The significance of AEI’s hiring of Hirsi Ali

The hiring of Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the American Enterprise Institute would seem to establish a tradition at that organization of bestowing sinecures on self-seeking and dishonest non-Western immigrants who then use their credentials as “conservative” nonwhites to attack and silence genuine conservatives. I’m referring of course to the certified liar Dinesh D’Souza, a long-time AEI fellow. Here are two letters by me I’ve previously posted at VFR, one to D’Souza’s then publisher (who in response to my and others’ letters threw out the entire first print run of D’Souza’s book, The End of Racism, and made him re-write an entire chapter), and one to the then editor of National Review, that detail D’Souza’s lies and smears and the damage they caused to the conservative movement. As for Ali, we already know that she got herself into the Netherlands by claiming to be a victim of the war in Somalia, when in reality she and her family had been living in comfort in Kenya for the previous 12 years. So she’s a serious liar, like D’Souza. Second, Ali—echoing D’Souza’s reckless use of the “racism” charge to shut down any discussion of race that didn’t have his approval—has called for the outlawing of at least two European conservative parties, including the Vlaams Belang, the largest party in Belgium. As discussed previously at VFR, she told a Belgian newspaper last year:

I would ban the VB because it hardly differs from the Hofstad group [a Jihadist terror network in the Netherlands, involved in the assassination of Theo van Gogh]. Though the VB members have not committed any violent crimes yet, they are just postponing them and waiting until they have an absolute majority. On many issues they have exactly the same opinions as the Muslim extremists: on the position of women, on the suppression of gays, on abortion. This way of thinking will lead straight to genocide.

So this is a person who equates any non-liberal views on social issues with Nazi genocide and jihadist terrorism and seeks to outlaw them. And the “conservative” AEI is hiring her. And the “conservative” Robert Spencer calls her a hero. And “conservatives” generally consider her the apple of their eye. I remember when D’Souza was considered the fair-haired boy of the conservative movement. He went into an eclipse following the publication of his dishonest book The End of Racism in 1995 and has long since ceased being a significant conservative figure, though he still has his comfortable perch at AEI.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 17, 2006 10:17 AM | Send