More: Outrage Over Firebrand Pamela Geller’s Planned Speech at Synagogue « CBS New York

GREAT NECK, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) — Pamela Geller calls herself a human rights activist, but her critics call her a hatemonger.

And as CBS 2’s Carolyn Gusoff reported, Geller will be taking center stage at a Long Island synagogue this weekend speaking about Islam, and there’s been a firestorm of opposition.

“What is the controversy?” Geller said. “You know, a Jewish girl going to speak at a synagogue.”

But there is plenty of controversy. Geller has been called everything from a fanatical bigot to a fearless dynamo, and being called upon to speak at Great Neck Synagogue has ignited even more strong reactions.

Geller has gained notoriety for her anti-Islam messages, notably including several series of ads that have appeared in the New York City subway and Metro North transit systems.

One round of ads read, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad.” Another features the twin towers of the World Trade Center burning on Sept. 11, 2001, and a quote attributed to the Quran saying: “Soon shall we cast terror into the hearts of the unbelievers.”

Geller was also the force against the Ground Zero mosque, which she called a “victory mosque” marking the site of the 9/11 attacks.

Geller’s most recent group, “Stop Islamization of America,” has been dubbed a hate group by both the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

More at CBS News.

UPDATE: The event has been cancelled.

The Struggle for Jihad
By Poh Si Teng
March 6, 2013

Two opposing groups battle to define the word jihad on public buses and subways.

Using Billboards to Stake Claim Over ‘Jihad’

CHICAGO — There is an advertising war being fought here — not over soda or car brands but over the true meaning of the word “jihad.”

Backing a continuing effort that has featured billboards on the sides of Chicago buses, the local chapter of a national Muslim advocacy group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, has been promoting a nonviolent meaning of the word — “to struggle” — that applies to everyday life.

Supporters say jihad is a spiritual concept that has been misused by extremists and inaccurately linked to terrorism, and they are determined to reclaim that definition with the ad campaign, called My Jihad.

Continue reading at the New York Times.

British Muslim-Basher Sentenced in UK After Entering US Illegally

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, the immigrant-bashing, Muslim-hating leader of the far-right English Defense League was sentenced yesterday to 10 months in a British prison after pleading guilty to trying to illegally enter the United States. Yaxley-Lennon used a friend’s passport in order to speak at a gathering of other immigrant-bashing, Muslim-hating bigots last Sept. 11 in New York City.

American immigration officials initially stopped the 30-year-old, name-shifting extremist from entering the country at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York when he was fingerprinted and it was revealed he was not the man listed on the passport - Andrew McMaster.

But Yaxley-Lennon, who also uses the pseudonym Tommy Robinson in his anti-Muslim protests and speeches across England, somehow managed to slip away from the authorities and travel into the heart of Manhattan. There, he delivered a speech to a conference of an international right-wing umbrella group, Stop the Islamization of Nations (SION), that included a U.S. SION spinoff, Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA). SIOA is headed by Pam Geller, the American anti-Muslim movement’s most visible and flamboyant figurehead and a Yaxley-Lennon ally.

Yaxley-Lennon returned to England the next day and was arrested a short time later.

“We were fortunate to have the singular Tommy Robinson come to New York and address the first SION World Freedom Congress on September 11,” Geller wrote on Oct. 21 on her website site, Atlas Shrugs. “Robinson has been arrested for his participation in this effort. This is the latest outrage in a relentless campaign of attrition, harassment and political persecution of Robinson by a weak, sharia-compliant UK government.”

A legal defense fund was set up on both sides of the ocean and his supporters called Yaxley-Lennon a political prisoner. Geller vowed to “fight alongside him.”

One anti-racist English blogger saw Geller’s position as hypocritical. “For the number of times they scream about ‘illegal immigrants’ setting foot on their precious land, you’d think they’d pick up on the fact that the EDL’s leader Tommy Robinson (Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) entered American illegally,” the blogger wrote.

nydailynews.com

Anti-Muslim bigot & listed hate group leader, Pam Geller, might sue again.

The MTA has rejected a proposed bus and subway ad calling Israel’s enemies “savages.”

Anti-Muslim firebrand Pamela Geller earlier this month submitted the poster in response to ads in 18 stations urging the US end military support to Israel.

Geller’s proposed advertisement states: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad.”

CBS Outdoor, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s media management company, wrote Geller her proposed ad violates authority standards.

It’s unacceptable because it “demeans an individual or group of individuals,” a CBS executive wrote Geller.

splcenter.org

Geller continues a warped orbit around a white dwarf star of hate in some alternate universe where Birchers and white supremacists are the good guys.

