Robert Spencer

Robert Spencer, author of several books on Islam and owner of jihadwatch.org, is seen by quite a few as an important figure fighting radical Islam. The following facts should, however, be known about him before anyone unfamiliar with him lends him his support or view him as a defender of freedom.

He joined a Facebook group that

. Advocate the total Reconquest and complete reassymilation of the Anatolia penninsular, eastern Thrace, northern Cyprus, Greater Armenia, The Pontus and Antiochia through the medium of Greek, Armenian, Cypriot, Byzantine, Pontic and Syriac National Sovereignty and on an unconditional basis.

. The complete unilateral and unnegotiable permanent ethnic transformation of theses territories in order to coopt the first aim.

And the establishment of a National coalitionary Greater European confederative super state in order to secure the first two aims, with guaranteed sovereign borders, fixed permanent garrisons and the necessary military means to ensure alien repatriation with a view to permanent long term resettlement.

* This group entirely understands and accepts that this project will require the displacement of up to 150 million persons, …

Spencer claims that he joined the group unawares but then proceeds to accuse the tipper together with his long-standing internet nemesis Charles Johnson of lgf of setting him up, and of being hoaxers:

But in this case I have fallen victim to an Internet prank. Johnson’s response to my joining this group was so swift that I suspect that the group itself, and its invitation that I join it, was a hoax and a setup, but in any case I freely acknowledge my mistake: I was working through a number of such requests hurriedly, and joined the group without looking further at what it was all about. I didn’t read any of the material the group had posted, which Johnson says advocates genocide and ethnic cleansing and even links to the Aryan Nations. [Note Spencer's evasion of the actual content of the group's mission statement, which by that time, given his temporary connection with it, he should have studied more carefully by that time.]

He updates the post saying he will have the tipper removed from Facebook. He has of this now not shown any signs of revulsion at the group’s content, nor has he asked Facebook to have the group’s content or the group itself removed. In other words, his anger is directed at the person most people in this kind of situation would have regarded with gratitude, while the source of his embarrasment, the noxious group, deserves no condemnation at all. He further insists at the hotair site in the comments section that the whole incident was and is a setup, without any proof to back up his claim.

UPDATE: I’ve been informed that this use of Facebook material for defamation and libel by Facebook user “Cato the Elder” is in violation of Facebook rules. I’ve accordingly written to Facebook asking that his account there be revoked.

He threatens to sue Charles Johnson for libel

SECOND UPDATE: I’d also like to remind Charles Johnson publicly that accusing someone of supporting genocide who doesn’t support genocide is actionable libel. I don’t have the time to waste suing this noxious individual, but anyone who continues to take him seriously as a public figure with something to contribute to public discussion should be advised that his attachment to the truth is tenuous at best.

If you re-examine Johnson’s post you’ll see that Johnson never did anything of the sort. Which is why you’ll never see any suit coming from Spencer over this issue this side of Kingdom Come.

Spencer’s friend James George Jatras was a witness for the defence in the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, where Jatras spouted conspiracy theories to the effect that the Clinton administration colluded with the Iranian regime to smuggle arms into Bosnia and Kosovo during the war to further the spread of radical Islam.

By including James Jatras, former American Republican Party analyst and adviser, in his witness list, Slobodan Milosevic wanted to prove his argument on the collusion between Bill Clinton’s Democrat administration and radical Islamic elements, first in Bosnia and then in Kosovo.

(Jatras also seems to be on Putin’s payroll.)

The reason for the enmity between Johnson and Spencer goes back to the Vlaams Belang controversy and Spencer’s unwillingness to dissociate himself from sites like Gates of Vienna, The Brussels Journal and writers like Fjordman. (Spencer’s last exchanges at lgf can be read here; Fjordman is still referred to as “the great European essayist Fjordman”.)

Spencer has written countless times something along the lines of this:

As far as fascism goes, I oppose all authoritarian governments, and believe in the freedom of speech and other freedoms that historically have never thrived in fascist settings. The jihadists want to impose a totalitarian order that crushes all dissent and enforces social conformity at the point of a sword — that is fascist. A genuine alternative is the Western idea of a free and pluralistic society in which people who differ on core issues in good conscience respect one another enough to refrain from trying to gain dominance over the others or asserting any supremacist agenda. But that is in its essence non-fascist and, indeed, anti-fascist.

