I'm still holding out for certified hater status from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) but that fraudulent group has been having some karma induced troubles of late.
Mostly, I was outraged at being labeled a "republican operative." Sorry Logan Carrol, the author of the piece (a name so WASP I'm blinded just by typing it), the last thing that I am is a republican operative: I'm a conservative, having long ago run from the cuck label of republican.
Republican operatives can be seen on "Almanac" or "At Issue." Or heard on podcasts along with members in good standing of the Regressive Left because they want to be liked. Or making nice with our shockingly mediocre media on Twitter. Or maneuvering for paid positions on campaigns that undoubtedly will lose, paycheck in the interim being all. "Same as it ever was."
As I've written before, once you understand high school, you understand Minnesota republican politics.
Before examining certain particular hilarities in the article, I have to give Carrol some credit: it wasn't completely awful writing. Then again, I'm not a regular reader of City Pages, the free tabloid of the uneducated, perpetually outraged Left in the Twin Cities. I'm old enough to remember when I praised one of its former writers, Aaron Rupar, who's since gone on to a sort of fame at national outlets (sorry about the demise of Think Progress, Aaron, although it would take a heart of stone not to laugh). I thought he had good instincts despite his politics being the opposite of mine. Carrol's article was, of course, lazy, reductive and came with a two by four agenda. Then again, the same can be said of all Minnesota media, no matter the topic.
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First, I write about Islam, only rarely an individual Mohammedan. I find the distinction crucial, others do not. But I'm not others and don't wish to become them. The forced mass migration of Islam into Europe holds lessons for those of us in Minnesota and America who correctly refuse to sit passively by while some wish for the same fate. Search for "Rotherham" (use Duck Duck Go). The City Pages article, like the CAIR Minnesota "haters" list, is designed to silence criticism of Islam, seeks to cow a populace under threat of being called names into acquiescence for Rotherhams here. No.
Next, Carrol writes: “You can’t object when your children are bullied by feral Somali youth,” declared Alpha News in a story last September titled, “The St. Cloud Times Shills for Refugee Resettlement.” No it wasn't "Alpha News," Logan, it was me! Come on, you're not even trying.
I wrote for Alpha News for approximately 18 months, quitting by email last December (my editor in chief followed two weeks later) when I was in Varanasi, India, after which I walked along the Ganges in the early morning light, smoking and looking for my favorite chai walla, down from the burning ghats where corpses are cremated in the open. I'm in negotiations with Netflix for the rights to the story at this very moment.
The point I'm making is that I had the sole opinion column at Alpha News during my tenure and don't appreciate this misattribution of my writing. How can I make the SPLC's hater list that way?
The repackaged hit piece moved on to the Center of the American Experiment, or, as I call it, far more accurately I think, the Center of the American Boomer. Carrol refers to it as "Minnesota's premier conservative think tank," which is akin to saying some burger & craft beer joint is Minnesota's premiere restaurant. Both are true, in that peculiar Minnesota sense.
In the story there's a large picture of John Hinderaker, the current president of the Center, who constantly refers to it as "my" conservative think tank. The last time any media drew attention to the Center he threw a distinguished member of the staff overboard. The Cathedral is never more powerful when its object are types like him.
We're in a cold civil war but somehow the Center has either failed to notice it or is too cowardly to fight it. Either way spells uselessness, David French conservatives (French Davidians per @PollySpin) when we need Sohrab Amari conservatives. You'll have to look up that last reference on your own.
Not to be entirely unfair to readers, Amari says Conservative, Inc. has conserved nothing, drag queens reading to our children in public libraries being the proof. French says, muh principles are worth hanging onto, even as America as founded is "fundamentally transformed" by Third World immigrants who have nothing to offer us but votes for Democrats as well as crime, welfare dependency if not fraud and low IQ's.
If you're looking for courage and leadership on the most pressing issues of our times, the Center isn't for you. If, rather, you prefer to be a blue rinse hair audience member looking for the next thumb to suck, the Center of the American Experiment is home, Boomer. Please give generously, they have payroll to make, even without Kim.
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"It was all a game, or a way of making a living." Joe Sobran on Conservative, Inc.
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The story plods on with the usual tired tropes generated by the Cathedral. I could have written it, so predictable is its narrative arc. But because it mentions me again, I'm forced, post modern-like, to deal with the text.
Carrol drags me for speculating that the attack on the terrorist mosque Dar Al Farooq in Bloomington was a hoax. Given that Muslims are the second greatest generator of hoax "hate" crimes (only behind students) it was entirely reasonable given that a substantial amount of time had elapsed since the attack with no arrests. It proved not to be true but that comes with speculation. Hello Russia hoax?
He also says I claimed victim status. To anyone who knows me or who reads me or who has heard me speak, that's enough to make a cat laugh. I stole that from Christopher Hitchens: I miss him still.
Not surprisingly, Carrol doesn't mention my reporting (I was an opinion columnist but more than once made hard news in the course of it) on one of the imams of the terrorist mosque. "Waleed Idris al-Maneesey (also spelled Meneese) is the radical lmam who heads up Dar Al-Farooq" I wrote in September of 2017.
I went on to note: "Al-Maneesey has said that no Muslim in a non-sharia ruled country should be a judge as only Allah can make law. Just last November he preached Muslims had an obligation to kill and destroy the Jews. Both of those sentiments strike me as decidedly un-Minnesotan but what do I know?"
The reaction from local media, including City Pages, to the news I broke? Nothing, as if to prove the title of my column "The Silencing Jihad."
Two years later, it continues. Cue the "it's all so tiresome" memes.
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I wrote "The Islamization of Minnesota Media" for the Center for Security Policy not quite a year ago. The Islamist propaganda Minnesotans face daily is discussed and explained there. Logan, take a look.
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Local media have been captured by CAIR and show ample signs of the Stockholm Syndrome. Most astute observers of both media and local Islamists have known this for some time. That City Pages had to gin up a warmed over version of what Minnesota CAIR put out last year suggests to me that local Islamists are not happy with the results thus far. White pill, fam.
I both apologize for and tire of quoting myself but why reinvent the wheel? How I ended my "The Silencing Jihad" column two years ago applies with equal, if not more, force today:
The attacks by [Sally Jo] Sorensen, [Wilhelm] Davis and MPR are designed to silence us, to exact a cost for the simple act of paying attention. Someone once said that political correctness is a war on noticing.
That’s why it’s up to us not to remain silent. Silence is their goal, their current jihad. “Silence is death,” as was said in another context. But we won’t stay silent. And if the forces of the Regressive Left don’t like it, they can find another state."
Image credit: Center for Security Policy
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