Sunday, October 04, 2009

Becoming the MSM

Huntley and Brinkley, 1968

I’m about to pay a brief visit to territory that most of our readers would rather not re-enter: the Little Green Footballs imbroglio of late 2007 and early 2008.

Yes, I know — the mud in that field has been churned up so thoroughly by now that there’s no earthly reason for us to set foot in it again. But bear with me: there’s actually a method to my madness.

LGF globeRecent events have brought the decline of Little Green Footballs into sharper focus. In the last couple of months Charles Johnson has pronounced anathema against the few remaining blogs — including Power Line and Iowahawk — that he had once held in high esteem.

As Tundra Tabloids says, “Mission completed! No one left to throw under the bus!”

We’re all neo-Nazis now.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

As longtime readers will recall, the trouble began on October 19th, 2007, at the conclusion of the Counterjihad Conference in Brussels. At that time all of us still assumed that Charles Johnson was a friend of our movement. He had been invited to the conference, and we kept him apprised of what we were doing.

When Dymphna and Pamela sent him our press release about the event, he immediately began attacking the Belgian party Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) and Sverigedemokraterna (the Sweden Democrats) for their participation. Several LGF commenters were primed and ready with disinformation provided by such extreme Left sites as Yelloman, Blokwatch, and EXPO. Charles Johnson used their material uncritically, without doing due diligence on it; in fact, he seemed to accept it at face value without any checking at all.

For details concerning the accusations and our refutations of them, see “Suggested Corrections for Charles Johnson”.

Unfortunately, although it took Mr. Johnson but a moment to paste in any given tidbit of disinformation, it took five people on the CVF team six weeks to research, document, and prepare the refutations. By that time (mid-December), Gates of Vienna, Atlas Shrugs, and the Brussels Journal had been excommunicated from Little Green Footballs. Robert Spencer — who had been one of the speakers at the Brussels Conference — was put on probation by LGF, and distanced himself from all the other bloggers who had attended Counterjihad Brussels. Many of the “lizardoids” (registered commenters at LGF) were banned during this time for daring to voice opinions contrary to those of the blog’s owner.

The blog wars raged on sporadically for the next year and a half. A partial side effect was our expulsion from Pajamas Media the following spring. Our blog and Pamela Geller’s became outcasts in some sections of the American blogosphere.

That was a sign of how much influence Charles Johnson wielded back in those days.

As his shift to the Left continued, more and more blogs earned his disapproval, and further legions of commenters were banned. Eventually it became apparent that something was not quite right with LGF, as Andrew Bostom was cast into the Outer Darkness, and early this year Jihad Watch fell to Charles Johnson’s scythe.

Over the last several months the process has accelerated, with Geert Wilders, Oriana Fallaci, Gateway Pundit, Michelle Malkin, Hot Air, and finally Stacy McCain and Dan Riehl being declared racists, white supremacists, fascists, neo-Nazis, and all the other epithets favored by Charles Johnson when describing his enemies.

His metamorphosis now seems to be complete: he is an unabashed Leftist who has repudiated all his former allies on the Right, and spends most of his time attacking Glenn Beck, Christians, tea party protesters, “bigots”, “wackos”, “birthers”, “white supremacists”, Ron Paul supporters, and anyone who criticizes Barack Hussein Obama.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

That, in a nutshell, is the story of the Great LGF Blog War. Charles Johnson’s stature has declined to the point where those who used to remain silent — presumably out of fear of the damage he could do — are now openly discussing his “descent into derangement”.

And they were right to fear the damage he could do. He and PJM helped reduce our traffic for most of a year, and I assume that other blogs had good reason to expect similarly negative consequences if they dared to challenge him publicly.

Then there’s the prospect of that “racism” charge. The baleful influence of politically correct ideology is so pervasive and so complete that even the most stalwart conservative lives in dread of being labeled a “racist”. Once the charge is leveled, it tends to stick, and becomes all but impossible to remove.

As a result, much of the American blogosphere assiduously avoided the LGF conflict.

If the Europeans paid any attention at all to Little Green Footballs, they viewed it with amused contempt. It was obvious that Charles Johnson was ignorant and misinformed about Europe and European political affairs.

To LGF the most dangerous and worrisome trend in Europe is the rising influence of “neo-Nazism”, which to any European outside of the hard Left is a laughable proposition. Neo-Nazis — in Europe and elsewhere — find their natural Jew-hating allies among Muslims, and not in the Counterjihad. Anti-Semitism is indeed rife in Europe, but it is overwhelmingly a product of the socialist and anarchist Left.

The neo-Nazis are a joke, a gaggle of fringe nut-cases massively infiltrated by state intelligence agencies. Nobody but an ignorant American blogger (or EXPO) could take them seriously.
- - - - - - - - -
However, even though the Europeans considered him irrelevant, Charles Johnson was still capable of damaging the transatlantic Counterjihad. His attacks on Lionheart made it that much harder for the English blogger to gain the support he needed in his struggle against persecution by the corrupt British police. Many useful connections between the USA and Europe were at least temporarily damaged or severed. One of the reasons that Vlaams Belang still struggles to gain the same kind of international acceptance granted to Geert Wilders’ PVV is the “neo-Nazi” slander aimed at the party by the European Left, with Charles Johnson acting as its American spearhead.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

WoundedCharles Johnson’s attacks on his enemies were of the sort generally favored by the Left: guilt by association, innuendo, quotes taken out of context or mistranslated, and outright falsehoods. One of his favorite techniques was to post photos with descriptions of their significance supplied verbatim by the disinformation artists who used him so effectively.

