Anti-Muslim

Frank Gaffney hosted Andrew McCarthy of the National Review yesterday on Secure Freedom Radio where he warned that People For the American Way is “promoting the Islamist agenda in the attack on Michele Bachmann” and should really be called the “People For the Islamist Way.”

PFAW recently delivered a petition opposing Bachmann’s reappointment to the House Intelligence Committee due to her long history of making extremist claims including her recent charge that Muslim Brotherhood agents have “penetrated” the U.S. government, a conspiracy that Gaffney helped concoct.

McCarthy joined Gaffney to defend the Minnesota congresswoman, who smeared Muslim-Americans in government including Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin, and once again argue that Bachmann is the real victim. He said that PFAW and other progressive groups have “decided to ‘bork’” Bachmann “because she has been so effective.” Gaffney said that the petition was part of the “red-green axis” that exists “between the left and the Islamists.”

Apparently, the PFAW-Islamist conspiracy must go all the way to the top of the Republican Party as Speaker John Boehner; Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC); House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security Subcommittee Chair Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) have all strongly denounced Bachmann’s allegations.

Gaffney: Let’s start with a woman that I think we both admire, who has been vilified in both Democratic and Republican circles, shamefully, for having had the courage to speak the truth about a problem that you have documented, most especially involving the woman that I guess caused so much controversy when Michele Bachmann and four of her colleagues asked the perfectly reasonable question: how did Huma Abedin with her ties to the Muslim Brotherhood get a security clearance and what influence is she having on policy? Give us your read on the fact that the so-called People For the American Way and I must say it sounds much more like it’s the People For the Islamist Way is up to when they try through a very substantially subscribed-to petition to have Michele Bachmann thrown off the Intelligence Committee in the House?

McCarthy: Well it seems to me Frank that it means that Michele has irritated all the right people who ought to be irritated. The American people ought to understand since we’re talking about People For the American Way that that organization is a contrivance of a far-left television icon of the 1970s and 80s named Norman Lear who was instrumental in the slander of Judge Robert Bork, so much of a slander that Judge Bork’s name became a verb in our modern lexicon and Michele Bachmann is the latest person that the left has decided to ‘bork’ because she has been so effective and because she’s been a staunch defender of American national security.

…

Gaffney: Andy McCarthy you have also drilled down in your writings about the axis, some call it the red-green axis, between the left and the Islamists. This certainly seems to be a prime example of it as you say with Norman Lear’s background and the role that they are playing and in this instance promoting the Islamist agenda in the attack on Michele Bachmann.

Last year, after Michele Bachmann launched a smear campaign against Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin and alleged that there had been “deep penetration” by the Muslim Brotherhood in high levels of government, People For the American Way launched a campaign to get Bachmann kicked out of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. On the Intelligence Committee, she has special access to sensitive national security information, which probably shouldn’t be in the hands of a fear-mongering conspiracy theorist. But this week, Bachmann announced that she had been reassigned to the Intelligence Committee, despite the protests.

In light of the news, PFAW has revived its petition drive and the campaign has been covered by USA Today, the Huffington Post, and the Ed Show:

Back in July, we published a rundown of Bachmann’s worst conspiracy theories. Since then, she’s added to her repertoire, claiming that President Obama has “enforced Islamic speech codes here in the U.S.” and is intent on imposing Sharia law at home and abroad.

You can sign PFAW’s petition to remove Bachmann from the Intelligence Committee here.

It is always fascinating to watch far-right activists claim that Muslims should be stripped of their First Amendment rights while denouncing the Obama administration for allegedly trying to undermine the freedom of religion all in the same breath.

Take, for example, Frank Gaffney, who testified in a Tennessee court on behalf of a group that tried to ban a mosque by arguing that Islam is not be protected under the First Amendment. He spoke with Eagle Forum head Phyllis Schlafly yesterday about Obama, whom Gaffney thinks is likely a secret Muslim, about his purported “assaults” on religious freedom.

After Schlafly named a series of lawsuits (most of which had no connection to the Obama administration) that she says prove Obama is hostile to the First Amendment, Gaffney asserted that Obama is not only trying to impose a “secularist agenda” but also champion “unalloyed efforts to promote Islamism.” He argued that Obama has a “profound affinity for” Islamism and asked Schlafly how that squares with his secularism.

Schlafly, however, couldn’t come up with a coherent answer besides arguing that Obama is wrong for saying that “we are not a Christian nation” since that’s “what the founding fathers were saying all the time.”

