Andrew Sullivan was probably the original political blogger I discovered after 9/11.
I used to read him all the time in 2001-04,
until he turned against the war.
Andrew Sullivan
I used to read all the time.
He used to be on my list of
Writers on politics that I like,
before Bush's anti-gay marriage policy drove him mad.
I have some sympathy for Sullivan.
I had problems with Bush too.
But Gay Marriage is simply not as important
an issue as the War on Islamist Terror.
Sullivan just can't swallow his pride and accept this.
He abandoned Bush because of this issue,
and spent years trying to justify it.
In 2004 he became obsessed with the Abu Ghraib scandal,
and endlessly wrote as if it was important,
and as if the WMD intelligence scandal was important,
and so on.
In the 2004 election, he supported Kerry,
and wrote
as if the
Swift Boat Veterans For Truth
were Republican dirty tricks, rather than what it was
- 200 people who hated Kerry for 30 years
and this was their moment.
He has switched sides and is now trying desperately to pretend that the Democrats
are strong on defence.
The old Andrew Sullivan
- the one who realised we are in a war to the death
with people who want to exterminate homosexuals
and lots of other groups
- is gone, sadly.
Andrew Sullivan v. Christopher Hitchens, Apr 2008:
Sullivan is demolished by Hitchens,
as he (Sullivan) struggles to defend the dodgy, evasive Obama and
his mentor Rev. Wright.
I haven't read Sullivan in years, but I am still shocked.
How far he has fallen.
He has become Simon Jenkins
or Geoffrey Wheatcroft, a hopeless confused muddle,
all because he is driven by another agenda.
Survey of Andrew Sullivan's readers, Feb 2008.
Despite him claiming to be a "conservative", only affluent left wingers read him now.
"2.5 percent of you describe yourselves as very conservative; 9.6 percent as conservative; 33.3 percent as moderate; 38.1 percent as liberal; and 16.5 percent as very liberal.""Only 22 percent of you earn $50K or less. Another fifth earn between $50K and $75K. Well over half have household income of over $100K a year."
"From the very beginning, of course, the Bush administration's left-wing enemies in the U.S. and Europe
were hysterically opposed to the push for Middle Eastern democracy.
A significant number of right-wing pundits
also proved themselves to be sunshine patriots ...
bailing out of the hard, dirty work of war and cultural transformation as soon as the predictable resistance arose.
But that's politics.
In Washington, if you're looking for a brave and steadfast ally, you need to buy a dog.
Fortunately our warriors battling away in Najaf and Samarra and Anbar province didn't surrender to the Beltway gloom
that defeated most of our media and political elites."
Charles Johnson on Andrew Sullivan, 5 Apr 2008:
"Not a shred of the post-9/11 Sullivan remains; all that's left is a rhetoric-spewing empty shill for "progressive" causes."
Today, that's how a lot of people feel about Charles Johnson.
For years
I liked LGF and Charles Johnson.
He was secular,
pro-science,
classically liberal, and hostile to Islamism
because he believes in the Enlightenment.
I always liked him,
at least until his blog war
with Robert Spencer and others.
LGF was a great counter-jihad blog from 2001 to 2008.
But after 2008, it started getting progressively more boring.
First came the tedious blog war and linking war.
Then there is the obsession with creationism.
(I agree with him on creationism, but it's not what I want LGF for.
Professionals like
Richard Dawkins or PZ Myers
do that stuff a million times better than LGF.)
Then, after Obama won, LGF started to get obsessed with right-wing extremists
and other uninteresting people.
If I ever visit now, I usually leave quickly because every entry is
boring.
And it used to be one of the most lively sites on the Internet.
I finally dropped LGF
from my RSS feeds
in 2009.
Charles Johnson, 6 Oct 2006 (back when he was good),
magnificently fisks a useless
Agence France Presse propaganda piece
about the poor impoverished Palestinians:
"People who genuinely want to build a functioning society will start building it.
You can't stop them.
But the Palestinians have proven time and again that destroying the Jewish state takes precedence over creating a hopeful future for their children.
My tears are all dried up when it comes to the plight of the Palestinian people. I'll save my sympathy and support for those who deserve it."
The LGF blog war
started as an argument between LGF and
the following anti-jihad blogs.
But it
escalated to become LGF v. just about all counter-jihad blogs.
