The following article by Clare Lopez about Diana West’s book American Betrayal was published this morning by the Gatestone Institute (originally here). Not long after it was posted, it was mysteriously pulled from Gatestone’s site.
David Horowitz famously said of American Betrayal and Diana West that “she should not have written this book”. Now it seems that no positive reviews of the book may be allowed to stand.
Look at this woman. Listen to her words. How could any reasonable person be afraid of what she has to say?
Clare Lopez’ Gatestone piece, which was captured and posted at Ruthfully Yours, is reproduced below.
Update: Diana West has weighed in herself at her website:
This morning, the Gatestone Institute published my Team B II colleague Clare Lopez’s latest essay, which juxtaposed the findings of American Betrayal with events in the Middle East to marvelous effect.
It is called “Recognizing the Wrong People.”
Maybe it did — because then they took it down.
That is, I have to wonder: Could the piece possibly have disappeared due to Clare’s highly favorable treatment of my book?
Recognizing the Wrong People
by Clare M. Lopez
It is high time we stopped empowering those who wish us ill: not just to recognize a blood-soaked regime, but to keep on recognizing it.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt [FDR], reversing the policy of four presidents and six of their Secretaries of State not to recognize the Soviet government, in 1933 extended “normal diplomatic relations” to the Soviet Union, the totalitarian slaughterhouse of Josef Stalin. As meticulously researched by Diana West in her new book, “American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character,” the reasoning behind Roosevelt’s decision was never made clear; what was clear, however, since the 1917-1919 Bolshevik seizure of the Russian government by force, was the Soviet reign of blood and terror. According to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago, by the late 1930s, Stalin’s regime was shooting tens of thousands of people per month. Yet, for reasons that remain murky, FDR was influenced, inspired, or somehow persuaded to normalize U.S. relations with Stalin, in exchange for a page of Soviet concessions, not worth the paper they were written on, which pledged that the USSR “would not attempt to subvert or overthrow the U.S. system.”
What West documents is the subsequent process of infiltration, influence, and “occupation” by an army of communist agents and fellow travelers; here, however, the focus is on what that original 1933 decision has meant for future generations, most especially our own, when confronted with decisions about whether or not to recognize enemies who make no secret of their enmity and intention to destroy us.
Whatever FDR’s thinking, West points out that this decision — not just to recognize the blood-soaked communist regime, but to keep on recognizing it — fundamentally transformed what Robert Conquest, the great chronicler of Stalin’s purges, called “the conscience of the civilized world.” And perhaps not just our conscience: as West writes, “[b]ecause the Communist regime was so openly and ideologically dedicated to our destruction, the act of recognition defied reason and the demands of self-preservation.” In other words, quite aside from the abdication of objective morality represented by FDR’s decision, there was a surrender of “reality-based judgment,” the implications of which on the ability of U.S. national leadership to make sound decisions involving the fundamental defense of the Republic resonate to the current day.
Fast forward to late September 2010, when Mohammed Badi, the Egyptian Supreme Guide of the openly, avowedly jihadist Muslim Brotherhood [MB], literally declared war on the United States (and Israel and unfaithful Arab/Muslim rulers). Badi spoke plainly of “jihad,” “force,” and “a jihadi generation that pursues death just as the enemies pursue life.” There was no ambiguity in his message: it anticipated the “demise” of the U.S. in the face of Muslim “resistance.” Even as the Muslim Brotherhood, from the earliest years after its 1928 founding, has always been forthright about its Islamic supremacism and objectives of global conquest, a caliphate, and universal shariah [Islamic Law], Badi’s pronouncement was as clear and menacing as Usama bin Laden’s 1996 “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places,” or his 1998 declaration of “Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders” — and garnered about as much understanding from the U.S. and Western political leadership of the time — which is to say, very little.
As explained, in fact, in a series of masterful online lectures for the Center for Security Policy [CSP] by Stephen Coughlin, a former Major in the U.S. Army and one of this country’s foremost scholars of Islamic Law, Badi’s October 2010 declaration of jihad against the U.S. followed in direct response to al-Qa’eda’s call to war as published in the inaugural issue, in July 2010, of its online Inspire magazine. This was the alignment of forces that shortly would plunge the Middle East and North Africa [MENA] region into chaos and revolution.
The third and final element to fall into place came in January 2011, in the form of a fatwa from Cairo’s al-Azhar University, the pre-eminent seat of Sunni learning in the Islamic world for over 1,000 years. That landmark declaration, issued at the IslamOnline.net website by Dr. Imad Mustafa, Professor of Fiqh and Its Origins, at the Universities of al-Azhar and Umm al-Qary, made clear that “offensive jihad is permissible in order to secure Islam’s border, to extend God’s religion to people in cases where the governments do not allow it…and to remove every religion but Islam from the Arabian peninsula…”
As we know from Islamic books of law such as the “Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law,” “Jihad means to war against non-Muslims, and is etymologically derived from the word mujahada signifying warfare to establish the religion…” (Reliance, o9.0, ‘Jihad’). So, there was not much room for doubt about what was being discussed: an alignment of al-Qa’eda and the Muslim Brotherhood under the theological sanction of al-Azhar to transition together to a more militant phase of jihad against the West, Israel, and westernized Middle Eastern regimes that have failed to enforce shariah. The green light from U.S. President Barack Obama had already been given months previously, at his milestone June 2009 Cairo speech.