Some photos — the cross on the bookshelf, the cartoon rat, etc. — depended on tendentious interpretations for their allegedly damning impact, but others were incorrectly labeled with spurious factual attributions.

To state it plainly: the descriptions of the photos were outright falsehoods, whether intentional or otherwise. Either Mr. Johnson was gulled by agents of the European Left, or he knowingly chose to label the photos falsely.

One such photograph was of Tina Hallgren Bengtsson in a Nazi uniform, which LGF claimed was taken at a Sverigedemokraterna rally. This was patently false, and the misattribution was relatively easy to verify.

Another example was a photograph of a “white power” flag which Charles Johnson said was taken at a “Vlaams Belang rally”, when in fact the event was a VJW (Youth of West Flanders) rally, and had nothing whatsoever to do with Vlaams Belang.

Sometimes even prominent bloggers make mistakes. But Rule #1 of blogging is to correct all errors promptly and post retractions. A blogger’s credibility supposedly hinges on such prompt corrections.

To this day, Charles Johnson has not corrected or retracted these two factual errors, nor any of the others.

And, strangely enough, his credibility hardly suffered at all. His star didn’t begin its descent until he picked fights with some of the big guns in the American blogosphere. Now — two years later — he is finally recognized as a retailer of smears and falsehoods.

Funny about that.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Charles Johnson made his substantial reputation back in October 2004 as one of the major bloggers who helped discredit CBS, Dan Rather, and the forged “Killian Memo”. Now, five years later, he has been brought low by the same sort of behavior — including using a blatantly doctored photograph in an attempt to smear Filip Dewinter — for which he so rightly pilloried CBS.

He has become the Dan Rather of the blogosphere.

Back in those heady days when political blogs first came into their own, the bloggers promised the MSM that they would “fact-check their a**.”

But what about the major blogs? Who will fact-check their a**es?

The answer, in a word, is: nobody.

In December 2007, after I posted the “suggested corrections”, I wrote to most of the major American blogs and requested that they take a look at the documentation we had amassed. I asked them to help us hold Little Green Footballs to account.

It was true that looking into the matter would take a bit of work, and that not all of the source documentation was in English. Still, we had laid everything out in a clear and concise fashion, and checking our work would have been no more arduous than, say, investigating the fonts used in 1972 models of electric typewriters.

But none of them answered my request. No one dared to fact-check a fellow blogger.

I won’t venture an opinion as to why any particular major blogger was unwilling to tackle the blatant falsehoods peddled by Little Green Footballs. I only know that Gateway Pundit, Hot Air, Hugh Hewitt, Instapundit, Michelle Malkin, Power Line, and Wizbang, inter alia, declined to fact-check Charles Johnson.

Now, two years later, Little Green Footballs has jumped a whole lagoon full of sharks. Charles Johnson has become a laughingstock. He is a safe target, and everyone feels free to pile on.

But where were the same people two years ago? Except for Lawrence Auster, Atlas Shrugs, and Gates of Vienna, none of the medium-to-large American blogs was willing to bell the LGF cat.

Remember: even Robert Spencer declined to dissociate himself from Charles Johnson until more than a year after the controversy — and then only after Mr. Johnson savagely turned on him.

And even now, when it has become totally safe to kick Little Green Footballs down the stairs, none of the major American blogs has seen fit to revisit the source of the original conflict, namely the “fake but accurate” material that LGF used against Vlaams Belang and Sverigedemokraterna.

No one seems inclined to state the plain facts: Charles Johnson smeared good people using outright falsehoods that were never withdrawn or corrected.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

The winter of 2007-2008 was a disillusioning time. I discovered that all my heroes had feet of clay.

The people who so zealously pursued the truth where the MSM was concerned showed much less zeal when it came to policing one of their own.

An uncomfortable fact has emerged from all this: when blogs become as big as the MSM, they also become like the MSM.

Presumably in their hearts they’re just as dedicated to the pursuit of truth and the exposure of falsehood as they were when their readership numbered in the hundreds. But now they have additional considerations to take into account.

For example, there are possible book deals, appearances on talking-head news shows, syndicated columns in the newspapers, paid speaking gigs, guest-posting at famous sites, appearances at CPAC, entry into the conservative political networks, etc., etc.

Who would risk all that by sticking his arm into the “racism” tar baby?

And now it’s all in the past, anyway. A footnote in a book of ancient history.

Best to let sleeping dogs lie.

Good night, Chet.

Good night, Dave.

62 comments:

Anonymous said...

Baron wrote: And now it’s all in the past, anyway. A footnote in a book of ancient history.

