Crushing dissent is all the rage on the Left these days. My latest in PJ Media:
Alex Kotch of the aptly-named Sludge Magazine reported Tuesday that various “anti-Muslim nonprofits” have “received funds from one or more of the donor-advised funds investigated by Sludge.” Yes — and so?
“Abbas Barzegar, director of research at Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), told Sludge” that this was a bad thing that must be stopped. Leftist “journalists” are increasingly open about their desire to silence all opposition to the Leftist agenda, and Kotch is an eager Stakhanovite in this effort.
In The Coming of the Third Reich, historian Richard J. Evans explains how, in the early days of National Socialist Germany, Stormtroopers (Brownshirts) “organized campaigns against unwanted professors in the local newspapers [and] staged mass disruptions of their lectures.” To express dissent from Nazi positions became a matter of taking one’s life into one’s hands. The idea of people with opposing viewpoints airing their disagreements in a civil and mutually respectful manner was gone. One was a Nazi, or one was silent — and fearful.
Today’s fascists, such as Kotch, call themselves “anti-fascists” and claim that they’re against “hate.” But like the Nazis, they are totalitarian: Determined not to allow their opponents to murmur the slightest whisper of dissent. Forcibly suppressing the speech of someone with whom one disagrees is a quintessentially fascist act. These fascists will target you for destruction if you oppose jihad mass murder and Sharia oppression of women and others. And so it is that Kotch is going after various charitable foundations, trying to intimidate them into stopping donations to groups that the Southern Poverty Law Center deems to be “hate groups.”
Never mind that the SPLC is incurably biased and viciously inaccurate, lumping in legitimate organizations whose only crime is to dissent from the Leftist agenda with the likes of the KKK and neo-Nazis. What the SPLC’s Heidi Beirich says in Kotch’s article is revealing: “Beirich said the SPLC has a high bar for listing organizations as hate groups. SPLC looks for ‘organizations that demean or debase an entire other group of people based on their inherent characteristics.’ Hate groups are those that issue ‘serious slurs’ — for example, claims that Jews are evil or gay men are pedophiles.”
Well, in that case Jihad Watch (and the American Freedom Defense Initiative, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and the Center for Security Policy, and others that Kotch names) are not actually “hate groups” by the SPLC’s own criterion. I challenge Heidi Beirich and Alex Kotch to come up with a single time that I or any other Jihad Watch writer has demeaned or debased an entire group of people based on their inherent characteristics. And I’m continuing to look into legal options against the SPLC; now that they’ve defined how they decide what qualifies as a “hate group,” it ought to be readily provable that they have defamed me and my organization, and done so willfully and repeatedly.
Kotch unironically turns to Hamas-linked CAIR as an authority. He doesn’t bother to tell his hapless readers that CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case…
Anyway, Alex Kotch and his colleagues may succeed in drying up all the funding that I and others who oppose jihad mass murder and Sharia oppression of women, gays, and others receive. America is entering a very dark period, with half the electorate believing that the other half has no right to express its views and must be silenced. It’s coming down fast. But Alex Kotch will never be able to make up down, or red blue, or the truth falsehood. It will, however, probably only dawn on him that it isn’t “hate” to oppose jihad terror and Sharia oppression when it is far too late. If ever.
Read the rest here.
Kilfincelt says
Kotch is just mouthing the typical blather of our supposedly well-educated media and academic elite which just proves the point that our educational system, particularly at the university/college level, is no longer educating but indoctrinating students. Most of them have no idea what they are talking about. They aren’t
capable of researching anything let alone thinking critically.
I have an example of the lack of intellectual depth among even university presidents. The following was from the current president of the University of Michigan, my alma mater:
“The conflict of discordant ideas and opinions – even when it makes us uncomfortable – is an essential feature of an academic community. At U-M, we are at our best when our discourse is inclusive and welcoming to conflicting ideas and diverse voices.”
So far so good but a couple of paragraphs later:
“Our ability to learn, together, is guided by core values of the University of Michigan including respect, civility and equality. These values are also essential to our educational environment. Speech that is hateful or threatening diminishes learning by inhibiting discussion, and it does not lift up our community.”
The problem, of course, is that hate is a very subjective term so we don’t really know what he means by using the term “hateful”. Furthermore, what is hateful to one person may be the truth to another and, in fact, may be the truth. Kotch and others like him don’t understand this because of the poor state of education in the U.S.
By the way I wrote back to the president and told him the following:
“Great message up until the addition of the phrase “hate speech”. One moment the President is advocating for a free exchange of ideas and then he is shutting that debate down by saying that “hate speech” will not be accepted. Unfortunately, defining “hate speech” can be very difficult. What is “hate speech” to one person may be the truth to another. In fact, the term “hate speech” may be used to silence any discussion that another group might find offensive simply because they want to hide the truth or have no inclination to face it. Furthermore, most speech termed “hate speech” is protected under the First Amendment. Punishing someone for using it may, in many instances, violate that Amendment.”
J D.S says
These do called journalist got indoctrinated in our universities by leftist, socialist .fascist Academia and no one seems to care about cleaning out tHese next of snakes.
J D.S says
ERROR..should read, these nests of snakes.
mortimer says
FASCISM is defined by WHAT YOU DO, KOTCH. Hitler and his brownshirts destroyed the only anti-Nazi newspaper in Germany: the MUNICH POST.
Kotch would have been on their side, no doubt, because his actions reveal he is a true fascist.
FASCISTS like KOTCH are in league with MUTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS which finance the suppression of free speech, just as they helped Hitler clamp down on free speech in Germany.
Kotch is a true FASCIST of the globalist persuasion, but he may fall afoul of the globalists if he ever steps out of line.
Many globalists who broke ranks are now blacklisted. You can be the next on the GLOBALIST blacklist, KOTCH, and there won’t be any journalists left to defend you.
gravenimage says
Robert Spencer in PJ Media: Sludge Magazine Tries to Shut Down Opposition to Jihad Terror
…………….
I’d noted before that Sludge was aptly named.
Lydia Church says
Slime works well too!
gravenimage says
Yep…
Lydia Church says
Dear Robert,
Yes, it really is getting bad all around. I know it will only get worse. I have tried to do my part and get the truth out as best as I could while we still can, and am a person of simple means. Very simple means. And I never know what will be next. Just look at the case with Tommy. He did a fine job exposing what is going on and they silence him (online). People are getting arrested for things like street preaching and informing others out in public. Many are being shut down on the internet. Censorship has many forms and many are afraid as a result. We see it all around. You and your work have been a target for a long time and then what happened in Iceland. I always hold my breath because one day this site may no longer be here. With that said, I just want to say thank you again for all you do. Eventually they will come for us all.
Thank you,
God bless you,
and we love you!
: )
gravenimage says
+1