Again

I wrote to Kristor a day or two ago:

Guess who has a huge thread about yours truly. Mangan. Again. A reader told me about it tonight. It’s all about my criticism of the anti-American and nihilistic content of Richard Spencer’s new site. I just glanced at it briefly. Don’t feel like reading it. Much of it seems like the usual, “Auster’s so mean, such a terrible person.” Haven’t these babies noticed that I have taken the same positions forever, and that if a writer, say, morally equates America with Islamic terrorists, I’m going to condemn him sternly? No, they can’t understand that. It’s all about how mean I am. Babies. I have no respect for them.

Kristor replies:

I just skimmed the thread. It’s rather droll, really, in a depressing way. They begin by castigating you for condemning doctrines you find damnable. Then they proceed to castigating each other relentlessly over disagreements on several different substantive matters. It’s a shouting match.

Kristor continues:

I should also point out in fairness that not a few commenters on that thread—Bruce Charlton and Fjordman come to mind—chime in to say, essentially, “Oh, come now. Lawrence may be prickly, but he’s essential; and besides, what seems like prickliness is really just his determined attempt to apply principles consistently, and one can’t really fault him for that.”

- end of initial entry -

James P. writes:

You wrote in the entry about Tanstaafl::

“It concerns the discovery by Tanstaafl, who had previously (so he said) thought highly of me, that I am a liar and a hypocrite and an agent of the Zionist takeover of America, because I do not apply Auster’s First Law of Majority-Minority Relations in Liberal Society to the Jews.”

Incidentally, a big theme in the comments to that Mangans thread is that you are an untrustworthy Marrano working relentlessly in the Jewish interest and for the benefit of Israel. Then the comments degenerate into a festival of wild Israel-hate that is regrettably typical on the Left these days. The thread is still not worth reading, for all that it’s 108 comments now and thus probably one of his more highly commented posts.

Kidist Paulos Asrat writes:

I know it is not worth your time going through the thread that Mangan has started, but here is what respectable writer and one-time blogger Fjordman’s says, whose comment I searched for amidst all those others:

“Auster is something of an ideological purist, which can be problematic at times … “

Although Fjordman does go on to say positive things.

This is depressing. What is an ideological purist? Its like saying someone is a little mad, or naive or out of touch with reality.

By the way, we (I) know very little about Fjordman except that he writes long essays on the inventions of Western civilization. Perhaps he is an atheist. Sometimes that is the final, determining factor between “an ideological purist” and one who is not.

LA replies:

In 2008 Fjordman wrote at Pamela Geller’s site that my criticisms of Robert Spencer were “immoral.” They were “immoral” because of the divisions I was supposedly creating among anti-Islamists. It somehow didn’t occur to him that calling me “immoral” created divisions.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 07, 2010 04:55 PM | Send