Yet, with every menacing signal plainly presented by the Brotherhood, as with the blatant criminality of the Soviet regime, the senior national security leadership of the U.S. in 2010-2011 still seemed oblivious to the jihadist threat. So oblivious, in fact, was the Department of State under Secretary Hillary Clinton that in early July 2011, it changed a long-standing policy of no official U.S. government recognition of the Muslim Brotherhood, and indicated that henceforth the U.S. proactively would pursue “engagement” with the Egyptian jihadis. The timeline is just about eight months from the Muslim Brotherhood’s declaration of war against the U.S. to full normalization of relations — initiated by the United States — minus any cessation of Muslim Brotherhood hostilities against the U.S. or its allies or even so much as a hudna [temporary ceasefire].
Even after the Egyptian military, urged on by huge numbers of the Egyptian people, ousted the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Mohammed Morsi in early July 2013, in a decisive coup d’état, followed by bloody street battles with the die-hard jihadis who were also busy slaughtering Coptic Christians across Egypt, the U.S. administration still could not bring itself to turn against its Brotherhood. Muslim Brotherhood penetration of top-level U.S. policy-making circles (as documented by Patrick Poole in a comprehensive June 4, 2013 essay for the MERIA Journal, entitled, “Blind to Terror: The U.S. Governments Disastrous Muslim Outreach Efforts and the Impact on U.S. Middle East Policy”) is certainly part of the explanation for such irresponsible behavior. The self-destructive legacy of 1933 that bequeathed to FDR’s successors a conditioned willingness to turn away from reality, engage in endlessly wishful thinking, and accept appeasement as an alternative to assertion of national will may well account even more directly for the apparent inability of America’s most senior leadership to acknowledge and confront even those enemies who declare war on us.
The next example of the apparently endless capacity of the human mind for self-deception is the U.S. decision, in March 2011, to enter the Libyan civil war on the side of al-Qa’eda. According to news reports, in early 2011 President Obama issued an “Intelligence Finding” that authorized covert assistance to the al-Qa’eda-dominated rebels fighting to overthrow the longtime Libyan ruler, Muammar Qaddafi. Among the known jihadist militias with which Ambassador Christopher Stevens, the State Department’s official envoy to the Libyan rebel forces, coordinated during the 2011 revolution were: the February 17 Martyrs Brigade; the local al-Qa’eda franchise; Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG, led by Afghanistan veteran Abdelhakim Belhadj); Libya Shield (which fought Qaddafi under the black flag of Islam); and various branches of Ansar al-Shariah, another Libyan al-Qa’eda franchise. Now, even if the most senior levels of the U.S. intelligence community somehow were actually under the impression that the Muslim Brotherhood is a “largely secular” organization that “has eschewed violence,” al-Qa’eda surely was generally acknowledged to be an Islamic terror group, man-caused disaster organization, or at the very least, in early 2011, a group that still posed some level of threat to U.S. national security interests. Yet, all the same, the Obama White House took the decision to dedicate diplomatic, financial, intelligence, military, and weapons support to these Libyan al-Qa’eda militias, along with our NATO allies, to help them oust a brutal tyrant, but at the time, a true ally of the U.S. and the West in the fight against AQIM (Al-Qa’eda in the Islamic Maghreb). By mid-July 2011, however, the U.S. had formally recognized the Libyan rebel leadership as the country’s legitimate government—al-Qa’eda, Muslim Brotherhood, and all.
To what can such a perversion of reason and reality, of common sense, of any measure of American self-interest be attributed: Poole’s Brotherhood penetration of the U.S. foreign policy cadre? More wishful thinking? The illogic of an upside down world view and America’s place in it? Or the pernicious persistence of that first betrayal, the U.S.’s 1933 recognition of Stalin’s murderous gulag of a regime?
As the world confronts the next horror of innocent Syrian men, women, and little children, hundreds of them apparently, killed in late August 2013 by a rocket barrage of the deadly chemical weapon, sarin, the U.S. and the world once again have the opportunity to react rationally, soberly, and with core U.S. national security interests uppermost in consideration. It seems most likely that the Iranian-and-Hizballah-backed regime of Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad is responsible for this latest war crime, and the outcry to empower his al-Qa’eda- and Muslim Brotherhood-dominated rebel opposition has become overwhelming. U.S. naval forces are positioned near Syria in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, pending a White House decision on U.S. action. Yet, even as one side of this intra-Islamic sectarian civil war is getting the worst of it, with more than 100,000 casualties racked up so far, and no end in sight, with chemical weapons against civilians introduced into the conflict, there has never been a more critical need for rational, sober-minded thinking about where U.S. interests and responsibility lie. While a 2012 Presidential Intelligence Finding for Syria authorized the extensive clandestine CIA, financial, and Special Forces training support that has been channeled to Syrian rebels (jihadis and non-jihadis alike), in the months since then, any decision to expand that support, now that chemical weapons have been used against civilians in a large-scale attack, demands a significantly better informed assessment of the probable beneficiaries of such assistance than has been the case to date.