True. But is there a lesson to be learned, for the war is not over yet - and therefore not ancient history. What are the lessons? Any siggestion?

Baron Bodissey said...

DP111 --

The lesson I took from all of it is that a lot of small blogs (and small groups of activists) are more effective than a handful of famous people. The “army of midgets” can do a better job.

The lure of fame is all but irresistible to an ambitious person, but I suggest that it should be resisted anyway, assuming that one wants to be effective. Prominent people, like politicians, can’t really lead; they can only follow.

Real change occurs at the bottom of the food chain and trickles up.

Félicie said...

"Except for Lawrence Auster, Atlas Shrugs, and Gates of Vienna, none of the medium-to-large American blogs was willing to bell the LGF cat."

Well, this just shows you who people with real integrity are. I hope that some of the other bloggers will admit now that they were blind.

But there is one more thing that is left for Charles to do. He is going to officially toss Israel under the bus. I think he is preparing for it now by criticizing right wing Israeli leaders.

(I noticed that Zombie, the investigative reporter, has been in the dog house lately for "cherry-picking" her images of leftist demonstrations. The blog has done an almost complete 180, with only the Israel issue remaining).

Fjordman said...

I was finished with this case a long time ago. There are only two reasons why somebody behaves the way Mr. Johnson has done. Either they suffer from some personal issues or they have been bribed and/or blackmailed to attack their former "allies." Let us just say that he is a former Leftist who never really left his ideological perversions behind and leave further speculations for later.

I partly agree with the Baron. Smaller blogs can actually be more effective in some cases. Bigger blogs are too concerned about their income, just like the MSM. We here at GoV don't get paid for anything we do, which sucks sometimes, but the good part about this is that nobody can threaten our sponsors or advertisers. We don't have any, which means that we can write whatever the hell we want to, and we do.

Given that he has by now attacked pretty much everybody who does something meaningful and is virtually the press secretary for CAIR I'm actually proud that he attacked us first. He did after all help to bring down one of the most powerful journalists in the Western world but he failed to bring down us, and not for any lack of trying. He hasn't attacked me for a long time. Maybe he considers me to be too far down the food chain, or maybe he knows that I'm smarter than him and that he'll lose. I suspect the former, although I'd of course like to think the latter.

I really don't give a damn by now. After LGF became a far-Leftist website we can treat them just like we treat all other enemies.

Lionheart said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Baron Bodissey said...

Lionheart --

I had to delete and repost your comment because of the long URL you pasted.

---------

Lionheart said...

My initial statement about Charles Johnson seems to ring true...

link

It was obviously only an analogy

Now it is evident to everyone that CJ is batting for the other side, even with his blog on CAIRS resource list, which proves the 'traitor' point.

Little Green Footballs is completely irrelevant to the UK. Although it is good to have the media support of our American relatives, it is not essential, because the fight will go on with or without people writing their opinions over us, our country and our people.

Looks like the Almighty used LGF to shake the tree and see, who was who, and what was what.

Seperating the wheat from the chaff!

God bless you GoV

Lionheart

p.s We now have our own CJ in the embodiment of Douglas Murray.

Treating people of the resistance in England as if we are the enemy, which logically makes us the enemy.

So that being the case we know where he stands for the future.

He might hob nob it with all the big american names and those in Europe but on the ground in England he is now known as a traitor. Just a little more educated and more connected than CJ but with the same motives.

Selling good people out!

Some high level members of the anti-jihad movement in Britain who follow what is unfolding will agree with me on this point.

Rose said...

Good points. And good reminders.

kepiblanc said...

Nice obituary of LGF. And a nice tombstone at that. And today 'The Emperor of the Rottie Empire' hammers another nail in Charles' coffin.

Félicie said...

Dymphna: "There is a purported CIA document circulating the blogosphere which claims that Israel has, at most, 20 years left. "

Ha-ha! I think God has other plans.:)

Félicie said...

"I'm actually proud that he attacked us first."

What a good point!

Lionheart said...

Psalm 105:15 "Do not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no harm."

Lucas said...

Good article, but you forgot to mention the greatest targets in Charles' blog: creationists.

I know that this is a bit unrelated to the kind of posts you do, but at least you could specify that group of people aswell.

Unless if you think that we deserve such "attacks". ;-)

In Hoc Signo Vinces† said...

No lesson, Totalitarianism is about conformity, in this case to apply a hate label on a non-conformist group, the next step in the politically correct conformity process is to deny a nation state the right to exist.

Baron Bodissey said...

Mats --

I didn't forget creationists at all. They are implicitly included in "Christians", since to CJ Christian believers, fundamentalists, and creationists are all essentially the same thing.

There were many other groups that could have been added to my list. But I'm not Walt Whitman, and I try to limit my catalogue rhetoric.

Lucas said...

Baron,
Fair enough.

The Hilltop View of Morris County said...

I see some old and favoured nics
commenting on this thread.
There are many who were banned back
in 2007 that the latest banned have
conveniently forgotten.

To Baron and Dymphna, you both have
shown courage and integrity in standing up for truth and transparency. Good on you.
As to the Charles, follow the money.

best regards,
Maggie aka quark2

jeppo said...

