Via Lawrence Auster and a correspondent, news that Charles Johnson of LGF has, more or less, slipped the tether of reality:
I'm sure you're bored rigid by now over the antics at LGF and its recalibration to the left but I'm concerned with the way LGF is targeting major figures in the anti-jihad movement: Fjordman, the Gates of Vienna blogsite, Bat Ye'or (whose Eurabia theory has been trashed), Diana West, and, I believe, soon to be, Robert Spencer. I've heard that Spencer and Johnson are or used to be friends.
Spencer is crucial to the anti-jihad movement and has been instrumental in making Islam's doctrines widely known on the Internet. In his precise, unemotional and scholarly fashion, he is far more of a responsible symbol than LGF could ever hope to be.
Evidently, this unmooring is the outgrowth of Johnson's reaction to the European counter-jihad conference, and the emphasis placed by participants upon cultural and civilizational heritage and particularity, as opposed to the deracinated fantasies of proceduralist liberalism and the self-indulgent quest for the moderate Muslim, a strange creature which, like the unicorn, inspires much whimsy but is never actually sighted.
Cultural particularity is the stumbling block of this unfortunate age of human history, upon which the West itself, in thralldom to various malign ideologies and delusions, now dashes itself.
Comments (5)
I don't want to get into the rights and wrongs on the sides of this, but I'll make a prediction: I don't think Johnson will attack Spencer, certainly not with any great force or virulence. My prediction, FWIW. Oh, and one more point: It really makes no difference who is right or wrong on this issue to the primary purpose for which LGF is useful--as an up-to-the-minute news clearinghouse on particular topics.
Posted by Lydia | December 18, 2007 12:03 PM
Well, I understand the latter point, though, for my part, I'd rather not have to wade through the miasmic slough of accusations of bigotry just to acquire some information on the latest insanities from the Dar-al-Islam. The mutation of anti-racism into a virulent and pestilential detestation for cultural particularity is precisely what renders Islam the threat that it is.
I guess what I'm saying is that I'll stick to Jihad Watch and Dhimmi Watch for my Islam-related informational needs.
Posted by Maximos | December 18, 2007 12:12 PM
If this post is any indication, Spencer agrees with Charles on the basic points.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/018805.php
Posted by Step2 | December 18, 2007 7:12 PM
Spencer's piece is much more temperate and sensible than anything Johnson has written on the subject. For my part, I'll say only that conservatives need to conquer their not-entirely-irrational terror of the thought-police of the left; one cannot effectively defend the enduring legacy of a culture and its wider, nurturing civilization if one is prepared to countenance, whether in principle or actuality, the replacement of the people who created the culture and civilization in question. While calls for a 'white Europe' are blunt and incendiary, it is simply a fact that a France, for example, in which the ethnic French have become a minority will not be France in any substantive sense; and the formal, procedural senses will not save.
The truth of this is quite compatible with the fact that Le Pen is a weaselly buffoon. And, in a sense, I believe that all of the caterwauling about racism partakes of the effort to transform cultures into sets of propositions, inasmuch as it permits us to indulge the illusion that the greatness of a culture can endure once its historical bearers, having lost their faith and their will to reproduce themselves, have passed into memory. Codswallop. In large measure, the racist-hunting is merely a means of self-absolution, a form of faith void of works: faith that France - to continue the thought - can endure the death of the French bereft of the only works whereby France can endure: creating more French children.
Posted by Maximos | December 18, 2007 7:47 PM
Spencer's piece is much more temperate and sensible than anything Johnson has written on the subject.
Up to about a year ago I have read LGF more or less regularly.
I read it very seldom lately.
To my knowledge Johnson did not post a single article of his own longer that 2-3 sentences.
His writeups on computer software/fonts/graphics, jazz music and his own biking are excluded.
After 3-4 years of reading LGF I cannot tell Johnson positions on immigration or culture.
Posted by mik_infidelos | December 18, 2007 11:14 PM