Any decision to deploy U.S. military force beyond a punishing strike against the specific Syrian base and military unit that carried out this chemical weapons atrocity must take into consideration the consequences of an al-Qa’eda and Muslim Brotherhood victory in the Syrian civil war. It is hard to see how enabling the replacement of Iranian proxies and Shi’ite jihadis in Syria with Sunni jihadis aligned with al-Qa’eda and the Muslim Brotherhood will advance either U.S. national security interests in the region or those of our closest allies, Israel and Jordan. Providing generous humanitarian assistance to civilian victims is urgent and right; but, before America recognizes any more totalitarian-minded enemies of genuine liberal democracy, it would do well to enlist common sense, good judgment, and a judicious measure of national self-interest. It is high time we stopped empowering those who wish us ill.
Previous posts about the controversy over American Betrayal by Diana West:
I dunno what your deal is with Horowitz, but is he frightened that this book is grist for the antisemitic mill?
If so it’s like a slightly guilty conscience betraying itself. Wasn’t Horowitz tight with the children of double agents in his schooldays? It’s strange cause he is sponsoring honest fellows like Spencer these days. Of course he’s also tight with [persons whose qualities I find less than admirable] like Pipes (who wants Turkey in the EU)
Horowitz was himself a Communist before his ballyhooed ‘conversion’. Yes, he pays Spencer well and gets good work in return for that pay. Daniel Greenfield is also a member of Horowitz team; he is one of the best writers I know – or rather, that I’ve read, since I don’t know him…
Obviously no one on the David Horowitz “Freedom” Center payroll is going to speak up, but Gatestone isn’t on his payroll. Nor are many of the old anti-Communist standard bearers of old, like National Review or American Spectator.
Maybe they want to stay on his dance card? I have no idea, but having experienced similar cordons sanitaire myself, I recognize the dynamic. Charles Johnson redux.
We see this same phenomenon among our invertebrate Political Class on the right, too. They’ll say anything, make any alliance, trample over any ‘friend’, in order to stay inside the Beltway.
Non-profits are some of the worst offenders of all – witness Jason Richwine’s being booted from Heritage when his dissertation became public. Is that because they’re now headed by an ex-politician? Again, hard to say.
A friend sent me a link to a link to this site. Interesting site. Please allow me to share my observations on this.
The conflagration you are witnessing is a neocon vs. conservo-libertarian war. The neocons have had it out for West for a long time. In their view, Lopez was a project that failed. With her national security and intellectual background, they probably considered her a potential star. Claremont Institute is the Yale of neocon schools, after the University of Chicago. They fed her, schooled her, groomed her…but then she started talking about “national self-interest” and praising a radical national self-interest proponent, if not associating with her (a question worth asking). She will clearly never be hip to their idea of forming a bridge to the Islamists to implement a religious partialitarian regime throughout the world. And now she is talking about “objective morality” like some sort of Objectivist? You can bet there were epileptic seizures in Camp Neocon after that piece went up. So it’s time to scrap the pawn and protect the king. I don’t think anyone at the Gatestone initiated this; its roster shows a C-team of unawares. Someone higher up in the movement pulled strings there.
Jason Richwine is associated with Charles Murray, a neocon. Rumor was that neocons were scheming to take down Heritage by co-opting susceptible intellectuals and then engineering a mass walk-out. What is known for sure is that neocons are not happy at all with the conservo-libertarian direction Jim DeMint has sent Heritage in.
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Ahem. I also “found” this essay in my daily email from Gatestone. I’m guessing that Ruthfully Yours found it there also and simply clipped it out and published it. I sometimes do that with Gatestone’s mass email essays for our newsfeed. That is, snip out a section, plus the title and URL and leave it for the Baron to put in with his other tips.
But in this case, I was so very excited to see it was a favorable review and actually dared to mention Diana’s book. Maybe the Soviet-like silence that David Horowitz had imposed throughout the conservative sphere of cyberspace was going to be broken? Wonderful! Her time in the Horowitz gulag was finally up!
I opened up a new email to tell Diana about this amazing news and included a snip…but as I was writing I was also opening up the actual Gatestone webpage using their URL…but…then the URL seemed to ‘blink’ & turned into the root link, and when the page opened…there was NO essay called “Recognizing the Wrong People” any where on the whole page…what th’???!
So I opened the author’s page…every single essay was there for the author, but not this one. It didn’t exist – except in my email. Was this sudden disappearance due to Uncle David’s smothering influence? Gremlins? The Black Hand?
