My recent Vanity Fair piece on Charles Johnson as well as my proposal to screw with the mainstream media (working title: Operation Fuck Everyone) has prompted a few reactions here and there. Antiwar.com director Justin Raimondo, whose political views are rather complicated, e-mailed this afternoon to warn me about, among other things, Johnson’s pro-Israeli sentiment; I explained to him that I’m among the three or four Americans who don’t really care about Israel one way or the other, and that at any rate Johnson’s views on that country seem to be reasonable. Raimondo also took issue with the idea that Johnson is really a “secularist” insomuch as that the blogger does not seem to have ever spoken out against religious fundamentalism among Israeli Jews; I noted that I myself am the director of communications for a quite secular political action committee and have never gotten around to speaking out against religious fundamentalism among Israeli Jews, either. Why would I? They’re in Israel. Nonetheless, I am clearly a secularist, and so is Johnson. You don’t have to point out that the Torah is gobbledygook to get your secularist wrist band.

Raimondo rounded out his criticisms with the following assertion:

And I might add that he is still pushing the same war-mongering agenda he’s always pushed: war with the entire Muslim world.

… which is obviously not the case, as Johnson has never said or indicated anything of the sort. He’s just not big on Islam. Neither am I, for that matter. So, there you go; Raimondo doesn’t like Johnson.

Meanwhile, conservative blogger Dennis the Peasant is unimpressed with the few details of Project Fuck Everyone that have been laid out thus far, wrongly believes me to be a “progressive” (he may be right about the “knob” part, though), and warns me not to deal with Charles Johnson:

Hey Barrett: If you value your sanity and your wallet, read all my posts under Mockery: Ragging On Raj. Make sure you start at the beginning, and take heed, my friend. Take heed.

I’m a maniac and my wallet is empty, so I’ll pass. Notes Mr. Peasant in response to what’s thus far been laid out regarding the anti-media campaign:

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!

Fair enough.

So, how does the fellow at the conservative blog Jawa Report respond to the article?

Bwwwahahahahhaaaaaaaa!!!!

Okay, which one of you guys is plagiarizing from the other?

Although the Jawa fellow isn’t exactly on board with what I’m proposing, he does seem to be interested in potential methods by which to improve the virtual infrastructure of the blogosphere, which is encouraging.

Meanwhile, I’ve gotten a few e-mails from other bloggers who have decided to participate. I’ll start recruiting in earnest next week.

END COMMUNICATION LOL

**Update***

Justin Raimondo shows up to comment further on my defense of Johnson:

So it’s okay to support religious fundamentalism in another country, so long as it isn’t America. Another country in which certain people — who happen to be the original inhabitants — are second class citizens, and living under occupation.

I said nothing of the sort. What I meant is that neither Johnson nor I have denounced Jewish fundamentalism in Israel. I don’t think either of us have denounced Shintoism, either. This is because neither of us find either movement to be particularly worrying. For my part, I’m more concerned with religions that manage to competently market themselves, such as Islam and the various Pentecostal branches. And I’m only concerned with those to the extent that they prompt their followers to interfere with the free action of other individuals. Otherwise, I don’t care.

I’ve got a Hasidic landlord, for instance. He doesn’t care what I do. His religious dictates don’t apply to me. He’s not looking for converts. Most importantly, he does not have tens of millions of other Hasidic Jews with which to form a powerful voting bloc and thereby cramp my libertine style. So I don’t spend a lot of time denouncing religious Jews or even thinking about them. This doesn’t mean that I “support” their religion. I don’t. And Charles Johnson doesn’t seem to “support” religious fundamentalism in Israel. He simply doesn’t consider it to be an issue of particular importance.

***ZOMG ANOTHER UPDATE***

This Dennis fellow seems to have misunderstood a portion of my Vanity Fair article dealing with Johnson. In an update to his post cited above, the blogger cites Johnson’s 2007 statement regarding his departure from Pajamas Media and contrasts it with a quote from my piece:

Sorry, but if there’s a denunciation of a “right-wing parrot organization” in there, I must have missed it.

Johnson referred to Pajamas Media as a “right-wing parrot organization” in a conversation with me a few weeks ago. My article did not claim, nor did he, that he made any such characterization about the company at the time when he left; rather, that seems to be his opinion of it today.

Over the next few weeks I will provide further explanations regarding the project that I have announced today in my latest Vanity Fair piece. Obviously, I will have to do quite a bit convincing in order to persuade more bloggers and commentators to participate in this project.

