Charles Johnson publishes fake pictures of Belgian conservative leader with Nazi thugs in background

(Note: See update on Johnson’s amazing response to the exposure of his photo as a fake.)

A reader writes from Belgium:

This picture was taken on the terrace of the rooftop restaurant of the Flemish Parliament in Brussels. It shows Vlaams Belang leader Filip Dewinter together with Markus Beisicht, the leader of the “Pro Cologne” group that is organizing an anti-Islamization conference in Germany on May 9:

Charles Johnson published the picture yesterday at LGF, but changed the background.

On the background we now see masked and hooded thugs in black, with red flags with a circle in the middle. LGF wants its credulous American readers to believe that the guys in the background are Nazis. They certainly look like Nazis.

In reality they are far-left “antifas,” the violent so-called “anti-fascists” who beat up the Pro Cologne demonstrators last October.

It is true that these guys use Nazi methods and do not shun violence. According to LGF, however, it is the non-violent victims of this violent group who are the Nazis.

LA writes:

The main subject of Johnson’s article is that Robert Spencer is going to the May meeting of the Pro Cologne group in Germany and thus proving that he is a fascist. To read it, paste the below address into your address bar. LGF cannot be linked directly from VFR as the link goes to an insulting and disturbing animation instead of to LGF. http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/33466_Robert_Spencer_Confirmed _to_Attend_Eurofascist_Conference

This VFR thread explains LGF’s redirect link and provides a sample to let you see what happens when you click on it.

See also VFR’s collection of articles on the ever-metastasizing Method of Charles Johnson.

- end of initial entry -

LA writes:

Thanks to a reader, I’ve learned that there is a way to bypass LGF’s vandalism and access LGF directly and safely from a hyperlink at VFR or any other website Johnson has vandalized. Here it is. When you click on this, you will be taken for one or two seconds to the Anonym website, which strips the Internet call of its original URL (in this case, amnation.com), and sends it onward in a form identical to what is sent when you access a web page by pasting its address in the address bar of a browser. As I understand it, Johnson has no way of distinguishing between calls being sent via the Anonym site and calls coming from any browser’s address bar. From now on, the only way he can stop us racists, anti-Semites, Euro-nationalists, fascist sympathizers, fascists, neo-Nazis, Nazis, genocide supporters, and Celtic Cross bookend worshippers from viewing his site is by stopping everyone in the world from viewing his site. Which makes sense. After all, who in the world is really pure enough to read LGF, other than Charles Johnson himself?

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UPDATE: Robert Spencer (who, let us remember, remained an adoring and supportive pal of Johnson’s all through the many months when Johnson was smearing as a fascist everyone under the sun, including, ultimately, Spencer’s friends Andrew Bostom and Diana West, and only turned against Johnson after Johnson denounced Spencer himself) has an entry attacking Johnson over the fake photograph, and Johnson replies. Amazingly, Johnson says that it doesn’t matter whether the photo was faked or not—the fact that Dewinter is shaking hands with Markus Beisicht of Pro-Cologne is bad enough. Johnson writes:

Which one is the real photo and which is the altered one? It’s not obvious from examining the pictures, but clearly, one of them was altered.

But it’s a meaningless distinction. The point of posting the photograph was not to show Filip DeWinter of the Vlaams Belang and Markus Beisicht of Pro Koln in front of a demonstration—it was very obviously to show that they are associates.

[LA says: That last paragraph is worthy of inclusion in a museum of lies. It is the kind of total, knock-you-back-on-your-heels lie that was heard from Communist and Nazi apparatchiks at the time of the Hitler-Stalin pact. Oh, if only Orwell were alive to see Charles Johnson!]

The photograph Spencer and Geller have posted merely confirms that fact. And it’s very easy to find more photographs of DeWinter and Beisicht together—at the Pro Koln website itself.

Both of them are screaming about the “fauxtography,” to divert your attention from the fascist connections of these people—which, you may notice, they don’t dispute.