I hope it’s not too cold in the Gulag that Mr. David “NoFreedomForDianaWest” Horowitz has erected especially for her. Maybe I should knit Diana some socks. If I knew how to knit…
What is it about these recovering Lefties? They bring those same totalitarian bad habits they developed as Communists and incorporate them into their work on the right?? Seriously?? And the brave conservatives on the Right? Crickets chirp…
This is like a schoolyard. Everyone wants to go to the popular kids’ parties so they ignore the smaller ones being beaten up near the monkey bars. They think their silence will keep them safe? Maybe it will. But now we understand what their integrity is worth, which is not much.
Let’s see which conservative writers and websites are willing to discuss this attempt to smother Diana West’s important revision of the American mid-century. Wherever you see it being talked about, you’ll know the writer is not under the Horowitz thumb.
I’m not sure I can do this much longer. Such brazen use of power is corrupt. It is antithetical to all the values conservatives claim they hold sacred.
I am sick unto death of bullies – and I know intuitively that this book review’s disappearance is the result of bullying – just as were those bizarre reviews of Diana’s book that said, “I haven’t read her book but…” and proceeded to say vile things other people gave them to say. Because if you haven’t read it, what are you doing but following orders?
And if these strong-arm tactics are not being discussed on the Right, at least in the places which praised the fall of Communism, what do you think causes that freaky silence?? I mean by all those “conservatives” who do book reviews – National Review, The Weekly Standard, et al.
Someone or other said that people are left swinging in the wind by others due to either laziness or fear. Both seem to be operative here…for shame.
Dymphna,
There have been many more books and authors who’ve been dealt with in this manner in the past. Even mentioning those author names today can elicit knee-jerk negative reactions. Those who could afford to do so fought the lynch mobs, but ultimately only retained their personal dignity. For me, at least, they stand still as good examples of character under fire. Nevertheless they were simply made into non-persons in influential circles. This is much the same as is happening to major climate scientists who refuse to support the CAGW fraud. You and Diana should consider the similarity.
What you have with Diana West looks a lot like consensus-think and power-brokering — what I call Political Cowering — but I think that there is something even more nefarious going on. It looks like someone with clout called someone else and the snowball starts rolling. You can call it bullying, but bullies are more looking for those weaker than themselves in order to make themselves feel bigger. This is more systematic than that. It feels too much like Alinsky Rule no. 12. And who else is better suited to use that technique than “former” leftists?
Let me guess at some of the questions going on in your mind.
Why would former Leftists who know all the good arguments of the Right be going back to the Left? They have fully argued that Marxism never works, and freedom and free markets are the only thing that has made the advances we Americans so often have taken for granted. WHY?
Let me suggest laying this out as my namesake would have. The are only so many motives for doing things. Take those motives and then ask why are these “former” Leftist’s backsliding? Do NOT be too quick to throw out motives that seem ridiculous, and some of them will become hideously too probable.
You could read some of the evidence backed opinion at my little blog. Or you could, on your own, take note of all those outrageous behaviors and organizations that our “leaders” never utter a sound of condemnation towards and see where that leads.
What compelled me to write was your seeming unbelieving that these seemingly intelligent people could be acting as they are. No, it is not you who is nuts. And, in a sense, neither are they. They simply have a very different moral code than that of the Judeo-Christian variety. See: when you ended your comment with “for shame,” it struck me that you don’t understand what they call shame. You cannot shame them, but they can and will harm you and feel it a sad necessity. Kind of like that line from the Godfather. “It’s only business.”
“but I think that there is something even more nefarious going on. ”
I’ll see your nefarious and raise you a deep cover infiltration. I.e., would it be so outlandish that Communists decided to pretend to be anti-Communists and try to infiltrate our various news & opinion media, as well as academe, education, and government with credibly anti-Communist seeming pundits and scholars (including “apostates” touting their “ex-Communist” bonafides) in order subtly and slyly to try to control the Conversation about the problem of crypto-Communism — conceding ground on seemingly important points, while commanding control on the more deeply important, such that when a Diana West comes along simply following the trail of evidence and raising good and disturbing questions, the wagons must be rallied and rounded to smear and discredit her and her work through various Alinskytish tactics?
I.e., perhaps Horowitz and Radosh are as “ex”-Leftist (if not -Communist) as Charles Johnson turned out to be?
P.S.: Not all who are playing along with their game (e.g., Conrad Black of NRO, Thomas Lifson of American Thinker) need be consciously so, but would be merely all too easily manipulable Useful Idiots.
I find myself agreeing with almost all your 3 paragraphs. In the case of Horowitz, he actually admits to having been a red diaper baby — that is raised as Communist from the crib.
What I’m suggesting is that Marxism is so insanely impossible, it ought to occur to saner minds that the money and power behind all the Marxists were something else and disguise an entirely different agenda. The hint of their real agenda are the 20th Century’s over 100 million murders that left billions more living in terror of their own rulers. That history, my friend, may very well have been the pilot programme of the strategists at the hidden core. There is only one force that will stop such megalomania, and out “leaders” are currently engaged in a omnidirectional attack on it so that all those who would turn there for relief would not know of it.