And yet he lends explicit, unqualified support to sites such as Gates of Vienna, The Brussels Journal by still linking to them from jihadwatch, sites that openly try to push the boundaries of what is conceivable in order to solve the “Islamic Question in Europe”. Spencer claims that he is “sifting the evidence” with regards to Vlaams Belang. If he does, the sieve he uses needs smaller holes. While at the same time he writes:

You may have not seen this short email exchange between Mr. Spencer and myself a number of months ago. The Lizards here can back me up that these are for real…

“Robert, can you answer one simple question for me. This would help a lot in deciding what is really going on here. Which European political parties do you UNCONDITIONALLY condemn because of their proven ties to racist nationalism?” (Walter L. Newton email to Robert Spencer sent on Friday, November 07, 2008 1:16 PM)

And his answer…

“Actually, I am fighting jihad, and have no interest in or intention to investigate these groups. Insofar as they are fighting jihad, I applaud them. Insofar as they are doing anything else, my endorsement is not implied.” [My bold. A contradictory statement in view of his earlier "I oppose all authoritarian governments".] (Robert Spencer email answer to Walter L. Newton sent on Sat 11/8/2008 10:39 AM)

So, a picture emerges of a man who plays on many levels, making strong efforts to keep them separated, at least for the various audiences he is trying to reach.

Here is Spencer’s view on race:

And I think that a race-based approach is wrong in a number of ways. To repeat:

1. It’s the wrong way to fight the global jihad. The jihad is not a race, Islam is not a race, Muslims are not all of one race. Those who are threatened by the jihadists are not all of one race. The issues between the Islamic world and non-Muslims are not racial. They are about religious supremacism. Bringing in race just confuses the issue, and allows jihadists and their de facto allies among the Eurabian elites to claim that this whole thing is about racism.

2. To form one group for indigenous Europeans, as has been done in several countries, reduces virtually every issue to the one non-negotiable issue of race and ethnicity, discourages cooperation, and thus encourages Balkanization, works against the idea of representative government, and obscures the common values of Judeo-Christian civilization that are shared by people of many races and ethnicities.

3. This approach hamstrings and marginalizes the anti-jihad movement. Many people who oppose the Islamization of Europe will never join with a race-based party to do so. As I said above, Hugh Fitzgerald and I have often commented here over the years about the tragedy in Europe: the mainstream political parties have completely abdicated any responsibility to deal with the Islamization of Europe, thus leaving the field open to groups that obscure the issue with racial politics.

4. Many, many people have written here, and will no doubt write again in response to this post, that the parties that speak of race are the only ones in Europe that are doing anything to resist Islamization, and thus they deserve the support of all those who believe there is something worth defending in Western non-Muslim civilization. I don’t think that is any sounder an argument than the claim that we must support Hizballah because it builds schools and runs charities when not lobbing rockets at Israeli civilians.

Spencer forgets to state the obvious: That the view that man is born with certain innate qualities based on a predominance of some specific set of chemicals in the parents is false and that it has led to immeasurable suffering through the millenia of man’s history. That should in fact be enough to reject that kind of view of man entirely. Spencer’s approach is rather tactical:

This approach hamstrings and marginalizes the anti-jihad movement. Many people who oppose the Islamization of Europe will never join with a race-based party

It’s the wrong way to fight the global jihad. The jihad is not a race, Islam is not a race, Muslims are not all of one race.

To form one group for indigenous Europeans, as has been done in several countries, reduces virtually every issue to the one non-negotiable issue of race and ethnicity, discourages cooperation, and thus encourages Balkanization, works against the idea of representative government, and obscures the common values of Judeo-Christian civilization that are shared by people of many races and ethnicities

In fact, he ends this reasoning with the following:

But while culture has a racial component, culture and race are not identical.

If Spencer would care to explain how “culture”, which, let us say, is the intellectual achievements of a society within a certain geographic area, has a “racial”, that is, innate component, he is invited to do so. Until then, we will have to draw our own conclusions.

