Little Green Footballs

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Stalking Charles Johnson

When Charles Johnson refers to this blog, as he has done repeatedly over the last few days, he invariably describes us as "stalkers".

The fact is that if we were really interested in stalking Mr Johnson, we would be ringing his private phone number in the middle of the night and breathing heavily at him; we would be publishing pictures of the inside of his home; we would follow him in a dark saloon as he cycles along the California coast; and we'd write extensively about his friends and family and his life before he became a celebrity blogger.

But we don't.

This blog isn't about Charles Johnson the man. It's about the evil ideology which he embodies: an ideology that regards Muslims, Arabs, and people with a different point of view as subhuman. It is an ideology which has its counterpart in some of the crazier manifestations of 'liberal' America, but which only seems to reach its full apogee in the rantings of the wingnut-o-sphere, where Charles Johnson is a vanguard member.

This blog is about documenting and exposing the hypocrisy and racism that is the daily fare on Little Green Footballs. Is it any wonder, therefore, that Johnson is trying to shut us down by calling us 'stalkers' and urging his minions to bombard Blogger with complaints?

Good luck to him, but he won't succeed. We're in this for the long haul, and if Charles Johnson finds that troubling, so much the better.

31 comments:

Anonymous said...

x said "This blog isn't about Charles Johnson the man. It's about the evil ideology which he embodies: an ideology that regards Muslims, Arabs, and people with a different point of view as subhuman."


Again x you have reached an insighteful plateau that in your modest blog, you say so much with so little. Keep the hammer heavy and soon Charles and his Jack-booted ilk will fall like a house of cards ISLAM IS THE RELIGION OF PEACE :)

Anonymous said...

I was in my local suburban Barnes and Nobles yesterday and I noticed something.

In the current events section, the clerks try to maintain some kind of "even handedness". They put Olbermann next to Ann Coulter, Chomsky next to Mark Steyn, Jimmy Carter next to Alan Dershowitz. There are apologists for American Empire like Glenn Beck and critics like Chalmers Johnson.

But the one thing that makes the "left" books different from the "right" books is this obsessive "stalking" of Islam. There are some leftist attacks on evangelical Christians like Christopher Hedges or Esther Kaplan but there's a whole industry of books "exposing" Islam. Some are written by people who haven't really studied it and others by relatively sophisticated orientalists like Bernard Lewis. But the obsessive "stalking" is frightening.

It almost feels like walking into a bookstore in Germany in 1930. You'd have some books by Marxists and Social Democrats, some foreign books, but above all you'd have books "exposing" the "Jewish Menace" and they'd all basically be the same book with different covers and different authors.

Anonymous said...

The funny thing is that these people can't even see the irony.

For example:

Imagine the absolute nuclear outrage if some male righty blogger with a history of getting uncomfortably close to people on the other side faked his way into an event with Jane Hamsher (of firedoglake.com)? The left would be calling for him to be prosecuted.



If Jane Hamsher went on a book tour, there probably wouldn't be a need to "fake your way in" because, like 99% of all book tours, it would be a public event open to anybody. I don't remember there being a lot of security at any of the stops for "Crashing the Gates".

But it really reverses the truth. The right has plenty of "stalkers" like that guy who run's "Zombietime". Now ff you look at his "photography" it's pretty clear that this guy isn't angeling to be the next Gary Winogrand. A lot of it feels like cointelpro, getting as many anti-war faces up on the web as possible.

X said...

ISLAM IS THE RELIGION OF PEACE

Oh come on anonymous, you're falling into the same trap that Charles Johnson is in: Islam is neither the religion of peace nor the religion of war. It's simply another silly set of beliefs like all other religion.

Islam isn't intrinsically true, or pure, and it isn't fundamentally evil either, as the lizards would have us believe. It's largely harmless mumbo-jumbo which is occasionally used by a few people to whip a minority into a frenzy.

Anonymous said...

Oh come on anonymous, you're falling into the same trap that Charles Johnson is in: Islam is neither the religion of peace nor the religion of war. It's simply another silly set of beliefs like all other religion.

Actually I'll do you one better. Islam (like Christianity and Judaism) is inherently repressive.

Religion is at base a tool of oppression.. the pie in the sky and the belief in a "set rule" handed down by god. If you can make people believe that, you can make them believe anything. That's why Napoleon said that if there was no god they'd have to invent one.

Modern religion is profoundly cynical, anti-science and a tool of reaction.