Gaffney: These seem sort of like small and unconnected assaults, but one of the places where we see and you write very powerfully about, this coming to ahead as you say, is the exception to his secularist agenda, which seems to be President Obama’s profound affinity for and I would argue unalloyed efforts to promote Islamism. Tell us what that’s about and how that’s translating into further problematic behavior with respect to our religious freedoms.

Schlafly: Well my book, No Higher Power, shows how he is trying to completely secularize our country but he is giving a pass to Islam. You find that he doesn’t attack Islam and he went over to one of those countries and announced that we are not a Christian nation, but America is a Christian nation, look at all of our founding documents and what the founding fathers were saying all the time and the very beginning. It is very peculiar the way he gives a pass to Islam.

Maybe Schlafly and Gaffney can read Thomas Jefferson’s autobiography where he explicitly states that Muslims have religious freedom and no religion has a privileged status, or see the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli negotiated by George Washington and ratified unanimously under John Adams which reads in part:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility [sic], of Mussulmen [Muslims]; and, as the said States never have entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

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Earlier this year, Rep. Michele Bachmann said that Muslim Brotherhood agents had penetrated the Obama administration, which she claimed was attempting to “enforce Islamic speech codes.” While Bachmann was roundly mocked and criticized for the baseless remarks, they were a hit in conspiratorial right-wing circles. Bachmann took her crusade against the supposed Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the government to Jan Markell’s radio show this weekend, where she again claimed that Obama is “aiding and abetting” radical Islamist groups.

Markell is an End Times broadcaster and a close ally of Bachmann, who attended her “Understanding the Times” conference this year. She has previously claimed that Mattel’s Little Mommy Cuddle ‘n Coo doll is promoting Islam to children, demanded the government begin monitoring mosques and in 2007 predicted a terrorist attack as a result of a Hindu prayer in the U.S. Senate. Markell has also suggested that a tornado in Minnesota was a “warning from God” meant to punish the Lutheran Church for affirming gay pastors and alleged that the deadly 2011 earthquake in Japan was divine judgment.

Markell charged Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, and Barger said that the supposed rise of Sharia law in the U.S. is proof that the Antichrist is coming.

Markell: Hillary, she’s a woman from Arkansas who used to be an attorney and rose to the White House, why would somebody like Hillary Clinton let herself get embroiled in things that are so Islamic? I’ve done entire programs on her assistant Huma Abedin connected to the Muslim Brotherhood. Why do you think someone like Hillary is getting so enmeshed in all things Muslim Brotherhood that this is absolutely a danger to the nation at this point because of the intricate nature of Muslim Brotherhood, Washington D.C., homeland security, national security, the State Department and the rabbit trails just keep going, and everybody is wondering who has looked into these kinds of issues, what is in the mind of somebody like Hillary Clinton that she is willing to sacrifice the safety of the nation by getting so embroiled in Muslim Brotherhood?

Barger: Jan, it is simply baffling to me. To be honest with you, I’ve thought about that so much and I’ve been living with this research now for several weeks that we’re using on the air. Somebody has her ear, obviously; maybe she is convinced that she can be a catalyst for world peace. You know, if you understand Islam at all you understand that the goal is not world peace, this is world domination, they have said it over and over; it’s in the Koran.

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Barger: Can you imagine Sunday sermons across our land soon being scrutinized by a panel by religious examiners to see if the words used pass the left-wing litmus test or the Muslim litmus test or however it’s viewed, to see if they become hate crimes or to see who would be called a renegade preacher is really just inciting his people? That’s where we’re going and eventually that’s the case Antichrist will make against people who disagree with him and who would stand against him and stand against everything that he will stand for. The thought police have now moved to the mouth and I think we need to see that and understand it. How soon will our legal ability to witness and defend the faith and preach the unadulterated Gospel be hampered or stopped? This is the important question, you see.

During the interview, Bachmann warned that Israel and the American people are in grave danger due to President Obama’s purported support of radical Islamists: “President Obama, if you look at nearly every decision he has made about this issue, it is to lift up the Islamists and to take down Israel.”

She also claimed that the Obama administration’s supposed “Islamic speech codes” could be “deadly for the American people.”

Bachmann also told Barger that everyone who is not an Islamist will “lose their right of speech and expression” as there is “no tolerance for dissent or disagreeing in any way with the goals or the beliefs of the Islamists.”

