Haters Gonna Die

It has been a few days since we heard about the horrible event in Texas. Just before 7 p.m. on Sunday, May 3, outside the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas, two men got out of their vehicle and began shooting. They hit one man, a security officer, in the ankle. A Garland police officer returned fire with his handgun and killed the two men.

It was reported but not confirmed that the two men were affiliated with ISIS.

One of the alleged gunmen Elton Simpson, has been identified as a convert to Islam who lived in Phoenix. The other, Nadir Hamid Soofi, lived in the same apartment complex and attended the same mosque. The obvious inference is that the two gunmen intended to attack the “First Annual Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest” that was being held that evening under the auspices of the American Freedom Defense Initiative.

The shock here is that it happened in Garland, Texas — as in anywhere USA, not Paris, France or Denmark. It happened on US soil.

It is also shocking to note that the mainstream media is feigning surprise over the incident and is preparing its “free speech” talking points in order to support an event that was meant to provoke such an action.

While the media would have you believe that the Annual Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest was a gathering of those who are free to express themselves, they ignore that the real targets were possibly those who were literally provoking a jihad from any interested party willing to take the bait.

It’s possible that the target was not the event but the speaker and organizers. Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician who has called for a ban of the Qur’an was in attendance and organizer Pamela Geller who now has become the darling of conservative media as an example of a person who is being persecuted for free speech.

Interesting to note that if the media is so supportive of Geller, then why they don’t show on camera some of the depictions of Mohammed used in the exhibit?

Are they aware of something that Geller isn’t aware of with regard to her rights, and what direction the media should have in order to appear objective? The media can constantly give us the idea that hate speech is free speech, however there may be another story that the media avoids in order to avoid taking the sizzle out of darling hate merchants like Geller.

It’s important to congratulate the police and the security officers at the event. The policeman who took out the two would-be jihadists deserves a medal. Simpson and Soofie were armed with assault rifles and were wearing body armor. At a time when American police forces are being publicly torn to pieces for alleged misuses of force, this was exemplary

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It’s likely that America just avoided its very own Charlie Hebdo blood bath and that act of valor deserves our attention, sadly though the protagonist and provocateur Pamela Geller gets to be seated right next to Sean Hannity making her case that she is a victim of a first amendment rights violation.

The attack ironically happened as controversy has risen in France over an award that has been offered, honoring Charlie Hebdo’s commitment to freedom of expression.

Hebdo’s freedom of expression included satirical cartoons of the Pope having anal sex with Jesus, cartoons of Jews that were reminiscent of the hook-nosed demon Juden provided by the Nazis is the 1930s and 1940s, a cover commenting on gay marriage with both God and Jesus having sex on the cover and a depiction of Pope Francis dressed as a dancing girl in Brazil.

Oh and the magazine offended Muslims.

The French satirical magazine had published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, an unforgivable insult in the eyes of the terrorists, who burst into its offices and shot eight of its staff, as well as four other people, including one police officer, last January.

Last month, the American PEN center announced it would award its annual Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award to Charlie Hebdo. In response, a group of writers — including award-winning novelists Peter Carey, Joyce Carol Oates, and others — signed a letter to PEN protesting the award. The signatories said that it could “be seen as being intended to cause further humiliation and suffering” to a section of the French population that is “already marginalized, embattled, and victimized.”

Even though every religion was offended by Hebdo the media has manufactured the Muslim hate topic since 2006.

This controversy all began when the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 editorial cartoons on September 30th, 2005, most of which depicted Muhammad. The newspaper announced that this was an attempt to contribute to the debate about criticism of Islam and self-censorship. Muslim groups in Denmark complained, and the issue eventually led to protests around the world, including violent demonstrations and riots in some Muslim countries.

Islam has a strong tradition of aniconism. Aniconism is the practice of or belief in the avoiding or shunning of images of divine beings, prophets or other respected religious figures, or in different manifestations, any human beings or living creatures.

It is considered highly blasphemous in most Islamic traditions to make a picture of Muhammad. This, compounded with a sense that the cartoons insulted Muhammad and Islam, offended many Muslims.

According to those against the honorarium for Charlie Hebdo, Power and prestige are elements that must be recognized in considering almost any form of discourse, including satire. The inequities between the person holding the pen and the subject fixed on paper by that pen cannot, and must not, be ignored.

In other words they believe that “free speech” needs to be qualified.

No doubt those who endorsed the letter would make a similar argument about the Garland Muhammad art exhibit. And no doubt if the attackers had achieved the massacre they intended, we would hear the same words: “Yes, we believe in free speech, but…”

Yes, there is a big but… and then the pregnant pause and then nothing.

Silence.

That is until the talking points and the passions take over again and we begin to see people utilizing their freedom of speech making nonsensical statements about hate speech and the right to say it whenever we feel compelled to do so.

We always hear the statement made to lighten the mood, “Haters gonna hate” or “Haters hate us because they ain’t us,” or some other trivial witticism, but anymore in the United States it is beginning to look like “haters are going to die” and believe it or not any hate speech or expression that provokes a response is not always protected by the Constitution.

Unpopular speech, hate speech, it is all free speech according to the constitution, however the Supreme Court has interpreted or has classified “Provocative conversation that includes expression, baiting or fighting words” may not be protected by the Constitution.

