2001 to 2008, daily read:
Charles Johnson's blog
Little Green Footballs (LGF)
was the leading counter-jihad blog for years after 9/11.
From 2001 to 2008,
LGF was sometimes a daily read for me.
It was where counter-jihad people would go to share links,
expose jihadists and Islamists,
attack the left,
celebrate the killing of Yassin,
the killing of Zarqawi,
and
the re-election of Bush.
2008 to 2009, strange transition:
And then the most incredible thing happened.
Around 2008,
Charles Johnson started fighting with everyone on the right.
He started by making some reasonable points.
But it got worse and worse, until he was fighting with every single person in the counter-jihad
except himself.
Eventually he left the counter-jihad altogether
and turned LGF into a loony left blog.
It is now the opposite of the old LGF.
2009 to date, forget it exists:
I dropped LGF
from my RSS feeds in 2009.
Now I regard LGF as a loony left site.
I enjoyed reading
The Diary of Daedalus
for some years,
to laugh at the new LGF.
But eventually I started forgetting that LGF exists.
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."
Hard to believe now, but as late as 2008
LGF was still a good blog to visit.
See full screenshot.
By 2013,
Charles Johnson is the one spreading Palin-hatred:
"Sarah Palin is on a media tour to promote her silly book
.. and today the blithering half-governor appeared on the Today show with a tasty new right wing word salad, achieving (not for the first time) total incoherence.
...
Speaking of apologies, has John McCain ever apologized for bringing this absolute moron into the right wing limelight?"
See screenshot
part 1 and
part 2.
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.
I'm not really a
Fjordman fan.
For example, he
says
that:
"Islam in any way, shape or form does not belong in the West. Islam, and all those who practice it, must be totally and physically removed from the entire Western world."
Does Fjordman really propose ethnic cleansing of several million people,
and a permanent restriction on freedom of religion?
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 finally dropped LGF
from my RSS feeds in 2009.
Charles Johnson has few allies in this:
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."
Why can't LGF and the Guardian quote Robert Spencer?
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.
Andrew Brown, The Guardian, 18 Aug 2010, writes an entire article against Robert Spencer
and yet nowhere does he bother to actually quote Spencer.
He uses the LGF strategy.
It's all about who once had dinner with who,
who shared a platform with who,
who linked to someone who linked to someone,
and so on.
But no actual quotes from Spencer himself.
He describes Spencer's site as "hate-filled"
and Spencer as part of
"far right hate groups".
Yet there is not a single quote from Spencer to prove this.
Not one!
Andrew Brown, The Guardian, 20 Jan 2011, again slanders Robert Spencer without bothering to actually quote him.
He refers to
"the preachers of hate on both sides, from Robert Spencer to Anwar al-Awlaki".
He compares Spencer to a fascist enemy leader who directs terror against America
and wants to destroy all human rights!
He doesn't bother providing a single quote from Spencer to show any similarity to al-Awlaki.
He doesn't provide any evidence that Spencer is a "preacher of hate".
Apparently Spencer and Geller are to blame for this, because of their campaign against the
Ground Zero mosque.
Charles Johnson
says the attacker's diary
"sounds exactly like the kind of stuff you can find all over Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer's blogs."
And he accuses Spencer and Geller of
"responsibility for creating a climate of hatred and bigotry in which violence flourishes."
"sounds like"?
"creating a climate"?
Very weak tea, Johnson. Very weak.
Why can't you find a quote from Spencer supporting the attack?
Or any such attack.
Why can't you quote Spencer?
He writes an
entire article, 8 Aug 2013, against Robert Spencer without bothering to quote him.
He says Spencer should be banned from debate at any Catholic forum.
He says:
"Mr. Spencer's vile anti-Muslim pronouncements certainly approach the level of bigotry we associate with Holocaust denial.
...
The problem with Mr. Spencer is both moral and doctrinal. His views are morally repugnant and his hatefulness challenges our core doctrinal beliefs about the dignity of all human persons.
...
Engaging in hateful bigotry disqualifies him."
He doesn't bother providing a single quote from Spencer to show any of this is true.
The Battle for the LGF Archives
- The Diary of Daedalus
is working on pointing out
the old, counter-jihad, material on LGF,
and LGF then deletes it.
Diary of Daedalus
says:
"we now know that we have the power in numbers, we have the tools, we have the motivation, and that we're a friggin' elite sniper team if we use them.
So I think I can speak for all the DoDers and LGF antagonists everywhere and say, "Bring It, CJ!" I for one am ready to battle until there is nothing left but "beach" open threads and "Tech Note" updates."
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."
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?"
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."
A Rip Van Winkle moment:
In a roundup of the
Shooting of Michael Brown
story, someone at
Salon, Aug 2014, thinks LGF is "conservative-leaning"!