Bachmann: Not just verbal speech, but written, a cartoon, a painting, whatever it is, if it is in any way construed as being against Islam that is where the confrontation comes from the Islamist world and they want to stop anyone in the world from saying anything negative about Islam. Which means there is only one free speech right and that would belong to the Islamists. Everyone else would lose their right of speech and expression.

The reason why this is important is because this is the whole game, it is game over if we who are in the non-Islamist world lose the right to criticize what the Islamist does, because the Islamist tries to advocate Islamic Sharia law and so anything that we would say in the future, once you criminalized anti-Islamic speech, anything that we would say that would be critical in any way of anything Islam does would be considered criminalized. That’s why I say it is game over; the Islamists will have won everything. That’s why they are willing to put ten years into achieving this objective of silencing any form of dissent to Islam.

Barger: That goes right along with the idea that in Islam you are either a member of the house of peace or the house of war, there is no live and let live or peaceful coexistence.

Bachmann: There is no tolerance. There is no tolerance for dissent or disagreeing in any way with the goals or the beliefs of the Islamists, there is only one way.

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Bachmann: Once you take away people’s ability to be able to speak, this is not a small right, this is everything, it is game over because then all of the power and authority has been given over to the Islamist. The Islamist is the only one who gets to dictate what we can say and what we can do, and what we can print and what we not print, and who can assembly and how they can assemble, because at that point Sharia Islamic law in effect becomes the law of the land because the Islamist gets to have the authority, not anyone who opposes Islam. This is a very, very important issue.

She accused the Obama administration of supporting the Organization of the Islamic Conference’s advocacy of blasphemy laws, which the U.S. unambiguously opposed. Bachmann said that Americans must study Islamic materials in the same way people studied Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf during WWII and alleged that a letter from Muslim-American groups [PDF] regarding anti-Muslim instructional material is “proof positive” that the Obama administration wants to introduce Sharia law to the U.S.

Bachmann: That’s what I spent my whole year doing was talking about this issue of what the OIC was trying to do with their ten year plan and all of these efforts in the Obama administration. The only conclusion you could make is that they are embracing the ten year plan and are supporting it and that’s why this October 19 document is so important because that is proof positive that every piece that is put into place is leading to one direction, this isn’t deviating it’s leading to one direction, and that ultimate goal it seems to be is to allow for mandating, following, every demand of the Islamist and we know what their ultimate demand is.

Barger: Sharia law.

Bachmann: That’s right. That’s why we need to know what their belief system is; we need to know what they truly believe. That’s why the most important thing a person could do in WWII was to read the book that the leader of Germany wrote.

Barger: Mein Kampf.

Bachmann: Because he laid out very clearly what his intention was, he wasn’t hiding it, the Islamist does the same thing. They do not hide it, they lay it out very clearly. But what we’ve never seen before is the United States aiding and abetting that goal.

Bachmann concluded by making the absurd claim that Obama and Clinton are going to do away with people’s First Amendment rights and “take away the free speech rights of the American people.”

Barger: We know that our Constitution certainly doesn’t match what the OIC and the Muslim Brotherhood want, nor what the United Nations seems to be doing with Resolution 16/18 and with some other things that are going on there. How much should we worry about executive orders and how they might become, instead of the legislation that should be passed through Congress, might become the law of the land that way?

Bachmann: We’ve already seen that President Obama has given himself a very free hand at writing any executive order that he wants because he said it himself that if the United States Congress won’t agree with him, he’ll just take matters into his own hand and he’ll become his own Congress and he’ll sign his own executive order and thereby put into practical effect a law that he wants to see passed. This is completely against our Constitution.

But even more importantly, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton she helped to formulate and write and pass UN Resolution 16/18, which calls for the criminalization—anti-free speech measures. This is very concerning that she went down that road. It doesn’t specifically say Islam, it talks about religious speech, but let’s face it there is only one religion that the OIC—the Organization of Islamic Cooperative [sic]—cares about and that’s Islam. Hillary Clinton was involved from the very beginning in writing this resolution. She’s already signed this. While a UN resolution doesn’t bind United States law, how in the world could the President allow the Secretary of State to sign a resolution that indicates that we are willing to take away the free speech rights of the American people?