There are several landmark Supreme Court decisions that I want you to be familiar familiar with:

1. Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942), concerns verbal insults in public places. In 1942, the Supreme Court sustained the conviction of a Jehovah’s witness who addressed a police officer as a “God dammed racketeer” and “a damned fascist” (Chaplinksy v. New Hampshire). The Court’s opinion in the case stated that there was a category of face-to-face epithets, or “fighting words,” that was wholly outside of the protection of the First Amendment: those words “which by their very utterance inflict injury” and which “are no essential part of any exposition of ideas.”
2. Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case based on the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Court held that government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless that speech is directed to inciting, and is likely to incite, imminent lawless action.
3. Wisconsin v. Mitchell, 508 U.S. 476 (1993). In June 1993, the United States Supreme Court made the landmark precedent pertaining to First Amendment free speech arguments for hate crime legislation. In effect, the Court ruled that a state may consider whether a crime was committed or initially considered due to an intended victim’s status in a protected class.

Incendiary, tortuous, malicious words meant to incite a lawless act, or fighting words that are meant to incite imminent lawless action are simply not protected by the First Amendment.

Pamela Geller is well known for using her freedom of speech. The irony is that this time she got a reaction, exactly what she wanted and now she is demanding that something be done to protect her from ISIS? Geert Wilders the Dutch politician who was going to speak has said that there should be a bounty on Muslims and then goes on to quote hate speech from the Quran don’t we find this a bit confusing?

Geert Wilders, told attendees that Muslims don’t have a sense of humor.

Our Judeo-Christian culture is far superior to the Islamic one,” Wilders said Sunday in Garland. “I can give you a million reasons. But here is an important one: We have humor and they don’t. … Islam does not allow free speech, because free speech shows how evil and wrong Islam is. And Islam does not allow humor, because humor shows how foolish and ridiculous it is. — Geert Wilders

Pamela Geller supports that comment as well.

Geller and the American Freedom Defense Initiative were behind a campaign to place a controversial advertisement series in New York City’s subways. The ads went up on the heels of the September 11, 2012 deadly attack on an American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, which killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans.

“In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad,” the ad read.

The ads were initially rejected by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Geller’s organization sued, and a federal judge ruled that the ad was protected speech under the First Amendment.

Critics called the ad hateful, but Geller called the legal win a “triumph.”

Geller co-founded the American Freedom Defense Initiative in 2010.

Geller played a key role in pushing the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” debate into the national lexicon. Her group planned rallies against a proposed mosque and community center — with Geller at the helm.

The Anti-Defamation League, in a statement condemning Sunday’s “attempted violent attack,” described the event as being organized by “anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller.” And the ADL said Wilders has “advanced a conspiratorial anti-Muslim agenda for many years.”

So the baiting by Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative has been happening for some time and after capturing the attention of her enemies, two Muslim men finally decided they needed to strike out against what they thought was incendiary and provocative actions.

The situation is becoming even more awkward.

Geller appeared on Fox News and told Sean Hannity that she is surprised that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have yet to contact her after the thwarted attack.

Could it be because what she did is not protected by the constitution and that not only did she incite a lawless action, but has also kindled a mini war, or even Jihad where she is now on her own?

Geller surely believes that her actions need to be protected by the President and the Department of homeland security.

But perhaps she knew nothing about how the Supreme Court may see her activities?

Geller and he American Freedom Defense group have been at the same old stand for years, mainstays of the Muslim-hating industry plugging away with a series of publicity stunts designed to provoke that which gives them satisfaction and that is hate and the business opportunities it creates for them.

Pamela is not just some woman standing up against Islam, she is the head of a group of hateful instigators that are now getting what they want and that is the attention of Islam.

Now ISIS has issued a public statement claiming responsibility for the attack — and Geller’s life ambition has been achieved.

The question is, now that we know what provoked this attack, should this entitle Geller to protection from our law enforcement or even on a federal level?

Geller’s whole career as a hate-monger has been depicted, in her own writings, as one long martyrdom, in which she has been “smeared” by the “pro-Muslim” media, which is complicit in the “creeping sharia” that is supposedly taking over America and the West. Anticipating the violence that was to come allowed her to depict herself as a brave “freedom fighter,” a species of extremist we haven’t seen anywhere else.

However we are lucky that the event in Garland Texas didn’t end up much worse and even then, the cult leaders don’t always die first , it is their sheep that wind up slaughtered in the confrontation of the come to Jesus party.

The whole point of Geller’s enterprise is to provoke violence and thus “confirm” — at least in their own minds — the central thesis of their movement: that Islam is inherently violent and must be suppressed.

But the media is ignoring that — they have said it is all a free speech issue without seeing what the supreme court believes about inciting a riot or a shooting or in this case a jihad.

Would anyone defend a group of white supremacists marching into Baltimore screaming the “N-word”? Of course they wouldn’t! But what about “free speech”?

Shouldn’t we ignore the “noxious” content and simply defend the principle of raw expression? Even if it cites a riot?

The idea is ludicrous.

Haters can hate, and if they ask for a war and someone gives it to them should they be protected?

Someone now has to ask, was it worth bringing the specter of terrorism to our own backyards?

Text – Check out Ground Zero Radio with Clyde Lewis Live Nightly @ http://www.groundzeromedia.org