Excellent essay, Baron. Some folks at LGF 2.0/Blogmocracy are wondering if they could have your permission to republish it over there. What do you think?

Underzog said...

I am one of the first people to be banned from LGF back then, because I wouldn't kiss Schmucky's @$$ as regards his smear of Vlam Belang and the website, Atlas Shrugs. I gave my view, Charles said something stupid and vicious that made me lose my temper and then I found I was banned.

Charles is a real joke now, being exposed as a libel blogger/frogger by Glenn Beck, but he was a force back then.

Underzog

ɱØяñιηg$ʇðя ©™ said...

I went to LGF a few months ago out of sheer curiosity. I haven't been back ever since. GoV is far better than that. I enjoy most essayists and commenters here. It's a nice and friendly atmosphere here. :)

Zenster said...

Charles Johnson used their material uncritically, without doing due diligence on it; in fact, he seemed to accept it at face value without any checking at all.

Thereby following in the illustrious footsteps of other MainStream Media giants such as Dan Rather. [rimshot]

Over the last several months the process has accelerated, with Geert Wilders, Oriana Fallaci, Gateway Pundit, Michelle Malkin, Hot Air, and finally Stacy McCain and Dan Riehl being declared racists, white supremacists, fascists, neo-Nazis, and all the other epithets favored by Charles Johnson when describing his enemies.

All of which leads to an interesting observation:

As Liberals along with their fellow Socialist and Muslim travellers continue to overuse the terms "racist" and "Islamophobia" they are quite handily being stripped of all meaning.

Despite the importance of actually discerning racism in its true form, it is far better that these favored code words temporarily lose their potency than for them to remain as functional levers as they are currently used by the Left.

That, in a nutshell, is the story of the Great LGF Blog War. Charles Johnson’s stature has declined to the point where those who used to remain silent — presumably out of fear of the damage he could do — are now openly discussing his “descent into derangement”.

Again, this is a good thing. Both sides of the aisle had better get used to seeing hamburgers being made out of their sacred cows. America's political landscape is in dire need of some re-turffing and its political parties are long overdue for complete overhauls.

To LGF the most dangerous and worrisome trend in Europe is the rising influence of “neo-Nazism”, which to any European outside of the hard Left is a laughable proposition. Neo-Nazis — in Europe and elsewhere — find their natural Jew-hating allies among Muslims, and not in the Counterjihad. Anti-Semitism is indeed rife in Europe, but it is overwhelmingly a product of the socialist and anarchist Left.

Having been to Germany twice in the past year I can safely say that America today has far more neo-Nazis than the Fatherland.

No one dared to fact-check a fellow blogger.

This is moral and ethical cowardice on an intolerable scale. As in any court of law, so must it be in the blogosphere: THE TRUTH IS THE BEST DEFENSE.

Who would risk all that by sticking his arm into the “racism” tar baby?.

Which is why I note how important it is that Liberals be allowed to flog "racism" to death with their inappropriate and libelous overuse of the term.

Finally, I too am obliged to commend Gates of Vienna for its integrity in emphasizing ethical conduct. Being somewhat late to this entire keruffle, the expulsion from Pajamas Media was a bellwhether that cemented my own doubts about the blogosphere's commitment to veracity.

The work of El Inglés (for which GoV was banished), was so vital in illuminating Europe's stark options and bleak future that not discussing it openly seemed a far greater crime than burying such work beneath convenient and inappropriate condemnation.

Thank you, Gates of Vienna, for steering by your own lights. Today, they shine just that much more brightly as other stars rightly begin to fade.

Crusader Rabbit said...

An excellent article.

I slept through this particular "blogwar" and am just now waking up. What a horrible hangover.

Keep up the good work.

William Teach said...

This little blogger stood up for y'all, and I am glad to see that the big folks finally got their a**es in gear. Long past time.

Keep the faith, and keep up the good work!

Dymphna said...

@jeppo --

usually bloggers do a big excerpt and then link to the remainder.

A rule I learned from Bill Quick.

Anonymous said...

I think I posted a total of 7 or 8 comments on LGF before I got banned. I was found guilty of the crimes of blasphemy and lese-majeste. Stepped on Charlie's toes once too many.

He NEVER had a clue about Europe or European politics. All he ever thought he knew, he got from far left political hooligans. Some commenters tried to differentiate but there was always such a frenzy among the commenters, who would lick the Johnson's hand first, that the noise of all those Pavlovian dogs drowned out the voices of reason on that blog forever.

Charlie had his chance. He screwed up. He became a leftist.

Baron, Johnson does not even deserve this obit!

Just dig the guy a very shallow grave next to a public pissoir ...

TC

Profitsbeard said...

As someone who disagreed with Chuckie the Monitor Lizard in his comment section many moons ago... when the GoV and Fjordman slanders started, and the Komodo Maoist Purity Campaign began... and who was instantly banned for the Thoughtcrime of Not Toeing The Party Line, I knew this clown was heading for the reefs of his of folly.

May his little dinghy disappear under the sea of his own delusions.

And may the scum left behind disperse.

