As a writer, it sure sucks when someone murders a bunch of people based on your ideas. (I mean, I assume that sucks. Weirdly, it's never happened to me.) So you can understand why right-wing anti-Islam bloggers are all being kind of defensive, these days.
Anders Breivik, the anti-Islam terrorist who killed 77 people in Norway on July 22, read a lot of American anti-Islam bloggers, many of whom he cited in his lengthy manifesto. Breivik's favorites included Robert Spencer, a self-proclaimed expert on Islam whose "Jihad Watch" blog was quoted and cited in Breivik's manifesto, and Spencer's ally and collaborator Pam Geller, whose "Atlas Shrugs" was similarly recommended by the killer.
So some people have been like, "hey, wow guys, a crazy person took everything you write so seriously that he murdered a bunch of people, in the name of protecting his nation from the creeping 'Islamization' of Europe that you guys constantly crow about, maybe you guys should stop and think for a minute about the horrible, hateful things you all write, all the time." And Spencer and Geller have basically screeched back, "CENSORSHIP!!!!!"
They are now actually fundraising on the fact that they helped inspire a massacre. Or more accurately, they're begging for money to protect them from the imaginary witch hunt that they claim the liberals will mount. (Is this part of the witch hunt? I am always confused about whether I'm witch-hunting or not, when I call people horrid hateful bigots.) Spencer also signed Geller's fundraising blog, and if you donate more than $500 to Atlas Shrugs, ThinkProgress reports, they will send you a signed copy of Geller's book, "Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance." (I assume a coordinated terror attack against radical Islam's liberal enablers is written off in the pamphlet as impractical.)
People are not responsible for what crazy people do after reading their blog posts for years, obviously (though inciting fear of and hatred for ethnic and religious minority groups tends to be the sort of speech with the bloodiest track record), and Pamela Geller never called on anyone to go out and murder some liberals, to save us from the Islamists. But she has now stopped just short of justifying the attacks, after the fact!
Adam Serwer notes the strong 'they had it coming' vibe in Geller's latest on Norway. From Geller's post:
But the more that is revealed about that youth indoctrination center, the more grotesque the whole story becomes. Of course, the genocidal leftists will twist what I write here; I am not condoning the slaughter in Norway or anywhere. I abhor violence (except in regard to self defense). But the jihad-loving media never told us what antisemitic war games they were playing on that island. Utoya Island is a Communist/Socialist campground, and they clearly had a pro-Islamic agenda.
Only the malevolent media could use the euphemism summer camp and get away with it.
The slaughter was horrific. What these kids were being taught and instructed to do was a different kind of grotesque. There is no justification for Breivik's actions whatsoever. There is also no justification for Norway's antisemitism and demonization of Israel.
Those are pretty perfunctory disclaimers against violence. Those dead people clearly had a pro-Islamic agenda! "Antisemitic war games" makes the victims sound like ... soldiers preparing to attack Israel, making violence against them conceivably an act of "defense of Israel," which is, of course, a justification for violence that in Geller's world is indistinguishable from "self-defense."
It may surprise you to learn that Geller feels any shame, ever, but she did delete the blatantly racist photo caption that originally accompanied the post. The faces of the camp attendees look, to Geller, "more Middle Eastern or mixed than pure Norwegian." (!) In other words: I abhor violence, but these pro-Islamofascist soldiers were being trained by the Commie-Nazis to destroy Israel, also they look sorta Arab, right?
So! Please remember how horribly these guys are reacting to what should be a moment of shameful self-reflection for them, the next time you see them cited in some newspaper editorial or interviews on Fox or something.
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