Most clear-thinking Americans can tell the difference between the real but limited threat posed by Islamic terrorists and the utterly insane theory that an entire religion is conspiring to take over the Western world. But then, Geller has a hard time separating facts from imagination.

Take, for example, the reference in her book to the Southern Poverty Law Center, whom she despises for having designated her organization, Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), as a hate group. The passage, reprinted from a February post on Geller’s Atlas Shrugs blog, creates an entirely fictitious history of the SPLC (which publishes this blog).

It reads, “Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the SPLC was designated as a Communist front. [Geller doesn’t say by whom.] It was essentially run by a couple, Anne and Carl Braden, who were Community Party USA members. They had been identified in sworn testimony, and they made no attempt to deny the allegations. They would be proud that their legacy remains intact today: their “heirs” – destroyers and America-haters — continue their work to subvert and destroy America.”

Heretofore, no one has disputed that the SPLC was founded in 1971 by Alabama civil rights lawyers Morris Dees and Joe Levin, both of whom remain active in the organization today. The Bradens, though renowned as courageous white champions of black civil rights in the heart of a racially intolerant South – and by no definition “destroyers” or “America-haters” – were never associated with SPLC.

“They didn’t have anything to do with the Center,” Levin reiterated Tuesday.

Heidi Beirich, the SPLC’s director of research, politely asked Geller for a correction. Beirich wrote, “Hi there. I just thought you might want to know that the section of your book on the founding of SPLC is completely wrong. Our founders are Morris Dees and Joe Levin. The Bradens have never played a role in the SPLC. I think you have confused us with someone or something else. We’d appreciate a correction.”

Geller, however, insisted her tall tale was accurate.

barthsnotes.wordpress.com

The two quotes illustrate Geller’s appeal across the right: one can’t imagine the hard-boiled Bolton having much time for Boykin’s brand of neo-Pentecostalism, which revolves around revelations given to prophets such as Jim Bakker and Rick Joyner, along with using the Bible to discern signs of the End Times in current events. It is, though, a tricky balancing act: in March 2010 Geller and her sidekick Robert Spencer had to scramble after their links with the Christian Action Network caused embarrassment for Geert Wilders, due to CAN’s anti-gay views.

The new book’s title, of course, references Geller’s “Stop the Islamization of America” organisation, which she took over from DL Adams and Kendra Adams in April 2010 at the request of Anders Gravers and Stephen Gash of Stop Islamisation of Europe. SIOA’s website was recently scrubbed of all content and access to cached versions has been blocked, but it is known to be controlled by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, which was set up by Geller, Spencer, Gravers, a certain Richard Davis, and John Joseph Jay.

Jay is also a member of SIOA’s board, and he came to wider attention in August last year after several sanguinary comments came to light, including the belief that “if we are to excise the ruling class, it will be with violence.” Spencer responded with bluster about ”leftists” and “misrepresentation”, but he was not able to explain away Jay’s obviously violent rhetoric.

YWC: just another youth group in the panoply of the SIOE*/SIOA / crazy Pam Geller/Robert Spencer Muslim hate nexus. In practice “Youth for Western Civilization” translates to “Youth for European descended Christian fundamentalists.” Like the Yobs, Neo Nazis, and soccer hooligans in the English Defense League, and Vlaams Belang’s youth groups, they never met a muslim that they liked.

Last weekend, several hundred right-wing political activists gathered for a rally in the German city of Cologne to protest the “Islamization” of the West and immigration policies that they contend threaten the “Western culture.”

They included representatives of Vlaams Belang, a Belgian organization that changed its name and liberalized some of its positions after it was convicted of racism in 2004 by a Belgian court; the Freedom Party of Austria, a right-wing party formerly led by the late Jörg Haider, who was often denounced for seeming to praise some Nazi policies; and the National Democratic Party of Germany, which is classified by the Bavarian government as a right-wing extremist institution.

Also represented was a small but growing nonprofit U.S. organization called Youth for Western Civilization. The group, which bills itself as “America’s right-wing youth movement,” bannered a photo of the Cologne rally on its website this week, accompanying an account that declared that “we will not falter nor fail in our attempt for the defense of the Western homeland.”

Similar to other Neo Fascist and New Right youth groups they are networked together and support each other. Some of this includes going to summer camps together**, (a different location each year) and participating in things like Ijzerwake and other thinly veiled gatherings of the far right.