After feedback, they changed this
to "the website ..."
Of course,
"the loony left website ..."
would be more accurate.
Rifqa
ran away from home in July 2009 (age 16, nearly 17)
after leaving Islam for Christianity.
She was terrified she would be killed if sent back to her family.
On YouTube alone she was getting new death threats every day.
See death threats
here
and
here.
She was put in state care.
As well as fear of her family, she had a problem with her immigration status,
and had to fear
possible deportation to Sri Lanka, where as an apostate her life would be in danger.
Again with the Grossly Inflated Wingnut Crowd Sizes
Sarah Palin's Word Salad of the Day
Gaddafi's Voluptuous Ukrainian Nurse Bails Out
Glenn Beck Rants About 'Commie' Logo That His Own Group Used
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."
Charles Johnson likes The Guardian and The Independent now:
Charles Johnson, 14 October 2010, writes his first ever media article. He chooses the most pro-jihad newspaper in the English-speaking world,
The Guardian,
a paper he formerly
spent years attacking.
He chooses as his topic not the Islamic jihad that still rages across the world,
but rather .. an attack on right-wing counter-jihad blogs.
What a tosser.
2006:
"Orwell's Newspaper"
- Charles Johnson on the anti-Israel UK newspaper
The Independent, June 28, 2006.
Interview of Charles Johnson, May 2012, by extreme leftists AlterNet.
(A Chomsky promotion
appears on the same page!)
Charles Johnson says:
"I was totally wrong about Barack Obama. That's one of my main regrets at this point. I really fell for a lot of the right wing propaganda, and I thought he was going to be a communist and a radical leftist and all that stuff. I believed a lot of the propaganda about him. If I could go back I would vote for him now, but we don't have that time machine yet."
Johnson's changing definition of Obama:
2008:
Obama is a leftist - and that's bad.
"Charles Krauthammer advises us not to be fooled by Barack Obama's apparently centrist appointments
... his socialist "progressive" agenda is still intact".
2009:
Claims Obama is a centrist.
"If you still refuse to believe that Barack Obama has become a truly centrist President, read his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
...
Not exactly the words of an America-hating commie traitor, are they?"
2013:
Admits Obama is a leftist - but that is now good.
He admits Obama is not a centrist but rather:
"the most liberal, progressive President America's ever had".
He now means this as a compliment.
April 2015: The "community" on the filthy left-wing LGF site now supports the Baltimore riots and attacks on the American police.
Graphing the tags used on LGF posts vividly shows how the subject matter of the blog changed.
Graph from here.
Here we see how a once great anti-jihad blog stopped covering the jihad at all.
Instead it started covering boring leftie topics.
The change in topics covered 2009-12
as shown in the tags.
From here.
Far-left blogger Charles Johnson now describes the US Marines as far-right and "bloodthirsty".
A tweet war started between Johnson and
John Nolte
over the video of
marines urinating on dead Taliban, Jan 2012.
Loony left Johnson is shocked that people on the right are not appalled by this.
(I am also unappalled.)
It ended in this revealing tweet by Johnson on
14 Jan 2012.
Johnson, Jan 2012, calls anyone who criticises Obama a racist,
and pretends that some "centrists" exist who might listen to him.
But no such people exist.
No one is interested in what a far-left loony has to say about the right.
The
Diary of Daedalus
gives most people's response.
Charles Johnson, Mar 10, 2012, ends up defending the black racist
Louis Farrakhan.
How did our alleged "anti-racist" loon get into this mess?
Because he has to defend everything President Obama does.
Therefore he has to defend everything
Derrick Bell
does.
Therefore he has to defend
Louis Farrakhan as not so bad.
Charles Johnson has a hilarious history with
Oliver Willis of the
loony left
Media Matters for America.
2005:
Willis calls Johnson a Nazi.
Johnson calls Willis a dumbass leftist.
(Thanks to
Liz_Ardoid
for capture.)
2012:
Johnson has himself become a dumbass leftist.
But it's still not enough for
Willis!
Oliver Willis still calls him a racist in this tweet of 12 Mar 2012.
Everyone hates Charles Johnson!
Hilarious stuff:
Anti-government
loony leftist
Glenn Greenwald, 26 Feb 2014,
calls
pro-Obama
loony leftist
Charles Johnson
"one the most devoted online Democratic partisans & US Govt loyalists in the Obama era".
LGF user "Achilles Tang"
utters the mildest of criticisms of Islam on LGF, March 2013, and gets universally down-dinged,
including by Charles Johnson.
"Achilles Tang" will be gone from LGF soon.
No critic of Islam belongs in
that pathetic dhimmi community.
In the comments,
LGF user "Stabby"
tries some modest criticism of Islam.
He is furiously down-dinged by the LGF leftists and Islamists.
