Excellent writing doesn’t change that:

1. He’s citing Bruce Bawer as a serious observer and effective critiquer of Islam. Bruce Bawer being an advocate of Eurabia and Islamist takeover of Europe in 30 years through breeding, and yet another ranter/raver about multiculturalism and leftist elites destroying Europe.

2. He’s eliding all “leftist” critique of anti-Islamist commentators into the narrow band of critique that is pro-Palestinian and unquestioning accepts the Palestinian narrative. Citations to articles and sources which indulge in accusations against amorphous “liberal elites” reinforces that beneath the intellectual posturing are lazy category-cladistics and unjustified assumptions.

3. All of Landes’ posts follow the same rhetorical structure—deferring discussion of issues on “his” sides of politics, in spite of nominal and minimal recognition, while cataloguing with excrutiating detail the pathologies of the other (while accusing them of lack of self-examination). A particularly vivid example of this being Islamophobia and Criticism of Islam, which defends, amongst others, JihadWatch and Robert Spencer. Again the false balance is a prominent feature—a formal distinction of critique versus -phobia is presented, but never engaged nor applied. Instead, the bulk of the document is a recitation of the “realities” of Islam (all negative…some of which are not “Islamic,” and some of which assume as-written scripture 100% represents religion-as-praxis).

4. The above approach is particularly foul when applied to Utoya—trim the nice verbiage and Landes is saying “…lots of kids died because of this guy who thought he was complying with my thinking, and that gives me pause for about two sentences, but let’s change the subject to how this prove how misguided pro-Palenstinian Europeans are.” His follow-up post Operating on a Media Holodeck continues this deferral…he’s glossing around the children being shot to talk about the sad mental state that put them in the line of a bullet.

Nominally, I agree with what Landes communicates: his critique of unquestioning supporters of Palestine, his desire for genuine and open critique of Islamism—but he’s purposefully engaging in rhetorical games to wedge open the discussion for irrational and dishonest participants like Spencer. Either he suffering from a dose of false consciousness himself or he’s presnting his arguments in bad faith.