Douglas Murray, the Henry Jackson Society, and Melanie Phillips Exposed: The Facts

Jai Singh

Posted Aug 2, 2013      •Permalink      • Printer-Friendly Version
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Douglas Murray, the Henry Jackson Society, and Melanie Phillips Exposed: The Facts

by Jai Singh

Regular readers will be aware that the United Kingdom’s Home Secretary recently banned the American anti-Muslim propagandists Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller from the UK (details here, here, here, herehere and here). Spencer and Geller had intended to speak at the Far-Right English Defence League’s demonstration in London on 29 June 2013.

Several very high-profile British figures subsequently published articles objecting to the ban and defending Robert Spencer & Pamela Geller:

Exhibiting a clear case of double-standards himself, “Henry Jackson Society” Associate Director (and contributing editor to The Spectator magazine) Douglas Murray promptly complained about alleged “double-standards over hate speech”, despite the fact that he had certainly not objected to the Home Secretary previously banning an extremist Muslim individual. (Note: The Spectator also recently published an article defending & whitewashing the explicitly racist, anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, titled “A fascist takeover of Greece ? We should be so lucky”.

Daily Mail journalist Melanie Phillips similarly rushed to Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller’s defence after the banning. Although Phillips claims she “does not support the approach taken by either Geller or Spencer to the problem of Islamic extremism. Both have endorsed groups such as the EDL and others which at best do not deal with the thuggish elements in their ranks and at worst are truly racist or xenophobic”, in the same article Phillips defends Spencer and Geller, claiming that they “don’t go around…..spreading conspiracy theories and lies to foment hysteria and hatred”, and describing the banning as “a serious blow to the credibility of these two writers, with particular damage being done to Spencer”. Phillips goes on to praise Spencer’s so-called “scholarship”.

In the same article, Melanie Phillips also claims that “the reason for the ban is that the British government is now telling people that certain interpretations of Islam are to be proscribed, even if they may be true”. Considering the fact that, in the same paragraph, Phillips explicitly states that she is basing this claim on the text of the Home Secretary’s letter to Robert Spencer, it is worth noting that Phillips is actually referring to Spencer’s own statements about Islam and claiming that Spencer’s “interpretation” is the “true” version of the religion.

Robert Spencer himself has responded to Melanie Phillips’ piece by writing a rambling article criticising Phillips and defending the EDL.

However, there is much more to this story. Considering the information detailed below, it is astonishing that Douglas Murray and Melanie Phillips are regularly invited as guests on various high-profile BBC debate programmes here in the UK, especially Question Time; most recently, Murray and Phillips were part of the Question Time debate panel in July and June 2013 respectively. Murray has also repeatedly been a guest on the BBC’s Sunday Morning Live discussion programme (most recently on 28 July 2013, on the subject “Are Muslims being demonised ?” Full video footage and revealing further details below). These prestigious programmes have millions of British viewers.

Not only are Douglas Murray’s real views on Muslims & Islam far, far more extreme than is generally known by the British public (especially Murray’s statements when the audience is not the mainstream British media), but it also turns out that both Douglas Murray and Melanie Phillips have actually been heavily involved with the Robert Spencer-David Horowitz cabal. In 2009, Murray even stated “I happen to know Robert Spencer; I respect him; he is a very brilliant scholar and writer”.

Before I address the issue of Douglas Murray, the Henry Jackson Society, and Melanie Phillips, for the public record it is worth reiterating the following relevant facts about Robert Spencer and a number of key members of his inner circle:

ROBERT SPENCER’S INNER CIRCLE

Robert Spencer:

1. Robert Spencer is the author of the virulently anti-Muslim website “JihadWatch”; he is also co-head of the “Stop Islamization of Nations”, “Stop Islamization of America”, and “American Freedom Defence Initiative” organisations. Spencer’s pivotal role in the multimillion-dollar international anti-Muslim propaganda network has been heavily documented. An extensive and fully-referenced list of examples of Spencer’s statements (a) demonising the entire Muslim population and (b) demonising the religion of Islam as a whole is available here.

2. Robert Spencer and “JihadWatch” were the most heavily cited sources of propaganda in the terrorist Anders Breivik’s manifesto; in fact, Breivik explicitly stated “About Islam, I recommend essentially everything written by Robert Spencer”.

3. Robert Spencer is formally allied with racist white supremacists and European neo-Nazis, and has even organised joint public demonstrations with them.

4. Robert Spencer is an ordained Catholic deacon (also see here) who has repeatedly made demonstrably false statements about Islam & Muslims (eg: see here, here, here, here, here and here) and repeatedly tried to hide the evidence when his misinformation was exposed. Spencer has publicly admitted that his actions are heavily motivated by his [unilateral] agenda for the dominance of the Catholic Church.

