P. David Gaubatz

The loony David Gaubatz who co-authored the book “Muslim Mafia,” has gone on record calling for a “backlash against the Muslim community.”

First, he said he found Saddam’s WMD bunkers. Then, he claimed that the U.S. military was zapping animals to death with real-life ray guns. Now, full-time kook and former Air Force Office of Special Investigations agent Dave Gaubatz is calling for a “professional and legal backlash against the Muslim community and their leaders,” following the Ft. Hood massacre. Which plays right into the hands of America’s opponents.

For years, Gaubatz has warned that Muslims in this country form a kind of Fifth Column — and that President Barack Obama is part of this seditious group. (He’s also called Obama a “self admitted ‘crack-head.’”) Gaubatz’s book detailing these claims recently became an Amazon bestseller, its conclusions endorsed by a handful of Republican Congressmen.

When Maj. Nidal Hasan — a Muslim-American with links to religious radicals — killed 13 at Ft. Hood last week, Gaubatz renewed his call for a purge within the U.S. Islamic community:

Muslims know what materials are being taught in their mosques and they know many of the materials instruct young Muslims to kill innocent people who do not adhere to Sharia law. If Muslims do not want a backlash, then I would recommend a “house cleaning.” Stack every Saudi, al Qaeda, Pakistani, Taliban, Hamas, and Muslim Brotherhood piece of material from their mosque and have a bonfire. Tell the American, Jewish, and Muslim community this hatred will no longer be allowed in their mosques.

The fevered language shouldn’t a surprise. Gaubatz continued to peddle claims that Saddam’s chemical and biological arms had been shipped to Syria — long after such conspiracy theories were dismissed as bogus. His accusation that the U.S. military has a killer ray gun, disguised as a non-lethal weapon has gone uncorroborated.  And the man has a long-standing and large problem with Muslims on American soil. He’s connected to a group, Society of Americans for National Existence, which calls for the United States “to develop the notion and legal infrastructure to restrict non-Western and non-Christian immigration so that alien cultures and peoples should never come to threaten the national character of this nation.” Other extremists are going even further than Gaubatz, demanding a “stop [to] the practice of allowing Muslims to serve in the U.S. military. “

Of course, most U.S. Muslims don’t shoot up their fellow soldiers. Fine… You invent a jihadi-detector that works every time it’s used, and we’ll welcome you back with open arms.

Ironically, Hasan, the Ft. Hood shooter, made a similar argument in a 2007 presentation. In order to avoid “adverse events,” like Muslim troops deserting or turning on their fellow serrvicemembers, Hasan recommended giving “Muslim soldiers the option of being released as ‘conscientious objectors.’”

The U.S. military’s failure to understand the cultural and religious landscapes in Iraq and Afghanistan directly contributed to setbacks in those war efforts, top generals say. You can’t conduct a proper counterinsurgency if you don’t understand how the society you’re trying to protect. Purge the American armed forces of its Muslims, and that cultural isolation becomes only more acute. Hard-to-win campaigns become almost impossible. It kind of makes you wonder who the real Fifth Columnists are around here.

After TPM originally reported this story, the neo-Conservative Family Security Matters who ran the interview with Gaubatz scrubbed the sentence that said, “it is time for a backlash against the Muslim community” and replaced it with “it is time for a backlash against the Muslim Brotherhood.” TPM reports in a piece titled, Scrubbed: Call For a Backlash Against Muslims Embarrasses even Right-Wing Think-Tank,

Adrian Morgan

The Neocons, the BNP and the Islamophobia Network

Tom Griffin, 17 September 2009

Events in London in recent weeks have highlighted the growing collusion between American neoconservatives and the European far right in stirring up hatred of Muslims.

Richard Bartholomew has details of a meeting at the George Restaurant in east London in August attended by Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer and Douglas Murray of the Centre for Social Cohesion at the invitation of the Christian Action Network. Also invited were the English Defence League, the group responsible for a number of recent violent anti-Muslim protests.

Robert Spencer says on his blog that he and Murray refused to meet with the EDL, and cites Adrian Morgan as a witness to this version of events. But the presence of Morgan, who did meet the EDL, is itself evidence of the emerging relationship between the neocons and the far-right.

Morgan is a contributing editor to Family Security Matters, which has been described as a front for the Center for Security Policy, a Washington think-tank run by the ultra-neoconservative Frank Gaffney.

