Friday, January 04, 2013

The Counter-Jihad: Still A.I.M.less

Image result for aimless street nevada 
Aimless Street, in Henderson, Nevada
 
"This coordinated identity of message is something I've noted here before: Leftists and Islamic supremacists tend to parrot the same talking points, as if they were all reading from the same script." 


The Islamopologists (whether Muslims or PC MCs) are, and have been since day one, ahead of us in the War of Ideas in terms of propaganda. As Spencer has noticed, they seem to have something roughly -- and fairly effectively -- functioning as a Pro-Islam Manual; while we in the Counter-Jihad are still floundering around in a sea or jungle of Too Much Information, Too Little Organized.

This is due to at least three factors, I think:

1) When it comes to monumental and complex sociopolitical issues, spinning sophistry is easier than truth-telling

2) The Islamopologists already have an extant template -- the PC MC template -- and this template, furthermore has been dominant and mainstream for at least 50 years throughout the West.  Its main mechanisms of Reverse Racism (and the flip side of that well-worn coin Excessive Self-Criticism of the West) turn out to fit Muslims perfectly like a glove; and so we must acquit, all day long (until some day, we must submit).  Hand over fist it's hand in glove, insofar as Muslims are treated by the PC MC mainstream as an Ethnic People (or better yet, a wonderful "tapestry" or "mosaic" or "rainbow" of Ethnic Peoples) -- indeed, Muslims have become designated the #1 Ethnic People in the world where, if we must make a choice between them and other Ethnic Peoples, we must throw the latter under the bus.

and, finally,

3) The Counter-Jihad has been inexcusably remiss in failing to develop its own definitive digital A.I.M. -- an Anti-Islam Manual by which we ordinary people on the front lines can be deputized in order to more effectively fend off the apologetic claims of

a) praising Islam;

b) defending Islam from substantive criticism;

and

c) indulging in various red herrings of obfuscation all revolving around Tu Quoque (or rather, Ego Quoque) and Moving the Goalposts.

One example out of thousands I could show to illustrate our problem:

David D. Kirkpatrick, influential pundit of the New York Times, expounded on the problem of Islam in an op-ed, revealing unsurprisingly that he needs to brush up on his literacy of Islam:

He [Abu Khattala] also said he opposed democracy as contrary to Islamic law, and he called those who supported secular constitutions “apostates,” using the terminology Islamist radicals apply to fellow Muslims who are said to disqualify themselves from the faith by collaborating with corrupt governments.

The "terminology" apostate is not merely that of "Islamist radicals" (is there such a thing as an "Islamist non-radical" or a "non-Islamist radical", one wonders...?) -- it is part of mainstream Islamic law, and under that law it denotes anyone who leaves or betrays Islam, and the penalty is death.

I wanted to write Mr. Kirpatrick a letter, but I knew that just dashing off a slapdash letter of a few unsubstantiated claims would be a waste of time.  To prove my assertion adequately with sources, however, had taken me 90 minutes to hunt down; and I still was not done before I had to give up and spend my time on other things.  (For example, I spent over 30 of those 90 minutes trying to find a source for the claim that the Umdat-al-Salik is certified by Al Azhar University -- a claim I found in abundance throughout the Blogospheric Echo Chamber, but so far always without an adequate reference link.  I never did find that adequate reference). I don't want to write to a NYT reporter merely relaying unsupported claims, nor with more un-referenced assertions from a site like Jihad Watch that he will dismiss out of hand: To have non-negotiable punch, I must have the adequate sources for my assertion.

If we had a digital Manual of all the important points of the problem of Islam, I could have dialed it up in seconds. But Robert Spencer and all the other luminaries of the Counter Jihad apparently think this isn't a high priority for the movement.