I find myself agreeing with almost all your 3 paragraphs. In the case of Horowitz, he actually admits to having been a red diaper baby — that is raised as Communist from the crib.
What I’m suggesting is that Marxism is so insanely impossible, it ought to occur to saner minds that the money and power behind all the Marxists were something else and disguise an entirely different agenda. The hint of their real agenda are the 20th Century’s over 100 million murders that left billions more living in terror of their own rulers. That history, my friend, may very well have been the pilot programme of the strategists at the hidden core. There is only one force that will stop such megalomania, and our “leaders” are currently engaged in a omnidirectional attack on it so that all those who would turn there for relief would not know of it.
After reading certain so-called “Anti-Islam” blogs for a long time one question refuses to go away, “operation Trust?” (операция “Трест”).
Technically any such operation would be entirely superceded by the capabilities of the NSA to record and sift nearly all internet activity. However, it does point to the absolute need we have to be public and open rather than attempting to keep ourselves secret.
Is it merely coincidental that the Gatestone Institute (much like Frontpage.com) has a staff of contributing authors and associates riddled with Muslim Moderates who are only against “political Islamism”, not Islam itself?
Ironically, Clare Lopez is listed on the Gatestone Institute website as being a “Distinguished Senior Fellow” there.
It’s not ironic. She is indeed a fellow there and they are lucky to have her. She’s a gem. Her knowledge of the workings of Islam is superlative.
What’s ironic is that her review was yanked. A rather shabby way to treat one’s Distinguished Senior Fellow.
Indeed. But “irony” is not the operative word, me thinks. How about “high-handed”? “Rude”? “Craven”?
Yes, shabby indeed.
Yes, and perhaps also “chilling”.
Roosevelt, preoccupied above all by the position of the American worker during the Great Depression, wished to establish diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. The telegrams from Ukrainian activists reached him in autumn 1933, just as his personal initiative in US-Soviet relations was bearing fruit. The United States extended diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union in November 1933.
Snyder, Timothy (2011-08-31). Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (Kindle Locations 1304-1307). Random House. Kindle Edition.
In the last months of Churchill’s war premiership, his satisfaction about the Nazis’ imminent downfall was almost entirely overshadowed by dismay at the triumph of Soviet tyranny in Eastern Europe. He wrote to a Tory MP on 6 March: ‘We are now labouring to make sure that the Yalta Agreement about Poland and free elections is carried out in the spirit as well as in the letter.’ In reality, of course, Yalta was flouted in both. Almost daily, news reached Downing Street of savage Soviet oppression in Poland, including the imprisonment of sixteen prominent Poles who attended a meeting under safeconduct from the Red Army, and the deportation to labour camps of thousands of non-communists. Beria’s NKVD conducted a war of repression against Polish democrats which persisted until the end of the German war, and after. Churchill drafted a fierce cable to Stalin, for which he invited American approval: ‘All parties were exercised,’ he wrote, ‘about the reports that deportations, liquidations and other oppressive measures were being put into practice on a wide scale by the Warsaw administration against those likely to disagree with them.’ The dying Roosevelt vetoed this message , and thereafter repeatedly rejected Churchill’s imprecations for the US to adopt a harsher policy towards Moscow. The president proposed a ‘political truce’ in Poland, which the British believed would merely strengthen the Soviet puppet regime. ‘ I cannot agree that we are confronted with a breakdown of the Yalta Agreement,’ Roosevelt wrote on 15 March. ‘… We must be careful not to give the impression that we are proposing a halt to the land reforms [collectivisation] imposed by the new Polish government.’ A stream of messages followed from Churchill to Roosevelt, emphasising the prime minister’s perception of the urgency and gravity of the Polish situation. Most went unanswered. The British persisted with their efforts, but received scant comfort from Washington, and none from Moscow.
Hastings, Max (2009-09-03). Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940–45 (Kindle Locations 9406-9420). Harper Collins, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
Why on god’s green earth were British politicos so worried about Poland so much? Am I missing some grand investment portfolio someplace? What on earth was all the posturing pre and post war really about?
If you want to know whether a person intends to deal fairly with you, it is a good idea to look at how that person treats others.
If the Soviet Union had simply be treated as an enemy, with whom no ‘friendly’ relations could be expected to exist aside from temporary reductions in overt hostility as a result of military defeats, then it wouldn’t really have mattered much what they were doing in Poland.
But because they were nominally allies and not at all nominally depending on direct material assistance from the U.S., what they were doing was of great significance.
Principle. ‘Progressives’, shallow craven sociopathic trash that they are, only understand ‘principle’ to refer to ‘perception’, ‘posturing’, or venal self interest.
While there are indeed Progs who match your description, there are others, thinking strategically over a long time and apparently more powerful positioned, who do indeed adhere to principle, simply none that I (and hopefully you) agree with.