Not until one spends the greater portion of the year in close examination of what passes for erudite commentary in this nation does one come to realize how inefficient is the system whereby pundits are chosen, promoted, and maintained. There are assuredly tens of thousands of Americans who could make better use of valuable column space than could Thomas Friedman or Charles Krauthammer, for instance, and it would not be difficult for the publishers of our several national newspapers to find and hire such people, as many of them are already working writers. The system as it stands, though, does not provide for this, as there is no reason why it should. Consider the following points:

1. It is evident that at least several of the major columnists, such as Thomas Friedman and Charles Krauthammer,  have performed terribly in their duties to inform the large swath of the citizenry who read their work.

2. Those columnists still have their columns – as well as their Pulitzer prizes and their regular spots on various Sunday public affairs programs.

Put these two observations together and one can only conclude that there is very little negative feedback in place within our nation’s opinion industry, which is to say that there is no way for the system to correct its own flaws. No one with the power to do so has any impetus to get rid of Thomas Friedman, no matter how much damage Friedman does to the public understanding by way of his slipshod commentary and ridiculous predictions. And so it is that any real change must come from outside the system.

The rise of the internet has already done much to challenge the existing structure. Media Matters for America maintains an ever-expanding database of demonstrably incorrect assertions and contradictions put forth by the news media at large and particularly by conservative or moderate-for-the-sake-of-moderate commentators, being a liberal watchdog group. A number of bloggers have come to focus on various of the republic’s most prominent pundits, keeping tabs on their flawed commentary and disseminating that info around the blogosphere. In the end, though, only so many people end up learning of such things, and most of them don’t partake of the lesser sorts of media outlets into which most such flaws are concentrated anyway.

The internet is the new medium. It is not some cure-all, though, any more than orality, literacy, the printing press, television, or any other form of information technology one would care to categorize as having fundamentally shaped the minds of man past and present could be reasonably pointed to as having cured all. Poems, written prose, mass-produced books, and the availability of instantaneous one-way communication have all been used in manners both conducive and deleterious to mankind’s strivings. Looking back, though, one would probably agree orality was an improvement upon body language, that literature was an improvement upon orality, that the printing press was an improvement upon the copied volume, and television was certainly an improvement over James Fenimore Cooper. Literature in particular has provided for great strides by way of both the effect that reading and writing has on the human mind as well as the onset of our ability to place our thoughts outside of ourselves, permanently and perfectly. And just as those who mastered literacy during the transition from orality had an advantage over those who had not, those who have mastered the internet during the transition from the printing press have a similar advantage.

The most important fact of the 21st century is that any individual on the planet can now communicate with any other individual on the planet. The great preponderance of human activity is the result of communication between two or more individuals. A great amount of human activity, both devastating and wondrous, has already occurred in a past defined by great limitations on communication between individuals. The internet came to public availability in the mid-’90s and has improved drastically as a means of communication in only fifteen years time. Some people will find these facts to be of crucial importance and will act on them.

We now have a chance to put pressure on the traditional media in such a way as would force them to reconsider the amoral path taken by all too many producers and publishers who don’t seem to care whether the output is of reasonable caliber as long as those producing that output are sufficiently famous to attract large numbers of customers. Starting next week, I will explain the method by which this may perhaps be accomplished.

Thomas Friedman’s January 12th op-ed in which he predicts continued and steady economic gains for China’s foreseeable future will no doubt have convinced the fellow’s readership that the Middle Kingdom’s future is on the right track, particularly if those readers are unaware of Friedman’s past attempts at predicting the future – and we may presume that they are indeed unaware of such things insomuch as that they bother reading the fellow’s nonsense to begin with. There is, in fact, a direct correlation between how much one knows about Friedman’s various failed predictions and how deeply one sighs when the fellow makes yet another one of the damned things. That Friedman has predicted an extended duration of Chinese economic growth does not necessarily mean that the Chinese economy is instead about to slow down, of course. Rather, it means nothing at all.

Friedman’s most recent foray into the Far East leads the New York Times mainstay to provide “two notes of caution” to those who suspect that Chinese economic growth may soon be coming to an end:

First, a simple rule of investing that has always served me well: Never short a country with $2 trillion in foreign currency reserves.