In summary, Spencer finds himself in the embarrasing situation of having joined a Facebook group with a revolting cause. Rather than quickly withdraw and condemn the group, he pours vitriol and strange conspiratorical “insights” on his helpers, he tries to bully Charles Johnson of lgf with the threat of a libel suit but fails for the obvious reason that Johnson’s post merely contains facts, he holds the contradictory positions of condemning racism and fascism, supporting racists and linking to racist/fascist leaning sites, while at the same time professing indifference to ideology altogether, and while seemingly seeing racism as an “impractical” approach to resisting jihad, and holding a view of man, that on the face of it, is at least partially racist. On considering the evidence, the inevitable conclusion is that Spencer is not a reliable ally in the defence of freedom, to put it conservatively.

I was asked in the comments section at jihadwatch if I thought Spencer was a crypto-fascist and in the heat of the moment I replied ‘yes’. On second thought I find that the point is moot: Spencer is, with all his contradictions, his bullying manners, his actions (regardless of the motives behind them) enabling racists and fascists who try to exploit resistance to Islamic jihad for their own purposes.

Added 4.07 pm, Feb 15: There is a common methodology shared by Spencer, his friend Jatras and the notorious Fjordman: their propensity to resort to conspiracy theories to “explain” events around them. Fjordman swallowed the idea of Eurabia, the idea that a small clandestine but extremely powerful department within the EU is working for the Islamification of the European Union, hook, line and sinker. This is certainly not reassuring and only adds to the “bad” side of the scales for their part.

Added 3.22 pm, Feb 27: Kejda Gjermani exposes the ties between Spencer and Trifkovic.

Added 9.02 pm, Nov 5: Littlegreenfootballs has of late veered sharply to the left. In its present state that blog has increasingly less of value to communicate. I will stay convinced, however, that my conclusions regarding Spencer, Vlaams Belang, etc., were correct, until shown otherwise.

Countdown to Nuclear Holocaust, II ½

Parallells between developments in Russia and in Turkey. Turkey’s gradual “de-Westification” and Islamisation, it’s strengthening of ties with Iran and Syria, and above all, the utter blindness of the US foreign office, and how unreliable the US is as an ally.

Update: Ukraine next?

Countdown to Nuclear Holocaust, II

According to Caroline Glick, Prime Minister Olmert has bought himself at least three more months in power, perhaps as many as ten. Judging by his previous behaviour, nothing will be done to stop the countdown.

Fjordman and that Muslim Rape Wave in Sweden

From eurofascism.info, this video exposes Fjordman’s irrational obsession over Muslim rapes in Sweden: a change in methodology was the cause of the spike in reported rapes in 2005.

Countdown to Nuclear Holocaust, I

The countdown to a nuclear holocaust in Israel has definitely begun. The US will not strike pre-emptively but seemingly will not stop Israel from doing so. Can it be stopped in time? It all hinges on Israel and its leaders.

Link Roundup

How not to dispose of a beached whale.

Caroline Glick on Olmert worsening his already catastrophic political trackrecord. [via lgf]

Say after me: “All cultures are basically the same, all cultures are basically the same …”

You are now entering Eurabia-land and an attempt to curb immigration [via lgf] and the coming of Eurabia–by the EU.

A Critique of Mark Steyn’s Demographic Argument

Mark Steyn is by far the wittiest political commentator writing today. He uses this talent for producing a neverending row of delightful puns to great effect especially when discussing subjects that are the opposite of lightweight. Turning all topics into a standup comedy routine has one major drawback however, namely that it distracts the reader from any serious point you’d want to argue. It’s an even bet that what you bring from a Steyn piece is the laughter and little else.

Steyn’s most important article is It’s the Demography, Stupid. Its thesis is the same as that of his bestselling book, America Alone, where he elaborates on the ideas put forth in the article. To sum it up, “many if not most Western European countries” will not survive this century. The reason is “our lack of civilizational confidence”, caused by “lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism”. The rise of radical Islam is merely a symptom of this weakness. The more intelligent Islamists realize they will never win on the battlefield but time is on their side, since “they have the demographical advantage”. This is so, because “[w]hen it comes to forecasting the future, the birth rate is the nearest thing to hard numbers”, and “demography is a game of last man standing”. The native European population is declining in numbers, the Muslim immigrant is increasing. To stave off the collapse of the European welfare states due to a declining population, “the EU will need to import so many workers from North Africa and the Middle East that it will be well on its way to majority Muslim by 2035″, an increasingly radicalized majority. Europe’s population will before long be “very old or very Muslim”; either way Western Europe is almost certainly doomed.