Some wonder as to why they must network across the water, but that answer is simple. As haters and followers of extreme right ideology they are a miniscule minority. To achieve an effective critical mass of like-minded individuals whether on the net or at demonstrations they have to gang together between countries.

That’s why fascist groups willing to network between countries are so extreme, and sometimes dangerous. That’s also why groups like YWC are essentially unAmerican at their roots: because blood, soil, and tribe don’t cut it here — that’s a Euro thing.

* SIOA is a listed hate group at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
** The far right youth group leaders are gathering in Croatia this summer.

Another person learns about the far right’s lack of ethics and use of deception to promote its hate-fueled, anti-science efforts to drive America backwards.

Until just a few minutes ago I’d never heard of the organization—the IEET, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies—where this article appeared, but their stated purpose sounds sane enough. They define themselves as “technoprogressives” and I didn’t see anything that immediately set off any moonbattery alarms, but I’m sure if I missed something one of you will let me know shortly.

I’d also never heard of Eric Klien, but the moment the author mentioned Pamela Geller’s name I knew that whatever was coming next would be highly unpleasant for him.

The article is interesting, if predictable in it’s outcome: normal, sane person encounters wingnuts, red flags go up, person has temerity to call out Geller and gets thrown out of organization, shitstorm ensues and person realizes just how morally bankrupt the far right is. It’s worth reading in its entirety. The whole thing starts off innocently enough (as usual):

…Okay, first: what is the Lifeboat Foundation? It is supposed to be a nonprofit organization dedicated to the study of existential threats to humanity (threats that could lead to destruction of the human race, or all life on the planet). It consists mainly of a very large number of invited members (sometimes called Advisors and sometimes Board Members) who are organized into groups known as Advisory Boards, which are dedicated to specific subjects like threats from artificial intelligence, from nanotechnology, from falling asteroids, and so on.

Sounds like a good idea? Well of course! I thought so too, when I was asked to become one of their advisory board members a couple of years ago. Serving alongside Nobel laureates! Heady stuff.

But last year something strange happened. The person who runs the Foundation, Eric Klien, decided to add a new Advisor who was a little controversial. Some would describe her as an “extremist political blogger.”

Her name is Pamela Geller, and to give you a general idea of what she stands for, she and her organization (called “Stop Islamization of America”) has just been classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “Hate Group.” The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is, for those who don’t know, pretty much the gold standard for monitoring and classifying hate groups. […]

At this point the author visits Geller’s blog and gets a first-hand taste of her rabid rantings. He pulls out close to a dozen quotes “gathered from just the front page of one section of her blog”. (Emphasis mine.)

He then calls out Geller and gets the boot, at which point some additional online sleuthing turns up new info about Klien (which is quickly removed):

It turns out that Klien has written—on Pamela Geller’s blog—that he is on a crusade against what he calls “The Religion of Science,” and that he formed the Lifeboat Foundation with the intention of deceiving its members about his true purpose:

I have developed Lifeboat Foundation with a Trojan Horse meme that tries to wrap our goals in the Religion of Science memes. For example our mission statement begins with “The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit nongovernmental organization dedicated to encouraging scientific advancements.”

[NOTE: The article quoted above was available on Geller’s Atlas Shrugs blog until yesterday, when Klien had it removed.]

[UPDATE: Here is a link to a cached version of the article. Google says this shows the page as it appeared on Jan 27, 2011 20:56:38 GMT.]

A few paragraphs later, the author begins to fully appreciate the vicious depravity of the people he’d gotten in bed with:

What does he suggest as an idea for “what to do about it”? He sets up the tone of the rest of the article by starting with a quote.

A quote from … Adolph Hitler.

“It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge.” - Adolph Hitler.

So, let me see if I have got this straight. Eric Klien tells us (in the rest of that article) that scientists belong to a religion that they are not even aware of belonging to, and this religion believes that all scientific advancement is good under all circumstances, and that members of this religion must do whatever it takes to quiet people mentioning any dangers that might be caused by science.

And his position is that this religion must be destroyed. And he puts in a quote from Adolph Hitler about fighting against people of faith.

This is beginning to get very scary.

[…]

Klien concludes the aforementioned article with these words:

By wrapping our meme with a Religion of Science coating, I hope to develop enough resources that we can make sure that unlike every civilization so far, we can have at least SOME people survive this dangerous religion.

In other words, if you kill the other guy in the lifeboat, then at least SOME people survive…?

[…]

More at the IEET website…

As I mentioned, there’s more good stuff at the source, but I don’t want to borrow more than what’s fair for commentary.