Paul Brinkmann of the Orlando Sentinel cited me in the story below about the motives of Orlando jihad mass murderer Omar Mateen, and he did so without the usual mainstream media defamation. That was too much for the Saudi-funded Bridge Initiative, which has partnered with a Muslim organization linked to Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad and Hamas; Bridge acts as a kind of sheepdog, yapping at mainstream media reporters to get back in line if they stray too far from the pack. Brinkmann and the Sentinel, in citing a source that tells the truth about the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat, rather than the usual establishment media lies, got out of line, and Bridge had to bring them back in:
This is outright libel, and typical of Lean, who is the most hate-filled human being I have ever encountered. A longtime foe of the freedom of speech, Lean has dedicated his life to defaming and lying about anyone and everyone who dares to utter a critical word about the religious ideology that guides Islamic jihadists and incites them to commit mass murder. His targets have included Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Maajid Nawaz and me, and in every case, Lean plays fast and loose with the facts, cheerfully purveying falsehoods even when he has been shown that they are false (the images are gone from that old post, but it still conveys the substance), so desperate is he to clear away all obstacles to the advance of jihad terror.
In this case, he is referring to my being poisoned with amphetamines and Ecstasy by an Icelandic Leftist; he’s claiming that I used the drugs myself. In reality, I’ve never used amphetamines or Ecstasy. Lean’s libelous claim is based solely on his hatred of me, and abundantly illustrates the preferred tactic of Leftists and Islamic supremacists in dealing with those whom they hate: they attempt to assassinate our character, since they cannot refute us on the facts. Lean smears me as a drug user and invokes the hard-Left SPLC’s defamation of me as a “hate group leader” because he cannot do what would be the most effective response to what I say: prove it to be false.
Then Lean’s partner at Bridge, Jordan Denari Duffner, a self-described “Christian who loves the Qur’an,” goes after Brinkmann with the Bridge Initiative’s new “factsheet” on me:
The Bridge “factsheet” contains fourteen points about me and my work, but contrary to its name, there is one thing that is glaringly absent from it: facts. The points include smears from other Leftist organizations and other false charges that are answered here and in 100 other places, plus some inept attempts at guilt by association (“Trump Administration chief strategist Steve Bannon has often praised Spencer and considers him an ‘expert,’ ‘probably the most renowned, or among the most renowned, of folks that are on the watch tower to make sure that we’re fully aware of this threat, this existential war'”) and some presentation of statements I’ve made that are demonstrably true as if they were obviously false (“he claims that ‘Islamophobia was a term designed as a weapon to stigmatize and silence anyone who opposed jihad terror'”). The “factsheet” makes no attempt, of course, to explain why these statements are false. It fails to do the obviously easiest thing it could have done in order to discredit me: quote even one false claim that I have made and prove it to be false.
It does not because it cannot. The Bridge “factsheet” on me, and Bridge’s targeting of Brinkmann for his citation of me in this article, is character assassination pure and simple, and a succinct illustration of why the establishment media all marches in lockstep, with no diversity of opinion ever voiced: anyone who steps out of line and gives voice to a view that actually opposes the establishment line is targeted with libel and defamation, and anyone who cites such voices is put on notice that he better not stray off the reservation again.
Meanwhile, the Iceland poisoning that Lean libels me about shows where this leads: the Left’s character assassination is now shading over into outright assassination attempts.
If any of this has come to the attention of Paul Brinkmann, he should reflect carefully on what is being done here, and on the essentially authoritarian character of what Bridge is trying to do: they want only one point of view represented in the mainstream. Anyone who states a dissenting point of view will be destroyed.
“Pulse gunman’s motive: Plenty of theories, but few answers,” by Paul Brinkmann, Orlando Sentinel, June 4, 2017:
….But Robert Spencer, a speaker and author of a blog called Jihad Watch, said the idea that Mateen was motivated partly by self-hatred or repressed sexuality has been used to divert attention from the problem of Islamic extremism.He warned that the world should be concerned about more attacks every year at Ramadan, the holy month for Muslims, when Mateen chose to attack.
“If Mateen was gay, which is completely hypothetical and bereft of evidence, he could possibly have been aware of sinning before Allah and knew that he could outweigh all his sins by one great act of jihad,” Spencer said. “In other words, if he was gay, this wouldn’t necessarily mean that his murders weren’t motivated by Islam’s doctrine of jihad.”
David Baker Hargrove, an Orlando psychologist who specializes in LGBT issues, said he believes sexual orientation may have been a factor in Mateen’s violence.
“Violence is not the norm. Normally they suffer in silence,” Baker Hargrove said. He said better mental health counseling could help prevent more mass shooters.
Spencer flatly rejected that idea: “No amount of gun control or health care would have stopped Mateen.”
Mateen’s threats of violence, and the fact that he made threats about having ties to terrorist organizations, were clear warning signs, O’Toole said. The FBI has previously confirmed that Mateen was investigated for making statements about having terrorist ties, starting in 2013….