The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

More LGF Fallout: New York Times ‘Casually Defames’ Filip DeWinter

Posted on | January 24, 2010 | 13 Comments

So says Diana West:

As many readers know, I have written extensively about Filip and his party’s  courageous political battle to halt and reverse the Islamization of Belgium since I first met him almost exactly three years ago. . . .

Diana West is certainly no fascist sympathizer. Unlike Charles Johnson, she’s actually been to Belgium and seen what Vlaams Belang is fighting against:

As Filip put it, “so-called anti-fascists used fascist methods to try to silence us. This cannot be allowed in a democracy.” 

Read the whole thing. A tectonic shift is re-arranging our political landscape, an insight brought into startling clarity a few years ago when I noticed that feminist Phyllis Chesler had invoked The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail.

Fifteen years ago, Raspail’s 1973 dystopian novel had a sort of samizdat existence, known only to a relative handful of paleoconservatives and certainly not a book that respectable American  intellectuals would admit having read. Raspail himself noted that his book — a nightmare vision of an ennervated Europe overrun by hostile invaders — would now be illegal to publish under France’s modern “human rights” laws. Times change, circumstances change, and the political correctness that suppressed The Camp of the Saints has long since passed its sell-by date.

Courage to speak painful truth has never been more important. Diana West knows that. So does Mark Steyn. Those who counsel cowardice in these times are not true friends of liberty.

UPDATE: Baron Bodissey also takes issue with the New York Times’ treatment of DeWinter and Vlaams Belang:

Filip Dewinter was the only national Belgian political leader to speak out publicly in Parliament on behalf of Belgian Jews this time last year, when the Left marched with Hamas supporters on the streets of Antwerp chanting “Jews to the gas”.
Vlaams Belang is the only political party in Belgium that takes a libertarian stance and supports a free market economy.
To refer to them as “fascist” or “neo-Nazi” is not just inaccurate, it is a travesty of the truth.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE II: Speaking of “casual defamation,” the anonymous blogger at a site called Drops In the River (DITR) labels me a “Neo-Nazi supporter . . . outspoken racist” and a “pussy” — I love it when anonymous people accuse me of cowardice — en route to asserting that DeWinter must be a fascist because Charles Johnson says so. (Argumentum ad ponytailem.)

DITR is such an expert on all things Belgian, don’t you know. But what’s interesting to me is that DITR lists his “favorite writers” as Matt Taibbi, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Andrew Sullivan, David Weigel, Max Cannon and Radley Balko. An interesting selection — Weigel and I are good buddies, which would be a too-familiar description of my acquaintance with Balko, although he and I are not strangers. And I’ve plied Hitchens with Johnny Walker while he told bawdy jokes at a DuPont Circle beer joint. Not to tar my friends with guilt-by-association, but one way DITR “proves” DeWinter is a “fascist” is because DeWinter was photographed talking to (gasp!) Pat Buchanan. By similar proofs, Michael Kinsley must be part of this crypto-fascist cabal.

DITR’s citation of both Hitchens and Dawkins tells me that we’re dealing with an atheist, probably a youngster who digs atheism because it’s so hip, rebellious and intellectual. Also, we presume, because atheist chicks are notoriously easy.

We note in closing that DITR is irony-impaired: Not 48 hours before he called me a crypto-fascist stooge for quoting Diana West’s defense of Filip DeWinter, he was highlighting the punishment of a 13-year-old girl under Sharia law in Saudi Arabia.

Yet DeWinter is smeared as a “fascist,” you see, for opposing the importation of Sharia to Belgium. We need a truth-in-labeling law in politics.

Category: Charles Johnson, Drops In The River, Europe, Terrorism

Comments

13 Responses to “More LGF Fallout: New York Times ‘Casually Defames’ Filip DeWinter”

  1. uberVU - social comments
    January 24th, 2010 @ 7:19 pm

    Social comments and analytics for this post…

    This post was mentioned on Twitter by rsmccain: @michellemalkin @AmPowerBlog @LegalInsurrection More LGF Fallout http://bit.ly/5WTdoY New York Times ‘Casually Defames’ Filip DeWinter…

  2. Old Rebel
    January 25th, 2010 @ 12:57 am

    One thing you have to say about Charles Johnson — he’s known for his unyielding contradictions.

    He screams about “Islamofascism” and cheers on the Neocon Wars (from the safe distance of California), yet he denounces any movement within Western nations to limit Muslim immigration.

    So Muslims thousands of miles away are a threat to our way of life, but Muslim colonization at home should be welcomed. Got it?

  3. Old Rebel
    January 24th, 2010 @ 7:57 pm

    One thing you have to say about Charles Johnson — he’s known for his unyielding contradictions.

    He screams about “Islamofascism” and cheers on the Neocon Wars (from the safe distance of California), yet he denounces any movement within Western nations to limit Muslim immigration.

    So Muslims thousands of miles away are a threat to our way of life, but Muslim colonization at home should be welcomed. Got it?

  4. Bob Belvedere
    January 25th, 2010 @ 4:32 am

    Times change, circumstances change, and the political correctness that suppressed The Camp of the Saints has long since passed its sell-by date.

    As proof we have My Site

    Yours,
    ‘Shameless Bob’ Belvedere

  5. Bob Belvedere
    January 24th, 2010 @ 11:32 pm

    Times change, circumstances change, and the political correctness that suppressed The Camp of the Saints has long since passed its sell-by date.

