As his arguments become exposed, so does he.
Robert Spencer is finished. The cloak of objectivity he claimed has long been undone, as he received blistering blows from not only Loonwatch, but former allies and mainstream organizations disavowing and condemning his anti-Muslim stance.
We have seen an odd metamorphosis on the part of Spencer. For years he tread a fine line, making statements that neared the boundary of Islamophobia without being outright anti-Muslim; veiled Islamophobia if you will. He fashioned himself as a rational, objective scholar when all along he was a right-wing Christian supremacist with an ax to grind against Islam and Muslims. Slowly the truth about who he is and what he believes came out over the past two years. One can only hide falsehood for so long.
It may be that Spencer has spent too much time with Pamela Geller, tea baggers and other nuts, or maybe this is what he has believed all along and it is in fact him influencing Geller, regardless he has hopped on a new loonie train: the “Obama is a Mooslim” conspiracy.
So lets count the conspiracies Spencer either believes or supports now:
1.) Eurabia: Muslim demographic take over of Europe.
2.) Stealth Jihad: Peaceful, law abiding Muslims are really just subverting Western Civilization and trying to impose Shariah law.
3.) Bosnia: The genocide in Bosnia and the massacre in Srebrenica never occurred or are exaggerated.
4.) Congressional Intern Spies: CAIR was sending spies into our government in the form of congressional interns.
and now,
5.) Obama is a Mooslim: The possibility that Barack Obama ever was or is still a Mooslim.
The evidence:
April 29th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
Great scoop, Emperor!
April 29th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
LOL what a goofball. Is he compensating for something by attacking Muslims?
April 29th, 2010 at 1:57 pm
In the words of Cenk Uyugur and John McCain, “We got ‘em.”
April 29th, 2010 at 2:24 pm
Wow, I think of Spencer as a shell of his former hateful self. No wit or strategy to him anymore.
In the Quran there is a verse that I am reminded of when I see this piece,
“Qad ja’a al-Haq wa zahaqa al-batil, inna al-baatila kana zahooqa”
‘Cerily truth has come and falsehood has perished, verily falsehood will always perish.’
April 29th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
This is very refreshing to see that Spencer’s sideshow can be called out for what it is: racism. Spencer really irks me because he pretends to be objective when he so clearly is not. I feel bad for all the people who have been brainwashed by him. Spencer doesn’t return my e-mails anymore because he cannot refute our answers to him. I wonder what must go on inside the heart of a person who exhibits excessive doublethink like Spencer. Geert Wilders too. I mean, “Freedom Party”? Really? The “Freedom Party” that wants to ban the Quran and deport Mooslims? A “Freedom Party” whose central platform is the banning of one of the world’s ancient, great religions? Like I said, freedom for white people only. Robert Spencer is a downright racist hatemongering war hawk and I hope the mainstream media figures that out soon! Thanks loonwatch!
April 29th, 2010 at 2:45 pm
Loonwatch has really done a great job of exposing this guy, the damage is irreparable, if he had an ounce of dignity, he would resign by now.
April 29th, 2010 at 2:49 pm
It may worth noting that Spencer seems to think that all Muslims would follow the same policies that Obama is currently implementing. If anything, Obama’s policies are anything but the type of policies most Muslim Americans would want implemented – especially on the foreign policy level.
April 29th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME HOW HE IS A GOOD MUSLIM WHEN HE SENDS TROOPS TO AFGHANISTAN!
April 29th, 2010 at 6:28 pm
This post comes at a favorable moment for us at Krapuul in Holland.
Spencer was one of the 11 “expert witnesses”, Geert Wilders had asked the Amsterdam Court to hear about the indictment for “hate-mongering” that human rights groups and the State have uphold against him. Spencer was one of the 8 “experts” the Court threw out, retaining only three, who are being interviewed in Chambers at this very moment.
We translated your post (see trackback) and made some fun about how Dutch Justice would have reacted to Spencer’s looniness.
April 29th, 2010 at 6:34 pm
“SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME HOW HE IS A GOOD MUSLIM WHEN HE SENDS TROOPS TO AFGHANISTAN!”
And has Rahm Emanuel, who served in the IDF and whose father was part of the Jewish terrorist group Irgun, as his Chief of Staff.
April 29th, 2010 at 6:42 pm
Huib,
That’s excellent. I am glad Krapuul and our friends in Holland can benefit from this!
Is there an english translation of any news from Holland about the witnesses who were thrown out?
April 29th, 2010 at 7:34 pm
@Emperor: The thrown-out witnesses, like Robert Spencer, are not to be seen in Court. As the hearings of the three remaining witnesses are confidential, we cannot expect to hear from them.
However, there are some loons among them, too (if not all of them). We are concentrating on (retired) Professor ‘Hans Jansen’ from a minor Dutch university, a close friend of Ms. Bat Ye’or.
As soon as we’ll have some information about his statements, you’ll be informed.
He is a former friend of the Palestinians. Changed his cap and is an ardent lecturing guest at extreme right meetings against ‘Eurabia’ now.
