Bruce Bawer is now condemning anyone in the Anti islamo-Fascist movement that supports the Vlaams Belang. Charles then emails him and gets permission to reprint the article on LGF. He takes shots without mentioning names at Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller and others.

memo from europe

Thursday, May 6, 2009, 9:28 P.M. CET:  Recently, Andrew Sullivan posted a link to an article about Charles Johnson, the celebrated blogger who has distanced himself from many other anti-jihadists and called them “a bunch of kooks.”  Though it grieves me to say so, and though I’ve hoped that things would somehow turn around, Charles is, alas, not whistling Dixie: I can testify that in the last couple of years some significant, and lamentable, shifts have taken place on the anti-jihad front.  Writers and bloggers whom, not very long ago, I would unhesitatingly have described as staunch defenders of liberal values against Islamofascist intolerance have more recently said and done things that have dismayed me, and that, in many cases, have compelled me to re-examine my view of them.

Once upon a time, these people made a point of distancing themselves from far-right European parties such as Belgium’s Vlaams Belang – whose most prominent Internet voice, Paul Belien, has declared himself to be fighting for “Judeo-Christian morality” not only against jihadist Islam but also against “secular humanism.”  Belien has made no secret of his contempt for gay people and for the idea that they deserve human rights as much as anyone else.  Now, however, many of the anti-jihadist writers who once firmly rejected Vlaams Belang have come to embrace it wholeheartedly.  In fact, for reasons unknown to me, this regional party in one of Europe’s smallest countries appears to have become, for a number of anti-jihadist writers on both sides of the Atlantic, nothing short of a litmus test: in their eyes, it seems, if you’re not willing to genuflect to VB, you’re not a real anti-jihadist.

Bruce who has written good works obviously isn’t a fan of the Vlaams Belang. But who else in Belgium is standing against Islam? He also doesn’t mention that the VB supports Israel and was the only party in Belgium that supported Israel’s war with Hamas.

My litmus test about being against Islamo-Fascism is Kosovo. If you support the creation of the Islamic Terror state of Kosovo, you are fake. If you support Serbia’s claims to Kosovo, then you are really anti Islamo-Fascist. What is Bruce’s position on Kosovo? Does anyone know since I am at the office and don’t have a chance to email him. Charles is enjoying this and now he feels he has an ally. Better the VB than Al-Qaeda/Hizballah/Muslim Brotherhood any day of the week.