Pamela Geller has always been into these dishonest techniques, so there’s nothing more to say about her; but it’s sad, and utterly pathetic, to see Robert Spencer resorting to such sleaze.

So, Johnson’s publication of a fake photograph showing Dewinter and Beisicht in front of Nazi-type demonstrators doesn’t matter, says Johnson, because Beisicht has “fascist connections” anyway. And what are these fascist connections?

Johnson quotes an e-mail from an LGF reader who endeavors to show that Pro-Cologne is an anti-Israel group. Notice how “fascist” has now morphed into “anti-Israel.” The reader’s evidence is that until two years ago Pro-Cologne had a pro-Palestinian position. But then he admits that virtually everyone in Europe—right, left, and center—has a pro-Palestinian position, so that will not fly. So then he refers to Pro-Cologne’s “agitation against the planned Jewish museum in Cologne.” Hmm, “agitation” against a Jewish museum, that sounds bad, doesn’t it?

He links to a translation of a German article. Though the translation is poor, the reasons given by Pro-Cologne in the article sound entirely reasonable. They don’t think this museum would fit in the most prominent spot in the town, because it would alter its historic character. In other words, they don’t want a museum of victimology at the center of their public consciousness. They are not opposing the museum as such. They are opposing its proposed location, just as many people in the U.S.—including many conservative Jews, including the editors of Commentary—opposed the construction of the United States Holocaust Museum on the Washington Mall, not because they were against such a museum, but because the Washington Mall was an inappropriate place for a museum of Jewish victimhood.

This, then, is Johnson’s entire proof of Dewinter’s and Beisicht’s “fascist” connections—connections so palpable, he suggests, that the fact that he published a faked Nazi photograph against them doesn’t matter.

* * *

Worth perusing is the comments thread following Johnson’s article. One “Lizard” after another obediently follows the party line laid down by Johnson: Yes, maybe the photo was faked, says a Lizard, but it doesn’t matter, because it still shows the two of them shaking hands … it doesn’t matter, says another Lizard, because it still shows the two of them shaking hands … it doesn’t matter … it doesn’t matter … it doesn’t matter … it doesn’t matter, because it still shows the two of them shaking hands …

I’ve never seen anything like it.

Truly Johnson, through his systematic purging of all commenters who disagree with him on any point, has created an online community that is the equivalent of a totalitarian party.

What comes to mind, again, is the Communist party at the time of the Hitler-Stalin pact, when all the Communists who opposed the pact left or were purged, and the ones who remained all echoed the party line that now Nazi Germany was the great friend of the Soviet Union.

Wait, there is some slight dissent from the party line. A commenter, William Woody, at comment #52, very mildly criticizes Johnson for falling for the faked photo, and everyone else immediately proceeds to beat up on him.

UPDATE (April 27) Apologies to readers. In the link to William Woody’s comment I had neglected to add the special code that bypasses Johnson’s redirect to the “You are a idiot” [sic] vandalism page and enables the reader to access Johnson’s site. The link is working correctly now.

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April 27

Sage McLaughlin writes:

Remember when Charles Johnson went to such lengths to debunk the famous Microsoft-generated National Guard Memos during the 2004 presidential campaign? And remember when, after those documents were clearly demonstrated to be forgeries, the leftist media responded with the “Fake but Accurate” defense? And remember when Johnson (and anyone with any sense) denounced that line of defense as not merely foolish, but wicked?

Well, now Johnson is the one taking that slimy tack—that the photos may be fakes but that they represent some higher reality, so the fact that they are defamatory forgeries is immaterial. Astonishing.

And you’re right, this line nearly made me drop my tea cup when I read it: “The point of posting the photograph was not to show Filip DeWinter of the Vlaams Belang and Markus Beisicht of Pro Koln in front of a demonstration—it was very obviously to show that they are associates.” No, what is really “obvious” is that Johnson is a discreditable liar. A non-forged photograph of the two men shaking hands would demonstrate that the two men were associates, wouldn’t it? But it would not do anything to make the point that Johnson is so keenly interested in making, which is that these two associates are fascists.