5. Robert Spencer’s actions are in direct violation of official Vatican policy towards Islam and Muslims. Spencer’s actions also directly undermine the extensive Christian-Muslim interfaith bridge-building efforts of his own Catholic sect’s global leadership (see here and here) and indeed the admirable message promoted by Pope Francis himself (see here, here, and here).

6. Robert Spencer is now being publicly supported by Father C.J. McCloskey, a senior priest in the controversial Catholic organisation “Opus Dei” which is notoriously secretive about revealing the identities of its members. McCloskey has been described as “priest to Washington’s conservative establishment” and “the Catholic Church’s K Street lobbyist”. Promoting Spencer’s latest book in an article for the National Catholic Register, McCloskey made a series of extremely bigoted and derogatory statements about Islam and “the Muslims”. His actions are in direct violation of official Vatican policy along with the message promoted by Pope Francis.

7. In 2002-2003, Robert Spencer was an Adjunct Fellow at the Free Congress Foundation, an arm of the Heritage Foundation. Both organisations were founded by Paul Weyrich, a convert to the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, which is the same Catholic sect that Spencer belongs to; Weyrich was ordained as a protodeacon in this sect. The Anti-Defamation League identified the Free Congress Foundation and Weyrich himself as closely affiliated with “Dominionism”; furthermore, the ADL identified the FCF and Weyrich as part of an alliance of more than 50 of the most prominent conservative Christian leaders and organizations that threaten the separation of church and state in the US. The FCF’s strategic plan, whose authorship was guided by Weyrich and which was published in 2001, has been described as calling “for the use of deception, misinformation and divisiveness to allow conservative evangelical Christian Republicans to gain and keep control of seats of power in the government of the United States.” (Note: Dominionism is an extreme interpretation of Christian fundamentalism deriving from “Christian Reconstructionism”, which involves the belief that rule by non-Christians anywhere in the world is sacrilege, explicitly approves of the historical slavery of African-Americans, and openly advocates the replacement of American law with Old Testament injunctions including the death penalty for apostasy and homosexuality; Dominionism also claims that its adherents have a God-given mandate to infiltrate the highest echelons of power and subsequently impose their beliefs on the entire world).

8. Furthermore, Robert Spencer is on record as stating “Paul Weyrich taught me a great deal, by word and by example, about how to deal both personally and professionally with the slanders and smears that are a daily aspect of this work”. Spencer also named Weyrich as a mentor of his writings on Islam. Spencer’s first book on Islam was published in 2002. Weyrich himself is on record as making the following extremely anti-Semitic statements on his website shortly before Easter in 2001, in which he directly blamed “the Jews” for the death of Jesus: “Christ was crucified by the Jews…..He was not what the Jews had expected so they considered Him a threat. Thus He was put to death.” During the subsequent outrage (particularly from Jewish organisations) at Weyrich’s statements, he was defended by David Horowitz, Spencer’s boss.

9. Robert Spencer has been proven to have made completely false statements about historical Popes and major Jewish figures, and to have subsequently tried to conceal the evidence when his actions were exposed. Full details here and here.

10. Robert Spencer is not actually a “scholar of Islam” in any credible sense of the term; he has precisely zero academic, professional or linguistic qualifications in this subject, and therefore cannot credibly be described as a “scholar” or an “expert” in the matter at all. In fact, Spencer’s own alma mater, the University of North Carolina, have publicly described Spencer’s writings as “perpetuating a type of bigotry similar to anti-Semitism and racial prejudice. They are to be viewed with great suspicion by anyone who wishes to find reliable and scholarly information on the subject of Islam.” Full details here

11. Robert Spencer’s anti-Muslim propaganda has been proven to be identical to the anti-Semitic propaganda of Julius Streicher, a Third Reich-era Nazi whom the US subsequently prosecuted at the Nuremberg Trials and convicted on the charge of crimes against humanity; even Spencer’s arguments in his own defence are identical to Streicher’s statements at the time.

12. Robert Spencer is on record as claiming that there is “no distinction in the American Muslim community between peaceful Muslims and jihadists”.

13. Robert Spencer is on record as denying the Srebrenica genocide, explicitly describing it as “the-genocide-that-never-was” and proposing “the possibility that Muslims could have carried out any deceptive atrocity-manufacturing in the Balkans”.

