Sullivan’s Smear

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.