Another example regarded a typical Islamopologist that not too long ago was blowing complex smoke in various Jihad Watch comments threads, and I noticed that while many JW regulars took him on valiantly, their responses rather reflected his tactic of scattershot obfuscation, rather than dispelled it to clarify the essential facts he was trying to obscure.  As I wrote in a comment there about the effects of that obfuscator -- "YGM 76700":

"[...he] is, ostensibly, fairly well adept at kitman -- weaving together plausible sounding inferences and conclusions seamlessly massaged into a tissue of lies and anti-Western hatred while managing (at least to those who aren't vigilant and literate in the issue) to keep the latter two subliminal.

"In addition to kitman, YGM 76700 is also deploying the tactic of obfuscation through complex quantity -- which is a two-fer: it not only helps to obscure the lies and the anti-Western animus; it also serves to wear down the opponents through the tedium of having to refute him -- for a thorough refutation of his long posts would require the labor of weeding through and detaching the lies from the kitman half-truths, then those two from the straw men and red herrings, a rather tiring task to the extent that he has woven a rather tight weave of a complex of warp-and-woof. It is tempting to take his Kitman Tapestry and just toss it in the trash, or rip it in pieces; and it's probably not a bad idea. But YGM 76700 is clever enough, it seems, to know that intelligent people will look at those responses and see they aren't actually refutations.

"While many responses to YGM 76700 that go into greater depth are helpful, they still don't deliver the refutation that is a result of painstaking unraveling of his carefully woven straitjackets. It would be far easier to deliver handy and effectively thorough refutations of YGM 76700 if we, as deputized Counter-Jihadists, had a digital Anti-Islam Manual."

Examples like these two can be, and have been, multiplied by the thousands in the past years in many different permutations, in many different contexts, and many different situations -- all the way from participating in public debates, to writing your Congresswoman, to having extemporaneous discussions with friends, family or new acquaintences: whether at a family gathering, at a party, in between classes, at the water cooler in the office, accidentally in the laundry room, etc.

We desperately need to have, at the ready, an organized template of Points and Counter-Points every time we find ourselves in any given situation where we need to 1) condemn some feature of Islam and/or 2) refute some propagandistic defense of Islam.  This would be the digital Anti-Islam Manual I keep harping on.  With such a Manual available for general use, in our iphones, our tablets, our laptops, our important role as Deputies in the Counter-Jihad would be enhanced immeasurably.  And we would then begin to tip the winning edge in the War of Ideas against the Islamopologists.

Without it, we remain less effective, like unarmed deputies, teeth missing in our enthusiastic smiles as we stand there with our pants around our ankles.  At any given point in the ongoing conversation about Islam, without a digital Anti-Islam Manual, the information we need to be effective in the War of Ideas suffers from the following flaws:

1) there is simply Too Much Information about any one of the 1,001 important subtopics of the problem of Islam,

2) the information is too disorganized

3) the information is far-flung and chopped up into pieces in different places

4) the information is often riddled with complicated overlaps of redundancy

5) the information is more often than not insufficiently referenced, and

6) for the most part only remarkably talented individuals -- like Robert Spencer who has instant recall and an encyclopedic memory -- are capable of firing back when obfuscators blow their complex smoke.

But, as I noted above, none of our luminaries in the Counter Jihad seem to think this is a high priority (if they even bother to give it any thought at all).


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hesperado

Yes there is dire need for such a manual. However the grandees of the movement don't seem to want effective soldiers in the fight.
They all seem to want to hog what little attention there is to be had for themselves. And when they aren't exposing Muslims they are purging posters from their blogs for all sorts of supposed violations/slights. One has to be very careful posting anything other than anti-Islamic rants. Veer into foreign policy and say the wrong thing and you're gone.

The grandees certainly aren't big tent people nor what I would call populists.

IMO with the current crop at the helm, the anti-Islam movement will continue to stay small and offer little resistance to Muslim encroachment.

Hesperado said...