… particularly if one lives in some bizarrely simplified dimension wherein no other factors need to be taken into account when determining the prospects of the world’s most populous country. But then I am interrupting. Sort of. Not really. Anywho:

Second, it is easy to look at China today and see its enormous problems and things that it is not getting right.

It was also easy back in 2001, when Friedman dedicated a column to addressing various “myths” regarding that country and predicted that the biggest threat to its regime would be a massive increase in unemployment “as superior U.S. sugar and wheat start flooding China” due to relaxed trade barriers. In fact, unemployment had been rising in China since 1999 and continued to do so until 2003 – at which point it decreased and remained relatively low up until last year. Meanwhile, U.S. wheat and sugar failed to make any significant inroads at all – even as the Chinese continued to consume greater quantities of wheat, total imports from all other nations amounted to less than a tenth of China’s domestic production in 2005. U.S. sugar didn’t do much better.

In the same column, Friedman dismissed concerns over whether the Chinese regime would successfully insulate its population from dangerous ideas conveyed by way of the internet:

Yes, it’s true that the Chinese government has tried to block access, but it’s not working. Come with me here in Nanjing and I will show you how to view online Tibet.com — the official Web site of the Tibetan government in exile — or NYTimes.com. No problem. Deep down, the leadership here knows that you can’t have the knowledge that China needs from the Internet without letting all sorts of other information into the country, and without empowering more and more Chinese to communicate horizontally and create political communities. In the long run this will only give more tools to the forces here pushing for political pluralism.

It turns out that “the leadership” didn’t know anything of the sort, which is why they promptly established what’s known today as The Great Firewall of China and continue to crack down on such things as social networking sites as new “problems” arise in their wake. Meanwhile, the regime even managed to force Google into compliance with the nation’s censorship policy until such time as the company’s executives got huffy at being spied on as if it were some sort of Chinese person using the internet or something. Perhaps some high official managed to figure out that free access to the internet would “only give more tools to the forces here pushing for political pluralism” and, being opposed to such things, decided to oppose such things. That would have been a tough one to predict, of course.

Our Pulitzer-possessing columnist has not fared much better in sizing up the future of Russia or even its past and present. In late 2001, he called on Americans to “keep rootin’ for Putin,” who had already proven himself a crook to those who were paying attention; three years later, he announced that the country “was tilted in the wrong direction and is now tilted in the right direction,” noting that being titled in the right direction entails “enough free market, enough rule of law, enough free press, speech and exchange of ideas that” that the next generation “can grow up, plan its future and realize its potential.” It was not until 2007 that Friedman finally got around to noticing that Russia can no longer even be termed a democracy and explained this to his readers, who are always the last to know. In Friedman’s defense, he’s not as bad as Putin.

At any rate, China’s economy may continue to hum, or it may begin to decline. If you’d like to find out which is most likely, ask a fucking economist.

Barrett Brown is the author of Hot, Fat, and Clouded: The Amazing and Amusing Failures of America’s Chattering Class, which contains another 12,000 words on Friedman’s offenses against rigorous analysis of the world around him and which is now available for pre-order. Buy a copy and send it to that guy who inherited The New York Times a few years back. You know, the one nobody respects. Yeah, him.

American Power fellow Donald Douglas is correct to note that I misread his recent post; my questions to him were answered by somebody else and posted on his blog, and though this was noted in the post, I didn’t catch it and assumed I was reading the responses of Douglas himself. An associate of Douglas claimed not to have known that McCain wrote an article for the white supremacist publication American Renaissance, rather than Douglas himself having said that, so Douglas’ actual assertion that he’d clicked on all of my Stacy-McCain-is-a-racist links obviously doesn’t contradict another assertion by someone else that the person had never heard of  American Renaissance since, you know, they are two different people. So fie on me.

Having said that, the fellow whom Douglas has had answer his questions for him admits to having actually subscribed to American Renaissance, a very obviously white nationalist publication. That’s kind of unusual right there. Not a whole lot of people subscribe to white supremacist publications. It takes a certain sort of person to pick up the phone and say, “Send me twelve issues of your white supremacist magazine. I’ll give you some money for them.” I don’t even know what else to say about this.

But the questions were intended for Douglas. He doesn’t seem interested in answering them. And this talk of his to the effect that I haven’t addressed something is nonsense. What haven’t I addressed? Ask me anything you’d like and I will address it. In the meantime, why not take this opportunity to address my questions and thereby show that you can explain anything I choose to throw out regarding the issue of McCain’s racist activities?