Understand them and their principles as Sun Tsu advises, or lose fighting phantoms. They understand the Judeo-Christian ethic and are successfully burying it one way or another, by hook and by crook.
See the comments by Marten Gantelius below and understand that it is not simply power for power’s sake that drives our enemy. For instance there is simply bloodlust in some. However, those can be understood easily even if we find it hard to believe such people exist. The ones I advise that you had better understand are far less easy to accept that they exist. And they do what they do with a clear conscience while believing you and I to be too obtuse to even bother arguing with. “Leave it to us boys. It’s for the best. Really.”
Aaargh!! As a proud “progressive” Brit, who nevertheless despises the naivete (or worse) of my fellow leftists on Islamic fascism, I protest!
Historically, “progressive” to me means anti-fascist, anti-racist, in favour of the abolition of slavery, emancipation of women, equal treatment of all (whatever one may think personally of their lifestyles), universal suffrage… I’m sure you get the idea. I know the American experience differs- Lincoln was a republican- but to me, the “progressive” agenda is far from over: the gap between rich and poor, here and in the US, has widened in recent decades.
Mark H — All allies against Islamic fascism are welcome in the fight. But some of us have noticed how self-styled “progressives” often display fascist-style behavior — not just the “anti-fascists” who smash windows and lob projectiles at people they disagree with, but the ones who sit behind desks busily grabbing more and more of our earnings (which they regard as government assets), and entangling us in more and more regulations, severely restricting the ability of citizens to earn a living, build businesses, make use of the property we bought, raise children (see our “progressive” Justice Department’s hostility to a law-abiding German homeschooling family), provide for our medical care according to our needs (e.g. not everyone should be forced to be “insured” for maternity care or drug addiction), etc.
“Progressives” have a long history of being so fixated on equality that they forget all about emancipation. American “progressives” have written a false narrative of emancipation in the 20th century, hijacking the achievement of people they hold as partisan enemies.
“Progressive” have set a pattern of opposing equal treatment because it inevitably leads to unequal results. They insist that “equal treatment” really means applying different standards to different people. Thus, they insist that “marriage” means something different for some than for others, and then demand that everyone else accept, approve, and actively support the altered standard.
“Progressives” also insist that whatever change they desire is the natural, predestined flow of history, and therefore anyone who points out the bad consequences of their agenda must be labeled a reactionary troglodyte who’s impeding cosmic justice out of sheer perversity and malice. The “progressive” ideal doesn’t have to be measured in actual results because it just sounds so nice.
Martin H — the point that’s pertinent to this discussion is that people calling themselves “progressive” were — and to an extent still are — quite willing to ignore, cover up, even justify gross assaults on human life, liberty, and dignity as long as they are committed in the name of perfect equality; but sometimes the mantra of equality is really just a disguise for power lust — the desire to manipulate other human beings as pawns in an abstract utopian scheme, and in the process grab an extra big share of the pie as a reward for the sham of caring so very much about the downtrodden.
Mark H,
I wonder which do you think worthy more of protest?
1) my pointing out that the Left is infested with those whose aims are quite contrary to what you claim is your own position, or
2)those who explicitly demonstrated their goals in October 2010 a major Prog Sustainability advertisement.
Here is a shortened version of that effort in number 2: “Goal In Sight….”
Be careful to search your soul before denying that that is not at heart where the Prog solution ultimately is to be found.
Progressivism (the ideology put forth by the Progressive Party) began in the U.S. in 1912. It thus has a particular historical meaning, which you do not get to define as you like.
In practice, all the fine things that you associate with “progressivism” are associated with it for the same reason that the party adopted the name “Progressive”, a fine sounding but utterly meaningless term. Progressivism is an invention of Fabian Socialists, and therefore seek to hide their true agenda (totalitarian enslavement or reduction of the human population) behind whatever terminology seems most popular, even claiming to be in favor of “freedom” and “liberty” (social, economic, religious, or what have you).
Political progressives are inherently Global Socialists or International Communists at heart, once you strip away the deceptive rhetoric and look at their actual policy prescriptions. They are only “anti-fascist” in that National Socialism does not have grand enough scope for their dreams of subjugating the entire human race (and liquidating that portion that will not submit, generally estimated at 90% of more of the existing population).
As Fabian Socialists, Progressives are committed to a gradual process in which society is modified incrementally to accept totalitarian control. This also involves incremental liquidation, beginning with acceptance of eugenic policies and widespread euthanasia. This incremental procedure is the only real basis they have for calling themselves “Progressive”.
Britain went to war to guarantee the freedom of Poland, as did France. After the humiliation of Munich and other appeasements it was paramount to Churchill to guarantee the position of Poland as a free state, for political reasons, as well as his personal sense of honour and to make it a buffer state next to the USSR. (sorry for any possible typos, I am French)
Personal sense of honour ‘ would not have
troubled Churchill, he was totally bought.
[redacted: unsourced allegations]
Mr. Ducain: Your comments at Gates of Vienna are troubling. Not only are they quite negative, but given the times in which we live I am hesitant to let these allegations- e.g., the above – stand because we will be seen as approving of your versions of history…which is not the case.