But what are friends at LGF never seem to getting around to confronting is the fact that the US government armed, funded, trained and cultivated fundamentalist Islam all through the 1970s and 1980s as a proxy to attack communism and other secular alternatives to the "west".

Now that the USSR is done, they can demonize and roll up their ex clients.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said Don't you agree?

You're making up a scenario applying the sin of omission. Let's talk about the real scenario.

Is Hez'bollah a terrorist organization?

What do you believe should be the status of the State of Israel?

If you can't openly and honestly answer those two questions then your position requires you to be devious. Devious positions have a high probability of not being right.

If you really believe Hez'bollah is right then you should be able to unequivocally say so.

If you believe all land in the Mid-East belongs to islam and there is no land for Jewish people at all you ought to be able to say so.


I work with a Muslim who has the conviction of his faith to say that the Jews should have no land in the Mid-East and that Hez'bollah is the side of right. Why is it so hard to stand up for your convictions? Why the need to be devious?

Anonymous said...

"We don't hate Jews because they are Jews, We hate what they do against Palestinians. If a Muslim did this, we would hate them, too."


To quote Ken Silverstein in Harpers:

If an Eskimo state had been created in Palestine in 1948, one suspects that anti-Eskimo feeling would have increased markedly in the Arab world.

And I'm guessing that if a white, right-wing Christian extremist had pulled off a major terrorist attack inside the United States, the USA would have built a wall around large parts of the Midwest and called it "Crackerland".

Indeed, it happened. When in the wake of the bombing of Oklahoma City, the US government herded all the white Christian males into Crackerland and surrounded them with a wall, the authorities were more than willing to let the Crackers have their own state, provided, of course, that the Crackers acknowledged the right of the United States to exist.

Unfortunately, crackerland never did and its inhabitants had to be "transferred" to Charles Johnson's blog.

The Sphinx said...

Aah Roger, wonderful.. The questions you think we're so afraid to answer. Why do you think I'd shy down because of those?

Anyway, first of with Israel:
I have absolutely nothing against Judaism, Jewish people or the people of Israel. But I AM against the violent settlers in the west bank who harass Palestinians, destroy their property, and get away with it. As for the Israeli Government, it does NOT fall short of being a terrorist organization. The way it wrecks havoc in the region, and deals death and destruction to its neighbors is absolutely dispicable. The way it handles it's own Israeli-Arab citizens and the Palestinians is inhumane, and the worst of all: How it's living of America's tax dollars, thinking it's above the law and better than everybody, and that it can get whatever it wants by whining, or by brute force. Just like a spoiled brat.

So yes, though I don't hate any Jew or Israeli, I think Israel is a terrorist state, and I will firmly stand by that statement.

As for Hezbollah, it entirely depends on what perspective you're looking at them from. If your city is becoming a victim of Israel's systematic Destruction™, and Hezbollah were fighting them off, you'd not be calling the terrorists, but freedom fighters, or people defending their homeland from a stark-raving batty enemy.

Let's just say, during the Lebanon War of last year, Israel's actions were surpassing anybody else's in despicability, so I WAS rooting for Hezbollah as the lesser of two evils. And I will firmly stand by that statement too.

Watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=249JaIaubVw

Just watch it the whole way through. Preferably a couple of times.

The Sphinx said...

So to directly answer your questions:

1) I'd prefer Hezbollah of Israel in its current state ANY time.
2) Israel would have a place in the Arab world, if it learned to behave.

Anonymous said...

Under Charles's logic he himself would be considered a stalker of Markos Moulitsas (DKos).

Anonymous said...

"Have any of you folks ever read a single book about Islam? I didn't think so."

You mean one of those Heritage Foundation hate books that line the shelves of most bookstores?

That's a bit like shoving Nazi pamphlets in my face and saying HAVE YOU EVER READ ABOUT JUDAISM.

Yep. There's a lot of propaganda out there. Awwww Poor Widdle Baby. Some people aren't as gullible as you are.

Why not go right to the source (and once again this month's Harpers is an excellent resource) and read the actual program of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

Even though this organization is a radical Islamist organization, they still accept the idea, for example, that Copts should have full citizenship.

In other words, as backward as it may be in some ways, it's probably less backward than the American supported "secular" government of Egypt.

Hezbollah? Can't say I accept most of their political agenda but compared to the Israelis they seem relatively moderate. Yes they committed some atrocities but they didn't exactly lace half the country of Lebanon with cluster bombs or destroy the entire coutnry of Iraq, did they?

Anonymous said...