Stalin's sockpuppet Lavrentiy Beria would have loved the ppurging dolt.

jeppo said...

Thanks Dymphna, I'll let them know.

laller said...

Personally, I laughed my way through most of the blogwar. I still laugh. Obviously I wasn't a "participant", as I don't have a blog. I was and am just a "spectator", so maybe that's why.
Now, I didn't laugh at GoV, Atlas or any of the other blogs/blogowners on that side of the conflict, but at the opposing side and the "fence-sitters". Mostly because it had been obvious to me for a long time that their views seemed to be in conflict with eachother and this issue made those conflicting views shine bright as the sun.

Regards

P.S.
If anyone with an LGF account reads this, could you ask CJ if Germany is a fascist/totalitarian state? In CJ's last attack on Wilders he said banning books and wanting to change the status of islam from religion to political was totalitarian or some such. Well, Germany bans books and various other things, and they continually refuse to recognize scientology as a religion, classifying it as a business... It's just a thought, but I'd love to see CJ's reply-

Anonymous said...

The war is not over by any means. All the combatants are still in place. In the blogosphere all that has happened is a re-allignment of the blog combatants. It was inevitable that the attempt to have an anti-Islam "blog central" would fail. As this war is going to last a long time, there is no assurance that this is the last re-allignment. Besides, there is a real war going on.

Given that this is going to be the case, what the blogs need to do is to maintain their allegiance to the cause, but not get so close, as to break apart due to any perceived doctrinal divergence or hurt feelings. A loose federation, with a general goal of not allowing totalitarian ideologies to gain traction in the West, should be the way forward (Baron- remember stealth when dealing with a liberal society) . Unity can then be maintained when egos are not threatened, or when the front is attacked by the liberal MSM.

Its still a good idea that blogs cooperate loosely, each giving the other a lift by re-posting a particularly good article from the other.

If there is to be another meeting, keep it low key, no fanfare as if D-day landings were going to take place. And no people who intend to dominate the proceedings. As Baron wrote,"Prominent people, like politicians, can’t really lead; they can only follow". The real work will have to be done downstairs. We will know it is bearing fruit when politicians are scampering to join us.

It is going to be a bitter fight fight. We will need faith to sustain us, faith to not lose hope, and above all, not hate our enemies or detest our once allies.

Anonymous said...

Zenster wrote: Despite the importance of actually discerning racism in its true form, it is far better that these favored code words temporarily lose their potency than for them to remain as functional levers as they are currently used by the Left.

Excellent. So let us too play the game.

Gaeidhil said...

After having spent six solid years as a researcher I can safely say that CJ knows sweet f-all about the complex dynamics of the global jihad. He just happened to ride the wave at the right time and accumulate a coterie of flying monkeys to be his jackboot squad. He is a limp dick of epic proportions.

Gaeidhil said...

Oops!
I think I broke the decorum qualifications on that last comment.
mea culpa!

Baron Bodissey said...

Jeppo --

Dymphna's right about the normal decorum for blogging, but I don't sweat it with my own posts. Re-post what you want, give credit & link to the original, and that's fine with me.

Cugel said...

I haven't visited LGF at all or thought much about it since I was banned last November (not as "Cugel," of course). The circle of tolerance was then shrinking, but now it sounds as though he's contesting for the Stalinist Show Trial of the Year award. Pity!

I don't know what moves the man, but cash under the table from the Alinsky-ites seems a possibility, although he did support McCain last year. Or it may be that he has become convinced that he sits at the right hand of the deity.

An "emeritus," wouldn't you say, Baron?

Morgan said...

The lesson I took from all of it is that a lot of small blogs (and small groups of activists) are more effective than a handful of famous people. The “army of midgets” can do a better job.

You're right. It was the "poisoned" bloggers who saw what LGF was (and still is) and what GoV was (and still is), and it was the "poisoned" bloggers who told the truth regardless of what Charles Johnson could do.

Your blog quickly became and remains one of my favorite blogs. Keep fighting the good fight.

Cugel said...

Afonso, I apologize for being late to respond, especially after you gave so much, but I did leave a comment on the thread of "sadness." Thank you again for introducing me to the sad soul of Portugal. It will take me a few readings even to begin to understand.

Unknown said...

Couple things:

If you're not aware, Johnson and Roger Simon parted ways over a year ago, and Johnson no longer has any involvement in PJM. In fact. Johnson accused PJM of being a racist site through his usual 6-degrees MO of connecting PJM to Stephen Green to Stacy McCain to some racist group.

Second, another big flip Johnson did was WRT climate change. We can have differences of opinion on the issue, but your description of his MO rings very true, because his style of argumentation consists of referring to articles that he doesn't understand as "proof".

His night of the long knives seems to be winding down, because he's literally burned through all of his conservative commenters; over 500 in September alone.

It's over.

Ilíon said...

Wasn't Charles Johnson *always* a leftist, or, at best, a "liberal?" Wasn't he one of those "9/11 converts" from liberalism to conservativism?

Looks to me as though his conversion didn't really take, sort of like the seed which fell on the stoney ground.

Baron Bodissey said...

Zimri, you posted this on the wrong thread.

