Atlas skids

The American blogger Pamela Geller has said recently that she was concerned about the English Defence League being infiltrated and that she had voiced that concern earlier on her blog. This meme has been replicated in several blogs. (See The Other McCain, uncoverage and American Power.) A mutation of this, the claim that Geller wrote about a troubling issue in her initial article, has spread to several other blogs. (See Zilla, pumabydesign, loopyloo305.)

If Geller had simply wanted to write about people infiltrating the EDL, then she could have done so without over-egging the pudding. How do we know this? Because she has written about it before. In October 2010, we saw Geller laying the smack down on a paper that had tried to make something of people throwing Hitler salutes at an EDL rally. Geller explained that the EDL supported Israel, waved Israeli flags around every chance they got, and had an ongoing problem with infiltrators trying to discredit them by making Nazi comments and throwing salutes to the evil being we know as Adolf Hitler. (See link.)

Now it’s Geller who has made a series of similar assertions about the EDL, and Tommy Robinson is explaining that the EDL supports Israel, its members wave Israeli flags around every chance they get, and they have an ongoing problem with infiltrators trying to discredit them. (Robinson adds that such people always have been, and always will be, kicked out of the EDL.) (See link.)

What Tommy Robinson has said, and what Geller herself said earlier, is not breaking news. Everyone who supports the EDL understands that the EDL have faced this problem since day one. That obviously includes the bloggers who signed off on that open letter to Geller, who stood up for the EDL after Geller had written them off as a forlorn hope.

And that is what she did. Geller said on her blog that she stood by her earlier concern about antisemism in the EDL’s leadership. (Link 1. Link 2.) But in her initial article, Geller did not say that although the EDL has always supported Israel, and its members wave the Israeli flag around every chance they get, she was concerned about antisemitism in the EDL’s leadership. Instead, Geller made a series of radical assertions about the EDL. She stated that the EDL had morphed into something unrecognisable, the EDL were heading in a terrible direction and the forces of good had failed to recapture the heart and soul of the EDL. This assertion of Geller’s is particularly interesting. Obviously if something needs to be recaptured, then it has already been lost. So if one unpacks Geller’s assertion, she’s saying that the forces of good have been defeated not once, but twice. And who would the forces of good be defeated by? The adversary. Geller then wrote the EDL off, exhorted its members to abandon the organisation, and envisioned an all-new British CJ effort led by Roberta Moore. (See link.)

We now know that Roberta Moore was trying to align the English Defence League with Victor Vancier, who is the head of an American outfit called the Jewish Task Force. Mr. Vancier has been convicted of carrying out acts of domestic terrorism in the USA. He has, as they say in America, done hard time. Just look at the following links: Link 1. Link 2. Link 3. Link 4. Link 5. Link 6. Link 7.

If Roberta Moore was leading the new British group which Pam Geller envisions in her article, then she would probaby forge links with Mr. Vancier again. After all, she’s got form. One also finds an interesting remark about Mr. Vancier here, in the comments section beneath ‘Roberta Moore’s statement on behalf of the EDL’. (Note that Pamela Geller links to that statement from her blog.) When asked about Mr. Vancier’s criminal record, the response was: ‘We believe in malignant and benign terrorism. Victor fits in the latter.’

Benign terrorism?

Roberta Moore and Victor Vancier are clearly not a ‘dream team’ that is going to ride into Britain and save the day. After all, Mr. Vancier is American. His organisation is based in America. And he has been convicted of carrying out acts of domestic terrorism in America. It does seem rather obvious that Brits who oppose terrorism are not going to join forces with someone whose base isn’t even in Britain, and who has already been jailed for carrying out terrorist acts. As the judge at Mr. Vancier’s ’87 trial said, ‘You don’t go bombing innocent people to make a point.’

There is another matter that ought to be addressed. If one visits Mr. Vancier’s group’s website, one can click through to a Hebrew language forum at hayamin dot org. Here is a video which appears to show some highly offensive anti-Christian material on that site: See link. There are several links on that youtube page, which anyone reading this can investigate for themselves. (Links like this one.)

Geller’s radical assertions and even more extreme conclusions are now being denied by their author then. An obvious distinction can be drawn between the inner psychological state of a human being and any statement they make about the external world. Clearly the truth value of any assertion about the external world cannot be determined by trying to discover the inner psychological state of whoever made the assertion. The truth value of that assertion depends on conditions in the external world. It either corresponds to reality or it does not. So when Geller says she stands by her concern about something she wrote about earlier, that say nothing at all about the truth value of her earlier statements.

Geller has been challenged by some other bloggers to reconsider what she had said. It is worth noting that in an open letter signed by these bloggers there are no ad hominem statements whatsoever. Geller’s earlier statements about the EDL are described as deplorable and unfortunate, but nothing in that open letter refers to Geller herself. (See link.) It has been interesting to see Geller’s response. She launched into an extended campaign of ad homimem abuse aimed at those bloggers, which is clearly irrational behaviour. Then she said that she stood by her own concern (i.e. her psychological state), while ignoring her earlier truth claims about the EDL. Such linguistic legerdemain is comparable to the finest work of Tariq Ramadan.

A distinction can also be drawn between prominence and leadership. Geller may have manoeuvred herself into a position of prominence in the CJ movement, but it does not follow that she is entitled, or even able, to lead anyone else. John Stuart Mill once wrote:

He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgement to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision. (John Stuart Mill, On Liberty)

Pamela Geller gathers a lot of data about how practitioners of Islam interact with the West. Her website is quite useful sometimes. She also appears to have been involved in writing a book about Barrack Obama. But it does not follow that Geller has any understanding of the British legal and political context in which the English Defence League are trying to operate. Geller’s calling for people to leave the EDL and to align themselves with a new British CJ group led by the likes of Roberta Moore and Victor Vancier shows just how little she knows about life in Britain. Any Brit with eyes to see knows that Geller over-egged the pudding, then presented it while it was still half-baked. And no one who chooses their own plan of life, as Mill put it, is going to sit at Geller’s table and dine on such poor fare.

And the other type of people Mill refers to? Her brand name may be prominent just now, and her website may be fairly popular. But if Geller keeps trying to go beyond what she is able to do, then she’ll become a divisive figure, as recent events have shown. Any good work she’s done will be devalued. And she’ll end up with the followers she deserves.

Edited 27th July 2011: Although I’m not a member of the EDL (I don’t even live in England), and I can only go by any public statements Tommy Robinson makes over the internet or on mainstream TV (see his recent appearance with Paxman), it does seem to me that their refusal to go along with Roberta Moore’s plan to hook up with Victor Vancier says something about the EDL. They may be a bit rough around the edges sometimes, being mostly working class lads (and women), but from what I’ve been able to make out as I looked into this little blog war, they didn’t want to have anything to do with Victor Vancier, or anyone of that ilk.