This is game over, as I’ve said before, because when you limit the right to dissent from the American people, the Founders made this the First Amendment because they understood this is our most sacred right, our right to speak, our right to practice our faith the way that we want to, the right to publish what we want to publish, the right to assemble and talk about whatever we want to talk about. That’s freedom, that’s the essence of freedom, that’s the First Amendment, and that is what UN Resolution 16/18 which Hillary Clinton signed, presumably with the affirmation of President Obama, and that’s the first step in a big step for taking away from you and me and all of your listeners our right of free speech and expression, religious practice, freedom of assembly, freedom of the printing press but even more importantly, it will empower the Islamist to use that against us.

Either Bachmann never read UN Resolution 16/18 or is simply misrepresenting it, as the resolution [PDF] actually defends the freedom of religion while at the same time expressing “deep concern” over religious intolerance, discrimination and violence.

Human Rights First also debunks the assertion that the resolution somehow curtails freedom of speech:

Myth 1: The U.N. resolution opens the door to limiting freedom of speech.

Wrong. The resolution acknowledges the language of article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), notably that “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.” It calls on states to take measures “consistent with their obligations under international human rights law, to address and combat such incidents.”

The United States has a reservation to that provision, to the extent that it violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, so it is not bound by the obligation. In fact, the U.S. has the highest threshold of free speech in the world, and the U.S. government has expressed no intention of lowering those standards. However, that does not exempt all other states from their legal obligations to fight “incitement, hostility or violence” according to article 20 of the ICCPR. After all, that is what they signed up to, so they have an obligation by law to honor their commitment.

In all respects though, the implementation of Article 20 must not infringe Article 19, which reasserts everyone’s right to freedom of expression. Rather than imposing new restrictions on freedom of speech, which it does not, the new consensus resolution opens the door to an action-oriented approach to fighting religious intolerance. That is very consistent with the U.S. policies and practices – combat violence, discrimination and hatred without restricting freedom of speech. Resolution 16/18 urges states to train government officials to address religious tensions, to harmonize actions at local and national level, to raise awareness of negative stereotyping of persons, to promote interfaith and intercultural dialogue, to foster religious freedom and to speak out against intolerance (among other recommendations. The only limitation on speech that is in the operative part of the resolution is incitement to “imminent violence”, which is in accordance with US law.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) spoke to anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney yesterday on Secure Freedom Radio where he alleged that the Obama administration actively aided Al Qaeda and follows the advice of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Texas congressman partnered with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and a group of Republicans to demand investigations of Muslim Americans serving in the administration, with Bachmann warning that Muslim Brotherhood secret agents have successfully conducted “deep penetration” of the U.S. government. After the witch hunt was roundly criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike, Bachmann ended up literally running away from reporters.

But Gaffney and Gohmert remained defenders of the witch hunt, with Gaffney accusing Speaker John Boehner of “parroting the Muslim Brotherhood line” and Gohmert claiming that Obama “has helped jump-start a new Ottoman Empire.”

Yesterday, Gohmert told Gaffney that the anti-Muslim investigations are needed more than ever, arguing that Obama made such “horrendous decisions” by backing “revolutions in Northern Africa and across the Middle East and to the Far East” that it is likely because the “administration had a bunch of Muslim Brotherhood members giving them advice.”

Gaffney: Congressman Gohmert let me just ask you quickly because you were one of five members of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich called you all the National Security Five, who back in June of this year wrote letters to Inspectors General of five different departments raising the question that some of these dismal policies that have resulted in the Obama administration embracing Islamists at home as well as abroad and finding itself I would argue squarely on the wrong side of history as far as freedom is concerned, may be a function of these Muslim Brotherhood associated individuals who are serving in or advising the Obama administration. Looking at what’s happening now, looking at what has developed since you wrote those letters, do you feel that that issue should be raised anew and much more aggressively as Congress looks into the fiasco in Benghazi and now more recently in Egypt?

Gohmert: Absolutely. I think it almost makes a prima facie case when you look at the decisions made by this administration over the last couple of years, or actually all four years. You look at the decisions it made especially in the last two years in going through the revolutions in Northern Africa and across the Middle East and to the Far East, and the only way you can explain the horrendous decisions that were so completely wrongheaded would be if this administration had a bunch of Muslim Brotherhood members giving them advice.

Gohmert, of “terror babies” distinction, later maintained that Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood take over Libya (they didn’t) thanks to help from the Obama administration and also talked about how Palestinians are actually a new group because they didn’t live in the area when King David ruled.

