The conservative establishment has blacked out Hirsi Ali

The mystery deepens. Three days after a Dutch news source reported that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has returned to the Netherlands, because the Dutch government wouldn’t continue paying for her security in the U.S. and the U.S. government had declined to assume the responsibility, and I linked and discussed the story here, Jihad Watch still has no mention of it, either by her champion Robert Spencer or by her champion Hugh Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald, as I pointed out yesterday, wrote an impassioned defense of her, but it was posted at New English Review in the form of a comment replying to Rebecca Bynum’s blog entry, which in turn was based on my report. Why wouldn’t Fitzgerald write about this at his own main website, Jihad Watch? The clear implication is that Spencer won’t let him.

A correspondent suggested to me that because Ali in her Reason interview disagreed with Daniel Pipes by name, and Spencer is a friend of Pipes, Spencer has cut her off. But that seems impossible. For one thing, Spencer of course also disagrees with the Pipes position on moderate Islam, though he has never brought Pipes into the discussion by name. And Spencer, to repeat, has long been a booster of Ali’s. It seems impossible that he would treat Ali as persona non grata simply for politely saying that she disagrees with Pipes’s idea, as reported in Rod Dreher’s excerpt of the Reason interview:

Reason: So when even a hard-line critic of Islam such as Daniel Pipes says, “Radical Islam is the problem, but moderate Islam is the solution,” he’s wrong?

Hirsi Ali: He’s wrong. Sorry about that.

Simply for saying, “He’s wrong,” they would ostracize her? Can’t be. There must be other things going on behind the scenes we don’t know about.

Furthermore, it’s not just Spencer who is unaccountably silent on this big story. A Google search reveals that while numerous MSM sites including the New York Times have mentioned it (all based on the initial Dutch report), no conservative websites have referenced it, with the sole exception of a brief item at “Little Green Footballs.” A Google blog search reveals that some obscure blogs have mentioned it, but none of the well-known conservative blogs.

The Corner has nothing on Hirsi Ali at least since at least early Tuesday morning. FrontPage Magazine has had nothing on her.

Then there is also the fact that Ali’s name no longer appears in the list of scholars at the AEI website, nor is there any explanation of her departure from the organization where she has been a resident scholar for the past year. (Correction: Ali is listed on AEI’s scholars and fellows page. I did a search for her name on that page the other day and didn’t find it.)

Thus the mainstream conservative websites and blogs—i.e., Ali’s main constituency, who normally treat Ali as their heroine—have gone silent on this blockbuster of a story.

Clearly some Stalinoid event has occurred whereby the establicons, acting as a single unit, have turned the erstwhile apple of their eye into a non-person. What could it be?

I repeat that I cannot believe that it was simply that she politely disagreed by name with King Dan.

Finally, isn’t it odd that the one person who is writing the most about this story, myself, has been Ali’s most persistent critic, while her so-called friends are silent?

- end of initial entry -

James W. writes:

I don’t think we should be providing bodyguards for Ali to speak her mind, or for you next, or for me. I think we should be removing the people and cultures from this country in which assasins thrive or hide.

As politicians granted Salmon Rusdie royal protective status, so did that very act provide political cover, while enabling them to avoid the task of addressing their civilizational deseases. Noting changed, but they looked to be standing up.

There is some compensation in great evils in that they enforce great lessons.

LA replies:

I agree with you that the right approach is to remove the threatening parties whose presence necessitates putting a Geert Wilders or a Hirsi Ali under guard, not for us to have to provide permanent security regimes for Islam critics for the rest of their lives. But that’s completely irrelevant to my point here, which is the conservatives’ silence on this.

George writes:

“Finally, isn’t it odd that the one person who is writing the most about this story, myself, has been Ali’s most persistent critic, while her so-called friends are silent?”

How can you possibly be surprised, Lawrence?

Of course they purged Ali!

It was inevitable that as neocon ambitions floundered in Mesopotamia, and the true, uncompromising, remorseless nature of Islam revealed itself that the neocons would fight harder and harder to deny and distort reality. What you are seeing is the beginning of the end of right-liberalism. Because it is unreformable, Islam is making it impossible for establicons to hold onto nondiscrimination.

Their world is falling apart, and so they fight to hold onto the essence of the liberal governing ideology because to replace liberalism as the ruling belief system of Western Civilization will inevitably mean new conservative leaders displacing the right liberals from their comfy perches.

LA replies:

I don’t understand. Why would the crisis in the non-discrimination ideology lead them to purge Ali?

George replies:

The neocons have bet the farm that Islam can be reformed via military invasion and reconstruction and that Muslim immigrants can be become loyal Americans.

Because Ali has basically said that Muslim immigrants cannot coexist in Christian nations and that there is nothing that can be done to reform Islam, she not only threatens the pillars of nondiscrimination, but threatens to cause a rupture in the conservative movement between conservatives who still cling to nondiscrimination and those who will start to question it.

I am sure there are other issues that are involved in her purge.

Still, she is now a threat to the establishment conservative order, and that probably played a role in it.

LA replies:

Your theory would require that on the basis of Rod Dreher’s excerpt of her Reason interview, which Dreher posted on October 1, the same day the news came out about her departure from America, the entire conservative establishment instantly learned of this, instantly and unanimously turned against her, and instantly and unanimously determined never to mention her name again.