Anonymous,

I was going to mention in my essay the impression one gets about Robert Spencer, but I decided against it. Perhaps another day. The impression I refer to is the ostensible fact that he effectively benefits from the current situation where he's the (or one major among a very small select group) font of anti-Islam knowledge. As far as I can tell, his career is based on this; and if there were an AIM (Anti-Islam Manual) produced and widely disseminated, his role would diminish greatly. He'd still be a great debater, and his Jihad Watch would still be a great source, newsreel-wise, but frankly he's not a good book-writer (his prose is exceedingly boring and unnecessarily complicated), and the money he makes apparently derives largely from that (and perhaps also from speaking and consulting fees). (Latterly, I've noticed that in the past year, Jihad Watch has become a "cookie monster" and by now he must be making a tidy sum from sheer advertising and cookies that invade every computer user who visits the site.

Meanwhile, I'm quite poor and nobody pays me for what I contribute.

Anonymous said...

I corresponded with Pamela Geller via email for a while a couple of years ago when she first started getting asked to be on TV.

My impression based on my personal experience is that Pamela Geller wants to be the Queen Bee of the anti-jihad movement, and she is downright vicious if she feels that someone has crossed her - whether that person intended to harm her or not.

For example, Pamela Geller had apparently paid for Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff to speak at an anti-jihad conference in the USA.

As I understand events, after Austria later charged ESW with a hate crime, ESW gave her first interview to Gates of Vienna (I think).

Well, as I remember it, Pamela Geller was incensed that ESW was so 'disloyal' as to fail to give Pamela Geller her first interview after Pamela Geller had paid her way to the USA in the past - with part of her personal money, natch.

In my opinion, it seemed that Pamela Geller 'interpreted' the entire event to be about herself and her very emotional response - rather than either ESW and ESW's problems or the ultimate goals of the anti-jihad movement. It was remarkable - in a very bad way!

As I recall, in a bizarre and surreal tit-for-tat spate of 'revenge' for an imagined harm, Pamela Geller omitted to blog about ESW's hate crime charge or trials on her website. That's when I began to stop reading her blog because I thought that Pamela Geller was extremely immature to omit to cover a very important anti-jihad news story with far-reaching implications.

Then, Pamela Geller's erstwhile business 'partner', Robert Spencer was first supposed to testify as an expert witness for GSW; then, Spencer backed out seemingly because Pamela Geller was allegedly furious at GSW; then, Spencer publicly volunteered to testify for GSW again after he was roundly criticized for failing to help. In the end, ESW declined Spencer's help - probably because ESW thought Spencer was completely mean and unreliable which is how is seemed to me at the time.

I have a few more other personal stories that prove my point, but my conclusion is that, first and foremost, Pamela Geller wants to be a celebrity.

With that said, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer still add to the base of anti-jihad information - although I never read Geller's blog anymore.

Also, Pamela Geller is very brave to bear the horrible death threats that she receives from Muslims on a regular basis. I presume that Robert Spencer receives the same type of death threats, too, from Muslims who are biding their time until they can make good on the death threats.

My sense is that neither Geller nor Spencer will ever lead an organized movement of people.

Geller wanted to create an action type organization, but she quickly became afraid of the liability to her if someone became violent to Muslims. I completely understand her fear because I believe that Western governments would LOVE to infiltrate anti-jihad groups just to commit crimes that discredit name-brand leaders and prevent them from gaining more anti-jihad partners.

Egghead

Hesperado said...

Yes, I recall that whole ESW saga; and it seems Spencer and Geller have quite a history doing similar things, burning bridges with various colleagues -- you might have seen my essays about the "Gentlemen's Club" in which I go into details about, for example, Andrew Bostom, Diana West, Debbie Schlussel. Also, there was an exchange I had here on my blog in the comments section with Baron Bodissey where he went on quite at length about Spencer in this regard; though he also, at the same time, basically said he could not go into too much concrete detail -- because, he strongly implied, he was actually afraid of what Spencer might do to him! (not physically, of course, but some other way that would "ruin" him; not sure exactly how, as he had to keep it vague). Weird, to say the least.

If you never saw those comments and are interested, I'll try to find them for you.

Anonymous said...

Yes, Hesp, that thread would be interesting to read if you can find the link to it easily. :)

Egghead