That Johnson also pretends not to know which photograph is real only fortifies my impression that he is acting in very bad faith. The idea that those two men would stand shaking hands in front of a mass demonstration like that, glad-handing for the camera while a march went on raucously behind them, is absurd. The fact that the particular protesters in question are violent leftists who would probably tear DeWinter and Beisicht limb from limb if they had the chance also ought to serve as a tiny clue. After mocking Dan Rather for standing by his National Guard story even when the truth was obvious, Johnson really ought to give some small heed to the integrity of his own house.

Bill Carpenter writes:

Is Charles Johnson a humanities professor somewhere? His response to the exposure of his fraudulent photos was just like the response of leftist academics when the fraud of I, Rigoberta Menchu came to light. They claimed it didn’t matter if it was fraudulent, it showed an essential truth. That after using the book to indoctrinate thousands of American students into leftist thinking.

LA replies:

Or it’s like the Nation’s response in 1988 when the Tawana Brawley / Al Sharpton charges, which had riled and paralyzed New York State for a year, were revealed to be a total fraud. The Nation’s editors said it didn’t matter that upstate prosecutor Steven Pagones and other men had not kidnapped Brawley, had not held her for several days while raping her, and had not left her in a garbage big covered in feces and with racist slogans scratched in her skin, because the charges expressed the essential truth of white America’s treatment of black women.

April 28

Paul Mulshine writes:

As I wrote when I first considered this character, a blown mind is a terrible thing to waste:

Before I had a blog, I largely ignored bloggers. Curiosity got the better of me, though, once I became one of them. And since I am a conservative, I decided to start looking at the blogs that label themselves conservative. Sure enough, on one called “Little Green Footballs” I saw a perfect example of the appalling naiveté for which the Internet is infamous. The lead blogger, a certain Charles Johnson, had posted an item about an Iraqi imam who defended Islamic law and the practice of adults marrying children.

I then noted on my own blog that any thinking conservative would react to such an item by asking why the Bush administration had handed Iraq over to such Islamic fundamentalists in the first place. This brought me a flood of e-mails from people who had no understanding that this is in fact the case. And it also earned me a denunciation from Johnson, who called me a “paleo-conservative.”

I then watched in fascination as the Little Green Footballs fans tried to puzzle out just what “paleo-conservative” means. From the responses, I take it that the typical blogger believes “Paleo” is the logical antecedent to “Alto,” and thus describes the seat of Silicon Valley. This is not the case. “Paleo” means “old,” and it certainly applies to me. I have been penning critiques of liberal and left-wing politics since the old days. My first columns on politics were critiques of Marxist students for my school newspaper at Rutgers in the 1970s. I spent the 1980s outraging liberal readers by supporting the Nicaraguan contras and other anti-Communists in Central America. In the 1990s, I branched out to debunking lovable left-wingers like convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.

So I wondered just what sort of conservative credentials this Johnson character has. It turns out he spent those years strumming a guitar. In the 1980s he was cutting records with people like Peter Allen while I was running around Guatemala with the late Barry Sadler of “Ballad of the Green Berets” fame. I will concede Allen’s superior musical skills, but Sadler was a bit farther to the right.

As for Johnson, he was “pretty much center-left before 9/11,” according to a newspaper interview. “That day was a real mind-blower,” he added.

A blown mind is a terrible thing to waste, at least in the Internet age. Johnson decided to enter the world of political punditry at the top, by sorting out the Mideast.

Let me contrast his example with that of one of the reporters I see regularly in the Statehouse halls, Tom Baldwin of Gannett. Baldwin reported from the Mideast for years. He has vast experience in its tribes and their feuds. Yet when Tom offers me any insights they generally center on surf spots around the world. Like me, Baldwin is a paleo-surfer. As for the secret of Mideast peace, Tom may know it. But he would rather discuss the rip tide at Jeffrey’s Bay.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 25, 2009 02:52 PM | Send