Note: The Tundra Tabloids was at the Counter-Jihad conference in Brussels in 2007, and can attest to the veracity of the Baron’s words. Filip DeWinter and the Vlaams Belang have been raked over the coals far too long, neither are they now, nor ever have been a fascist movement. KGS
How many times have you heard that “Vlaams Belang is a fascist party”?
How many times have you read that “Filip Dewinter is a neo-Nazi”?
It’s a persistent and pernicious meme. It has no basis either in history or current events, but it became the “dominant narrative” back when Vlaams Belang was still Vlaams Blok, and it is a lie that simply will not die.
Time for a reality check. Take a look at this photo one more time:
Tell me, who are the fascists in this picture? Who wears the jackboots?
I bring all of this up because of a piece that appeared a couple of days ago in The New York Times Magazine. The article is part of the “strange new respect” accorded to Charles Johnson by the Leftist media since he repudiated the last of his erstwhile friends on the Right.
Most of the article covers the same old ground, recounting the Great Blog War of 2007 from a distinctly Johnsonian perspective. But that’s not what interests me. As a part of his research, the author interviewed Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer about what happened back then. Here’s where the relevant portion begins:
IN OCTOBER 2007, Johnson was asked to take part in what was billed as a Counter-Jihad Conference in Brussels, a gathering of fewer than a hundred politicians and opinion leaders from around the world who convened to share ideas and strategies for combating the spread of militant Islam. Johnson was not the only writer invited — Geller was there, as well as Robert Spencer of jihadwatch.org (a Web site Johnson himself designed), to name two — but he did not go. “I’m just not a joiner of these things,” he says.
A couple of points here: I was one of the organizers of the Brussels event, and I was the person who wrote to Charles Johnson to invite him. No one else communicated with him about the conference ahead of time. Although he normally responded to my emails back in those days, he never replied to any of the several that I sent him about Brussels.
We went ahead without him, and Mr. Johnson’s first response was the broadside attack he launched against us the same evening the conference concluded.
Read it all here.
NOTE: Retreading through this entire sordid meme, yet again, is boring, laborous but necessary.
