • Oliver says

      Nov 16, 2016 at 4:36 pm

      What mistakes? Speaking dirty/obscenely?
      Ted Kennedy killed a woman-driving drunk. His son (or is it nephew) Patrick Kennedy ( formerly Rep. from NH) was (possibly still is) coke head-in and out of rehab, while in Congress.

      Bill Clinton ( could have been a great president- but in 2016 could not get the Dem nomination-too far to the right) is supposed to have raped women, as opposed to consensual sex. (With Monica L.-I was under the impression that it was consensual

      unsubstantiated rumors from 30 years ago?

      Some businesses tanked, others went well. (George McGovern, after leaving the Senate, started and went bankrupt in several businesses; I beleive personally also).

      The media is selective .

      ).

  14. Stan Lee says

    Nov 16, 2016 at 2:01 pm

    What would the Democrat Party be without attempting to assassinate a political adversary’s character?
    After all, the Trump-Republican victory has created the Democrats with plenty of spare time to brush up on their rule book….Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.

  15. Dave says

    Nov 16, 2016 at 3:16 pm

    The Northern Enrichment Round Table NERT gave Bannon their highest rating the full Adam Smith, so Trump has nothing to worrie about ,

  16. Oliver says

    Nov 16, 2016 at 4:39 pm

    Huffington, when married to Mr. Huffington ( far right Rep. Congressman from Southern Cal) was also right wing Rep.

    When they divorced (Mr. Huffington was /is-no clue if he is still alive) (he was the heir to a 9 or so digit oil fortune) was gay, and their children preferred to stay with him. (Judge felt that the children old enough to make the decision). Huffington Post started with the divorce settlement money.

    Guessing, to get back at her right wing ex- became far lefty.

  17. billybob says

    Nov 16, 2016 at 7:36 pm

    Pamela Geller has an excellent article on this too with even more details at…
    http://pamelageller.com/2016/11/huffington-post-hacks-for-islam.html/

    One thing that struck me is that we are being unkind to Christopher Mathias when perhaps we should give him a little encouragement. Afterall, it appears that he has quoted Robert Spencer (and other anti-Jihad champions) accurately and extensively. I think that is a huge leap forward for the Huff. There is nothing wrong with having an opinion as long as you supply the facts. Mr. Mathias probably thinks that by quoting these people he is exposing them, but in fact, he is giving them a platform. Thanks to him, Huff readers who are not totally blind may actually follow up on his sources (Robert et al) and finally discover the horrible truth about Islam.

  18. Merklexit says

    Nov 17, 2016 at 12:11 am

    next up: “Bannon was feted by ‘ZOG'”… (oops their prejudice is exposed) [“prej-slip”?]

    and

    “Bannon is a Terrorist who makes heads explode!”

    and then,

    “Bannon eats bacon.”

    so, funny and entertaining to watch them piss themselves and slander and lie – so much better that they are LOSERS.

    Exposed media is shameless; no, actively proud of their prejudice and manipulations…

  19. melancholy observer says

    Nov 17, 2016 at 8:40 am

    I have been watching and listening to the lying bilge vomitted out of the Southern Poverty Law Centre for some years now. Is it any wonder that since their purpose is the promotion of a massive anti-white, not just non-white majority in the United States that they should lie about and defame Steve Bannon. Isn’t it high time that true environmentalists and people with any moral courage stand up in force against this cunning well-funded and scandalous outfit. Oh, and I believe George Soros is a funder of this shameful twister of the truth.

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