It wasn’t enough to send verbal accolades; this administration sent planes and bombs and support to oust Gadhafi so that Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood could take over Libya. Some of us were fussing about it back then but we faced what was then ‘all the rage’ and that was you know Muslim Brotherhood taking over, call it Arab Spring, call it Arab Winter, whatever you want to, but it was disastrous unless you were wanting a new Ottoman Empire to take place and that’s what this administration helped jump start. So with that same kind of spirit and enthusiasm and excitement that we saw from this administration as Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood took over in Libya and has now taken over in Egypt, now we’re seeing that for the Morsi brokered temporary peace. There is not going to be any peace in the Middle East until the Palestinians—and Newt Gingrich is right, that’s a relatively new term, they certainly weren’t around 3,000 years ago when King David was ruling from Hebron for seven years and then Jerusalem.

The Christian Broadcasting Network’s terrorism analyst Erick Stakelbeck has no credentials to report on security issues (he is a sports reporter), but that hasn’t stopped him from playing the role as “expert.” Stakelbeck appeared on The Janet Mefferd Show to repeat right-wing talking points to claim that President Obama is a failed leader. He said Obama is “using the bin Laden raid as his sole, only foreign policy talking point,” arguing that it doesn’t reflect “foreign policy” and that “anyone in their right mind” would have made the call to go into Pakistan to find bin Laden (unless you’re Mitt Romney). But then Stakelbeck claimed that mission didn’t really matter since bin Laden “was basically isolated and neutralized at that point anyway.”

He went on to talk about how Obama is “empowering and emboldening the Muslim Brotherhood,” “throwing Israel under the bus” and “appeasing the Iranians,” and even said that Obama may pull of an “October surprise” by making a deal with Iran or sending troops into Libya. “Who knows what else they have up their sleeve, I have to say these are people who are leftist ideologues, they are hell-bent in their words ‘fundamentally transforming America,’ and I don’t think they’re going to go quietly,” he said.

Stakelbeck also discussed with Mefferd the non-scandal in Benghazi, arguing that the President has turned into “Imam Obama” over his UN speech where he said: “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. But to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated, or churches that are destroyed, or the Holocaust that is denied.” Stacelbeck decried the speech and lamented, “This is an American president saying that in front of the UN? This is madness,” apparently forgetting that President George W. Bush made similar statements during the Muhammad cartoon controversy. He concluded that Muslim countries can never have democracy because “Islam and true democracy are not compatible.”

Stakelbeck: He goes in front of the UN two weeks later and blames this obscure YouTube clip that no one has seen that’s defaming Mohammad. Not only that, when he goes before the UN General Assembly in a stunning statement which the mainstream media also ignored, he says ‘the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.’

Mefferd: As if we all accept him as prophet, right?

Stakelbeck: Thank you Imam Obama. Not ‘Islam’s prophet,’ ‘the prophet of Islam.’ This is an American president saying that in front of the UN? This is madness.

Mefferd: I know.

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Stakelbeck: I don’t believe that Islam and democracy are compatible. I know that’s a very controversial thing to say but if history is a judge and the Koran is a judge, then I believe that’s a fact, that Islam and true democracy are not compatible.

Anti-Muslim activists on the Right have consistently warned that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the Obama administration. But if their unhinged McCarthyism is to be believed, then Mitt Romney’s campaign has been penetrated by the Muslim Brotherhood as well, as Romney’s campaign has named George Salem, Samah Norquist and David Ramadan “National Co-Chairs of Arab Americans for Romney.”

Pamela Geller labeled George Salem’s Arab American Institute a “nototrious anti-Israel Israel [sic] organization” composed of “Islamic supremacists” and led by a “Jew hater.” She even suggested that the AAI seeks “Jewish annihilation” by backing Mideast peace efforts.

Geller, Frank Gaffney, Robert Spencer, William Murray, Andrea and James Lafferty and others sent a letter to Edwin Meese demanding he withdraw his endorsement of Virginia Del. David Ramadan because of his purported ties to Muammar Gadaffi and “radical views,” including his support for the right to build the Park 51 Islamic Community Center. James Lafferty said Ramadan is an “extremist” who should not even “be allowed to continue to live in the United States,” and Geller said he is a “stealth jihadist” and a “Muslim Brotherhood plant.”

