Pamela Geller vs. LGF

So I wake up from a nap and, curious to know what's happening out there in blogland, I check Memeorandum and see this headline from Little Green Footballs:

Pamela Geller: Poster Girl for Eurofascists

OK, to boil it down: Next month, Geller will attend a conference in Cologne, Germany, on the Islamicization of Europe. One of the key figures in the German group sponsoring the Cologne conference is Manfred Rouhs. He has appeared at events with neo-Nazi activist Axel Reitz who, in turn, has appeared at events with neo-Nazi activist Christian Worch.

Whence these associations? I've explained it before, but I'll explain it again: The mainstream "conservative" parties in Europe have refused to address effectively the issues of immigration and multiculturalism. (In Europe, multiculturalism takes the form of pandering to their massive number of Islamic immigrants.) Because mainstream politicians have forfeited leadership on these legitimate concerns of their citizens, the vacuum has been filled by the likes of Reitz and Worch. Ergo, if there is a conference in Europe addressing the question of whether Islamicization is a threat, it won't be organized entirely by "respectable" types.

Thus, Johnson's guilt-by-association attack on Geller highlights the real problem we face in America: If the Republican Party and the mainstream conservative movement don't recognize and respond to our own citizens' concerns about immigration and multiculturalism, then those issues will be taken over by similarly disreputable groups.

What should Geller do? Cancel her trip to Germany? I think not. Rather, she use the occasion to alert Germans to the consequences of cowardice by their leaders. Germans, perhaps better than any other people, are aware of the heinous results when democracy fails in a time of crisis.

Anyone who has read William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich knows that Hitler never would have come to power if the mainstream conservative parties in Germany had more effectively addressed the problems of the Weimar Republic. The German people were desperate for leadership, a credible alternative to the ineptitude of the Social Democrats who dominated Weimar, and Hitler -- who had shrewdly studied the tactics of the Social Democrats in his native Austria -- appeared to offer such an alternative.

Knowing that history, one sees why so many conservatives were frustrated and outraged about George Bush and John McCain's open-borders stance on immigration. Anyone who paid attention to talk radio -- and I was doing a talk-radio tour to promote Donkey Cons while S.2611 was being debated in the Senate -- knew that grassroots conservatives were about 110% against the "shamnesty." And yet the Republican leadership allowed this opposition to be smeared (and, indeed, John McCain himself smeared them) as "anti-immigrant" and worse.

This was a Weimar-style failure of leadership. The Republicans in Washington were doing the exact opposite of what the people who had elected them wanted them to do. No surprise, then, that the GOP lost the 2006 mid-terms. And then the Republicans nominated as their 2008 presidential candidate the chief Senate advocate of "shamnesty," who proceeded to demonstrate he was as inept and tone-deaf on economics as he was on immigration.

So, here we are in 2009. The Republican Party is now nearly irrelevant in Washington and Obama and the Democrats are gearing up to push their own "shamnesty." And what's Charles Johnson doing? Is LGF rallying conservatives to oppose the Obama/Pelosi/Reid agenda?

No. Pamela Geller is doing that. Every freaking day. And also getting smeared by LGF every freaking day. The result? She's doubled her traffic in the past year.

Given the threat we face here in America, I'm willing to let the Germans evaluate how much of a fascist threat Rouhs and Reitz pose to Germany, and I'm willing to let Pamela Geller decide which conferences she does and does not attend.

Mark Steyn, Kathy Shaidle, Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller -- we're all "Rightwing Extremists" now.

UPDATE: Linked by Atlas Shrugs, who laughs at the idea of pro-Israel neo-Nazis. Folks, the tectonic plates of politics are shifting, as I've realized ever since I noticed liberal feminist Phyllis Chesler citing The Camp of the Saints. And if anybody feels tempted to hit my tip jar, please don't resist that temptation.

UPDATE II: Linked at Hyscience, who calls Pamela a "common sense-thinking conservative who's willing to speak out for what she believes in."

I like "Rightwing Extremist" better. Easier to remember. BTW, trivia time: "Pamela" is Greek for "honey."

UPDATE III: Robert Spencer accuses me of writing "sensibly"! And he thinks he's got a libel problem. Next thing you know, I'll be accused of being "a top Hayekian public intellectual." No, wait . . .