So it turns out that the acting director of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, William Perry Pendley, has denied the Left’s “climate change” mythology, and opposes jihad violence and illegal immigration. CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski is out for blood, trying to get Pendley for heresy, that is, for his dissent from Leftist orthodoxy.
My first reaction to this was, so what? William Perry Pendley is in the Bureau of Land Management. What does that have to do with “global warming,” unless Kaczynski thinks that the sea levels are going to rise and swallow whole cities, including Obama’s new beachfront estate, and we’re all going to be dead in 12 years? What do jihad violence and illegal immigration have to do with land management? Kaczynski here shows that he would have been a terrific Gestapo official: why no, sir, you cannot have a position as a grocery clerk, because you have shown insufficient ardor for the Führer.
And indeed, the Left is increasingly open about its totalitarianism. Those with dissenting views will not be allowed to hold jobs, even if those jobs have nothing to do with the subject of their dissent. A few years ago I was invited to address an education conference in California that had nothing whatsoever to do with Islam; the hate-filled fascist Georgetown University thug Nathan Lean got the cowardly Catholic bishop Jaime Soto, under whose auspices the conference was being held, to cancel my appearance. (I spoke at the conference as scheduled, in a venue outside the bishop’s purview.) And also a few years ago, the Washington Post discovered that Qur’an-burning pastor Terry Jones was driving for Uber; they duly got him fired. I don’t approve of book-burning, but it is not illegal in the United States, and the idea that a man must be hounded forever and prevented from making a living for views that dissent from the Left’s reveals what Leftists really are.
Among William Perry Pendley’s heresies was that he “has repeatedly pushed hardline anti-Muslim views, including citing an article by anti-Muslim activist Robert Spencer in a 2018 tweet to claim Islam was at war with America.”
Here Kaczynski employs the familiar smear of Leftist “journalists,” that opposing jihad mass murder and Sharia oppression of women, gays, and others makes one “anti-Muslim.” That could only be true if all Muslims endorse jihad mass murder and Sharia oppression of women, gays, and others. Does Kaczynski believe that? If so, he should accuse himself of “Islamophobia” and resign in disgrace from CNN. In reality, opposing such things doesn’t make one “anti-Muslim” any more than opposing the Nazis during World War II made one “anti-German.” I’ve only said that about ten thousand times, and have said it directly to Kaczynski in emails. He doesn’t take any note of it, because he is not a real journalist, he is a Leftist propagandist who is not interested in the truth, but only in shaping the world by imposing his narrative upon it. He may succeed for a while, but all totalitarian thought-control breaks down in the end under the weight of reality.
In this case, reality may break in on Kaczynski in a most unpleasant way, when he discovers that the Islamic jihadis he has enabled and run interference for are something less than grateful.
Kaczynski smeared Pendley with this: “‘Who knew? Islam’s war with America started just up the road in Greeley, Colorado!,’ Pendley tweeted. In the article, Spencer floats unfounded conspiracies about ‘leftists’ allying with ‘Islamic hardliners who adhere to Sharia, a system of laws that would have many of them executed.’”
The PJ Media article in question details how Leftist were banning the song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” which Muslim Brotherhood theorist and Islamic scholar Sayyid Qutb also found objectionable. That wasn’t a conspiracy theory at all. Both the Leftist hatred for the song and Qutb’s similar hatred for it are amply documented in the article and elsewhere. What is ironic here is that Kaczynski claims that I spread “unfounded conspiracies about ‘leftists’ allying with ‘Islamic hardliners who adhere to Sharia, a system of laws that would have many of them executed.’” Yet in demonizing me for opposing jihad terror, he enables those Islamic hardliners. In claiming that the idea that Leftists would ally with Islamic hardliners is a “conspiracy theory,” the hardcore Leftist Kaczynski allies with Islamic hardliners to try to destroy those who stand against jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women and others. Conspiracy theory?
Kaczynski also objects to Pendley for saying that the Department of Homeland Security should focus on jihad terror rather than “right-wing extremism”; Kaczynski quotes acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan saying that “extremism from white supremacists” is “one of the most ‘potent ideologies’ driving acts violence in the US.” He notes that Pendley said this in 2010, but doesn’t bother to inform his hapless readers that few people were worrying about “right-wing extremism” in 2010. Nor does he bother to inform them that the idea that “right-wing extremism” is a greater threat than jihad terrorism is based on studies with numerous flawed premises.
We have just learned regarding the jihad massacre last week in Paris that the jihad murderer Mickael Harpon “had caused alarm among his colleagues as far back as 2015, when he defended the massacre of 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper by two brothers vowing allegiance to al-Qaeda. But even though a police official charged with investigating suspected radicalization among the force questioned the colleagues, none of them wanted to file an official complaint.”
Why didn’t they? The answer is obvious. None of them wanted to file an official complaint for fear of the French counterparts of Andrew Kaczynski. They were afraid if they did, articles like this one about William Perry Pendley would be in their future, and their career would be in ruins.
Yes, by stigmatizing and demonizing opposition to jihad terror, Leftist “journalists” are getting people killed. If CNN were a genuine news source, it would fire Andrew Kaczynski and repudiate his hit piece on Pendley. But it isn’t, and it won’t.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His new book is The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.