Perhaps no chair of Romney’s committee is despised more than Samah Norquist, wife of conservative leader Grover Norquist. Glenn Beck and Jerry Boykin have said that Norquist is a lackey for the Muslim Brotherhood and according to anti-Muslim activists like Gaffney and David Horowitz, Norquist secretly converted to Islam and joined the Muslim Brotherhood at the behest of his wife. Conservative attorney Cleta Mitchell wrote in a report for the American Conservative Union that she is “certain that Mr. Gaffney’s hatred [for Norquist] is further fueled by the fact that Grover is married to a Muslim-American woman (who also has worked for the United States government in very responsible positions, I might add!).”

Of course, these spurious claims against Ramadan, Norquist and Salem are just as baseless and wrong as their attacks against the Obama administration and the Muslim-Americans serving in it.

But while extremists like Geller, Gaffney, Horowitz and others are quick to attack Obama with such bogus charges, for some reason it seems unlikely Romney will receive similar treatment.

Pamela Geller discussed with Janet Mefferd her new campaign with ads that read, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man,” and the arrest of journalist Mona Eltahawy for vandalizing one the ads in a New York subway station. In a blog post, Geller called Eltahawy’s actions “a classic case of Stockholm Syndrome” since she survived physical and sexual assault while detained by Egypt’s Interior Ministry. Geller backtracked in the interview and said she didn’t refer to her actions as a case of Stockholm syndrome, even though she did exactly that on her blog, but went on to say that Eltahawy now stands up for the “savage” (i.e. Muslim) only “once they become Jew-haters.” Or maybe, because unlike Geller, Eltahawy does not paint all Muslims with the same brush and blame every single Muslim for the attack she faced in Egypt.

Mefferd: This is interesting, you write today about this woman Mona Eltahawy who went and defaced your ad in the name of free speech, it was just vandalism, the Stockholm syndrome angle was new to me, I had not realized she had been assaulted last year. Why in the world would she go from being assaulted in Cairo to doing this, wouldn’t she think these people were savages after what she went through?

Geller: Why indeed. Actually the word that she used for them at the time was beasts, they were beastly, she said. I guess they cease being beastly once they become Jew-haters, once they’re Jew-haters they are I guess cleansed of any beastliness. I don’t mean to be funny but it’s really true, it’s the same jihad, it’s the same mandate that possessed them in Tahrir Square that possess them in their war on the Jews in Israel. Yes I agree it was decidedly—I know people have called it Stockholm syndrome, I don’t, because when the attacks were on her she saw it in crystal clear moral terms, when the attacks are against the tiny state of Israel, then all the sudden she is attacking.

Geller, who literally runs a group called the American Freedom Defense Initiative, told Mefferd that “it’s interesting how fascists always cloak themselves in the word ‘freedom’” and claimed that anti-fascists are the new fascists. She even blamed the vandalism on a culture of “lawlessness” promoted by the media, the “very violent and misogynist” Occupy Wall Street movement and Obama, who she says is also “aiding and abetting of Al-Qaeda and jihadist elements.”

Not to be outdone, Mefferd claimed that the “radical left agenda” is pushing a “creeping anti-Semitism” reminiscent of the Holocaust.

Geller: We certainly don’t think this should be encouraged, which the media is doing; they are encouraging this kind of lawlessness. It is sort of the whole Obama administration culture that we are living in, the OWS, the Occupy Wall Street, this was sanctioned by Obama, very violent and misogynist, lawless movement. Good people have to stand up, we have to defend ourselves, we have to defend our freedom.

Mefferd: I agree. You know what really depresses me, I was talking about this with my husband not too long ago, I remember at the time Schindler’s List came out and there was so much discussion as Steven Spielberg had done all these interviews with Holocaust survivors and we heard so much good with ‘never again’ and remember these stories that we want to preserve so this will never ever happen again. And yet we’re seeing this creeping anti-Semitism come up and it’s scary, it scares me, because it doesn’t just affect the Jewish population, it affects Christians, it affects anybody who goes against the radical left agenda.

Geller: Oh yeah. It’s pure fascism. Of course the new fascism—it’s interesting how fascists always cloak themselves in the word ‘freedom’ and now they’re cloaking themselves, I mean actually many of these groups are called ‘anti-fascist groups.’ I’m telling you it’s the big, giant lie and the more absurd the lie the more they tell it with absolute certainty and conviction. These are dangerous times. I think it’s most manifest in the handling of the attack, which was an act of war on our embassy in Libya and here you have Obama who was largely responsible for sanctioning the aiding and abetting of Al-Qaeda and jihadist elements in the revolution against Gaddafi.