Right Richter

Someday?

Last June, “anti-jihad” bloggers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer planned one of the oddest, most ambitious endeavors in recent conservative memory: the Freedom from Jihad Flotilla. 

Set up after the cancellation of a joint European-American anti-jihad conference in France (because police there wouldn’t guarantee their safety, according to Geller), the flotilla was meant to be the anti-jihad answer to the Gaza flotilla. It would launch from New York on September 11, 2011 “from the New York harbor closest to the World Trade Center site.” 

From there, Geller’s flotilla would travel to Greece, then skirt along the coast of Turkey, as a tribute to Greek and Armenian victims of the Ottoman Empire. Then it would then head to Egypt, where “all Coptic Christians seeking to escape Islamic oppression will be saved,” according to a press release. Then the flotilla would go on to Nigeria, Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Thailand.

September 11th came and went, and no flotilla. What happened?

The organizations behind the flotilla, Stop Islamization of America and Stop Islamization of Europe, are still raising money for it, according to Geller.

“It seems there is oodles of money for Jew hating Gaza flotillas but little for real victims of oppression and subjugation,” Geller wrote in an email to me. “Maybe you should write about that.”

It’s fair to ask whether the flotilla will ever launch. According to my very rough Google Map of its proposed route, it would cover over 28,000 miles. And that doesn’t even get into the more serious logistical questions, like how do you convince majority-Muslim countries to let the flotilla dock, and where do you take these Egyptian Copts once you rescue them? 

Previously: Pamela Geller, pioneer of Chris Christie’s “Islamist connections”.

I’ve got a hot story up on Campus Progress about the HL Mencken Club, where paleoconservatives hang out with eugenicists.

My favorite part:

And during last year’s meeting, World Net Daily columnist Ilana Mercer wondered aloud in her speech why South Africa’s apartheid government gave up power so easily—a troubling reading of history.

At that time, Mercer also touted her disturbing book about the end of apartheid, Into the Cannibal’s Pot; its cover is illustrated with a picture of a naked white woman, pulled into the fetal position and covered in black handprints.

Paleoconservatism is the most baffling thing, because they really aren’t joking around about either being racists or consorting with them. Whereas your average mainstream conservative is obsessed with having nothing to do with racism.

And yet, Pat Buchanan, the public face of paleocons, is a regular on MSNBC. 

On the topic of Pat Buchanan, it was great hearing Sean Hannity interview him on the radio. Buchanan’s latest anti-immigrant book seems to take a more pragmatic position for Republicans to oppose immigration, even the legal sort, rather than the usual line about Balkanization.

He’s saying that, since immigrants are generally poorer and more dependent on government, increased immigration always gives more power to Democrats. Buchanan’s solution is to put a moratorium on all immigration for a couple decades, until our current recent immigrants can make some money, making them natural Republicans.

Sean Hannity needed serious verbal acrobatics to square that with the movement “Hispanic values are Republican values.”