The changes at Little Green Footballs
Bookworm on Sep 22 2009 at 10:21 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
We’ve had discussions in the comments section of this blog about the change in tone at Little Green Footballs. From being a stalwart defender in the War Against Terrorism and an effective warrior in the battle for a free and honest press, Charles Johnson has turned his entire focus (or so it seems) on the evils creationism, the horrors of the Tea Parties, and the stench of those bloggers he believes are in some significant way associated with fairly small potatoes right-wing political organizations in Europe. People who aren’t with that program get purged from his site. John Hawkins, at Right Wing News, looks at Charles’ changed behaviors and tries to see if there is a pattern.
As for me, I’m deeply sorry to see these changes happen, because I feel that those of us who believe in the War on Islamic Terrorism have lost a very important friend. The terrorists are still out there, but Charles isn’t at our side any more. I hope that whatever is causing his unease with conservatives doesn’t change his former belief in issues that lie at the heart of any true conservative movement — a commitment to freedom at home and national security abroad.
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8 Responses to “The changes at Little Green Footballs”
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I stopped reading LGF in January/February of this year.
It was so strange – it was if, all of a sudden, Charles focused almost exclusively on the “evils” of creationism. I happen to believe in the Bible BUT I pay attention to scientific findings and keep my mind open. In the end, I don’t feel a huge conflict between creation and science.
I understand people’s unease with creation. I get it. But I thought we had bigger fish to fry – why concentrate so much on this one thing? And why the vitriol for those of us who believe in God? I’m not asking others to believe as I do.
It’s just weird.
Deana
a commitment to freedom at home and national security abroad.
If freedom means giving space to Birth Certificate advocates or diversified education, Charles will have the same opinion as what he would think concerning the US’s acceptance of sharia.
He’ll be against, vehemently so even.
This is because Charles sees religions as being cults that prey upon the weak. Whether it is Islam or CHristianity, he makes no distinctions.
Instead of seeing people as individuals, he sees them as dots connecting one organization SPCL doesn’t like with another organization he doesn’t like. Instead of accepting personal eye witness accounts of people’s characters, Charles would prefer to armchair general the inner minds and hearts of individuals, labeling them X, Y, and Z based upon his own personal brand of zealotry.
Like Christopher Hitchins, they like to be against Islam, but they think all religions, not just Islam, are irrational and harmful to the public body. The fact that they need true believers to fight and die for the “Cause” is the only reason why they are ‘allied’ with us in the first place.
They never believed in the power of individual free will with respect to faith and belief. Because they have rejected God or any higher power, they have only themselves to use as barometers, standards, and limits. And that isn’t enough. It creates anxiety in them, doubt, and suspicion. They have nothing greater to believe in, to rely on, so they have to cleanse the world themselves, they can’t be patient and wait for there is no Heaven or Hell as they see it.
(Nothing I said seemed to faze him or give him pause in the slightest)
Takes one to know one. I’m a zealot about the US Constitution and Democrat slave politics. I mean theoretically there could be something you could provide in terms of reason, argument, logic, or facts that might sway me to thinking the Democrat party has historically been on the side of liberation and equal opportunity or that the US Constitution is an evil document written to exploit weaker folks, but the chances of that are so low you shouldn’t even bother trying.
Nothing people say to me on those two scores will faze me or make me pause in the slightest. Because I believe. That’s the definition of a zealot, a milder one of course, but a zealot, a True Believer.
SO I can readily understand why Charles wouldn’t be fazed by his behavior. He sees it as necessary. Just as I see purging Democrats from positions of power and corruption as necessary.
Now, Charles Johnson was banning people for disagreeing with him?
That’s incorrect. Johnson is banning you because he doesn’t want to be associated with you. When it came to pure rudeness and acting out, he could tolerate that. When it came to people like you getting too close to his enemy as defined by his ideology, that is not tolerable. He won’t negotiate or communicate with his enemies, as he self-styles them, any more than I would communicate with sadists, rapists, Iranian death squads, or Al Qaeda girl child/women assassination squad. I would simply end them, not talk to them. If talking to them is required to end them, then that will happen, but they will be terminated, one way or another. I won’t accept a compromise on this score. And neither will CJ tolerate moderation concerning his right wing ‘racists’ or so forth.