Also, according to your theory, Robert Spencer, who uncompromisingly says that Islam itself is a threat, should have been purged long ago. True, NRO purged him; they stopped publishing him, and also stopped publishing Bat Ye’or. But he remains a presence in the rest of the mainstream conservative establishment. He’s an employee of FrontPage magazine and publishes there every week, for example. He’s invited to address conservative conferences. So your theory doesn’t stand up.

George replies:

“So your theory doesn’t stand up.”

You’re right, it doesn’t stand up, so something else must have been bubbling behind the scenes that we don’t know about yet.

Whatever caused this rift between Ali and the establishment must have been very significant. There is no way that it is an accident that nearly all of the major conservative blogs blacked out this news.

Also, I wonder if the official story that she left because of an issue over security is a smoke screen. Was she asked to leave for other reasons?

We will see what happens.

Sam H. writes:

Sometimes things aren’t as complicated as they seem. What I understand is that she continues to work for AEI (and even will return to the US in the near future to give a lecture). She also said she will do some fundraising so she can pay for her own security. Seems like a temporary problem to me.

LA replies:

Mainstream news sites all cover this story, and there is total silence about it in the conservative Web, yet you dismiss the whole issue. Are you serious?

Sam H. replies:

Well, I agree with you that it’s odd and maybe you’re onto something, in particular with respect to JihadWatch, which looks into these things closely. But from some prior direct experience with journalism and politics, I know that there are two ways of looking at public events: the chaos theory and the conspiracy theory. Many a time have I read the most elaborate explanations by outsiders for certain public events I was personally involved in which were completely wrong. A lot that happens is simply due to the chaos, confusion, laziness, randomness of everyday life. That doesn’t mean there aren’t conspiracies or things going on behind the scenes. But in my personal experience, it means that 9 out of 10 times the conspiracy theory of explanation is wrong.

And don’t forget that the “conservative” part of the web is an echo chamber. If someone at the Corner (an agglomorate of many, many contributors) would have posted something on it, pretty high chance several other websites might have responded.

So I am going with Ockham’s Razor for now.

LA replies:

Ockham’s Razor says that the simplest theory is the best theory. I disagree. I think the theory that best explains things is the best theory. Ockham’s Razor is (or at least is repeatedly used as) a mechanical rule, which is not helpfrul for arriving at truth.

Milos L. writes:

Hello. I’m a blogger myself, I post under the nick “Witch-king of Angmar” at this blog. I believe I have an explanation as to why Spencer is silent, or rather I can see a pattern in his behaviour.

I was banned some time ago from Jihadwatch for multiple skrimishes with a woman poster called “Morgaan Sinclair”. This woman takes offence at the slightest disagreement with her opinions and responds with vicious offenses, name-calling and threats. To get a picture of the kind of person she is have a look at this Dhimmiwatch threat and her comments below.

Hugh Fitzgerald is not the only Jihadwatch board member she offended, she made a blistering attack on Marisol Seibold as well. Yet for some reason she was not banned even though anyone else in her place would certainly be. Not only that but to this day she still gets credit for some of the news posted (although she no longer makes comments, since at the time they banned me she got a slap on the wrist of sort). The only logical explanation is that she is either a friend, relative or a donor and these people obviously get special treatment from Spencer. Other members who argued with Morgaan were also banned as well.

Why am I telling you this? Well, Pipes is a friend of Spencer’s and since Hirsi Ali publicly disagreed with Pipes she is now off-limits. Even Hugh Fitzgerald has to adapt. Just take a look at his comment on a Jihadwatch thread about the 9/11 anniversary.

Notice the last sentences:

Six years of false authorities teling us what and how to think, “terrorism” experts, “Bin Laden” experts, the unrepentant “moderate-Muslims-are-the-solution” experts [a clear allusion on Pipes], e tutti quanti. And those are the good ones.

Yet a couple of days later when the comment was published on the Jihadwatch main page as an essay, the Pipes remark was gone! You can see that here:

Six years of false authorities telling us what and how to think: “terrorism” experts, “Bin Laden” experts, e tutti quanti. And those are the good ones.

It seems that there are some Spencer’s friends one can not afford to cross.

LA replies: [note: this reply was sent before I wrote the main blog entry above and found out the extent to which the Ali story is missing not just at Jihad Watch but in the whole conservative Web]:

You’re saying that Spencer would completely cut off Ali, of whom he’s always been a big booster, solely because she disagreed politely by name with Daniel Pipes over moderate Islam? That’s seems impossible. Especially as Spencer has the same disagreement with Pipes, though of course he never disagrees with him by name.

But maybe there are other things going on. Maybe her disagreement with Pipes was part of a larger pattern of behavior we don’t know about, maybe she dissed Spencer too. Behind the scenes, in addition to disagreeing politely with Pipes, maybe Ali has also said something about Spencer himself that he doesn’t like, and that’s why he’s gone silent about her.

Milos L. replies:

Well, it just seemed, based on my personal experience and what I read on his site that there are people for whom Spencer reserves special treatment. But I just read your latest entry about Hirsi Ali and I realized that indeed all the major conservative blogs are silent about her going back to Holland. Something sinister is going on.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 04, 2007 10:03 AM | Send