Steyn is right in that there is a “lack of civilizational confidence” caused by the prevailing anti-Western ideologies, most notably in this context multiculturalism. As noted, one surreal example demonstrating its widespread influence is President Bush’s visiting the Islamic Center of Washington DC immediately after the 9/11 massacres. It is also correct that the rising threat of Islamic totalitarianism is merely a symptom of what I’d prefer to call our lack of moral certainty, a lack of certainty that fundamental Western ideas and institutions are superior to the ideas and institutions of other cultures, and worth defending. The states sponsoring Islamic terrorism would not last a year against the uninhibited application of military force the US could bring to bear, had it the courage to do so.

Steyn is wrong in his projections for the demographical outlook of Europe, and, more importantly, about its importance.

It is disingenious of Steyn to describe the fertility of countries such as Spain, as ” ‘lowest low’ fertility from which no society has ever recovered“. (my bold) The dishonesty lies in the fact that historically there are no precedents to the current demographical transition occurring in the developed nations, which reduces his assertion to baseless speculation. Furthermore, saying “[w]hen it comes to predicting the future, the birthrate is the nearest thing to hard numbers” demands that you actually use numbers that correspond with facts. As it seems, Steyn’s use of an average total fertility rate of 3.8 for Muslim women in Europe needs to be revised.

Fundamentally, however, Steyn’s fretting over fertility rates is uninteresting. To see why, consider a situation where everything is as now except that the natives of Western Europe bred well above the replacement rate, perhaps outbreeding any immigrant minority. Will their numbers in relation to the Muslim immigrants make them more able to resist any creeping Islamization taking place (or any other “minority rights” demands, domestic or foreign)? Judging by today’s situation where the natives are still in an overwhelming majority, no. Will the children of “the races who, for ill or good, shaped the modern world” be able to reject environmentalism, an ideology aimed at dismantling our industrial society and being able to cause mass death on a huge scale? By the current trend, no.

It is obvious that it is ideas that matter, not the brute counting of heads. The ideas that need promoting are the distinctly Western ideas of rationality, individualism and individual rights. Their obvious strength is proved by the fact that even in Europe, where they are much less pronounced in the US, the immigrants arriving there choose freedom, such as the freedom of women to have less children. Steyn partially acknowledges this but ultimately dismisses it as of lesser importance. What moves him is the demographical shift he is projecting, and which he foresees will have very dire consequences. His dazzling prose may sound plausible but its content is on closer inspection found to be wanting, and misleading.

[Edited for grammar, clarity and content]

Mark Steyn’s Demographic Argument vs. Older Demographic Argument

From the introduction to The Rising Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy, by Lothrop Stoddard:

If this great race, with its capacity for leadership and fighting, should ultimately pass, with it would pass that which we call civilization. It would be suc-ceeded by an unstable and bastardized population, where worth and merit would have no inherent right to leadership and among which a new and darker age would blot out our racial inheritance. …

Fight it must, but let that fight be not a civil war against its own blood kindred but against the dangerous foreign races, whether they advance sword in hand or in the more insidious gnise of beggars at our gates, pleading for admittance to share our prosperity. If we continue to allow them to enter they will in time drive us out of our own land by mere force of breeding. …

Our present condition is the result of following the leadership of idealists and philanthropic doctrinaires, aided and abetted by the perfectly understandable demand of our captains of industry for cheap labor. …

I’ve only read the introduction so far. The book was published in the early 1920s which explains its countless references to race and racial wars that noone wanting to be taken serious today would dare to make. Overlooking the overtly racist slant of the whole introduction, the argument goes as follows:

The natives are threatened with extinction, the result of which would mean the end of civilization and bring about a new Dark Ages. There is a two-front war going on, the actual fighting and the demographic war. Our present predicament is the result of foolish and false ideologies, and economic considerations. This is rather close to the views put forth by Mark Steyn. This is why I’ve always felt a little uneasy reading his demographic projections. I will write further on this why I believe demography to be ultimately unimportant.