One clear difference between my methodology and beliefs and CJ’s beliefs is that CJ can easily ban people and he won’t have to justify himself epistemology or ethically to God. I do. Because my end of goal of termination, death, is irreversible, I cannot afford to jump the gun and ‘make mistakes’ because of arrogance, emotion, or lack of professionalism. No, I have to get the target right. That means I have to get to know the target, their dreams, their loves, their hates, and their actions. Not just what they have said, but what they WILL do and HAVE done.
CJ doesn’t care about what you will or have done. All he cares about is that you are somehow ‘connected’ with people, who he doesn’t know, that he does believe Have Done Things. This kind of research methodology is efficient when it comes to Islam because almost everything about Islam is connected in conspiracies like this, but when you apply it against Christians and Tea Party members, now you are on a witch hunt.
I would never approve the execution of anyone, child or adult, until I knew them almost as well as they knew themselves. This is assuming the situation gives me time, but in war often you don’t get the luxury of as much time to consider as you would wish, so threat priorities will have precedence. But Charles isn’t under threat. He has all the time in the day or the year to make decisions. His people won’t die because he took a little bit more time to say yay or nay. American families won’t get blown to hell simply because CJ took the time to carefully consider the virtue or vices of the people he was banning.
You have a lot of friends on the Right who have stood behind you over the last few years. It’s probably not too late to mend fences with them. If that’s not the direction you’re going in, are you trying to change over to a left-wing anti-Islam blog?
In a war, you need as many allies as you can get. If the US Marines will ally and befriend the rather tribal and backwards Sunni tribes that have tried to kill them some odd years ago, then I can’t really say that Iwill try to keep my hands clean when it comes to winning a war I thought was important. You don’t have to like the Arabs or their culture or their religion or their freaking inshallah outlook on life. But that doesn’t mean you can just push them away and ignore them, either. Not if you are going to discharge your responsibility to your nation and your comrades and your ideology.
In a sense, that’s too bad. Charles Johnson had something great going on with Little Green Footballs.
When a supposed ally betrays you for the other side, you burn him down and replace him with a more reliable ally. And if that’s an Arabic speaking former Sunni anti-American insurgency….. well.
No…we need to look at this differently.
The imperfect is not the enemy of the Good.
CJ has a set of values (Atheist, basically pro-US, mostly small govt, *staunchly* anti-Islam) that most decent people will share.
He goes a little overboard being an attack dog on people who share some of his views but violate others.
That doesn’t make him an enemy. That makes him a limited ally. The vast majority of your personal and political allies are limited.
Think of it this way…
If an Islamist (your actual enemy) opposes you, he wants to take away everything that you are/have and kill your family.
If CJ opposes you, then he wants to make fun of you for believing in god and possibly discredit you if you have some tenuous connection to white supremacists.
That’s AMERICAN. That is using the battlefield of ideas to fight out your differences.
I too have left the LGF site. Most of the articles don’t interest me. Amusingly enough my most frequently visited link is on his site.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/lgf-linkviewer.php
While his comments are not that valuable to me anymore, the links that his readership posts are *great*! You find all sorts of wonderful stuff there and you don’t have to wade through his commentary.
BTW Book! Thanks for giving this a more public airing. I have been wondering ftw LGF has been doing.
Glad to see that my perceptions are shared by other sensible folks.
And Ymarsakar, I don’t care *what* everyone else says…I still call you “sensible folks”.
That’s AMERICAN. That is using the battlefield of ideas to fight out your differences.
No, I wouldn’t say that’s CJ’s modus operandi given his actions. I would say rather that what has been in use has been LGF’s tried and true methods about fighting internet insurgents and terrorists, as applied against another group.
LGF is not fighting out a difference. He has no interest in meeting with or communicating with the individuals he has written SPCL bios and threat analysis pieces on. Fighting out a difference would require a diplomatic or communication channel, while LGF is busy closing down those channels.
Since communication and even argument requires two sides, once LGF decides to shut down the talk, there’s no more to be had regardless of what the rest of the people around him want.
The 1st Amendment makes no guarantees that people have to listen to anyone. It only secures the population against government laws that restrict the people’s ability to communicate ideas or disagreements. The American way is not about free exchange of information between people as opposed to restricted flow of information. It is about the people making such a decision on their own, free of government restraints. Thus LGF can prioritize and I can prioritize which people I will or will not listen to, since I am not the government and I am not in a position to make a law about anything.