What did he ban you for?


—————

Zimri said…

Some of MY thoughts. These may hold some interest to you, as one of your detractors at the time, and (most of the 2007 to early 2009 period) a lizard in good standing.

* I read your commenters at the time, and was unamused. Some made racist and exclusionary (based on race) comments. You didn’t delete them at the time at which we accessed them. At LGF we had those trolls too, but in 2007 they got banned faster than yours.

* The support of Christianity, any Christianity, as an alternative to Islam was wrong headed. There are many forms of Christianity. Some are poison. I would not trust most Orthodox denominations. Serbs in the former Yugoslavia had a wonderful time bashing the heads of Catholic Croats. That tells me that Serbian Orthodoxy, given the resources of caliphist Islam, would behave like caliphist Islam. I’m sure we could have a merry old time saying whether the Catholics, Orthodox, or even Protestants were in the right or wrong; but when I was watching, early 1990s, it was the Serbs who were doing the shellings and murders.

* I don’t see immigration of well-adjusted populations as a problem. If 20,000 people from Somaliland wanted to move here and they were serious about making it here, I would be fine with that. I’m on your side as to the Mogadishu riffraff in Minneapolis; but that is because that particular group were always known to be violent Islamist riffraff, not because they’re black or foreign or such. This is a distinction I didn’t see your site making.

(A postscript. Dymphna herself, at least as to racism, is blameless. I did read her supporting Englishmen of African descent as truly English when they supported English culture. Before I saw that, I had been tarring her as nothing more than (IIRC) “a contributor to a white-nationalist blog”. I offer my sincere apologies to her. Not sure I should offer such to you, yet; nor to your blog.)

10/04/2009 11:05 PM

PRCalDude said...

Then there’s the prospect of that “racism” charge. The baleful influence of politically correct ideology is so pervasive and so complete that even the most stalwart conservative lives in dread of being labeled a “racist”. Once the charge is leveled, it tends to stick, and becomes all but impossible to remove.

In other words, they're all completely worthless.

"Racist." What does that even mean - you want to live unmolested in your ethnic homeland and don't want to give it away to foreigners? Didn't we call such people 'patriots' a short time ago?

Wow. We'll look back on this period of our collapse (provided the victors don't completely write the history of it) and wonder what we were thinking. How could the fear of one little word send us all running for cover afraid of speaking obvious truths?

Baron Bodissey said...

Zimri --

Our commenters are who they are. Their opinions are often different from mine. Yes, some of them are racists. So are a lot of people, of all races. Strange but true.

I don’t delete comments for their expressed racism, or any other opinion. I delete them if they insult other commenters, or call names, or make ad-hominem arguments, or are off-topic, or are obscene, or incite violence.

Dymphna deletes them if there are more than four per commenter per thread, or if they go over 500 words.

When I say “free speech”, I mean exactly that. People are entitled to hold any opinion they want, so long as they express it civilly. That’s the rule I believe in and try to stick to.

Fortunately for us, the most repugnant opinions are very difficult to express in a civil fashion. That’s what keeps the discussions here relatively pleasant (most of the time).

PRCalDude said...

Some are poison. I would not trust most Orthodox denominations. Serbs in the former Yugoslavia had a wonderful time bashing the heads of Catholic Croats.

This comment is other garbage. There are often full-fledged neo-Nazi rallies in Croatia. Much of what you've been taught about the Serbs during the 90s came from...wait for it...the Albanian Muslims.

I don’t see immigration of well-adjusted populations as a problem. If 20,000 people from Somaliland wanted to move here and they were serious about making it here, I would be fine with that. I’m on your side as to the Mogadishu riffraff in Minneapolis;

It's not just Minneapolis. They've raised plenty of hell in Tennessee and San Diego also. They have a madrassa in San Diego. How do you call someone or some group who subscribes to a creed that calls for the hate of kuffar 'well-adjusted?' Somalis in San Diego tried to break into my friend's house by kicking down her door over some pot her brother took.

(A postscript. Dymphna herself, at least as to racism, is blameless. I did read her supporting Englishmen of African descent as truly English when they supported English culture.

Who made you judge? Englishmen "of African descent" have an astronomically high crime rate compared to the white English (ie, the actual English) so the actual English have a right to decide they don't want any more of them in their country. Is that "racism" in your book?

Free your mind from the PC mental-slavery, maaaaaan.

Darayvus said...

Since you ask, I'll blow my second comment of this thread here...

Charles banned me because I wrote a long post on his comments explaining how his site had become an "anti-conservative blog".

(The rest of the story: I behaved as a knight errant of LGF for a couple months after that, at places like Ace of Spades - supporting him and certain of his causes against what I then still saw as smears. Then LGF went and supported that p.o.s., Van Jones. At that point I figured out that CJ was in darkness and wasn't coming back to the light anytime soon. I'm a little bitter...)

But I see from a comment above that, still, I would definitely not be any happier here. I'd be spending all my time fighting your own. It appears also that I may assume that my second and third points have been answered, tacitly, by proxy.