I know we are under surveillance as it is. I don’t intend to let you live rent-free here, talking trash and never offering well-sourced references to support your character destruction.
It will not do sir. Not even if you *did* pay rent.
Some have suggested you are a plant, a saboteur. Somehow I doubt it, but that doesn’t mean your comments are not harmful.
There are hundreds of websites who would find your comments congenial. May I suggest you make your home in one of them? I am weary of cleaning up after you.
Excellent, D&B!
I don’t know what S Duncain wrote that you redacted, but please do whatever is necessary to keep this site civilised. One of its charms is the absence of profanity, the good manners, etc. I believe this attracts a better quality of reader: intellectually, ethically and temperamentally speaking.
Baron, why are you unwilling to
listen to an alternative viewpoint ?
It seems to me that you are pushing
a certain agenda and you want to cherry-pick the comments to
reflect your sponsors views.
s ducain —
That wasn’t my editing, it was Dymphna’s — she should have announced herself. But I agree with her.
We are not obliged to publish any “alternative viewpoints”, especially those that use unsourced allegations concerning controversial topics. An honest commenter provides sources when introducing an assertion that he knows will be controversial.
As for your snide reference to our “sponsors” — I know what you mean, and fie on your nasty insinuations!
Our only “sponsors” are the readers of this blog, who kindly chip in a modest amount every now and then to keep us going.
And, unless your real name is totally different from the pseudonym you use here and your email address, you are not one of those. So you can take your “alternative viewpoints” and [obscene imperative verb phrase redacted].
Just out of curiosity, if it was not Poland but France for example, would you be still asking that question?
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Watch the methods used………..not smart at all censoring a person like Clare M Lopez.
Let’s hope that Clare Lopez issues a public response about her thoughts on having her fine review, on which she obviously spent a lot of time and thought, purged in much the same way, apparently, as was Mark Tapson’s favorable review in FrontPage.com:
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2582/-American-Betrayal-Purged-at-Frontpage.aspx
In 1933, Stalins holodomor in Ukraina had starved 7-10 million people to death. Didn’t FDR and the US government have knowledge about that?
According to the website of Gatestone Institute, they promote “Ensuring the public stay informed of threats to our individual liberty, sovereignty and free speech.”
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I just received an email from Gatestone featuring Clare’s review; wtf is going on here?
Yes, we did too. It was one of two essays they featured and for all intents and purposes looked genuine. It is only when one tried to click on the URL they provided that the thing fell apart.
I was snipping some of it to put in our newsfeed and to send to Diana West also. It was amazing to see *any* site of substance on the right support her so I knew she’d want to see it. So I tried to access the essay by Clare Lopez by using that URL. But when I did, it would “blink” the root URL for the homepage would appear…and the essay was NOT on the homepage…weird??
…so I took another tack, going to the author’s page and looking at her archives. There was nothing for September. IOW, the essay had been stuffed down the memory hole. Even given all the scurrilous attacks on Diana West, this was a new low.
Oh wait: it was a second low:
previously the Horowitz “FreeSpeechForMeButNotForThee” yanked a positive review of “American Betrayal” and substituted a strange rant by Ron Radosh, an old, old friend and ally of Horowitz. They had been Communist brothers-in-arms back in the CPUSA days. Supposedly they saw the light and left the Left. But evidently old totalitarian habits die hard.
So it appears that Gatestone was simply playing follow-the-leader, and Ms. Lopez didn’t get the memo. As a Fellow at Gatestone, she has posting privileges and her mention of “Betrayal” – as you can see in your email – was part of a longer piece.
Removing material from your website is a mortal sin in cyberspace. You can change your mind, or find facts that contradict what you posted, but in those cases, you simply update the posting to reflect those changes. An ethical website NEVER EVER disappears material once it’s up. However, it is becoming distressingly common on the right as it follows the larger cultural trend of degradation.
That email I ended up sending to Ms. West was not the one I started to send. Instead of congratulations, it became just one more announcement of yet another betrayal. Who knew her book’s title would become a prescient announcement?
As for David “NoFreedomForYou” Horowitz, he actually has an essay on his website saying the book shouldn’t have been written at all. Amazing & truly dreadful.
Fortunately, there’s been pushback on his attempt at censoring a fellow conservative’s ideas, coming from small blogs like ours. Here’s one I picked at random on a google search:
When Should a Book Not Be Written?
As for Radosh, the original trash-talker on this subject, he’s got another strange missive, this time on Pajamas Media, about why we should go to war against Syria and calling those of us who don’t want troops there “isolationist”. The commenters are wrathful, accusing him of various things, like hitting the bottle.
BTW, if I’m not mistaken, PJM is another enabler in this beatdown. But since we know personally how scared they are of *ever* going off the reservation, quelle surprise. I could be mistaken about their cowardice, so if someone has seen a positive review of her book on PJM, I’d love to know. I’ll link it.
