Vlaams Belang: As long as the horse draws breath, beating it is not fruitless

This is an edited version of a previous post I published here.

I saw fit to excize the first few paragraphs which were basically just complaints about Robert Spencer once again censoring my comments on a Jihad Watch thread relating to the Vlaams Belang (VB) controversy.

The post concerned the VB controversy and its impact upon the Anti-Islam Movement, particularly in the Blogosphere. In a nutshell, that impact has had the effect of dividing (or revealing an already extant fissure in) that Movement into two camps:

1) those who have an inordinate sensitivity about “racism”

2) those who have sufficient intelligence to recognize that “racism” has become an Orwellian term used by Politically Correct Multi-Culturalists to browbeat their opponents and to stifle critical dissent from the PC MC party line.

The following is the comment Spencer interdicted—which, as any sane and intelligent reader will see, does not deserve to be censored:

The overarching problem here is that there is currently an ideological tenet in force throughout the West—Anti-“Racism”.

Anti-“Racism” is distinct from Anti-Racism without the Orwellian quotes.

Anti-“Racism” is an important piece in the PC multi-culturalist mosaic. It is being used very effectively throughout the West to protect Muslims and Islam from substantive criticism (let alone from the condemnation they deserve), and to smear those critics as being tainted with (if not blatantly guilty of) Racism without the Orwellian quotes—which, of course, nobody of sense and good faith wants to be tainted with or guilty of.

It is disappointing to see so many in the anti-Jihad Movement (a regrettably decaffeinated designator for what should be the “anti-Islam Movement”) succumb in one way or another to the confusion between Anti-“Racism” and Anti-Racism, and to manifest their degree of confusion with, at worst (Charles Johnson), blacklists of VB and Filip Dewinter, or, at best (Robert Spencer), insulting McCarthyesque demands that VB and Dewinter comport themselves “correctly”, without extending them the intellectual courtesy—which CJ and RS themselves would reasonably expect, shoe-on-the-other-foot-wise—of at least examining arguments in the defense of VB and Dewinter already published, and then producing counter-arguments (or, Heaven forbid, announcing they had actually changed their minds because of new data!).

Those already published defenses—detailed refutations of the smearing of VB and Dewinter come from the Center for Vigilant Freedom website:

1) http://www.vigilantfreedom.org/910blog/2007/10/27/facts-part-1-intro-counterjihad-brussels-2007-conference/

2) http://www.vigilantfreedom.org/910blog/2007/10/28/diana-west-vlaams-belangfreedom-fighters/

3) http://www.vigilantfreedom.org/910blog/2007/11/08/vlaams-belang-in-the-european-parliament-part-2/