The least I can do, since I won't be apologising, is to thank you for letting me air my stance here. Not sure if it's the Orthodox Church of Charles scripture as of 2008 or so. It was close enough then to keep me from being banned, anyway.

ɱØяñιηg$ʇðя ©™ said...

Zimri, in my country (Sweden) the somalis are among the most hated people of all immigrants. Arabs and albanians comes on a close second and third place. These there ethnics has something in common. One is extreme criminality. Another is islam. You can call me a racist all you want. Not in a million years I will change my mind about these people. I'm just sick and tired of them. My country was a nice place before we got all these scumbags here. They few good somalis I could probably count on my fingers and the few good arabs on my toes. The few are not worth the massimport. They're nothing more than woe and misery for us. Last year we had way over 5000 rapes. Statistically thet is much more than your country have and USA is way bigger than Sweden. But that's cultural enrichment for you. That is what you can look forward to if these people spread outside Minneapolis and a few other cities.

Dymphna said...

@Larry--

If you're not aware, Johnson and Roger Simon parted ways over a year ago, and Johnson no longer has any involvement in PJM..

Yes, people told us about it.

Second, another big flip Johnson did was WRT climate change...

Chazzer flips constantly, and it will continue until he has flipped himself back to 9/10. He has to do this in order to get ready for his left wing commenters.

IMO, Chazzer's traffic is in the nethersphere...his only chance to recover that and continue to earn money is to appeal to his former enemies, who are, in actuality, his original friends. Goin' back to his roots...

Félicie said that he may dump Israel. I hadn't thought of that, but it would be in keeping with his pro-Obama stance.

YoelB said...

I share some of Zimri's concerns, and not just about the Orthodox and the Serbs; there were high ranking Slovak Catholics who were vicious antisemites and Nazi collaborators.

There are certainly some troubling things about some European nationalists, but some – VB, among others – have taken firm public stands that make it at least as justifiable to ally oneself with them as it was for the Allies to include the USSR after the German invasion in 1941.

Thinking of the choice that Churchill – anti Nazi and anti Communist as he was – faced in allying himself with Stalin – helps me to understand what went wrong at LGF.

There is no question that including the USSR in the Alliance was essential to Allied victory; Churchill understood this, as his famous quip in 1941 after the German invasion of the USSR demonstrates:
If Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons shows.
Charles Johnson doesn't believe that the war against Sharia is to the point at which allying oneself with the European anti Sharia forces is justified.

In fact, he seems to think that wide swathes of American Christianity are not fundamentally different from the jihadis.

He also doesn't buy the linkage between the Progressive movement in the USA and fascist/totalitarian thinking; in both cases he is dangerously in error.

Dymphna said...

@Zimri--

read your commenters at the time, and was unamused. Some made racist and exclusionary (based on race) comments. You didn’t delete them at the time ...

You, sir, have been brain-washed by the p.c. multi-culti indoctrination that has been the ruination of our culture.

It is normal to prefer one's own kind. Watch a black child back away from a white grown-up or vice versa. They're not racist, they're human (i.e., social) beings.

As our circles of inclusion grow, those we consider "our own kind" may come to number people of different backgrounds, skin colors, etc. Or they may not.

Europeans have it harder than Americans. They haven't had our opportunities to be a part of the melting pot. That is a disadvantage because they see our racial tensions as not being worth the effort of attempting to live with one another. That's a basic deprivation they can't overcome, anymore than I can overcome the limits of my experience.

So when, say, Afonso, says he prefers white women, I understand the experience of blackness he has: all immigrant, all members of former Portuguese colonies who cannot assimilate even if they were permitted to do so. But you have to have some grasp of Portugal's history to know that. Otherwise, you would simplistically eliminate him as a "racist" when he's actually a "preferist"...and brave enough to say so.

We're all racists, every single human being on this earth. The word is meaningless. Might as well accuse people of being human.

I'm no less racist than the Baron.

flenser said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
rickl said...

Actually, the first wave of LGF bannings occurred in 2006, when a number of long-time veterans got the heave-ho. This was long before the "blog wars" started.

Many of them formed the blog Gulf Coast Pundit, now known as Grouchy Conservative Pundits. I wasn't banned at the time, and others at that site can provide a better history than I can.

I left LGF for unrelated reasons around May 2007, and never looked back. Much later I discovered that I had been banned posthumously, probably because Charles discovered that I was posting at GCP.

I'd say that most of us at GCP like GoV, and you'll be in our blogroll, if and when we ever get around to putting together a front page.

I'd also like to say that I haven't been reading GoV as regularly as I used to during the past couple of years. That has nothing to do with the blog wars, though. It's because as an American, I've been more preoccupied with the American political scene lately and our descent into communism/fascism and have had less time to follow the European situation. But I do check in now and then, and I'm still grateful for all the work you do here.

Dymphna said...

Zimri has the right to maintain his nic on this blog w/o having his name put up by someone else. It's his choice.
==================

rickl--

Nice to see you, and other old timers, here, however briefly.

I understand your preference for American news. It is my own...I'm just not up to posting as often as I used to.

And I don't want to follow the relentless news cycle. I find that whenever I do, my posts are more shallow...they need time to germinate.