He is also the author of Western Resistance, a defunct blog on which he laid out his view of the BNP:

I am slightly ambivalent about the British National Party, on account of its racist past. Nowadays, under the leadership of Nick Griffin, a skilled politician, the racist agenda has become replaced by an agenda which is highly focused against Islam. With this aspect of its policies, I am in agreement. Islam poses a more serious threat to every aspect of British democracy than anything previously encountered. (via the Internet Archive)

Ambivalent or not, Morgan’s interest in the BNP is reciprocated, according to Searchlight Magazine, which reported in 2007 on the efforts of BNP idealogue Alan Goodacre to tap support from right wing bloggers:

Goodacre also stated his intention to try and gain the help of Adrian Morgan who writes regularly for the Western Resistance website and has previously contributed to The Guardian and New Scientist and was once a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Society. Morgan also contributes to the “Islam Watch” website – “Islam under scrutiny by ex-Muslims” – which would explain Goodacre’s interest in him.

It might also be explained by Morgan’s membership of the 910 Group, an offshoot of the Center for Vigilant Freedom (CVF), which ran the CounterJihad Europa conference in October 2007.  Among those speaking alongside Robert Spencer at this Brussels event were representatives of European far-right parties such as Filip Dewinter of the Vlaams Belang and Ted Ekeroth of the Sweden Democrats.

The CVF’s Christine Brim suggested in November 2007 that the strategy of embracing such parties could be extended to Jean-Marie Le Pen and the BNP:

We suggest looking for the possible movement of Le Pen’s political party Front National towards the center-right, as they may change their platform to pro-active support to improve the situations of European Jews and Israel. The same trend is happening in Austria, and with the BNP in the UK (also not invited and did not attend the conference). If such parties specifically state pro-Israel positions, and take real actions opposing anti-semitism and disavowing previous positions - and reach out to Jewish constituents and encourage Jewish participation in party positions - these are real actions to observe, and to approve. They have not done this yet - but are starting. (via the Internet Archive)

Indeed they were. Alan Goodacre had written to the Jewish Chronicle in 2006 (much to the bemusement of its readers):

We hope that our future behaviour may in time bring you to understand that our repudiation of antisemitism is genuine. We are the only party in Britain that is truly serious about fighting the Islamofascist threat.

Morgan, Brim and Goodacre have each employed the same sleight of hand, attempting to present the embrace of Islamophobia as some kind of atonement for anti-semitism, rather than another manifestation of the same underlying racism. If this strategy seems crude, it may yet take neo-fascist Gianfranco Fini to the Italian premiership.Time Magazine describes the process:

To fulfill his big ambitions, Fini understood in the early 1990s that he had to distance himself from his past. Eventually, he came to believe that the shortest path from marginal Mussolini nostalgic to mainstream political power was unwavering support for the state of Israel. The decisive moment came when Fini traveled to Israel in November 2003, declaring his affection for the Jewish state and his “shame” for Italy’s racial laws under fascism. The following year, Silvio Berlusconi made him foreign minister, where the longtime leader of the National Alliance party stood out amongst his European partners for his pro-Israel policy.

This conversion even impressed some on the ‘Decent Left‘. Harry’s Place wrote of Fini:

He is pro-European Union and pro-US - neither of which fit easy with the claim that he is still a fascist. After September 11, AN posters across Italy declared ‘Solidarity with the United States’ - Italian fascists despise the US for obvious historical reasons.

He is also explicitly in favour of capitalism and the free market. Again this is a break not only with old style Italian corporatist fascism but also the later post-war concept of the ’social right’ which believed in large scale state ownership and nationalisation etc.

AN also supported the liberation of Iraq, a position that I am not aware of any of Europe’s genuine fascists taking.

As Time noted “having “Israel” stamped in your passport and publicly condemning anti-Semitism cannot alone remove lingering doubts about extremist tendencies.” Yet the attempt to prove otherwise has some influential backers.

In addition to being a key player in the CVF, and secretary of another counter-jihad outfit, the International Free Press Society, Christine Brim is a senior vice-president at Frank Gaffney’s Washington think-tank, the Center for Security Policy (CSP), and director of its Victory Coalition Fund, an incubator for anti-Islamist projects.

The CSP is open about its involvement in political warfare and even has a vice-president for information operations who blogs on the subject. Its General Counsel David Yerushalmi heads up the Society of Americans for National Existence, whose material found its way into last year’s Policy Exchange briefing against the Global Peace and Unity event in London.

Gaffney’s sister Devon Cross, a member of the CSP advisory council, heads up the Policy Forum on International Security Affairs, a neoconservative briefing operation for European journalists which was run for some time out of Annabel’s nightclub in Mayfair.