The argument began in 2007, mainly
over the nature of Vlaams Belang.
LGF was pointing out their anti-semitic
and neo-Nazi past (and perhaps present).
Some other counter-jihad blogs were defending them as now reformed allies against the jihad.
This, though, rather reminds me of
the claim that the BNP has "reformed".
I find
the sceptical view of these kind of Euro-nationalist groups
the most convincing.
Europe tends to get things wrong.
The French revolution is the American revolution, done wrong (leading to tyranny not democracy).
Europe of course got everything wrong in the 20th century, with fascism and communism,
while the English-speaking world carried on with democracy.
The EU is the United States, done wrong (done with contempt for democracy and states' rights).
Europe does immigration wrong compared to America (not integrating them,
not having a "European dream" for immigrants).
Europe does patriotism wrong compared to America (based on ethnicity not ideas).
And likewise,
Europe is likely to do the counter-jihad wrong too,
confusing it with racism, or white Christian supremacy.
Vlaams Belang
have a
racist, anti-semitic and neo-Nazi past
that they are trying to move beyond.
Whether they have succeeded or not I don't know.
But I would keep my distance for a while.
Robert Spencer:
"There is no doubt that the party has changed.
The question is whether or not the change is genuine or not."
Summary of the case against Vlaams Belang
makes a good point:
"my conclusion is that allying with Vlaams Belang would be strategically inept while providing little value, and would ... sap support for our anti-Islamofascist efforts.
This is the case whether VB is taking a course to reform or not. There is too much evidence from their own sites, manifestos, statements, party publications, and affiliated groups that their leadership is not distant enough from the stance on collaborators, identity politics, and immature political theater to make any alliance with them sane. Even if they are making whole-hearted honest efforts to reform, the track record is just not long enough. (Some in their leadership are I think, some others aren't.)
...
Associating with Vlaams Belang when they bring so little to the cause while carrying so much bad baggage is not only poorly thought out, it's also politically naive."
In short, it is a waste of energy for anyone on the anti-jihad side to attempt to defend
Vlaams Belang. They should just shrug and say: "I can understand why you don't like them.
I think they're reformed, but I understand if you think differently."
Charles Johnson escalates the dispute:
So I find
the LGF view of Vlaams Belang and similar European groups
the most convincing.
I think the blogs that defend Vlaams Belang have made a mistake.
It doesn't mean they are racist
- just that they've made a bad call on allies.
LGF should accept they are wrong but well-meaning,
and they in turn should accept that LGF and others like me
may honestly disagree with them.
But that's not what happened.
Charles Johnson
dramatically escalated the dispute by refusing to
link to people
who don't think VB are racist (like Gates of Vienna).
And then Charles Johnson
escalated further,
by refusing to
link to people who link to people
who don't think VB are racist (like Robert Spencer).
Even though I kind of agree with LGF about Vlaams Belang (!)
I gradually stopped reading LGF
because of this escalating link ban policy.
I agree with
Robert Spencer
that Charles Johnson's behaviour is absurd.
I think we should just not link to racists themselves, and leave it at that.
It got worse.
LGF started claiming that Robert Spencer is a racist.
Unable to quote anything Spencer actually said to support this,
LGF resorted to guilt-by-association,
associating Spencer with the beliefs of others he might have met
or had some contact with.
Simultaneous with this slander, and drift to the left,
LGF began getting really, really boring.
Out of habit, I would visit, hoping for the LGF of old to somehow be back,
and instead be presented with boring posts that would have me out of there in 1 or 2 minutes.
There's only so much you can take before you realise the old LGF is never coming back.
Shame. I liked it.
I cannot think of any major counter-jihad blog
that enthusiastically joins LGF in his war against these blogs.
Most of them are staying out of the way, or opposing him,
or dropping him silently.
LGF links to a lot of left-wing blogs that support him,
but support from any big counter-jihad blogs seems very silent.
When you're in a party of one, it might be a sign that you've got the wrong end of the stick.
I agree with
The Jawa Report on the LGF war, 30 Apr 2009.
He doesn't necessarily support Robert Spencer on all things, but he says:
"I'm not comfortable with the guilt-by-association accusations ... Robert Spencer may be a lot of things, but his views on liberty don't seem too much different than my own. ... Frankly, I'm not sure I understand the roots of the conflict. But from my vantage point the differences here are not irreconcilable. ... Please stop Charles."
