Your Unofficial ‘Ongoing Self-Destruction of LGF’s Charles Johnson’ Thread

The Other McCain: “BEST. BLOG. HEADLINE. EVAH!”

So obviously everyone should go and read that post.

It must have seemed terrible to R.S. McCain when Charles Johnson libeled him, but a lot of people – including Pamela Geller, alleged “poster girl for Euro-fascists” – would not have gotten the justice they are getting now if that had not happened.

Charles Johnson’s hit list reads like a “who’s who” of pugnacious conservatives, and the people he attacked didn’t even mistrust him, let alone attack him, till one after another he went for them. Even then, he continued to have standing among conservatives, and he got kindness from his confused and shocked victims. The normal reaction was Pamela Geller’s first response: that this had to be some sort of misunderstanding, and she didn’t want to escalate it.

This had to end.

It’s the right week for making ashes and stubble of Charles Johnson’s reputation among conservatives.

There’s two more reasons why Charles Johnson should be damned in perpetuity, that ought to appeal to conservatives of a practical mind.

First, he’s got nothing to bring to the table. He’s proven to be a serious, major and consistent liar, which means his archives have nothing of value in them. Nothing he’s said is worth quoting unless you check it all himself, so he doesn’t save you any time. He doesn’t have the usual virtue, for a high traffic conservative blogger, of having been checked up on, even a little, by his readers. Even if you’re willing to wade through long and trivial comment threads to see if anybody brought up any facts that called Charles Johnson’s line into question, for all you know one of his commenters brought up something that blew what he said out of the water, and he banned them and deleted their refutation. Finally, even if you’ve checked everything, you can’t quote him without inviting everyone to say “if you believe Charles Johnson about that, you should also believe him about [insert his slams on many pugnacious conservatives]“. Looking up what he wrote can never do any good; it only does harm when naive people read him and believe the terrible things he says about people.

Second, someone who will rat you out once will rat you out twice. Even if Charles Johnson said “sorry” now, which he definitely will not do, how could anyone sensible believe that if conservative bloggers tried to give him a fresh start and restore his credibility from now on, he wouldn’t make them regret it down the road? What rewards and acceptance among conservatives has he not already enjoyed, and rejected in favor of the pleasures of damning as fascists Europeans he knows next to nothing about, and whose countries, problems and politics he knows next to nothing about? On the evidence of his actions, he likes condemning people as fascists, truth and justice be damned, and he doesn’t like playing Rikki-tikki-tavi (Run and find out!”). How is anyone with those tastes not going to wind up doing cheap shots for the Left?

Since we already know that kindness to him has been misguided, that any credibility he retains will be put to bad use, and that he doesn’t refrain from going after people because they’ve never spoken a bad word about him, there’s no reason for conservatives to refrain from putting up “Ban Little Green Footballs” signs (link) on their blogs.

It is a positively good thing every time someone posts to say why they are doing this, and that R.S. McCain is a good guy, and that Pamela Geller is innocent of everything Charles Johnson’s malice has invented against her, and so on. Go down the list of people Charles Johnson has smeared, and pick out the ones you know best, the ones you know are all right, and say good things about them. Declare their innocence. Let justice be done, at least as to reputations.

At last. At long, long last.

David Blue on September 22, 2009 at 8:50 PM

Kejda Gjermani, Sep 22 2009 (link) says: “Unprovoked and unchallenged, Robert Stacy McCain has been harassing Charles Johnson of LittleGreenFootballs relentlessly over the past ten days—twenty posts and counting since September 15th and the archive of hatred and verbose distortions runs deeper.”

“Unprovoked”!?!

Kejda Gjermani lies extraordinarily with her first word, and she carries on from there in the same style.

While this is what an assistant online editor at Commentary thinks and says – and by all means read the whole thing – the time to swords and pray for the poor beguiled soul of Charles Johnson, as though he was not doing harm any more, has not come.

This is no time to be an 80% ally.

David Blue on September 22, 2009 at 11:12 PM

I’m fine with R.S. McCain expressing his views on race, which I’m sure are sound as he’s been blogging for a long time and there’s no trace of racism about the man.

But he can’t ‘clear this up once and for all’ by doing so, because ‘this’ isn’t about him, it’s about a large and growing group of conservatives and anti-jihadists that Charles Johnson has libeled.

Charles Johnson can’t possibly be right, unless there’s not a one of them that isn’t a racist / fascist / white supremacist / bigot / whatever. All you have to do is find someone on Charles Johnson’s target list who you read and trust, just one, and defend them, and you’ve picked your side, and it’s the opposite of Charles Johnson’s side.

(In my case, I’ve been reading Robert Spencer for years, so I’ve known for years that Charles Johnson has been up to no good.)

You don’t have to do the reading for every separate person that Charles Johnson smears. And if you did, the task would be endless.

David Blue on September 23, 2009 at 1:06 AM

No matter what R.S. McCain says about his own views on race, that still doesn’t ‘clear everything up’ because “Pamela Geller: Poster Girl for Eurofascists” is still under attack, and after you defend her too, there’ll be more and more and more targets to defend, allegation by allegation and smear by smear, because Charles Johnson keeps going.

Not even Hercules could clean up the Augean Stables pen by pen and cow by cow. He had to break holes in the walls and let the river though the whole stinking mess. That’s what R.S. McCain has been doing with the sweeping rhetoric of his anti-Charles Johnson posts.

It’s necessary to take this approach, because for years Robert Spencer and others have been defending themselves piecemeal, against libel after libel, and and even though they’ve had truth on their side all along it hasn’t had the proper effect.

Piecemeal uncoordinated defensive actions are not the answer. A swarming offensive is the answer. There’s no other way to defend all the many people Charles Johnson has already attacked and will later attack.

If you won’t accept the need for a general counter-attack, when one person unjustly attacks so many, then you might as well write off any thought of an anti-jihadist movement. And then pro-lifers, as Charles Johnson doesn’t like us either, and he’s likely to get around to smearing people on that account. (Why wait for him to start, since we already know his methods?) And our Christian friends. And the whole Tea Party movement. And the targets of his next obsession, whatever that will be.

David Blue on September 23, 2009 at 1:39 AM