As long as we're talking about reading books on Islam, you might also want to do some reading on how the neocons try to keep pro Muslim scholars out of the US.

Why keep Tariq Ramadan out of the country if it's so obvious that Islam is this evil totalitarian force?

Hmm?

AMY GOODMAN: I'm looking at a piece by John Tierman of Alternet or that was distributed by Alternet, and it says that they don't think that Professor Ramadan's appointment to a major university would have been challenged if it weren't for the intervention of anti-Muslim groups, Graham Fuller, a middle east expert, a senior Rand Analyst and former Vice Chair of the National Intelligence Counsel told the Chicago Tribune quote, “pro-Likud organizations want to block people who can speak articulately and present the Muslim dilemma in a way that might be understandable and sympathetic to Americans.” In talking about the Arab-Israeli crisis, he said, “They succeed by present this as a security matter. There is no way homeland security would initiate this on its own.” Your response?



Why stack the deck and try to arrange it so the only books available on Islam are those bulked up Heritage Foundation pamplhets you can buy now?

Why not let both sides speak and let the truth come out?

Anonymous said...

Get to know muslims personally, visit your local mosque and say you want to learn more, go to muslim charity events, chances are you'll find lots of information there.


I'm an atheist and I think all three monotheistic religions are backwards collections of intellectual absurdities.

BUT I also think it's important to see how selective demonization of some religions and some populations serves its own poltical purpose.

Charles Johnson doesn't care about the oppression of women in the Middle East. If he did, he'd be concerned about the poverty most Palestinian women are living in.

He doesn't care about anti-semitism. If he did, he'd be outraged over William Donohue and the Catholic League for Civil rights.

Johnson's a small player. He shovels hate and he gets a few banner ads to click through. But the overall problem for Johnson's paymasters is that Islam interferes with the American ruling class's plans to control the development of the Middle East. Of course the theocracy in Iran is backwards and oppressive. But you also have to ask why there's so much outrage over Iran and not so much about Saudi Arabia. Hint. It's about how each country choses to develop it's resources and distribute wealth.

The liberal ruling class (eg Nicholas Kristoff and Paul Kruman) interestingly enough always tries to split Islam between "good" Islam (Indonesia) and "bad" Islam (the Middle East).

Why? One is friendly to free trade.

unaha-closp said...

Charles Johnson doesn't care about the oppression of women in the Middle East. If he did, he'd be concerned about the poverty most Palestinian women are living in.

Pretty sure that Charles Johnson concerns himself greatly with the poverty of Palestinians. Hardly a day goes by when he doesn't point out the fate of millions suffering under a backward, enfeebling religion that panders to sociopathic dictators and impoverishes everyone else. Or meaningless acts of ineffectual aggression carried out solely to provoke a reponse and reinforce the rule of men with guns. Or the seeming inability to work out that having more mouths to feed when you have no food is a bad idea. Or the way schooling is aimed to indoctrinate (again because of said stoopid religion) to love only their own religion.

I am sure he will be gladdened to know you share his concerns.

unaha-closp said...

"It's about the evil ideology which he embodies: an ideology that regards Muslims, some Muslims, and people with a Muslim point of view as subhuman."

Certainly is evil to classify people as sub-human. Strangely though all I can find on LGF is denigration of Islam, criticism of Islamic societies and portrayals of Muslims as violent; I cannot find the reference to Muslims as an inferior sub-human group, indeed can find contrary praise for Muslims who hold non-Islamic views being respected people.

X said...

Unaha: have you taken Dr. Menlo's LGF Quiz?

Kiddo said...

But deciding that another's ideology (as if there isn't ideology on "both sides") is just as damning to those who hold those opinions. I respect that you include the statement about "manifestations in 'liberal' America", but I think that the name calling and deciding that certain opinions are lower on the humanity scale is absurd.

I will not complain, or flag this blog. You have a right to say what you say. I've just gotten so sick of the discrediting of people with differing opinions or the demonizing of them as "dangerous" that I could scream.

Will you guys accept some things on LGF as credible? Some are quite realistic. My comments about wanting to arrange a fight with Ann Coulter notwithstanding, as they were obviously me just being the goofball that I am.

unaha-closp said...

My source? The Quran itself. It's all in there. But do people like you know that? Nooo, you only hear of verses that are severely ripped out of context and presented in a different light that what they really stand for.

The Quran is a big book, so big that it can hold lots in there. Read enough of it, stress the right words and you can find justification to do most anything. Indeed take the Muslims who spoke at the Secular Islam Summit, Charles prefers their interpretation. Muslims calling for reform in Islamic society, trying to reform those who stress another word or two in the Quran.

