Bartholomew's Notes

At FrontPageMag, Robert Spencer comes to the defence of his close associate Pamela Geller, who he asserts has been “demonized” by the media. He was moved to write following set-backs Geller has had on the right, such as Christine O’Donnell recently dropping Geller’s endorsement from her campaign website. Spencer, with thudding inevitablity, sees an malign organising intelligence at work:

…the Leftist media establishment has mounted an all-out assault against her, with hit pieces coming virtually every day, following classic Alinskyite tactics. Her treatment in the media has been a textbook case of how the Left follows Rules for Radicals author Saul Alinsky’s playbook to destroy its most formidable opponents… “Pick the target,” Alinsky directs, “freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” …First, the hard-Left self-styled media watchdog Media Matters drew up a dossier full of distortions, half-truths, and outright lies about Geller. 

…The general haste to advance the false claim that Geller believed Malcolm X to be Obama’s father, and the utter indifference to her explanation to the contrary, recalled another Alinsky rule: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counteract ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.” Hit pieces in The Guardian, Salon, The Atlantic, Talking Points Memo, and elsewhere among the Leftist mainstream media tried their best to portray Geller as ridiculous, even affecting a faux puritanical streak (“she filmed a video blog wearing a bikini!”) to try to make the characterization stick.

… if conservatives are not going to defend their own, and stick up for their own, then Alinskyites will pick us off one by one, and never themselves be exposed.

Why do people make fun of Geller? Simple: it’s a Left-wing conspiracy, as can be proven by reference to a particular text which reveals a both hidden overarching strategy and the “true” motive of any critics. It’s doubtful that Spencer really believes any of this, but as a rabble-rouser he’s hardly pitching himself at thoughtful readers.

Geller has long lamented the “Malcolm X” fiasco, which appeared in material on her site written by someone else but only partially endorsed by her. Charles Johnson notes:

Here’s the post at her hate site: HOW COULD STANLEY ANN DUNHAM HAVE DELIVERED BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA JR. IN AUGUST OF 1961 IN HONOLULU, WHEN OFFICIAL UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON RECORDS SHOW HER 2680 MILES AWAY IN SEATTLE ATTENDING CLASSES THAT SAME MONTH? – Atlas Shrugs.

As you might be able to tell from the all-caps title, it’s a rambling, deranged Birther conspiracy theory, it’s thoroughly nuts, and it’s very long. Geller marked it up with bold, red, and different sized text, and included dozens of pictures. The page is about 3.5 megabytes in size. It’s huge. It took quite a bit of work to post.

But even if you take Geller’s laughable excuse at face value and forget about the claim that Barack Obama is Malcolm X’s love child, the rest of this “anonymous author’s” psychotic rant is every bit as bad. What part of this ugly mess is supposed to be a “spectacular job?”

Another point addressed by Spencer is Geller’s smear of Elena Kagan as a neo-Nazi; he quotes Geller’s own explanation:

Here is credentialed journalism: they say without explanation that I “posted doctored pictures of Elena Kagan, the Supreme Court justice, in a Nazi helmet.” They don’t bother to mention that the Kagan photoshop came after it was revealed that Kagan had cited in her thesis a German Marxist who became a Nazi when Hitler took power.

I wrote a blog entry on this here – Geller’s attack was crude and presposterous piece of abuse which suggested that because Kagan had quoted a sociologist who had later become a Nazi, she must herself be a Nazi. It showed up Geller for what she is: a vulgar smear merchant whose ultimate target is not so much Islamic extremism but the very idea of rational discussion. Geller and Spencer are demagogues using fear to advance both themselves and a particularly unpleasant agenda. You don’t need to go hunting for some “textbook” which would “expose” their strategy: what they are up to is all too blatantly obvious.

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