In August, Pamela Geller threw an entire anti-mosque rally under the bus after a leftist blogger smeared the rally as “racist.” And now Geller’s colleague Robert Spencer asks why the Right does not defend Geller against a leftist attack on her.

Here is a comment I sent to FrontPage Magazine last night in response to Robert Spencer’s article, “The Demonization of Pamela Geller.” We’ll see if FP posts it. (As of 11:50 a.m. Eastern time, the comment is still “awaiting moderation.”)

This is rich. Robert Spencer wonders, “Why is the Right remaining silent in the face of an all-out Alinskyite assault [on Pamela Geller]?” I agree that the attacks on Geller are false and vicious. But how did Geller herself respond when a non-Geller anti-mosque rally in New York City in August was absurdly attacked by a leftist blogger for having an anti-black “pogrom”? She attacked the rally herself. She said it was a bad rally, badly organized, with speakers she had never heard of, and that it shouldn’t even have taken place. Even though all the indications were that it was a perfectly respectable rally, with good and prominent speakers (several of whom in fact had spoken at Geller’s own anti-mosque rally in June), yet because the August rally wasn’t a Geller rally, she dismissed the rally as worthless and didn’t defend it from the ridiculous charge of racism. At the time, some regular commenters at Robert Spencer’s website were shocked at Spencer’s and Geller’s gratuitous attack on the rally. (See full account of the incident here.)

So, if conservatives aren’t coming to Geller’s defense, could it be because she has shown so abundantly that she’s mainly out for herself?

Geller has a lot to offer and deserves much credit for driving the Ground Zero mosque issue. But as long as everything she does is—and is seen as—mainly a means of advancing her colossal narcissism, she is not going to get the kind of support that she feels she deserves.

Here is more on the Geller/Spencer personality cult à deux.

Spencer and Geller will undoubtedly see the above comment as yet another attempt by that meanie Lawrence Auster to harm them. It is not. It is an attempt to awaken them to their senses. But they can’t get the message, because, as a European correspondent just wrote to me about this story:

In my experience there are two problems with (quite a few) Americans: (1) They cannot distinguish between the cause and their own ego; and (2) They will not listen to advice.

Geller and Spencer are supreme examples of the personalism of today’s culture, meaning that they identify their ideas, their positions, their causes, with their own persons, and therefore they automatically interpret any criticism of their positions as a purely personal attack on themselves. Which makes it impossible for them to hear criticism. - end of initial entry -

Richard F. writes:

He that drinks his Cyder alone, let him catch his Horse alone.
— Benjamin Franklin

Stogie writes:

I think you are right about Geller. She only cares about herself. Yes, she did handle the leftist attack on that alternate rally very badly. I cringe when I think of it.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 27, 2010 08:38 AM | Send