These actions have a consequence on the greater war effort, but they are not affected by American traditions concerning liberty and free speech.
That makes him a limited ally.
Alliances are based upon mutual interests. Once Bush got out of office, CJ was free to make new arrangements with a President that did not have Bush’s political relationships. CJ doesn’t need the Republican party to fight Islam now. He can get Obama to do it, at least theoretically.
The strategic calculus changed. If simply having allies was something CJ had prioritized as important, he would never have attempted to destroy his relationships with various people, blogs, and political organizations in the US or outside it. Regardless of what you think is important about limited allies, Charles Johnson does not share your view. And until you can convince him otherwise, good luck on that, Charles means what he says he means and I will take him at his word.
Charles ‘was’ a limited ally. He had issues with conservatives, but tried to find a harmony of purpose or at least not stoke up the fires of differences given a common enemy. Ask yourself what has changed recently.
The imperfect is not the enemy of the Good.
It is to Johnson. And no man can tell another man what he will or will not accept as Good or Evil. That decision is up to the individual in question. People have tried to change Charles’ mind, but have hit a predictable road block.
On a purely ethical footnote, Charles Johnson has no business telling Europeans what political party they should or can support, when it is the families under Europe’s Islamization that are suffering the direct effects of aristocratic socialism. I reject the Ghandi advice that the Jews should sacrifice themselves for moral purity and deliver a propaganda blow against Nazi brutality by allowing the Nazis to kill more and more Jews. The Europeans deserve to choose what they see as the best defense that they have available. Charles does not have the right to sit here in the good old United States trying to lecture people in other places what they can or cannot support when it comes to defending their nation, their family, and their traditions.
I still call you “sensible folks”.
I appreciate the sentiment, though as the consequence of being interested in particularly non-sensible folks, I would necessarily have had to adopt some of their quirks.
Hi, this is my first post here. I too noticed changes at LGF since first posting there from Sept 26, 2004. I was a “normal” poster there but by the time I was banned had garnered a record -41 rating for my anti-war comment. After being banned I stopped viewing the site but recently decided to see what was going on there and the additional changes are astounding. Anyway, the following LGF thread that had Charles Himself ban me on the spot for daring to be anti-war I first posted at
http://lgfwatch.blogspot.com/2007/10/sort-of-open-thread.html
(Banned from LGF with a record -41 —
I posted as “nagasaki_hata” since 2004)
(—LGF THREAD—)
UV Students Overturn Anti-Military Ban
Sat, Oct 27, 2007 at 10:31:09 am PST
Here’s some good news for a change from the world of wacademia: University of Victoria students have overturned a ban on military recruiters.
[...]
#1
Sharmuta 10/27/07 10:32:12 am
4
How encouraging. Good job, Kids!
#2
newsjunkie_ky 10/27/07 10:33:55 am
3
SF, pay attention.
#3
Ojoe 10/27/07 10:40:34 am
5
Eventually, the old hippies will be very old indeed.
#4
smokin’ hamster 10/27/07 10:40:52 am
0
Canada is at least a start..
#5
daledog 10/27/07 10:41:03 am
5
Good news is when things return to where they ought to be.
nagasaki_hata[deleted] 10/27/07 10:41:29 am
-41
[...]
#46 Charles
re: #6 nagasaki_hata
Great news, we need more cannon fodder. For Endless Peace, we need Endless War, it’s the American Empire Way!
That kind of comment belongs at Daily Kos. Go post there. You’re not welcome to spew that kind of idiocy at LGF.
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Registered lizardoid since: Sep 26, 2004 at 9:25 am
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Topic: UV Students Overturn Anti-Military Ban
Comment #: 0006
Forgot to say that after 9/11 of course I strongly supported the “shock and awe” bit, but as facts came to the foreground, I wanted the USA to hit them hard and leave, not get mired as we have done. Then as I read more Ron Paul, decided he was correct and that view evidently didn’t go over well with the lizardmaster. I’m honored to be an “enemy” (albeit a small fry) when in the company of Rush, Malkin, and Beck. May LFG reap the karma they deserve…