There is a new threat to freedom of speech emerging, and this time it comes from Facebook, whose proprietors have not acted to stop an Islamic jihadist group from destroying the largest pro-Israel site on the increasingly popular web social network. I join in supporting the protest being organized by The David Horowitz Freedom Center. If you are a Facebook member, or an individual outraged by those who seek to curb free speech, read this:
The David Horowitz Freedom Center is calling upon all supporters of freedom of speech and of Israel to join in its protest against Facebook, the Internet social networking site. Facebook has allowed a group of hackers who openly support the terrorist group Hizbollah to take over and destroy what was once the largest pro-Israel site on Facebook. Then Facebook added insult to injury by disabling the account of that site’s creator, 14-year-old Todd Snider.
Snider established the Facebook group called “I Wonder How Quickly I Can Find 1,000,000 People Who Support Israel,” in July 2008. By February 2009 it was Facebook’s largest pro-Israel site, with over 180,000 members.
But on February 15, 2009, On February 15, 2009, Snider’s Facebook group was hacked and destroyed by a pro-Hizballah group calling itself “Lebanese Shee’a Hackers.” The hackers completely erased the original site content and replaced it with threatening, obscenity-laced pro-jihad, anti-Israel propaganda datelined Bint Jbeil, South Lebanon: “DEAR ADMINS, DON’T WASTE MY AND YOUR TIME , LEAVE THIS GROUP ITS BETTER FOR BOTH THIS IS THE LAST TIME ILL EDIT YOU INFO , NEXT TIME…”
Facebook allowed the hackers to destroy Snider’s site, answering his repeated entreaties for help with blandly evasive form letters.
And now, after the appearance on March 6 of an article about the incident in FrontPageMagazine.com (“Facebook Jihad” by Robert Spencer), Facebook has taken the additional step of disabling Snider’s account altogether, capitulating to the jihadi hackers and accusing Snider himself of “misusing” Facebook’s “features.”
Facebook’s outrageous action is not only an assault on free speech and a breach of its own social networking protocols, but also appeasement of a group of hackers who have invaded Facebook’s space and who openly avow their support for the jihad terrorist group Hizballah.
We therefore urge all Facebook members to contact the site administrators through the Facebook contact form, and all others to join us in protesting against Facebook’s outrageous behavior by writing to abuse@facebook.com.
David Horowitz
Robert Spencer
Take out a moment and follow their suggestion. Forcing a change in Facebook’s outrageous action is a blow for free speech, as well as a necessary repudiation of Islamic practitioners of jihad.
On another matter, I would like to single out Cathy Young’s contribution to the debate I had with Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker. Young is one of the smartest and independent minded commentators writing today. Now she has a revamped blog site, on which she has posted her own comment on the issue of socialism and fascism. Young writes that we should leave the term fascism out of the debate, since for better or worse, its historical associations and the emotional reactions it creates takes away from a rational discussion of Obama’s economic program. I know that my friend Jeffrey Herf, perhaps one of the most brilliant scholars of fascism, feels the same way. Both he and Young have a point.
I still think Michael Ledeen is correct about the validity of the relevance of the economic component of the corporate state to today’s world. But perhaps this is a losing battle. Jonah Goldberg was savaged despite the many valid insights in his book for calling his study Liberal Fascism. He has valiantly defended himself. But to his critics, it is not satisfactory. The associations of the word fascism with concentration camps, the SS and the like is just too well established to not elicit the kind of negative reaction anyone who uses it gets.
“But to his critics, it is not satisfactory.”
So what? I’m not going to back down one inch. Did I tell many of Barack Obama’s admirers to favorably compare his hopes and dreams with those of FDR? Is it my problem that these individuals are so historically illiterate that they are unaware of the openly fascists aspects of the New Deal? Let’s get something straight right here and now. We don’t owe Hendrik Hertzberg and his ilk a thing. I don’t give a damn whether I hurt his feelings. He has been pampered long enough. Nobody told these folks to reside in a leftist echo chamber and remain ignorant of basic historical realities. It would illogical and anti-intellectual not to point out the overwhelming similarities of Barack Obama’s plans for our country with those of yesteryear’s fascists. And I say this as somebody who is convinced that our new president is not a per se fascist—although many of his goals are identical to those of Benito Mussolini.
Ron wrote, “On another matter, I would like to single out Cathy Young’s contribution to the debate I had with Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker. Young is one of the smartest and independent minded commentators writing today. Now she has a revamped blog site, on which she has posted her own comment on the issue of socialism and fascism. Young writes that we should leave the term fascism out of the debate, since for better or worse, its historical associations and the emotional reactions it creates takes away from a rational discussion of Obama’s economic program. I know that my friend Jeffrey Herf, perhaps one of the most brilliant scholars of fascism, feels the same way. Both he and Young have a point.
[continuing the quote:]“I still think Michael Ledeen is correct about the validity of the relevance of the economic component of the corporate state to today’s world. But perhaps this is a losing battle. Jonah Goldberg was savaged despite the many valid insights in his book for calling his study Liberal Fascism. He has valiantly defended himself. But to his critics, it is not satisfactory. The associations of the word fascism with concentration camps, the SS and the like is just too well established to not elicit the kind of negative reaction anyone who uses it gets.”
As you may know, Ron, I spent years on Pacifica Radio discussing these issues. Starting in the late 1980s (and while I was researching my doctoral dissertation), I started an occasional series of commentaries, “How Do We Know When We Are Not Fascists?” This in response to my research, that had noted the wildly conflicting definitions of fascism that had been disseminated before, during, and after the second world war. I don’t know of anyone in the academy who has systematically examined the nomenclature, not even me, to my own satisfaction. Since all important questions of ideology are “emotional” I don’t agree with Cathy Young’s objection to the use of the word fascist on those grounds alone. But I do worry that even amongst ourselves, there is not enough precision in distinguishing, for instance, between Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. Nor do even many academics, let alone the general (under)educated public, understand the structure and function of the corporative state (a.k.a. “the Ethical State,” Mussolini’s), let alone such weighty matters as the status of the individual in various contending twentieth-century ideologies, extant even today. For instance, before the war, one profascist Catholic intellectual saw Nazism/fascism as defenses of the classical individual, embedded in the socially-aware and ethnically homogeneous people’s community, but during and after the war, Nazism was identified by allies of the New Deal with the “romantic puritan,” i.e., the domineering laissez-faire capitalist—willful and selfish and archetypically the Jewish destroyer of “community.”
As for the critics of Jonah Goldberg’s use of the F word in his book, as I recall, in his zeal to nail the “nanny state” he failed to provide a comprehensive picture of Nazism and Italian Fascism that would allow the reader to accurately contrast populism/progressivism/social democracy/statism with the totalitarian alternative—both of which appealed to “the masses.” Moreover, he was echoing, perhaps unknowingly, a fashionable trend in cultural history that blames America for teaching eugenics and racial hygiene or mind-management (e.g. consumerism) to the dictatorships.
In sum, I agree that there should be great care in the use of the F word to describe specific existing or developing structures and practices in the Obama administration, but if such usage is properly framed with reference to the structures and practices of Germany and/or Italy during the interwar period, then it would be appropriate and a necessary warning.
Didn’t I once say something apropos of this subject?