14. Robert Spencer is on record as repeatedly promoting the work and writings of Serge Trifkovic (also see here), the former spokesman for Radovan Karadzic, one of Serbian war criminals charged with genocide during the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Bosnia; Spencer and Trifkovic have even held joint interviews and collaborated on an anti-Islam documentary film. Trifkovic is on record as making the following extremely anti-Semitic statements: “Since the late 1800’s the Jews have had a disproportionate impact on a host of intellectual trends and political movements which have fundamentally altered the civilization of Europe and its overseas offspring in a manner deeply detrimental to the family, nation, culture, racial solidarity, social coherence, tradition, morality and faith.”

15. Furthermore, Serge Trifkovic openly supports and defends Ratko Mladic, whom the United Nations Tribunal has indicted on 16 counts of genocide and war crimes. In 2003, Trifkovic appeared as a defence witness during the trial of Milomir Stakic at the Hague Tribunal; Stakic was subsequently found guilty of multiple counts of murder along with crimes against humanity such as extermination, persecutions and deportations. In 2008, Trifkovic appeared as a defence witness during the trial of Ljubisa Beara, who was subsequently convicted of genocide, extermination, murder and persecution. Trifkovic was also cited by Anders Breivik in his manifesto.

16. In 2009, Robert Spencer publicly admitted to having joined a genocidal white nationalist Facebook group titled “Campaign for the Reconquest in Anatolia”, whose mission statement openly advocates the ethnic cleansing, mass sterilisation and euthanasia of Turkey’s entire Muslim population, targeting “up to 150 million people”. Readers can draw their own conclusions about Spencer’s convoluted explanation after his actions were exposed. Full details here. Spencer’s own website has also promoted the aim of “freeing Constantinople from Muslim occupation” (eg: see this article written by Spencer).

17. Robert Spencer has made extremely disparaging statements about the prestigious West Point military institution and has described Far-Right terrorists in the United States as “ordinary Americans who believe in individual rights”. Full details here..

18. When the Washington Post asked Robert Spencer if he was being deliberately combative and provocative, Spencer chuckled and said “Why not ? It’s fun”.

Pamela Geller:

1. The Board of Deputies of British Jews recently released a lengthy statement supporting Pamela Geller’s banning from the UK. Full details here. The article includes Geller’s own response to the Board’s statement, including the fact that Geller appears to blame Jews for the Holocaust.

2. Pamela Geller is the author of the virulently anti-Muslim website “Atlas Shrugs”; she is also co-head of the “Stop Islamization of Nations”, “Stop Islamization of America”, and “American Freedom Defence Initiative” organisations. An extensive and fully-referenced list of examples of Geller’s statements (a) demonising the entire Muslim population and (b) demonising the religion of Islam as a whole is available here.

3. Pamela Geller has repeatedly made demonstrably false statements about Islam & Muslims, and repeatedly tried to hide the evidence when her misinformation was exposed.

4. Pamela Geller has repeatedly made false statements about her own actions, despite the fact that her extensive anti-Islam/anti-Muslim writings are a matter of public record.

5. Pamela Geller was repeatedly cited by Anders Breivik in his manifesto.

6. After Breivik’s terrorist attack in Norway, Pamela Geller wrote an article claiming that the victims (predominantly children) were not innocent; she also included a photograph with the caption “Note the faces which are more Middle Eastern or mixed than pure Norwegian”. Full details here.

7. Pamela Geller is formally allied with racist white supremacists and European neo-Nazis; she has even organised joint public demonstrations with them, and then tried to hide the evidence when her allies’ explicitly Nazi sympathies were publicly exposed.

8. Pamela Geller is now on record as publicly advocating what is effectively a “Final Solution” targeting British Muslims, including mass-murder.

9. Pamela Geller is on record as insisting “There are no moderates. There are no extremists. There are only Muslims”.

10. Pamela Geller is on record as denying the Srebrenica genocide, describing it as a “fabricated narrative”, a “lie”, and a “manufactured genocide” that is part of a “classic Islamic modus operandi of self-killing and manipulating media coverage”. Geller is also on record as defending the Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic. Extensive details here.

David Yerushalmi:

1. David Yerushalmi is Robert Spencer & Pamela Geller’s lawyer. He has been directly involved in supporting the SION/SIOA/AFDI leadership.

2. David Yerushalmi heads an organisation (SANE) whose mission statement explicitly declares that its [currently unidentified] members are “dedicated to the rejection of democracy” in the United States.

3. David Yerushalmi believes that American women shouldn’t even have the right to vote.

4. David Yerushalmi is on record as claiming that there is a racial hierarchy of intelligence, with black people at the bottom.

5. David Yerushalmi is General Counsel for Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, an extreme right-wing organisation actively trying to infiltrate & influence US domestic, foreign and (particularly) military policy; the CSP’s financiers include a number of the largest weapons manufacturers in the world.

