Justin's Political Corner

Pamela Geller discussed with Janet Mefferd her new campaign with ads that read, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man,” and the arrest of journalist Mona Eltahawy for vandalizing one the ads in a New York subway station. In ablog post, Geller called Eltahawy’s actions “a classic case of Stockholm Syndrome” since she survived physical and sexual assault while detained by Egypt’s Interior Ministry. Geller backtracked in the interview and said she didn’t refer to her actions as a case of Stockholm syndrome, even though she did exactly that on her blog, but went on to say that Eltahawy now stands up for the “savage” (i.e. Muslim) only “once they become Jew-haters.” Or maybe, because unlike Geller, Eltahawy does not paint all Muslims with the same brush and blame every single Muslim for the attack she faced in Egypt.

Mefferd: This is interesting, you write today about this woman Mona Eltahawy who went and defaced your ad in the name of free speech, it was just vandalism, the Stockholm syndrome angle was new to me, I had not realized she had been assaulted last year. Why in the world would she go from being assaulted in Cairo to doing this, wouldn’t she think these people were savages after what she went through?

Geller: Why indeed. Actually the word that she used for them at the time was beasts, they were beastly, she said. I guess they cease being beastly once they become Jew-haters, once they’re Jew-haters they are I guess cleansed of any beastliness. I don’t mean to be funny but it’s really true, it’s the same jihad, it’s the same mandate that possessed them in Tahrir Square that possess them in their war on the Jews in Israel. Yes I agree it was decidedly—I know people have called it Stockholm syndrome, I don’t, because when the attacks were on her she saw it in crystal clear moral terms, when the attacks are against the tiny state of Israel, then all the sudden she is attacking.

Geller, who literally runs a group called the American Freedom Defense Initiative, told Mefferd that “it’s interesting how fascists always cloak themselves in the word ‘freedom’” and claimed that anti-fascists are the new fascists. She even blamed the vandalism on a culture of “lawlessness” promoted by the media, the “very violent and misogynist” Occupy Wall Street movement and Obama, who she says is also “aiding and abetting of Al-Qaeda and jihadist elements.”

Not to be outdone, Mefferd claimed that the “radical left agenda” is pushing a “creeping anti-Semitism” reminiscent of the Holocaust.

h/t: Brian Tashman at RWW