The Demographic Argument

Commentators such as Mark Steyn make great of the idea that Muslims will outbreed native Europeans, the effect of which would be the transformation of Europe as we know it within merely a generation or two. Quoting Steyn replying to a reader:

But just to keep it simple. Let’s say you’ve got a population of a million. 90% are ethnic Europeans, 10% are Muslims (the “official” French figure). Let’s pretend they’re all the same age, rather than dealing with the reality of the fact that in, say, London the vast majority of its one million Muslims are under 25. But let’s imagine these million people are all 20 years old. The 900,000 ethnic Europeans with a fertility rate of 1.4 per couple will have 630,000 children and 441,000 grandchildren – steep population decline. The 100,000 Muslims with a fertility rate of 3.8 will have 190,000 children and 361,000 grandchildren – rapid growth. The “overwhelming majority” and the “tiny minority” will have near equal numbers of grandchildren. And, as I said, that’s without ongoing remorseless immigrating and accelerating export of native talent.

But why argue about the when of it? It might slow down or accelerate, but unless there’s a big profound change the Islamization of Britain is inevitable. Why quibble over the hypothetical date of a statistical majority? Once Islam reaches 20% of the population and becomes the majority in every major English city, Britain will be semi-Muslim in its sociopolitical character. Which is to say: Britain, as we’ve known it, will be dead.

The problem with this argument is that it assumes that the fertility rates remain the same relative to each other, something which as of late has been shown to simply not be true:

In their study, Westoff and Frejka sift through the available data to estimate the level and trends in childbearing among European Muslims. They show that although Muslim immigrants do have more children than other Europeans, their fertility tends to decline over time, often faster than among non-Muslims.

In Austria, for example, Muslim women had a total fertility rate (an estimate of lifetime births per woman) of 3.1 children per woman in 1981, well above the 1.7 average for the majority Roman Catholic women. By 2001, the rate for Catholics had fallen to 1.3, but the Muslim rate had fallen to 2.3—leaving a difference of just one child per woman between Muslims and non-Muslims.

The gap narrowed even further in the former West Germany, where the authors relied on data by mother’s nationality rather than religion. West Germany recruited a large number of workers from Turkey beginning in the 1960s, giving Germany one of Western Europe’s largest Muslim populations. In 1970, Turkish women living in West Germany had more than two more children than German women. By 1996, the difference between these two groups had fallen to one child.

Recent trends in the Netherlands tell a similar story (see figure). The fertility gap between native-born women and women born in predominantly Muslim Morocco and Turkey narrowed considerably between 1990 and 2005.

Proponents of the demographics argument as stated above should be pressed for an answer to the question why these fertility rates will remain essentially the same for the next 25-50 years, a question which they to my knowledge have not addressed at all but merely assumed to have been answered. Further:

But fertility has been falling in many Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa, which may help explain why younger Muslim women have lower fertility than older women. In Turkey, the TFR dropped from 3.3 in the 1985 to 1990 period to about 2.2 in 2003. Over the same span of years, the TFR fell from 4.5 to 2.5 in Morocco, and from 5.6 to 2.1 in Iran, according to UN estimates.

Muslims who grew up in Europe in immigrant families are also likely to adopt the majority population’s preference for smaller families. All countries in Europe have had low fertility for decades.

This invalidates the demographics argument.

Update: A comment claiming that a difference of 1 in the fertility rates between Muslims and non-Muslims still makes a great difference made me actually make use of my mobile phone calculator. Using the figures for Austrian Catholics and Muslims in Austria, and numbers from the CIA Factbook, I get the following (Catholics are 73.6% of Austria’s total population, Muslims are 4.2% of the total population):

Looking only at Catholics and Muslims, Catholics make up 94.6 % and Muslims 5.4% of the total of these two groups. Starting with 946,000 Catholics and 54,000 Muslims, they will have 614,900 and 62,100 children respectively. At this point Catholics will make up 90.8% and Muslims 9.2% of these two groups taken together. These will in turn have 399,685 and 71,415 children respectively, which will correspond to 84.8% and 15.2% respectively of the total of these two groups. This is a considerable shift in demographics, but far from the certain Islamification that is envisioned. And, the remaining 22.2% of Austria’s population has not been taken into consideration. And, this hypothetical scenario will remain merely hypothetical by the fact that we do not know how the fertility rates will develop for the next 50 years. Claiming otherwise is worse than ignorance.