6. The Center for Security Policy is also the main source of the ridiculous conspiracy theories about “Muslim Brotherhood infiltration” of the Obama Administration.

7. Frank Gaffney himself was recently exposed as having attended networking events organised by David Cole (aka “David Stein”), a high-profile (and unrepentant) Holocaust revisionist. Commenting on Cole’s views on the Holocaust, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, stated “I’m very disappointed that someone who abused his Jewishness to get his five minutes of notoriety still stands by his lies. It’s disgusting and puts him in the camp of bigotry.”

8. According to the New York Times, Frank Gaffney is David “Yerushalmi’s primary link to a network of former and current government officials, security analysts and grass-roots political organizations” and is also able to tap “a network of Tea Party and Christian groups as well as ACT! for America, which has 170,000 members”.

9. Despite the fact that David Yerushalmi, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer publicly claim to be staunch supporters of the concept of “freedom of speech” and refer to this concept when justifying their own actions, they keep threatening to sue people who exercise their own freedom of speech against them.

English Defence League:

1. On a personal note, as a Sikh I’d like to mention that the EDL have been forcefully condemned in a joint statement by a very long list of British Sikh temples and organisations, including the two largest Sikh temples outside India. The signatories also include the most senior Sikh religious leader outside India; he is (a) closely linked to the global Sikh authorities at the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar, and personally represents the global Sikh community at the Parliament of the World’s Religions, (b) the recipient of an award from England’s Queen Elizabeth II due to his Guru Nanak Nishkam Sewak Jatha organisation’s humanitarian activities, and (c) the recipient of the rare honour of being one of the few non-Catholics whom the Vatican has formally declared a Knight of the Papal Order of St Gregory, due to his exemplary efforts to promote peace between people of all religions.

2. The EDL have also been publicly condemned by the Israeli Embassy and more than a dozen major Jewish organisations in the UK, including the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Council for Racial Equality, the Community Security Trust, and Jews for Justice for Palestinians. (Also see here.)

3. The EDL leadership are members of the “Stop Islamization of Nations (“SION”) Presidents Council”.

4. The EDL leadership are formally allied with racist white supremacists and European neo-Nazis; they have also organised joint public demonstrations with the aforementioned neo-Nazis, in conjunction with Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller (who were also present).

5. The EDL leadership are on record as repeatedly admitting that their agenda is racially-motivated; EDL leader Stephen Yaxley (aka “Tommy Robinson/Stephen Yaxley-Lennon/Stephen Lennon/Paul Harris) himself is also on record as repeatedly making public statements clearly demonstrating that he is using the terms “Muslim” and “Islam/Islamic” as codewords for “South Asian”; furthermore, Stephen Yaxley is on record as publicly accusing “every single Muslim” of collective guilt and simultaneously threatening the entire “Islamic community” with retribution involving “the full force of the English Defence League”. Further details here, here, http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/13806”>here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. (Also refer to this article.)

6. Stephen Yaxley is on record as publicly promoting neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic, white supremacist websites and organisations, in one instance citing defamatory material from such websites live on the BBC in front of millions of British viewers, and subsequently promoting the same neo-Nazi website online; further details of such incidents are available here and here. (Also see here and here.)

7. During an EDL demonstration in London in May 2013, a major British news channel photographed multiple EDL members openly doing Nazi salutes in Stephen Yaxley’s immediate vicinity; Yaxley is the man in the brown army/camouflage jacket surrounded by EDL members.

8. Stephen Yaxley is on record as giving an interview to the Norwegian media in which he publicly praised Anders Breivik, promoted Breivik’s manifesto, and claimed Breivik’s mass-murdering terrorist attack would have been “easier to justify” if the people killed had been Muslims. Full details here and here.

9. Stephen Yaxley has been prosecuted and convicted for illegally travelling to the US using a false passport in order to attend an anti-Muslim conference hosted by Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller and David Yerushalmi in New York in September 2012. Full details here, here, here, here, and here.

10. EDL co-founder Kevin Carroll is on record as ranting about non-Christians being “pagans” whom he will “never bend or bow to”; Pamela Geller, David Yerushalmi and David Horowitz are of course non-Christians themselves. Kevin Carroll also gave a speech at the aforementioned anti-Muslim conference in New York, a fact that Geller enthusiastically publicised on her own website.

11. EDL co-founder Richard Price is a convicted criminal on multiple counts of downloading child pornography; at the time, Stephen Yaxley first tried to cover this up, and then launched a campaign to try to free Price from prison. Details here and here. The EDL leadership also released an official statement defending Price, written by Yaxley (screenshot here).

12. The EDL leadership were deputy leaders of the now-defunct “Britis

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