“This is a showdown for American freedom,” said Pamela Geller about the abortive jihad beheading plot against her, and she was right. The showdown is right upon them now, and mainstream media talking heads have no idea of the significance of what is happening.
“They targeted me for violating sharia blasphemy laws. They mean to kill everyone who doesn’t do their bidding and abide by them voluntarily,” Geller added.
“It’s just beginning,” she warned. “ISIS is here. Islamic terrorism is here.”
That is all true. The jihad plot against Pamela Geller was an attempt to enforce Sharia blasphemy laws upon someone who does not accept them. If it had succeeded, it would have shown Americans that no one who deviates from Sharia norms is safe. It would have been a staggering blow to the continuation of the U.S. as a free society.
Heedless of these manifest implications, however, the mainstream media hasn’t caught on. The execrable New York Daily News couldn’t stop sneering at the heroic Pamela Geller — “conservative firebrand,” “Upper East Side right-winger” — even when she was a direct target of an Islamic State-inspired murder plot.
CNN’s Chris Cuomo, interviewing Geller, lectured her:
You can show the cartoon. People have the equal right to criticize your showing the cartoon as an overt provocation of a religion.
And he asked her:
Why not do what we often teach as a function of virtue — when we’re dealing with savagery — which is show that we are better than this? Not show that we can poke them in the eye in a way they don’t like it.
Geller rightly responded:
That’s not what you’re doing. You are submitting, and you are kowtowing. And they’re saying to you, if you draw a little cartoon; if you draw a stick figure and say it’s Mohammed, we’re going to come and kill you. And so you say, okay, we won’t — we won’t draw it. CNN won’t show it.
The Daily News and Chris Cuomo and the rest at CNN, along with their many colleagues among the comfortable media and political elites, are happy to throw her under the bus. They effectively say: “Free speech? Yes, of course, but not deliberate provocation.”
They don’t realize that whatever distaste they may have for Pamela Geller (and that distaste ultimately derives from the fact that she speaks truths they would rather ignore and deny), she stands for all of us now. Whether you’re as proud to stand with her as I am, or whether you wish she would go away, she is the figure today about whom one must decide: will I stand for freedom, or kowtow to violent intimidation? Will I submit to the tyranny of violence, or defend free society?
Remember Pastor Niemöller from World War II?
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.
Well, here we are. Those days are upon us again, and as few, or fewer, people are paying attention to what is happening as were in those days.
First they came for Pamela Geller, and they did not speak out, because they didn’t like “right-wingers.” Or because they wanted to keep appearing on CNN, or because they didn’t want to offend Islamic supremacists, or because they thought her ads were in poor taste, or because they wanted to keep getting invited to the best parties, or because their Leftist Alinskyite friends would have laughed at them.
So first they came for Pamela Geller, and they did not speak out. What they do not realize, or do not care to acknowledge, is that the jihadists will not stop with Pamela Geller. They will not stop with those who had something to do with showing Muhammad cartoons. They will not stop. It is stand now, or surrender.
“This is a showdown for American freedom,” said Geller. Yes, it is.
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