April 29th, 2010 at 8:23 pm
My God, Spencer is hideous much like Islamophobes Michael Medved(who Spencer is regular guest at his radio show) and Charles Krauthammer. All of them look like beings from outer space or spawns of Satan, lol.
April 30th, 2010 at 1:39 am
I don’t see the change. He’s always been a weasel, and his answer there is keeping with that line. If confronted, he would say “I didn’t say Obama is a Muslim” And it would be true, just as it would be true that he has never said “Islam is evil”, he only implies it with every one of his witless comments.
But there is a certain influence from Geller in his Obama posts. Spencer wasn’t particularly Anti-Obama, he was like Schlussel, he didn’t like his policies, but he didn’t like Bush’s policies either (never went far enough as they would like i.e. deporting Muslims and dropping even more bombs in the Middle East) but Obama made Geller crazier (as incredible as that sounds), and SPencer is getting some of that by osmosis, or because she pays his bills.
April 30th, 2010 at 9:35 am
I dunno if it was my email that alerted you to this, or maybe you found it on your own. Either way, great work guys, glad to see you got this up so fast.
Robert has exposed himself big time yet again. Objective? Are you kidding me. This man comes up with new twisted logic to concoct new wacky theories.
Any Muslim like me, who sees that video would just laugh at what he said at the very end “His policies & actions suggest he is a Muslim”. Could he be any more clueless as to what Muslims think or what Islam teaches? In what world would legalising homosexual marriage, being pro-abortiotn, sending more troops to Afghanistan, killing innocent muslims etc make a person a muslim??
Strange man. Clever in how he disguises his racist anti muslim views. But no more.
I alos recommend, anyone with any social book marking accounts, bookmark this webpage. Put it up on Digg, del.ico.us, stumbleupon, redit etc. Get as many people to see this man for what he is.
April 30th, 2010 at 8:02 pm
May 20th has been declared to be draw Muhammad day, and this event has been set up on Facebook. So in response Sami Zaatari has created a counter Facebook group and campaign ‘Honour The Prophet Muhammad’, and this will also lead to May 20th. So please join the Facebook group, and do your part, on May 20th we shall be releasing a high quality production video that shall compile some of the greatest examples of the prophet Muhammad. The group can be found on the following link:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=122422947769479&ref=ts
April 30th, 2010 at 10:03 pm
Either I’m reading wrong, am too stupid to realize something in the post, or LW forgot to put something in the part where it says “the evidence”?
May 1st, 2010 at 1:57 pm
Okay there’s a video now in the space where it says “the evidence”.
May 1st, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Wait: Watch the video. That’s the evidence.
May 1st, 2010 at 7:53 pm
There is a video below. Refresh your browser or use another one. It’s there.
May 2nd, 2010 at 8:18 am
There is a video there. Must be something wrong with your browser which is preventing you from seeing it
May 5th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Good job debunking Spencer. With all due respect I have to say that “conspiracy” # 3 is one of the few times when Spencer has a point. (Even a broken clock is right twice a day.) The International Court of Justice (ICJ) did not accept the claims of genocide in Bosnia and the death toll numbers given by ICTY demographers as well as the Sarajevo based Research and Documentation Center are indeed around 100,000 dead on all three sides of the war. (It is true and I would not deny that the Muslims made up the majority of the victims and Serbs committed the majority of the atrocities and killing.) I don’t accept Spencer’s anti-Muslim take and disagree with much of what he says on former Yugoslavia but Kejda Gjermani’s gives the usual pro-intervention narrative, highly misleading and propagandistic. She takes some very right-wing positions and repeats all the old propaganda from the 1990s excusing crimes committed by sides she favors (NATO, the Kosovo Liberation Army/KLA, Croatia, etc.) She also misrepresents the sources she cites a number of times and sneeringly dismisses any contradictory evidence. The breakup of Yugoslavia and the wars that followed were brutal and ugly and complicated. We shouldn’t reject Spenser’s propaganda only to replace it with the simplified interventionist propaganda claims of NATO or the KLA and its supporters.
May 5th, 2010 at 4:26 pm
@Justin Says:
April 29th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Justin by banning the Qur’an and banning other Islamic practices which are contrary to human rights individual liberty etc one isn’t simply exposing freedom for white people.
One of the main reason of course is that Islam is not race bound.A white person can be a Muslim.In fact some of the most fanatical Muslims are converts.
As to article in question.
If you are going to write an article about Robert Spencer suggesting he believers Obama is a Muslim it’s not smart to actually link to a video where he clearly says he doesn’t know if he is or isn’t.
May 6th, 2010 at 11:35 pm
@Danios
Yeah thanks I already knew that when finally something showed up in “the evidence” section. Before there was nothing there so I thought either my browser was glitchy or LW is out for some burgers. Nevertheless great job.
May 11th, 2010 at 9:02 am
@Durendal
What video were you watching? He clearly says so right at the end, he believes Obama is a Muslim based on his actions & policies. He does believe it.
