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The Spectacle Blog
Phyllis Chesler calls it a “weird piece which came at me out of left field, literally” — a column at the Web site of Zeek, a quarterly publication of the Forward, accusing Chesler of “single-minded zealotry” and “promoting the Religious Right and its Christian nationalism” as part of “The War Against Tolerance.”
Why would Chesler, a Jewish feminist, be assailed by a Jewish journal affiliated with the Forward? The author of the Zeek column, Rachel Tabachnick, is a regular contributor to a Web site called Talk2Action.org, founded in 2005 by Bruce Wilson. From there, the trail leads in an interesting direction:
What we do know is that Bruce Wilson has been posting at DailyKos as “Troutfishing” since October 2004, and that his fourth post - written the day after John Kerry’s defeat in the 2004 election - argued for the formation of a “progressive/liberal/Dem umbrella group which would be the left equivalent of the Christian Coalition.” …
Talk2Action, on which Wilson and Mrs. Tabachnick are “collaborating,” is a political project originated at Daily Kos in 2004 by a partisan opponent of the Bush administration. The goal of Talk2Action is to defeat Republicans by discrediting conservative Christians, portraying them as dangerous, intolerant kooks.
Chesler’s column about Rifka Bary, and her general work in discussing the oppression of women in Islamic societies (Chesler was once married to a Muslim and lived in Afghanistan), were rather disruptive of the “American Taliban” message that Wilson and Mrs. Tabachnick have been relentlessly promoting… .
Unlike the actual Taliban, of course, the Christian conservatives targeted by Talk2Action haven’t sent any car-bombers to Manhattan.
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More Blog Posts by Robert Stacy McCain
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wbfrank| 5.11.10 @ 10:52AM
Like it or not. There is a real movement that will be coming to the good old USA. God help us all, big G nor little g. Because of the kooks such as Soros, the daily KOS and many others there is the real possibility of revolution with a big R!
Pingback| 5.11.10 @ 11:27AM
Twitter Trackbacks for The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : From DailyKos to the Fo links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Tony in Central PA| 5.11.10 @ 12:57PM
If there are any people who know everything about " dangerous, intolerant kooks " I'm sure they're to be found at the DailyKos.
Bruce Wilson | 5.11.10 @ 1:24PM
Is The American Spectator so threatened by Mrs. Tabachnick's piece as to try to discredit it with something I wrote six years ago ? First, I've long ago given up trying to rally the religious left. But here's a hint - I'm not the person who wrote the article.
One interesting aspect of this: Phyllis Chestler, in her rebuttal to Tabachnick, states, "For the record: I have had absolutely nothing to do with the activism around the Rifqa Bary case and do not know and have had no contact with the various people whom the article names."
But a quick Youtube search reveals an ABC segment from August 2009 in which Phyllis Chesler was identified as Rifqa Bary's lawyer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJUBYGU8Pmw
Closely associated with the Rifqa Bary case is Lou Engle, Founder of TheCall, who most recently traveled to Uganda in support of a bill there that would all-but legislate Uganda's gay population out of existence. Some fundamentalists believe Lou Engle is running a cult.
Cheers,
Bruce Wilson
Robert Stacy McCain | 5.11.10 @ 2:55PM
Some fundamentalists believe Lou Engle is running a cult.
And some people -- namely, me -- believe you're just a Democratic Party hack whose entire enterprise is about trying to represent the GOP as responsible for Lou Engle, in the same way you tried to make John McCain responsible for John Hagee.
Notably, you have never exhibited any interest in investigating the extremism of, inter alia, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. No, you're all about digging up various disreputable words or deeds of figures from the Religious Right, who can then be "connected" to the Republican Party: "Look, they're controlled by theocratic kooks! It's the American Taliban! Run for your lives!"
I've never heard of Lou Engle, and I strongly suspect that not a single Republican member of Congress would recognize his name. Yet you are promoting the dishonest insinuation that Engle exercises powerful political influence over the conservative movemenent and, by extension, the GOP.
Whatever Engle has said or done, however, I'm pretty sure he isn't running a terrorist organization comparable to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, Hamas, Fatah or Hezbollah. Why, then, does your associate Mrs. Tabachnick feel it necessary to scold Ms. Chesler for failing to denounce Engle and other Christian conservatives, as if they were analogous and equivalent to Islamic jihadists?
You are a political fearmonger engaged in a dishonest smear campaign against innocent people, and should be ashamed of yourself.
Bruce Wilson | 5.11.10 @ 4:04PM
"... in the same way you tried to make John McCain responsible for John Hagee." - Well, McCain did endorse Hagee repeatedly, including at a press conference broadcast nationwide. And, Hagee did say, among other things, that God sent Hitler to drive Europe's Jews towards Palestine.
Hagee also wrote in Jerusalem Countdown (2007, Front Line books) that Hitler was part of an evil lineage of "half-breed Jews" descended from Esau and Hagee claimed, in the book, that it was the idol worship of the ancient Israelites that gave rise to modern day anti-Semitism:
"How utterly repulsive, insulting, and heartbreaking to God for His chosen people to credit idols with bringing the blessings He had showered on the chosen people. Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destructive to them for centuries to come." (page 93 in my edition of the book)
Nice guy, that Hagee. I guess John McCain didn't read the book, billed as having sold over a million copies.