When the laws of Islamic countries reflect this Islamic movement by changing to (from St Petersburg Declaration):

"reject Sharia law, fatwa courts, clerical rule, and state-sanctioned religion in all their forms; oppose all penalties for blasphemy and apostacy, in accordance with Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights;

eliminate practices, such as female circumcision, honor killing, forced veiling, and forced marriage, that further the oppression of women;

protect sexual and gender minorities from persecution and violence;

reform sectarian education that teaches intolerance and bigotry towards non-Muslims;

and foster an open public sphere in which all matters may be discussed without coercion or intimidation."


thus reflecting the truth of Islam, I will believe you. But whilst it is impossible for a woman to inherit in Iran or drive in Saudi or 2 men cannot legally love each other; how can Islam claim to be just?

The problem with Islam today is that it has fallen in so many places away from the true ideals of Islam as truthfully espoused at this Summit. It is held captive to the rule of brutal dictators and distorted.

The Sphinx said...

"thus reflecting the truth of Islam, I will believe you. But whilst it is impossible for a woman to inherit in Iran or drive in Saudi or 2 men cannot legally love each other; how can Islam claim to be just?"

That's the point here, it's not Islam's problem. It's the problem of the people who are getting it all wrong.

Women are not to inherit? That's flat-out wrong. Islam has clearly set the regulations for inheritance, and the woman's right to inherit is one of the revolutionary things introduced by Islam to start with. So whoever does otherwise is violating Islamic principles, and it's entirely their problem.

By the way, I found this link:
http://www.peacewomen.org/news/Iran/June04/assets.html

It seems Iranian women _do_ inherit. But I assume you were talking hypothetically.

About the driving thing in Saudi Arabia: That's also an absurd distortion of Islamic doctrines, and has nothing to do with them any more. Once again, this is entirely the problem of Saudi Arabia, not Islam. It's them who are doing it wrong. I don't feel obliged to defend them at all in that case, but I don't want Islam itself blamed for what they're doing.

About the gay marriage thing, that's another issue. I don't know of any religion that allows gay relationships, let alone sodomy to start with. So it's not just Islam, but Christianity and Judaism as well.

You can't blame the rules for the shenanigans of the people who break the rules. It's only the people themselves who are to blame.
You also can't blame guns for killing people, you can only blame the gun-wielder who shot somebody.
You can't blame alcohol for fatal car accidents, you blame those who were irresponsible enough to drink and drive.

The reason why I'm so defending of Islam, is that it has nothing to do with all the bad things associated with muslims today, especially terrorism. "Islamic terrorism" is an oxymoron in itself. And what grinds my gears are places like Little Green Footballs, who put the blame in the wrong place, and act all smug about it.

unaha-closp said...

Not hypothetical.

The parliament in Iran passes laws which are then presented to the guardian council for the protection of the islamic revolution for approval and then the supreme leader has the right of veto. That law never made it past that point, still it was a positive sign. Unfortunately the government that passed the law btw was largely barred from the most recent elections by the guardian council and other reformers were defeated. The Iranians elected a new government who use batons to beat those who peacefully demonstrate for that sort of equality.

http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/defenders/hrd_iran/alert013107_iranian_women.htm


Yet you are largely right it is not Islam per see that is the problem. Just the laws of violent regimes - who claim to be islamic.

unaha-closp said...

Mr Sphinx

In case you're interested the Iranians have released all but 2 of the women who protested for womens rights on International Womens Day.

http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2007/03/16/iranian-women-activists-in-pain-and-ahmadinejads-trip-to-ny/

Anonymous said...

Folks, let's see if there is something we can all agree on, whatever side of the political/religious/cultural divide we stand on.

How about this:

Every day on LGF there are posts that are full of ignorance, bigotry, lies, fantasies, parnoia and general stupidity. Calls for war/violence/bombings are regularly made on LGF.

No one can seriously deny this
inconvenient truth.

Or how about this:

LGF attracts morons (mostly teenage boys, one suspects) and racists - not Academics and Professors to post in it's threads.

Again, can anyone seriously deny this?

Care to deny it Charles?

How about this one:

Some -many- of the memes regularly expressed on LGF are incredibly stupid and illinformed.