The CSP and the Policy Forum have been endorsed by some of America’s wealthiest conservative foundations. The Philanthropy Roundtable recommended both organisations in its 2006 publication, The Struggle Against Radical Islam: A Donor’s Guide (pdf) which criticised the US Government for failing to develop political warfare and public diplomacy programmes modelled on those of the Cold War, and called on private sector donors to fill the gap.

Neoconservatives had repeatedly come up against resistance in attempting to run political warfare programmes through their powerbase at the Pentagon during the Bush administration. One such proposal was leaked to the New York Times in 2004:

Pentagon and military officials directly involved in the debate say that such a secret propaganda program, for example, could include planting news stories in the foreign press or creating false documents and Web sites translated into Arabic as an effort to discredit and undermine the influence of mosques and religious schools that preach anti-American principles.

Some of those are in the Middle Eastern and South Asian countries like Pakistan, still considered a haven for operatives of Al Qaeda. But such a campaign could reach even to allied countries like Germany, for example, where some mosques have become crucibles for Islamic militancy and anti-Americanism.

A private sector version of that strategy is clearly visible in the smears and secret briefings directed at British mosques, a campaign which has now taken a step further with the recent wave of street protests by provocateurs like the BNP-connected English Defence League and the Counter-Jihad Europa affiliate Stop the Islamisation of Europe.

Communities Minister John Denham last week announced plans to address issues alienating white, working-class people at risk of being exploited by the far-right. If that approach is to succeed, the wealthy right-wing propagandists who are actively trying to set working-class communities against each other must be exposed.

English Defense League Protester

The blog wars have heated up again. Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, former ally and friend of Robert Spencer, exposes another instance of Spencer teaming up and hobnobbing with extremists; this time it’s the English Defense League and the Christian Action Network.

The English Defense League is an organization that claims to speak out against Islamic Extremists but many have linked them to far right organizations, football hooligans, and neo-fascists such as the BNP. The organization was founded by Jeff Marsh, a Welsh hooligan. Barth notes, “Separate from the MFE and UBA are the English and Welsh Defence League (EWDL) and Casuals United, run by the Welsh hooligan Jeff Marsh.” Read more on Jeff Marsh’s sordid past here.

In a post titled ‘English Defense League’ Riot in Birmingham, Charles Johnson writes,

And look who’s hanging out with the English Defense League now, on a tour of Britain with wacko fundamentalist nutbag Martin Mawyer and his “Christian Action Network” — none other than Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch: English Defence League Interviewed by Veteran US Anti-Gay Bigot.

It seems that Spencer was in Britain as part of a tour with the Christian Action Network. The Christian Action Network is the same organization which suggested that Hillary Clinton was a Lesbian,

The Christian Action Network (CAN), a Religious Right group based in Forest, Va., held a press conference in New York City Sept. 7 to announce plans to place ads in the New York media suggesting that Clinton is gay. The organization freely admitted that it had no hard evidence for the allegation but cited ongoing “rumors.”

Bartholomew notes,

The Christian Action Network was apparently in the UK as part of a tour with none other than Robert Spencer. In an August posting on Jihad Watch, Spencer tells us that:

I had a most illuminating dinner with a group including Douglas Murray that offered a bracing introduction to British dhimmitude: we had to move our dinner at the last minute since the proprietors of the George Restaurant didn’t like us discussing jihad and Islamization on the premises…When not getting bounced out of pubs, the intrepid Jason Campbell of the Christian Action Network and I took strolls into a few mosques…

This is the same dinner which the English Defense League were invited to, as Adrian Morgan of Family Security Matters (another extreme right wing group) admits in an attempted defense of Robert Spencer, “The EDL had been invited to the George pub.” Robert Spencer wants us to believe that all this is a coincidence and is crying that he is a victim of guilt by association, which is quite rich considering how, as we have demonstrated, Spencer traffics in nothing but guilt by association. I guess this time it’s a case of Spencer not being able to take his own medicine?

Spencer responds to the accusation by Charles Johnson with a searing salvo of cheap shots and name calling. Is that any way to act for an “objective scholar?” He calls him “libelblogger,” “lying scoundrel” and calls those who are member’s of LGF “cult members.”

Robert Spencer seems to still be fuming at being outed by Charles Johnson, who many in the anti-Muslim blogsphere think of as a “traitor” for exposing Spencer’s proclivity to be an apologist for fascists as well as his joining a genocidal Faceebook club.