    As proof we have My Site

    Yours,
    ‘Shameless Bob’ Belvedere

  6. HillBuzz Bloggers Outed, Threatened by Nutrootz Thugz
    January 24th, 2010 @ 11:38 pm

    […] And more on casual defamation. […]

  7. Drops in the River.com: Shocking that someone who thinks Jews go to hell when they die doesn’t find Buchananite parties repulsive
    January 25th, 2010 @ 1:31 am

    […] Here is Robert Stacy McCain’s defense of Mr. Dewinter and his fascist party. Apparently it’s not fascism when you’re protesting Arab immigration. […]

  8. Charles Johnson
    January 25th, 2010 @ 8:25 am

    Racists. All of you. Now excuse me, I am going to eat a cake alone in my kitchen.

  9. Charles Johnson
    January 25th, 2010 @ 3:25 am

    Racists. All of you. Now excuse me, I am going to eat a cake alone in my kitchen.

  10. dymphna
    January 25th, 2010 @ 9:18 pm

    As we’ve pointed out previously on our blog, there has to be a statute of limitations on what may or may not have happened in a political party’s past.

    If that issue is not resolved in a given polity, then down the generations you have what is happening now to Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and to Vlaams Belang in Belgium.

    The deep and abiding sense of guilt the Dutch still harbor over their collaboration with the Nazis and their willingness (with the exception of a few brave souls) to make Holland ‘judenrein’ has given them no way to deal wisely with the onslaught of Muslim immigrants into their country. The fact that Wilders is part Indonesian himself does not give him more credibility with the top tier of Dutch power brokers who permit the Islamicization of their country. And the chasm separating the elite from the average citizen is too wide to bridge.

    There are similarities with the history of the Belgians and WWII collaboration. However, the majority of anti-Semites in Belgium can now be found on the left, and it is they who do the dissembling and finger-pointing at Vlaams Belang while remaining overtly hostile to Israel. Orthodox Jews trust VB. In fact, of all the political parties in Europe, Vlaams Belang most resembles an American center right group: small government, low taxes, reasonable rates of immigration and stipulations encouraging the assimilation of immigrants into the local culture.

    We can make a similar case for the political sins of the past in America. No one fought harder against racial equality than the Democrats. But once equality was the law of the land, those same folks were quick to use governmental largesse to buy the black vote. So what if their largesse served to destroy the bonds of the black family? They still had the votes.

    But none of those Dems -Lyndon Johnson and the rest – were ever held accountable for the ruin of so many people’s lives and for the creation of a degraded underclass led by the professionally Aggrieved.

    Daniel Moynihan warned what would happen, but who cared beyond the next election? Now, in Obama’s “community organizing” neighborhood in Chicago not only are black fathers fleeing responsibility for their children but the mothers have also started to do the same. The state is becoming the default-parent for these poor kids – “poor” in every sense of the word.

  11. dymphna
    January 25th, 2010 @ 4:18 pm

    As we’ve pointed out previously on our blog, there has to be a statute of limitations on what may or may not have happened in a political party’s past.

    If that issue is not resolved in a given polity, then down the generations you have what is happening now to Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and to Vlaams Belang in Belgium.

    The deep and abiding sense of guilt the Dutch still harbor over their collaboration with the Nazis and their willingness (with the exception of a few brave souls) to make Holland ‘judenrein’ has given them no way to deal wisely with the onslaught of Muslim immigrants into their country. The fact that Wilders is part Indonesian himself does not give him more credibility with the top tier of Dutch power brokers who permit the Islamicization of their country. And the chasm separating the elite from the average citizen is too wide to bridge.

    There are similarities with the history of the Belgians and WWII collaboration. However, the majority of anti-Semites in Belgium can now be found on the left, and it is they who do the dissembling and finger-pointing at Vlaams Belang while remaining overtly hostile to Israel. Orthodox Jews trust VB. In fact, of all the political parties in Europe, Vlaams Belang most resembles an American center right group: small government, low taxes, reasonable rates of immigration and stipulations encouraging the assimilation of immigrants into the local culture.

    We can make a similar case for the political sins of the past in America. No one fought harder against racial equality than the Democrats. But once equality was the law of the land, those same folks were quick to use governmental largesse to buy the black vote. So what if their largesse served to destroy the bonds of the black family? They still had the votes.

    But none of those Dems -Lyndon Johnson and the rest – were ever held accountable for the ruin of so many people’s lives and for the creation of a degraded underclass led by the professionally Aggrieved.

    Daniel Moynihan warned what would happen, but who cared beyond the next election? Now, in Obama’s “community organizing” neighborhood in Chicago not only are black fathers fleeing responsibility for their children but the mothers have also started to do the same. The state is becoming the default-parent for these poor kids – “poor” in every sense of the word.

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    January 25th, 2010 @ 11:39 pm

    […] right, and I’m sorry to have arrived late for this rally. We are at a point when — as I explained yesterday — there is a tectonic upheaval in the political landscape, re-arranging coalitions to form […]

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    January 30th, 2010 @ 10:42 pm

    […] Hugely ironic considering that both men pride themselves on their “skepticism”.More LGF Fallout: New York Times ‘Casually Defames’ Filip DeWinterPOWIP gave us a hat tip.Drops in the River reveals itself a purveyor of misinformation. Sad.The […]