Please Charles, Stop, The Jawa Report, September 10, 2009:
"I say this as a friend. Stop this misplaced guilt by association campaign you have been engaged in against Robert Spencer.
Robert is no extremist. You know this. Stop it.
... stop the guilt by association nonsense.
...
It's not even guilt by association. It's guilt by association with those who are guilty of association. Guilt by association, once removed."
Glen Reinsford
of
The Religion of Peace
is totally unimpressed with LGF:
"Filtering out contrary opinion also seems to have deepened Johnson's sense of moral certitude to the point that he is attacking former friends, such as Robert Spencer ...
with unnecessary hair-splitting and flimsy "guilt-by-association" slurs
...
In order to establish that the founder of Jihad Watch is a bigot (or Nazi) who hates Muslims and Jews, it is first necessary to ignore what Spencer actually says about Muslims, Jews, Nazis and bigotry. Once this restriction is in place, an intricate "Six Degrees" linkage is concocted between the hapless Spencer and real-life neo-Nazis
through some sort of Rube Goldberg-like sequence of personal associations.".
Hilarious comment:
"I am just waiting for the post by Charles stating that he is closing his website because he learned that he himself is linked to neo-Nazis through a 28-link chain of association."
The challenge to Charles Johnson from Robert Spencer
nicely expresses my problem with LGF:
"If Charles Johnson really thinks I am a neo-Nazi sympathizer or a racist,
let him produce even one line that I have written to support such a view."
That is, writings by Spencer himself,
rather than by someone else.
If Charles Johnson is ever able to do this,
let me know here.
Sept 2009: "We long ago stopped reading LGF.
Suffice it to say (suffice it for me to say, anyway) that Charles's political inclinations and interests now diverge widely from our own."
2009:
The link is deleted, and replaced with a note:
"Lotta Good Fine Blogs Out There; Why Not Try a New One Instead of Old Ones That Have Gone Off Their Trolley?"
LGF blogroll
is missing a lot of big counter-jihad names now.
LGF has
banned over 1,100 counter-jihad commenters
and de-linked loads of counter-jihad sites, the above and many more
(while they in turn have been de-linking him).
He's heading towards "a Counterjihad of One".
Wikio's ranking of political blogs
(ranking blog influence based on links) shows LGF becoming irrelevant on the right. As at Oct 2009, their rankings show:
Hot Air
The Corner
Michelle Malkin
Gateway Pundit
Power Line
Atlas Shrugs
Dan Riehl
The Jawa Report
Ace of Spades
Jihad Watch
Iowahawk
Blackfive
The Belmont Club
LGF
John Hawkins, September 17, 2009:
"[LGF] used to be the best anti-radical Islam blog on the planet.
... Charles Johnson had something great going on with Little Green Footballs. He was making a difference in the fight against radical Islam. He was making a difference in American politics -- and you can ask Dan Rather about that -- but now, he's just left-of-center attack blog #854. What a waste."
John Hawkins, 2 Dec 2009:
"It's a terrible shame that someone who had the sort of success most bloggers could only dream of, crumpled it up and tossed it away."
As part of its strange mutation into a left-wing blog,
LGF says the War on Islamism is not so important any more, Jan 2010:
"It’s not that the war on terror has finished. It’s never going to be finished, but I think things have reached the point now where it’s not as pressing as it was. Some of the measures we took to protect ourselves against extremists have been pretty effective."
Image from
Tundra Tabloids
mocks the number of counter-jihad people that
Charles Johnson has
"thrown under the bus".
The quote is from
Gates of Vienna, Nov 2008:
"As the arbiter of membership in the Counterjihad, Charles Johnson has finally made it official: he's a Counterjihad of One."
Rifqa Bary
(and here),
high-profile teenage apostate from Islam,
is terrified she will be killed if she is sent back to her family.
On YouTube alone she is getting new death threats every day.
As part of its strange mutation into a left-wing blog,
LGF
is confident there is no danger to her.
She is currently in foster care.
She turns 18 on 10 Aug 2010, and would then be free of her family.
However she faces possible deportation to Sri Lanka where as an apostate her life would be in danger.
She is also seriously ill.
More death threats
here
and
here.
Since 1995.