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Someone (I think it was Robert Scheer, who knew David Horowitz when) once said of him “once a Stalinist, always a Stalinist.”
There is I believe too much focus on Horowitz’s leftist past. Jamie Glazov, Front Page’s Managing Editor was the person who advised Diana West that the positive review of American Betrayal by Mark Tapson had been pulled and plainly he was a part of that decision-making process. Nobody could accuse Glazov of having a leftist past. I have admired Glazov for decades; before he came to Front Page. I simply cannot believe he could have been “leaned upon” by David Horowitz. The saga is a sorry and perplexing one.
Horowitz is in charge of Frontpage.com.
The reviewer chosen to defame West without a fair trial, Ronald Radosh, is a longtime close friend of Horowitz.
Horowitz not only chose Radosh to review her book, he published a defense of Radosh and an extra set of nails to continue her crucifixion.
After the evisceration of Radosh in 2008 by M. Stanton Evans, no one should delegate a review to him. Not only did Horowitz make this egregious error, he compounded it by digging in his heels after Diana West demonstrated how bizarrely inept Radosh’s review was (and her demonstration reflected only a small portion of Radosh’s errors; she will soon publish her detailed rebuttal).
Glazov should know all this, and abjure it, if he is as free and independent as you imply. Instead, he’s 100% in synch with Horowitz. If Glazov is not an “ex-Leftist”, he’s analogous to the Middle Eastern Christian dhimmi who does the bidding of his Muslim masters.
Besides, Glazov is one of those anti-Islam pundits who is all no-nonsense bluster on the surface, but who really believes in the TMOE and the Moderate Muslim meme when push comes to shove. In this regard, Glazov is little better than Pipes, and probably a little worse.
Would you kindly elaborate on “the evisceration of Radosh in 2008 by M. Stanton Evans”? Thanks.
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2008-01-01.html
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I see that Gatestone has reposted the Clare Lopez review of Diana West’s book; but I have it on good info that she has now been sacked from Gatestone. There are some extremely baleful undercurrents to this Syrian debacle; who ordered her sacking? Why didn’t John Bolton object? I repeat – WTF is going on? Not only are we being shafted in the West by Obama and his Alinski disciple puppeteers, it seems those who profess to be on ‘our side’ are simultaneously sodomising us. I’m very sore!
Indeed. Don’t sit down without the judicious use of pillows.
Someone, I think it was commenter Pascal, said they were using Alinsky’s Rule #12 on Diana West. Here it is, spelled out at Red Hunter:
Alinsky’s Rule 12: Destroy the Individual
RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)
This rule has been applied by BHO in every single elective office he has sought. Which is why his campaigns were truly ugly.
http://theredhunter.com/
Alinsky rules are far less troublesome once they’ve been spotted.
In the days when society was more unified, the rules of decorum could be breached more easily with the tactics. The radicals would use subterfuge whilst their foster parents with “clean hands” in the elitist “Progressive” movement (including media big wigs) protected them from being stripped of their thin veneer by charging those who reacted to the tactics with being reactionaries when they fought back, or conspiracy nuts even as the Progs clearly were protecting the radicals. “Who are you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?” And the public went back to sleep because they were inculcated to trust their “leaders.”
All that lead-in is to say what you are doing on this issue is the biggest reason you have been under attack even by those who you once trusted. B&D cannot be relied on to go along with the crowd and had your readership had to be put on notice. “You aren’t quoting them are you? To a lesser extent you’ve been treated much like Diana, and now Clare.
And the good news is that recognizing Alinsky rule number 12 has been used gives all of you the sympathy that the tactic tries so hard to eliminate. That’s primarily why I suggested in my earlier comment that you and Diana consider it. The backlash can be made to work in your favor. Used wisely, at least you will know who you can trust more and who you can trust less.
Correction:
B&D have proven often they cannot be relied on to respond to pressure to go along with the narrative. Your readership had to be put on notice. “You aren’t quoting them are you?”
Very soon, after having read the review of Mr Radosh, I realized that Ms West was a target for what here is named “Alinsky’s rule 12”. And I wrote a little contribution to the the resistance with my linguistic arguments.
I’ll tell you the trick – it’s not difficult at all. Observe and count the value loaded words in a text – both negative and positive (In this case, Nr 1 was when Mr Radosh called the book “awful” in the headline of his review at frontpagemag.). Please, also observe the methods use. How come that the reviews of Mark Tapson and Clare M. Lopez has been taken down from frontpagemag. I’ve read them both.
PS. Thanks Pascal for understanding my intentions.
[Foulness]! I hadn’t read the last post from Pascal when posting mine.
When you are catching flak, it’s a sure sign you are over the target.
For anyone who cares, lead character assassin Ron Radosh has just appeared on pjmedia.com with an article on Syria:
“Why We Must Support a Military Strike in Syria
by Ron Radosh
An answer to Bryan Preston and other hawks who doubt the president’s plan”
There are 53 comments, with an overwhelming majority reacting negatively to his argument.
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