Common and typical memes include:

Europe has been taken over by Muslims (not true)

Palestinians don't ever suffer at the hands of Israelis- it's all their own fault (not true)

Hamas are all evil/IDF are all heroic (not true)

Liberals/Lefties/Europeans bow down to Islamic Hardliners and
Fundamentalists in an effort to avoid their own destruction and because they are all anti-semitic anyway(not true)

Westerners - in particular White Westerners - have a long tradition of tolerance,peace, justice,civillity,modernity respect for women etc etc (not true)

Americans are a peaceful people while Islamists seek conquest of the globe (not true)

Americans were the only ones who made sacrifices during WW2 (not true)

All Americans love Jews and Israel while everyone else hates them (not true)

There is nothing wrong with religious fundamentalism if the fundamentalists are:
a> White and B> Christian Americans
(not true)

Americans need to arm themselves so that they are ready to deal with the Muslims once the Muslims decide it's time to take over the country and implement Sharia law (not true).

I don't think I've written anything controversial here and hope that anyone familiar with LGF will agree with all the above.

I also hope that Charles has the guts/grace/intelligence to admit that what I've written above is all reasonable and beyond dispute.

A website that intelligently takes on and challenges Islamic Fundamentalism is no bad thing.

LGF is no such website.

Henrik R Clausen said...

"Islam was never about killing infidels."

OK, that's just plain wrong. Islam became all about waging war on infidels - actually the whole mankind - at its founding moment, the 2nd pledge of Al-Aqabar. Islam was practiced this way from AD 622 onwards. It didn't change (yet), but I think it's about time.

You may wonder where I have this from?

Islamic scripture. Sorry 'bout it, the holy books themselves. The Sirat, to be exact, which are Hadith collections, supplementary scripture to the Quran. Ibn Ishaq and Al-Tabari agree. These are original Islamic sources, not later-day commentary or interpretations.

Anonymous said...

Am VERY relieved that at least someone out there would take time out to expose these racist bigots on LGF!!!
Have only EVER read LGF once... And couldn't stand reading it for more than a couple of lines...
Will definitely keep an update view on this blog. Thanks for the info!

Rgrds,

Marisa

Anonymous said...

I read LGF and they are NOT bigots. Not racists. Not morons, either. I wonder what your motives are here on this blog.

--Just Curious

Anonymous said...

I love LGF. Even if I disagree with LGF, the comments they post are good for a laugh. I'm for peace, and anti most mainstream organized religion. Islam is my least favorite, followed by Catholicism. LGF holds no punches in exposing leftist anti-zionists for the racist neo-socialists they can't or won't see they have become. Thank You LGF!

Unknown said...

Wow. I've been reading LGF for years, and got myself kicked off somehow.
(I used to post, and voiced disagreement sometimes--next thing I know, I'm outta there!)

Glad to find this site. I've always thought the lizards could go WAY over the top sometimes, so I'm glad to see someone is calling them on it.

(Words to the wise-just try not to visit Town Hall too much--there are some real loonies there!)

Anonymous said...

Undeniable? It's not even remotely supportable by the evidence that Charles Johnson and the remaining members of LGF are "supporting a very Nazi-esque propaganda". In fact they seem to be kicking some members precisely on the basis of suspicions to that effect - posts regarding Muslim extreists and their lobbyists in CAIR are invariably backed up by plenty of cites and references.

I am not a fan of how LGF is run, and I don't support many of the views of people there. But irrational hatred for Muslims is not one of their faults. If anything, the bulk of their venom tends to be addressed against CHristianity, although again even in this case their advocacy is to strip Christians of any political power and participation as representatives in government, not to herd them into death camps.

There are plenty of things to complain about regarding LGF, but blind anti-Muslim hatred is not one of them. Such accusations are "unarguable" only in the sense that they are unsupportable - Johnson has taken great pains to speak out against crimes committed inthe name of Islam, and has emphatically refused to make common cause with the sort of anti-Muslim haters you describe - to have gone so far as to kick members on the mere suspicion of having appeared to argue otherwise.

Smears like this do not help make any sort of case against LGF. If anything, they prove Johnson's contention, that the people he's kicked off are irrational and abusive trolls who don't deserve hearings. I would suggest that generating evidence for his contentions does not help your cause any.

V said...

Well, thanks for stopping by.

Anonymous said...

how about trying lgf2.0

Pauli said...

This accusation of "stalking" has always bothered me for this reason: the word stalking used to mean something. E.g., I've known women who have been stalked. For real.

Now... obsession is a different thing altogether. If all you do is read one person's material and then point out what you believe are mistakes and fallacies, you may be said to be obsessed.