The plot thickens.

 

“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”

     --Sherlock Holmes (The Sign of the Four)

§ § §

 
The Gatestone Institute -- yet another stalwart "conservative" think tank, affecting to be patriotic and concerned for American, and Western, security in the face of the threat of Islam.  The Gatestone Institute: it sounds so distinguished, so stolid, so presentably brimming with integrity, so ivy-league; so... gatey and stoney. 

Well, a seemingly small crack has appeared in that stony facade (and doubtlessly the Distinguished Fellows therein hope no one will notice its incipient fissure ominous of deeper fault lines).  Clare Lopez, a Distinguished Senior Fellow there herself, with an unassailable résumé, published at Gatestone an essay expatiating upon Diana West's new book, American Betrayal, and in the process favorably alluding to its thesis which may be described, in a nutshell, as asseverating, on the basis of massively detailed reference citations to numerous scholarly works on the subject, that Communist infiltration of the United States (particularly in government) was far more extensive and intensive than heretofore appreciated and assimilated by mainstream historians and the pundits who percolate propagandistic (and culturally influential) sound-bites from that mainstream history.  A secondary thesis of West's, directly interlocked with this primary one, is that a revisionist history (with its attendant pop cultural percolation) has become mainstream by which the Communist infiltration has been severely minimized and the patriotic Paul Reveres warning of it (viz., the gold standard, Joe McCarthy) reduced to caricatures of paranoid alarmists. 

A couple of days ago, we learned that this fine essay by Clare Lopez was summarily yanked from Gatestone by unseen Gatestone hands, with not a shred of explanation offered out of respect to Ms. Lopez or to her (and Gatestone's) readers and supporters.

Then today, we learned something even more egregious.  The Gatestone Institute has fired Clare Lopez.  (Read the full, sordid details at the Gates of Vienna blog.)

This is outrageous, and strange.  And, as has been recounted here and at Gates of Vienna and at Diana West's site and at Ruthfully Yours, only represents the latest in a series of outrages against Diana West's book, and against her character.

Something rotten in Denmark is afoot here -- if I may mix my metaphors, Shakespearean and Sherlockian.  Only two explanations seem logical, though neither one can be redeemed from outlandish implications that beggar plausibility.

The first is that ex-Communist anti-Communists David Horowitz and Ronald Radosh have serious brain damage rendering them a) incapable of processing elementary data (as amply and clearly demonstrated by the detailed refutations by Diana West (even in her abbreviated “coming attraction” presaging a major rebuttal soon to come) and M. Stanton Evans of Radosh’s attempts at criticism) -- even as their brains seem perfectly capable of intelligent commentary and analysis about nearly everything else; and b) susceptible to irrational spasms of emotion further incapacitating their already seriously compromised ratiocination in this regard.

The second is that ex-Communist anti-Communists Horowitz and Radosh are not really ex- and nor anti-Communist, but continue to further the Communist Revolution, in latter years under deep cover pretending to have earned anti-Communist bonafides — i.e., they are doing Stealth Communism in the guise of fighting Communism. Part of their nefarious motives would involve a mistaken, but powerfully dreamy belief that the Communist world revolution can be strengthened through a synergy with Islamic Jihad (and here too, then, a pretense to being anti-Islam on the surface would mask an ulterior opposite agenda, reflected by the occasionally glinting traces of tips of an iceberg in the form of the curiously soft embrace they affect of various “Reformist Muslims”, not to mention in Radosh’s essay lecturing his fellow “conservatives” about how Islam isn’t all that bad).

Neither scenario, as I said, is fully satisfactory; and both leave an unpleasant aftertaste in the mind considering them. But unfortunately, they seem to be a Scylla and Charybdis, forcing us ruthlessly to follow the sage counsel of Detective Holmes.  The only question is, which of the two choices is the accurately “impossible”…?