May 11th, 2010 at 1:09 pm
FYI: The American Muslim has a great piece where they compile a lot of stuff on Spencer from different sources. The pile just gets bigger and bigger.
http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/the_politically_incorrect_guide_to_robert_spencer/0018064
May 11th, 2010 at 4:12 pm
Well – they railed on Obama’s church back in Chicago because the pastor there was a showman who would loudly preach criticisms America and its policies during services…
Even if Obama was a Muslim – I’d still vote for him!
There is NO reason why a Muslim, or a Jew, or atheist – can be a US President.
I do recall that somewhere in the US Constitution that “there shall be NO religious test for office?”
May 12th, 2010 at 3:24 pm
The question in the item if Spencer was always going to come out in the open like this or was it because of his association with the other hate-for-profiteers is for me most certainly the former.
I support the theory that some old philosophers have espoused that all forms of radicalism must ultimately follow three “rules”. Thus Spencer simply “has to”.
Those three rules are:
1) The lie. That the posture or agenda being radical is unacceptable and thus they must lie as well as lie to cover-up the agenda if hidden.
2) To promote that lie further (since they can never back down) they must sell-it through abuse of context (which is what my blog blootstellen is focusing on). The abuse of context is done becuase at some point they must attempt to challenge criics by making the “lie” look legitimate.
3) They must assume the target audience are stupid. Well, they are telling a lie and trying very hard to say it is true. It also, by default, takes on the arrogant form of them assuming they know what the audience needs and should know.
Spencer has crossed the line of no return, he is unable to backtrack and thus steps further on to cover-up and push the line (the lie) further on. He has hinted and backed others that have tried the “Obama is a Muslim” line and so ultimately he must confirm that view as well.
The assumption that the audience is stupid backfired (face it most of America, GB and Europe ignored him and his friends) and more and more it returns to the same captured audience of the faithful far-right, he has to play to that audience – and that is the group that “wants to believe” that Obama is a Muslim.
We can also see, from the press, that Gellar (and thus Spencer, Fitzgerald and others) are again attempting to have a go at making their audience the general public, by re-inventing themselves as part of the “human rights” community and avoiding claiming to be anti-jihadists. The “lie” is still the same, the abuse of context will continue with the same shameless spin and they again assume that the public are stupid and will presume that a new name means different people and views. I find that last one rather like a fraudster moving towns and re-inventing a new name to continue scamming.
Donny (blootstellen)
June 14th, 2010 at 4:43 pm
propadanda and lie against islam is not new.
June 18th, 2010 at 6:27 pm
Perhaps the biggest load of crap to spew out of Spencer’s mouth….yet.
August 15th, 2010 at 8:15 am
Muslims always play the double strategem of threatening violence whilst claiming victim status.
It is a crazy psychological strategy which has yeilded great results over the centuries.
Muslims don’t like democracy. When they enter a democratic country, they immediately undermine it.
islam is a form of fascism which wraps itself in religious garb for protection in civil societies.
Any faith which mandates unequal status under law for certain groups within society is not compatible with secular democracy. That is simply a fact. Muslims need to address this fundamental bigotry at the heart of their so called faith.
Claiming to be victimized really isn’t good enough.
October 21st, 2010 at 5:09 pm
“Muslims always play the double strategem of threatening violence whilst claiming victim status.”
Really? You Islamophobes say the same things again and again. Firstly, “Muslims” implies that all 1.5 billion Muslims are doing this, which is untrue as the vast majority lead happy lives. They are not threatening violence nor believe themselves to be the victims of anything. A minority feels that they are under attack by some big Zionist-Crusader Alliance (their words, not mine) and respond to that with some terrorism.
“Muslims don’t like democracy. When they enter a democratic country, they immediately undermine it.”
Lies. Pure Lies. Is it pure coincidence that nearly all Muslim countries are democracies, that the majority of the world’s Muslim population lives happily under democratic rule, that countless Muslim scholars and mujtahids and alims and muftis and Imams have supported democracy. Some even believe that the early Islamic government, which was run with a parliament called the Shura to be an early democracy. Many Islamic scholars have also said that through ijtihad, or reasoning, it is perfectly Islamic to pass down the Khilafah’s powers to a parliament.
“Any faith which mandates unequal status under law for certain groups within society is not compatible with secular democracy.”
Absolutely. Good thing Islam isn’t one of those faiths. Of course with the general state of ignorance in Islamic countries its not unusual to see religious minorities abused but Islam does believe in religious tolerance. Please click on the links on the side of this site such as “Constitution of Medina”, “Caliph”, “Young Ottomans” and the “Objectives Resolution of 1949″.
“so called faith.”
What else is it then. Let me guess, you’re going to say its political system or a cult etc. It is the consensus of the main religious scholars that Islam is a faith and an important one with 1.5 billion followers.
December 27th, 2010 at 6:29 am
I cant stop laughing at Spencer.
He is not a scholar.