My friend Sam Childers, a missionary to Africa, titled his book
Another Man's War, and my appreciation for that title has been deepened in the past 12 days, since Charles Johnson began attacking me. This was not a fight I sought. I came to the defense of my friend Pamela Geller and have since found myself drawn into a long-running conflict which would have been in my personal best interests to ignore.
Which brings us to the subject of
Kejda Gjermani, who joined the Little Green Footballs attack on me yesterday and replied to my defense by accusing
me of "threatening"
her:
All I need to know about you before I opine on you are your own statements and a list of people and organizations you are affiliated with.
Before you issue further threats, a word of caution: Research Robert Spencer’s exchanges with me. He has called me many unflattering an epithet and tried to shut me down. He has harassed my employer with seething e-mails. But he is worse for wear. My research on him has brought to his reputation ruin from which he may never recover. The only reason I have not taken him down even further is because he bores me.
You, sir, do not wish to become my target if you have skeletons in your closet.
Gjermani does not "opine" on me, but asserts flatly that I am a "white supremacist." Understand that I've been a professional journalist for 23 years, so I know libel law inside and out.
When I call Charles Johnson a cowardly lying crazy fool, that is not actionable (besides which, truth is an ironclad defense). American libel law does not protect anyone from verbal abuse. However unbecoming it is for a professional journalist to engage in such behavior, it's not libel. If I were to
state as a fact that Charles Johnson has sodomized Thai child prostitutes,
that would be actionable. (Note that this is a hypothetical; I have no interest in or knowledge of Charles Johnson's sexual interests or activities.)
One of the most important points in this engagement is that since October 2007, Charles Johnson has accepted the credibility of LGF's pseudonymous commenters (
e.g., "Dave of Sweden") attacking Geller, etc., without making any evident independent effort to verify these charges.
Is Vlaams Belang "fascist"? I can't even pretend to know that. I've never set foot in Belgium, I don't know any Belgians, and everything I know about the political sympathies of Vlaams Belang would therefore be second-hand at best. An old reporter's motto: "If your mother says she loves you, check it out." No one has offered to pay my way to investigate extremism in Europe, and I claim no authority on the subject.
Are Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer (Diana West, Richard Miniter,
et al.) fascist sympathizers, as Charles Johnson has repeatedly alleged? All four of the individuals named are persons known to me, and I am utterly certain that these allegations against them are false. That Robert Spencer may have an unfortunate habit of sending "seething e-mails" (a temptation to which I have at times yielded myself) is known to me, but does not cause me to suspect him of being a crypto-fascist.
If I know that Charles Johnson has lied about people whom I know, and whose
bona fides I have no reason to doubt, the question arises as to Johnson's motive. As I have repeatedly pointed out, Johnson has become obsessed with his commenters, promoting their contributions to his blog, and relentlessly purging those who question these accusations against Geller,
et al.Considering how accepting at face value the accusations of pseudonymous commenters has played such a large part in the Madness of King Charles, I am hesitant to do the same. However, a commenter on a previous post suggested that Gjermani is the LGF contributor "Medaura" who, in May, was
subject of a post at the ex-Lizard site Blogmocracy:
Charles Johnson is the gift that keeps on giving, his new target: Michael Savage. As I posted earlier Savage has been banned from the UK. This is bogus as the UK allows Islamist groups to operate on its soil. Charles agrees with the banning and even lumps in Savage, who is Jewish with Neo-Nazi Don Black. Savage hates Nazis and Fascists, but Charles thinks anyone who stands against Islam and for America is a Nazi. . . .
But wait it gets really better, now The Militant Albanian Islamist Medaura chimes in.
Medaura was one the reasons LGF went down. She came in and spread Albanian/Al Qaeda propaganda against the Serbs. She also instigated the Charles-Robert Spencer split. Now if anyone on LGF supports Serbia’s struggle against Islamo-Fascism, they get banned.
Cited in that
Blogmocracy article was this comment by "Medaura":
361 medaura18586 5/05/09 10:37:49 am
Savage is nothing but a conceited fuck, and while I don’t listen to his show enough to know whether he has advocated violence on air, I know he has supported genocide and attempted genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo, respectively. That’s good enough for me
Read the whole thing. Accusing Michael Savage of
advocating genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo? To borrow from Marc Anthony's funeral oration for Caesar, if Kejda Gjermani is indeed "Medaura," it is a grievous fault, and grievously shall she answer it. See
Robert Spencer's writings on the subject of "Medaura," Kejda, and the KLA.
Yet I cannot vouch for this commenter's assertion that Kejda is "Medaura." Please see my comment (2:09 p.m. 9/23) on the
Green Room LGF thread:
It is an elementary mistake of logic to suppose that any particular fact you know (or think you know) is the only fact relevant to a controversy. In a universe of facts, the numerous facts you don’t know may be far more important than you think. This is the Hayekian insight, with which you ought to acquaint yourself.
Read the whole thing. Hey, I'm just askin' questions.
UPDATE 6 p.m.: Conservative lesbian
Cynthia Yockey:
Is Kejda Gjermani working as a concern troll to support Islamic jihad?
Charles Johnson -- and his minions, including Kejda Gjermani -- are, (1) forcing legitimate anti-jihadists to defend themselves non-stop so they can't do any work against the Islamic jihad against the West, AND (2), put such a fog of complicated accusations on them that it is almost impossible for their prospective supporters and allies to recognize them as allies.
Another technique that Kejda Gjermani seems to be using is the pose of the "concern troll."
I learned about "concern trolls" in the fall of 2008 from HillBuzz, which was a regular target of the Obama campaign's paid trolls. They operate by feigning agreement and support, but then express fears and concerns with the objective of demoralizing the blogger and his or her readers. This is consistent with the persuasion model employed by sociopaths: say one thing, do another. Kejda Gjermani may say she opposes Islamic jihad against the West and just wants to purify the European and North American anti-jihad movement of people she claims oppose jihad for the wrong reasons -- racism, fascism, whatever. Never mind the reality that she -- and Charles Johnson -- are destroying the reputations of jihad’s legitimate opponents like Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer and thwarting their efforts against the Islamic jihad against the West. . . .
Read the whole thing. Meanwhile, we note this from former LGF admirer
Brian Ledbettter at Snapped Shot:
Once again, we can conclusively show that Charles Johnson cares not for the facts when they're found to be inconvenient to him.
Frankly, Brian, at this point, I fear that the Madness of King Charles is so far gone that he wouldn't even recognize a fact if you showed it to him. And
I have replied to Wild Irish Rose.
Standing at mid-ring, I await the bell . . .
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