"I've never heard of Lou Engle, and I strongly suspect that not a single Republican member of Congress would recognize his name. Yet you are promoting the dishonest insinuation that Engle exercises powerful political influence over the conservative movemenent and, by extension, the GOP." - Actually, Lou Engle is the GOP's new, unofficial prayer leader.
Last December 2009 Engle led the Family Research Council's "Prayercast" against health Care reform, a telecast event attended by GOP Senators Sam Brownback and Jim DeMint and Republican Congressional Representatives Michelle Bachmann and Randy Forbes.
Lou Engle claims he was Kansas Senator Sam Brownback's roommate for seven months, and Brownback has attended at least five of Lou Engle's TheCall rallies.
( see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8wK801bHyM )
Engle's association with GOP politicians doesn't stop there. During summer 2009 Lou Engle blessed and anointed former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and former GOP Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.
More recently, Engle led a session on "prayer and revival" at the April 2010 Freedom Federation 'Awakening 2010' conference at former Moral Majority head Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, VA. Attending the event were Virginia's Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, Texas Governor Rick Perry, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, Congressman Randy Forbes, Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and Reagan Administration Undersecretary of Education Gary Bauer.
"Whatever Engle has said or done, however, I'm pretty sure he isn't running a terrorist organization comparable to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, Hamas, Fatah or Hezbollah." - Well, I never said Lou Engle did. But I have written that Lou Engle employs at his stadium rallies, the sort of rhetoric that could be found during the 1990's at antiabortion rallies association with the domestic terrorism group the Army of God.
Lou Engle doesn't carry at out acts of terrorism. He deploys rhetoric that can incite it.
On December 31, 2007, at one of his TheCall events in Kansas City, Engle told his audience that one of the names of God was "avenger of blood" and encouraged his audience to worship that aspect of God. Engle stated that decades of legal abortion had incurred a blood debt that must be repaid in blood, and he predicted that legal abortion would cause a second civil war.
Five months and one year later, in May 2009, Kansas late term abortion doctor George Tiller was shot through the eye and killed, on Sunday in the lobby of his Wichita, KS church. In a March 2009 letter on his personal web site, Engle had suggested Tiller was like an “Auschwitz death camp worker.”
In his pamphlet "The Doctrine of the Shedding of Innocent Blood" Lou Engle writes,
"There is a blood pollution problem on America's soil. The "most dangerous terrorist" is not Islam but God. One of God's names is "The Avenger of Blood." Have you worshipped that God yet ?"
( see: http://www.thecall.com/Publish.....1000005763 )
Bruce Wilson | 5.11.10 @ 4:08PM
*a correction - that should have read, "...antiabortion rallies associated with the domestic terrorism group the Army of God."
Bruce Wilson | 5.11.10 @ 4:12PM
*also, a correction for that Hagee quote - it should read "showered upon the chosen people" rather than "showered on the chosen people". The meaning, however, is the same.
Robert Stacy McCain| 5.11.10 @ 2:56PM
Forgot to close a tag.
matthew s harrison| 5.11.10 @ 4:06PM
At some point, those of us who are sane, i.e., anyone and everyone not a libtard progressive, need to decide to fight fire with fire. While I read Stacy religiously, and read Thinker and Spectator before I even have my morning coffee, all of the kind pieces from all of the above are factually destructive to the left, if only the MSM were covering anything that the conservative blogosphere writes. Lets face it-Soros has pumped much of his personal fortune into obama, moveon, etc-to the extent the obama administration had to give him Indymac, and guarantee it's mortgage portfolio to 90% to keep Georgy boy's dough flowing to OFA, etc.
So, all of that said-where is the money? where are the 527's to combat this lunatic fringe that has gone mainstream in the US? Everyone knows that this is a conservative country. We do collectively cling to our bible(at least to the 10 commandments), and our guns(as we know we are going to need them!), and we do so, because that is what our nation was founded on.
We have finally come to realize that the left have had their hands up the backsides of the IB's on Wall, and have allowed all they have allowed. We have finally come to realize, that while the leaders of the RNC slept at the helm, moveon, et al, quietly raised $50 billion to pump into the smear and hate campaigns, and the illegal voting campaigns, and the rest of the obama agenda, like health care, immunity for the 20 million mexican fellons in this country, universal voter registration, steal bonds from GM's first lean holders, etc.
Since this has all happened on our watch....while we had a president in the WH for 8 years, we owe this country. We owe our fellow citizens a good fight. Where is it going to come from? The polls? I think not! They will steal elections. They always have. They always will. Obama stole the state senate race in IL, stole the US senate race in IL. and stole the presidency with the help of koz, huffpo, wapo, nyt, and of course soros and all of his splinter "in the dark" clandestine hate mills. So we need to do the same. Sarah Palin isn't going to get it done guys. We need real "fire power". We need billions. Where are the founders of the fed, the families on the right who built this nation? Where are all the dollars? And why is Michael Steele at the wheel at the RNC?
They have us right where they want us-and voting drives aren't going to cut it. Too many bad guys are doing too much character assassinating on the left, for us to make it out unscathed, unless we fight fire with fire!