Leftward Ho!

I’ve said my fill about Black Panther and am done with discussing the obvious leftist Cultural Marxist manifestation of “identity” politics for blacks, courtesy of Hollywood. 

This column is about the ongoing leftward turn of CPAC.

It’s time to focus on something that the anti-Trumpers and the Left are likely tittering about now, which is the major slide to the Left of CPAC, or the Conservative Political Action Conference.  And how are conservatives leaning Left when the Left has proven to be conservatives’ mortal enemy? 

Pamela Geller was supposed to have a panel at CPAC sponsored by her ADFI, but since September, after expressing interest, the show-runners of CPAC at the last minute, cancelled Geller even holding a panel in a spare room because it refused to allow Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit on the panel.  The Wikipedia link to Gateway reveals the author’s bias and hostility by asserting, “The website is known for publishing falsehoods and spreading hoaxes.” Which is a lie, as much of one that accused Pamela Geller of dropping out of the latest CPAC synod. Robert Spencer has the whole story of CPAC’s dhimmitude over the jihad threat. Both Geller and Spencer describe the whirligigs, chiefly by APP’s Terry Schilling, put Geller through for months.

Robert Spencer writes:

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) has never been much interested in hosting honest discussion of the jihad terror threat.

Not only has CPAC consistently dissembled about the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat, but it has also shown a disturbing tendency to dance to the tune of the Left. Saul Alinsky’s 13th Rule for Radicals is “‘Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.‘ Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.” The Left consistently does this; in the case of counter-jihadis (including me), it presents our statements, however correct and demonstrable, as egregious and individual to us — that’s freezing and personalizing the target. Then Leftists move to “cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy,” demanding that others on the Right disavow and condemn, or at very least shun, the target.  

One of CPAC’s leaders is Suhail Kan, a Muslim, who denied to an audience during CPAC-2014 that the Muslim Brotherhood existed in the U.S.

Geller writes,

The uber-left SPLC’s “Hatewatch” is a clearinghouse of enemedia articles that reflect the propaganda spin that it wants to put on news events. In this edition, it links to the Forward’s ridiculous hit piece on me that tries to make something of a few retweets supposedly by Russian bots, as well as to the CNN story in which ACU board member Terry Schilling lies about the panel I conceptualized and proposed to CPAC, and which now has been taken over by Schilling without my authorization.

You can read the full story of that here — I proposed a panel and list of speakers to CPAC. Then CPAC demanded I drop Jim Hoft, as he had offended leftists. When I refused, they canceled the panel. Now CPAC is claiming that I was

“invited” to that panel and “bowed out,” and they’re presenting a panel of the same title, with same speakers, minus Jim Hoft (who they demanded be removed) and me.

It’s intellectual theft.

It also plays into the vicious hands of the CPAC, which has announced its intention to “destroy” the individuals and groups that it deems “hate groups” because they dissent from its far-left agenda. CPAC, like RINOs everywhere, always jump to do the left’s bidding, and act as its tools. That’s what’s happening here. Does CPAC leadership think the left will spare them if they jump to its tune and drop Hoft when they demand it, and sing along with the SPLC? They are in for a surprise.

And,

CPAC's Terry Schilling: Snake in the grass.

Now Terry Schilling of the American Principles Project (APP) says he is holding the panel anyway, without either me or Hoft, and that it was his panel to which he invited me. In reality, neither Schilling nor the APP nor anyone at CPAC had any hand in the conception or organization of this panel. CPAC’s claim that I was “invited” to this panel that I originated and that I then bowed out is a lie; their running with this panel that I conceived and organized without my authorization or consent is intellectual theft.

This is the height of irony: a panel on free speech from which not one, but two speakers have been banned. How can they claim to stand for free speech after dropping a speaker because of pressure from the authoritarian left? What value can a free speech panel have when two free speech leaders were banned from that panel? And if I am so toxic, having been shunned at CPAC for years, why are they stealing my work?

The panel is now bitterly ironic: social media censorship discussed at a heavily censored event. CPAC should be inviting us, not banning us. To bow to the left by dropping Jim Hoft of Gateway because the left is targeting him only reinforces our weakness and shows why we are losing this great war.

Grover Norquist’s influence at CPAC, the American Conservative Union,  and in other “conservative” burrows of obsequious deference to Islam –  “Carry a twig,” not  “big stick” – to the effect that many conservatives regard Islam is a “religion of peace,” regardless of the number of attacks in the West and on Westerners committed by the murderous sycophants of Islam. It is likely significant to his mindset that Norquist is married to a Palestinian Muslim, and has become a

CPAC's Grover Norquist: Muslim leader

Muslim..  He claims that Islam’s beliefs and practices are compatible with the U.S. Constitution.

Will not Surrender to Norquist's "lions" of Islam

The Potomac Tea Party Report in 2011 suggested this dollop of honesty from Norquist:

If Norquist was sincere in his belief that Muslim goals (Sharia!) and our Constitution were perfectly compatible, he would quit calling those who disagree with him names.  He would stand up and tell the truth about his involvement since before 9/11 with Islamists. He would explain how and when he himself became a Muslim.  He would put it all out on the table and urge debate on his apparent belief that the Republican Party should embrace all Muslims and frankly he should agree to debate someone like Frank Gaffney in a public forum for us all to hear all the facts so that we can each decide for ourselves who we agree with.  That is what he should do if he REALLY cares about the Republican Party.

That is not going to happen. If the powers behind CPAC are not only unwilling to debate knowledgeable authorities on the peril of Islam, but go out of their way to smear and denigrate those authorities and censor them when they can, one must ask what kind of leadership governs CPAC. Norquist cares about the Republican Party only insofar as it becomes hostile to freedom of speech.

And there you have it. The conservative cave is populated with fork-tongued snakes like Grover Norquist and Terry Schilling, more than willing to duct tape and silence crusaders for freedom like Pamela Geller and Jim Hoft and so many others.

Wither go conservatives? Except more to the left, Alinsky-style? Does the rank-and-file conservative realize what a bill-of-goods he is being sold? Does he know where he is going?