Author: Justin Raimondo

Andrew Sullivan, the Boadicea of the War Party, has Antiwar.com in his sights:

“FIFTH COLUMN WATCH: An Anti-War.com writer pleaded guilty to federal weapons and explosives charges. He was planning to fight for ‘Muslim causes.’”

This “Antiwar.com writer,” Ismail Royer, who wrote one very good piece for us a couple of years ago, was charged with violating the Neutrality Act – which forbids Americans from taking up arms against countries with which we are not at war — because he and his friends wanted to go fight in Kashmir for an obscure anti-Indian guerrilla group. At no time did he take up arms against America or Americans. As Tim Cavanaugh pointed out in Reason last year:

“There are various questions to be raised about the indictments. (Among them: Is paintball a fitting substitute for Basic Training?) The invocation of the archaic Neutrality Act—most of the charges involve actions taken before the LET was named as a terrorist group—has inspired tendentious but not inapt comparisons to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the French Foreign Legion.

“For me, the real mystery is the involvement of Ismail (Randall Todd) Royer, whose prior writings give little indication that he was a jihadist. Among his articles: A plea to respect religion in the public square. A call for détente between Islam and the West. An article urging Muslims to avoid wallowing in victimization. All outspoken articles, but pretty far from militancy. Royer is a co-editor of ATrueWord.com, a site that aims ‘to actively engage the non-Muslim world in a constructive and honest dialogue of ideas.’”

Sullivan is a despicable fraud, and so is the continuing campaign to link this website with “terrorist” activity: the ex-Trotskyite-turned-Muslim nutball cultist Stephen Schwartz has also tried to link me personally with Royer:

“The role of Raimondo in this maneuver remains extremely interesting. Raimondo has inexhaustibly assailed me because, like Royer, I have taken an Islamic name, although unlike Royer, I have never used it for deceptive purposes. Royer employed Raimondo’s propaganda as a fig-leaf to cover his own attempt at intimidation…. The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and others have similarly recycled Raimondo.”

I have never met Royer, nor never even sent him so much as an email, yet in the fantasy world of Schwartz and Sullivan, I’m part of a grand conspiracy, a “fifth column” in secret communication with Osama bin Laden! They would like nothing better than to see Antiwar.com shut down, and me behind bars, like Ismail Royer. What’s frightening – not to me, personally, but on account of the realization that we’ve gone this far down the road to serfdom – is that they have the legal “tools” to do it in the form of the “Patriot” Act and its successors. The new totalitarians know they can’t win the battle of ideas, but they’re hoping they won’t have to: Sullivan and the pathetic Schwartz actually think we can be intimidated, or else forced to shut up.

Schwartz is so well-known as a nutball that even the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies – the subject, interestingly enough, of Royers’ piece for us – dropped him like a hot potato. As for Andy “Muscle Glutes” Sullivan — I’ll be damned in hell before I’ll be intimidated by this slimey limey. Sullivan gives new meaning to the phrase size queen: he only tells really BIG lies.

It’s funny, but Bill Evers used to be one of those libertarians who went around giving everyone else a purity test, and he often found them wanting. Back in the good old days, he used to write a column for Libertarian Vanguard, the newspaper of the Radical Caucus, called “Brickbats and Bouquets,” in which he handed out kudos and judo chops to those that, in his view, deserved them. The ideologially pure were praised, and the deviationists were denounced in no uncertain terms. How fitting that he – the self-appointed enforcer of libertarian political correctness turned apostate, who makes Judas Iscariot look like Horatio at the bridge — should now be the recipient of one of the biggest brickbats of all time.

Oh, but don’t hold it against him. I, for one, am glad to see that Bill has finally settled down and found himself a decent job. After all, how long can you pretend to be a grad student – at the age of fifty-something?

David Horowitz is such a big crybaby. I posted a review of his new book, Left Illusions, on Amazon, and he’s wailing that it’s all a result of “left-wing sabotage.” Here’s Horowitz:

“When my new book Left Illusions came out I prepared myself for the inevitable sabotage the political left and its fellow-travelers would attempt in order to discourage readers. So when Amazon posted a character assassination by Justin Raimondo in its section reserved for reviews I was not surprised.”

In other words: Wahhhh! Wahhhh! In his book, Radical Son, from which excerpts are printed in this latest compilation, Horowitz red-baits his own parents, who were members of the Communist Party, and says they deserved to be fired from their jobs as teachers for being “traitors.” In his non-rebuttal, Horowitz denies all – but anyone who has read Radical Son, or his latest, can easily see that I’m right.

“I have never been able to quite pinpoint the psychological disorder from which Raimondo so evidently suffers. Why would a man who has a well-trafficked website even think to post to this obscure section of the web simply to discourage people from buying someone else’s book. Why would he spend the time? A google search of Raimondo’s site, brings up more than 250 personal attacks on me, so that is probably a sufficient explanation. His ‘review’ is titled ‘Nobody Likes A Stool Pigeon’ and accuses me of ‘turning in’ my parents as Communists. Of course as Raimondo and anyone else who has read Radical Son knows, both my parents died before the book was written (I described both deaths in the book itself).”

Anyone who points out the hypocrisy and hysteria behind his politics is crazed, according to Horowitz – this is so typical of the neoconservative mind, which cannot even imagine honest disagreement. Every attack on his politics is, according to him, a “personal attack.” More crybaby stuff. I don’t know where he gets “more than 250” – it’s about 50, not counting duplications, and all of them are old. This also includes an article by him on our website, and very brief mentions of his name. So what? Why is this relentless self-promoter complaining about that? And Amazon.com is not exactly an “obscure section of the web,” but we’ll let that pass.

Why would anyone bother with Horowitz? That’s a better question, the answer to which is: why not? Sure, he’s a schmuck, but over a month is far too long to go without an attack on me originating in Frontpage, Horowitz’s website. It used to be that every week, at least, there would be a new attempt to prove that I’m a fascist left-wing sympathizer of the Mikado – and then, suddenly, nothing, nada, zilch! What’s up with that? I knew – I just knew – this would get a rise out of him. And it did. (Bwahahahahahaha!)

Horowitz can dish it out, but he sure as heck can’t take it. Grow up, David, and stop yer whinin’. There’s nothing worse than a crybaby – you big sissy.

So there I was, wasting time while waiting for that little elf Jeremy to post this column, surfing around until I wandered over to Matt Drudge, and clicked on a story headlined:

AMAZON: DRUDGE SURPASSES MAJOR NEWS OUTLETS IN WEB TRAFFIC…

This took me to Alexa, the popular site-rating service, and sure enough there was good old Matt at number 8, just below Google.com and ahead of the Washington Post. Way to go, Matt! I looked down the rest of the list: USA Today, CBS News, the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Post, until my gaze fixed on number 36 – Antiwar.com!

We’re just below the Chicago Tribune, beating out Time magazine, Newsday, the Associated Press, National Geographic, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and the Houston Chronicle, among others.

Wow. I’m impressed, and — believe it or not — humbled.