Charles Johnson sneers:
"So basically, you agree with Pamela Geller? Is that what you're saying?"
Discussion over! Banning coming soon.
Stabby even attacks Pamela Geller himself
but it's no use.
LGF in 2007
attacks CAIR for refusing to condemn Hamas.
LGF in 2009:
"At long last, the FBI has finally cut off contacts with the Hamas-linked Council on American Islamic Relations. Since LGF has been targeted by CAIR in "hate speech" complaints to the FBI, this is very welcome news."
But they are friends now.
CAIR, 29 May 2013, is now promoting LGF.
The Muslim
anti-anti-Islamist
"CuriousLurker"
is typical of the anti-counterjihad posters on
the useless site LGF these days.
Diary of Daedalus
calls her "Furious Burka".
Fascinating exchange between American Muslim "CuriousLurker" and left-wing Jew "Elias" on the new LGF, July 2012.
The leftie hopes for approval from the left/Islamic crowd
by declaring that he hates Geller and Spencer, but he still attempts some mild criticism of Islamism.
For this he gets down-dinged.
Curious Lurker rushes to the defence of Islam, and gets up-dinged.
The leftie encounters a wall of hostility, and he sadly says:
"I knew you were all very liberal but I couldn't imagine that you were so naive about the threat of Islamism."
LGF is still anti-Pelosi for meeting with Syria in 2007.
LGF is however becoming anti-Israel, and now compares Israel to Syria.
Johnson compares
Eric Cantor talking to Israel behind Obama's back in 2010
to Nancy Pelosi talking to Syria behind Bush's back in 2007.
Um, maybe the difference is that Israel is an ally and Syria is an enemy, dumbass.
You used to know that.
The Diary of Daedalus says:
"It's only a matter of time before Chuck does a why I broke with Israel piece.
He's laying the seeds down."
A search in 2015 on LGF for
"Pelosi Syria"
reveals the changing Charles Johnson.
In 2007 he understood exactly what Nancy Pelosi's disgusting trip to Syria meant.
But what's that in the modern search results?
Yes, it's some modern leftist crap like this March 2015 post:
"Nancy Pelosi Slams Netanyahu's "Insult" to the US".
LGF is now going anti-Israel and pro-Pelosi.
Leftists react uncomfortably to Islamic violence.
They make jokes.
They attack the people who point out Islamic violence as "bigots".
And so on.
Johnson is now this kind of person.
Apart from reacting uncomfortably, another leftist approach is to ignore the jihad attack.
LGF, once the world's top counter-jihad blog, does not even cover many Islamic terror attacks any more, even ones in America!
7 days later, on 5 Dec 2016,
a Google search finds not a single mention of the attack
on the LGF site.
And this was an attack in America!
It goes without saying that he mostly ignores attacks elsewhere in the world now too.
But to ignore an attack in America is incredible.
When it emerged that the Woolwich jihadist beheader of May 2013 was a
long-time associate of Anjem Choudary,
no normal person was surprised that the terrorist was linked to this enemy hate preacher.
But
Charles Johnson, 23 May 2013, reacts by attempting to defend Anjem Choudary.
What's next
in this continuing mental decline?
Some qualified support for jihad "resistance"?
Ultimate conversion to Islam?
Once a leading counter-jihadist,
Charles Johnson now
cracks jokes at the terrifying advance of ISIS, June 2014.
To brain-dead leftists, "jihad" and "caliphate" are just silly words the American right uses.
What is amazing about Johnson is that he used to understand the reality. And now he is like this.
I swear this guy used to understand why jihadis kill infidels.
But the new
Charles Johnson, Apr 2017, has got new, left-wing theories for why jihad happens.
Charles Johnson, 9 May 2012, is now friends with
Imam Mohammed Ansar.
Mo Ansar
is a right-wing religious fundamentalist,
a supporter of religious sharia law,
a hater of Israel,
a 9/11 truther,
and (ironically, given LGF's obsessions)
a creationist.
If he was a Christian right-wing cleric, Charles Johnson would have nothing to do with him.
Left-wing moron argues that if only the settlements contained
different types of Jews,
the jihad would be OK with them.
From here.
How the old LGF would have laughed at this fool!
A quick Google
check
in 2020 shows that
LGF has not written about jihad in 7 years.
"I am always surprised when someone sends me a link from the green swamp. No one reads this boil on the ass of the blogosphere anymore".
-
Pamela Geller, 5 Feb 2012, on the car wreck of Charles Johnson and Little Green Footballs.
"Nominees for The 2013 LGF Awards were difficult to select, as Little Green Footballs, once a bright beacon of sentience in a disturbed world, is now a dim yellow porch light that even the moths make fun of."
- The Diary of Daedalus, 20 Jan 2014, on how this may be running out of steam. Few people now remember when LGF was good.