However, sometimes I am so shocked by an event-- e.g., the hubris of the Obamas in Copenhagen, that I go ahead and write about it anyway.

However, it's important to realize that western civilization is a tapestry...start pulling out the threads in one place and the coherence is ruined everywhere.

That's why Ireland's recent failure is so portentous.

Crusader Rabbit said...

It should be added that the proprietor of said blog now bans for sins of omission. It is apparent that failing to post your undying devotion to him is sufficient "cause".

One had best not be the first to stop applauding when the illustrious party secretary enters the room.

Zenster said...

DP111: Excellent. So let us too play the game.

As someone who truly enjoys your lucid commentary at this site, I can only say: "Let the games begin!"

flenser said...

Zimri has the right to maintain his nic on this blog w/o having his name put up by someone else. It's his choice.




Zimi posts under both his real name and this one (Zimi) at Ace of Spades and other sites. He's not being outed.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Zenster

Some game playing here

Satire: 'Youths'
Race - Islam

YOUTHS

levi from queens said...

Perhaps Discarded Lies is only a small and diamond-like blog, but Evariste and Zorkmidden were the heart of lgf in 02 and 03 and 04. They were banned and delinked years before GOV and Atlas, for speaking truth. While I greatly respect both of these blogs, ancestor-worship does have its dues.

Ilíon said...

Ah, I have some small acquaintance of Evariste and Zorkmidden.

Imperialistu' said...

Baron, I have always kept you and Dymphna in high regard. You have always been always fair with us, Europeans, and I apreciated that, especially when I saw what happened because of your honorable stance: you were "cast out into the darkness" by the comissars of the anglosphere. I can't thank you enough.

God bless you and God bless America!

As for those bloggers who refused to take sides, I don't think i'd be to harsh on them if i'd call them spineless cowards. Heh, I don't see them apologize any time soon.

Keep up the good fight.

Baron Bodissey said...

Imperialistu' --

Thank you. We experienced a lot of support from European bloggers, and from small blogs and ordinary readers in the USA.

It was only the large American blogs that seemed to be susceptible to Johnsonitis.

Anonymous said...

Emperor Misha apologizes to GoV:

http://nicedoggie.net/index.php/archives/3148/comment-page-1#comment-27702

"I wish I could say that I’d earned it, but I haven’t. As a matter of fact, I owe sites like Gates of Vienna an apology. When the blogwar between Chuckles the Prevaricator and them (as well as other good people), I didn’t pick up on just how serious it was. I thought it was just a spat and thus it flew under my radar."

Chechar said...

I agree with everything that Dymphna has said on “racism”, brainwashing, etc. In fact, politically-correct views similar to Zimri’s views were answered exactly two years ago, here in GoV, by the commenter known as Gringo Malo. He wrote: “In any case, whether third world immigrants can be transformed into perfectly good Americans or Europeans is a question that should never have been asked. What do we gain by radically transforming the ethnic balance of our countries?”

Gringo Malo is right. I myself don’t believe that non anti-Semitic white nationalism is about hate. It’s rather about survival.

Ilíon said...

The issue of 'survival' isn't about biological race or ethnicity, it's about culture -- at any rate, with respect to America, which is not an ethnos in the customary sense; perhaps things are slightly different with respect to the more traditional nations of Europe.

The real issue is specifically about the conscious (and also unconscious) efforts to destroy our common Western culture and our individual national variants on that.

And, the matter of the fact is, it is *we* who are actively destroying our cultures. And it isn't *merely* the leftists in our midst -- who hate everything (but especially Western culture) and desire only to destroy, and are consciously working to destroy the Western nations -- who are destroying "the West." We regular folk, who do not consciously desire to destroy our nations and cultures, are nonetheless frequently doing our parts to aid in this destruction: it all traces back to the rejection of and hatred of Biblical religion, and that is typically rooted in hatred for the sexual ethics demanded by Biblical religion.


Going on about white nationalism isn't going to save us: that's just going to lead to reprise of the twentieth century.

If you want to save your culture, your society and your nation, the only hope is in a national repentence and a return to Christianity. This return must be authentic, rather than strategic; doing it "because it's good for the children" won't work.

There is a seeming paradox here -- nations don't "come to Christ," only individuals do. And "coming to Christ" isn't *about* saving your culture or your nation, it's about being saved from yourself, it's about being transformed into a new being.

Chechar said...

@ “The issue of 'survival' isn't about biological race or ethnicity, it's about culture…”

Wrong. Who would give a sh***t about a thoroughgoing brownish California of the late 21st century that looks more like Mexico than the predominately white California of the 1950s? In my blog I have an extremely brutal phrase that really crosses the line (my specialty :) “I’d infinitely prefer a global albeit Aryan Caliphate than a bladerunnerized democratic England or a multiracial Europe, or—since I am thinking in filmic terms—[an American] Zion like the one in the second and third Matrix films: a futuristic city in which most citizens are an ugly mixture of white, black and brown peoples.”

And Christendom is almost gone, man. We better start elaborating the next paradigm, or myth if you like, that will appeal to the surviving Westerners before it’s too late.