Håller du med?

Funebo riktar återigen fokus på Sd och dess representanter. Den här gången gäller det nyss förtalsdömda representanterna för Landskrona, Stefan Olsson och Carina Herrstedt. De spinner vidare på en expressenartikel som tar upp socialdemokratisk oro över invasionen av mördarsniglar enligt följande:

Jag tycker detta är ett alldeles utmärkt förslag ifrån (s), för hur många trädgårdar har inte dessa slemmiga inkräktare förstört? Det går inte att stoppa dem, de parar sig med vanliga sniglar, och vips så är avkommorna kamouflagefärgade. Det enda som hjälper något sånär är igelkottar, för de äter sniglarna. Men då får man fullt med igelkottbajs i hela trädgården, och det är ju inte bra när barnen springer barfota. Med andra ord, man skulle tagit detta problem på allvar när det dök upp första gången, så hade vi kanske inte haft denna massinvandring av sniglar.

Hoppla! Där blev ändå dissonansen mellan vad Sd-representanter tror/hoppas att svensken i gemen har för uppfattning och vad han egentligen tycker för stark? Eller är det bara jag som gör kopplingen till invandrande människor och Sd:s invandringskritiska program? Som jag skrev i kommentaren:

carina & stefan! Det är väl kontrasten mellan oron över den explosionsartade spridningen av mördarsniglar och den positiva inställningen från (s) till fortsatt invandring av människor som är anmärkningsvärd. Varför tar ni annars upp det? Vad jag vet är inte mördarsniglar något som det skrivs särskilt om i Sd:s olika program och ni hänvisar ju inte till något sådant i posten, så kopplingen till det man vanligtvis menar med invandring (också med tanke på Sd:s betoning på vikten av en restriktiv invandringspolitik) är oundviklig. När ni sen själva spånar vidare så ska ni vara medvetna om att mer än ett ögonbryn höjs i stugorna av er besynnerliga liknelse. Återhållsamhet på nätet är att rekommendera—it’s sooner than you think!

Update: E’ru go, eller?!

Fulpostens upphovsmän replikerar på sedvanligt och förutsägbart vis.

Till alla er som tolkat inlägget helt fel så vill jag bara säga några saker.För det första så handlar inlägget om mördarsniglar och anledningen till att jag skriver invandring i det syftet är för att de ursprungligen kommer i från Spanien. Sen skriver någon här att det inte står i Sd:s program om sniglar, vem har med det i sina program? Har vi bara rätt att tycka till i frågor som är upptagna i vårt partiprogram?
Ingen hade reagerat om detta inlägg stod på en blogg med annan partitillhörighet, snacka om fördomar! Sedan är det någon okunnig som skriver att det är hets mot folkgrupp, tror inte mördarsniglar tillhör någon folkgrupp. http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hets_mot_folkgrupp

Lade en kommentar till detta som det återstår att se om de publicerar då de aktiverat kommentarsgranskning:

carina & stefan! Självklart får ni skriva vad ni vill. Självklart kommer ni bedömas utifrån vad ni skriver. Bara omogna individer börjar gnälla att de inte vill ta konsekvenserna av sina handlingar, inte sant? (“Jag förstår inte varför folk reagerar på det jag säger …?”)

“Jo, ni läste rätt. Sossarna vill ta i med hårdhandskarna mot den okontrollerade massinvandringen av av mördarsniglar.” (ursprunglig fetstil)

[Okontrollerad massinvandring av, Ed.] Mördarsniglar, till skillnad från …? Som sagt, carina & stefan, har ni några mer postningar om svensk natur? Kan vi förvänta oss uppföljningar nu i detta spännande [och högaktuella, Ed.] ämne?

Va’ f*n har det med Spanien att göra? Tror stefan & carina att vi är hur dumma som helst? Eller som man säger i götet: E’ru go eller?!

PS Finns det något tråkigare än oseriösa människor som inte vågar stå för vad de säger?