This seems to be Douglas’ objection:

Barrett Brown has never addressed the main point of contention, which is that he’s an unprincipled smear merchant who has nothing on Robert Stacy McCain which hasn’t been addressed elsewhere.

How the fuck am I supposed to “address” that? “Dude, I’m not.”

It’s just an assertion. It doesn’t come after an examination of the evidence that might show me to be an unprincipled smear merchant; it is merely written down. Douglas claims that all of the evidence has been addressed elsewhere. I’d like Douglas to show that this is actually the case. Where is the explanation for why McCain wrote an article for American Spectator, for instance? Is this explanation actually satisfying?

Meanwhile, this is nuts:

That is, he quotes me as saying, that “I’ve looked through everything he’s linked,” and then wrongly infers that I’ve read everything HE’S EVER LINKED WITH RESPECT TO ROBERT STACY MCCAIN. And thus, that allegedly makes me a liar. Actually, as anyone even vaguely familiar with blogging would know, when I say that “I’ve looked through everything he’s linked,” that’s an ovbvious reference to “everything” at the very post in which he attacked Robert as racist, which would be, “A Reply to Donald Douglas and a Restatement of My Offer to R.S. McCain.”

There is no “very post” in which I attack McCain as a racist; there are nearly a dozen of them. I said that “the totality of the evidence” showed him to be a racist and McCain now says that he was countering that assertion by reference to something considerably less than the totality of the evidence – which is to say that I was saying that all of the evidence says something, while Douglas disagreed with me in claiming that some smaller portion of the evidence does not.

Again, it would be swell if Douglas could answer the questions I have asked of him on his own.

Having gotten into a dispute a while back with Donald Douglas of the prominent conservative blog American Power, I last week posted seven questions for Douglas regarding Robert Stacy McCain’s white supremacist activities, which Douglas, of course, does not recognize as such. Still, he has been kind enough to answer me, as well as to throw in some additional content. For instance:

Unfortunately, Brown doesn’t read well or comprehend sophisticated racial dialogue, and he selectively quoted my essay without delving into the real issues involved — and that’s not to mention his claim that I attacked him as an “atheist,” when what I really attacked is his smear merchandizing [sic].

Let us set aside the irony of someone claiming that his opponent “doesn’t read well” or “comprehend” particular brands of “dialogue” before going on to misspell a common word. After all, Douglas is correct that what he “really attacked is [my] smear merchandizing [sic].” I mean, he really did do that, which is why I spent the vast majority of my response addressing  the topic of my alleged, uh, smear merchandising, as anyone can see for himself unless he suffers from the considerable handicap of being Donald Douglas.  Insomuch as that the “real issues involved” are thus the ones that I addressed, one might protest that it is a bit unfair of Douglas to assert that I responded to his essay “without delving into the real issues involved” as, again, I did indeed delve into those issues, and in fact did almost nothing else. On the other hand, protests are rarely effective, so let us instead simply note very calmly and without undue assembly that Douglas is not even good at being dishonest.

Still, he continues to practice at it, characterizing it as my “claim” that Douglas “attacked [me] as an ‘atheist,’” as if this were something that I had perhaps just made up. In fact,  Douglas spent a portion of  the post in question doing just that:

And Barrett Brown is listed as “Communications Director” at Enlighten the Vote. So, what kind of organization is this? Enlighten the Vote is a political action committee of the American atheist movement. The PAC is apparently so bad that no one — and I mean absolutely no one — wants anything to do with them.

I would think that this constitutes an attack on my atheism, insomuch as that the only reason it is discussed is that I run the evil atheist propaganda portion of the organization, and insomuch as that nothing is noted about it other than that it involves atheism. Incidentally, the assertion that we are so bad that no one wants anything to do with us – except for the various high-profile congressmen who happily pose for pictures with EV president Ellen Johnson, I guess – involves the idiotic Elizabeth Dole campaign commercial in which the since-defeated former senator tried to depict her opponent as an atheist because she had once been in the same room as one of our PAC’s operatives. The person whose reluctance to have been misidentified as an atheist apparently proves that no one wants anything to do with our PAC, Rick Stone, was a theology student at Harvard Divinity School. Yeah, that’s right; absolutely no one – not even a Christian who studies theology at a divinity school – wants to be wrongly identified as being involved in our atheism-oriented PAC in the course of a dishonest campaign ploy pulled off by a Christian senator. Take that, our PAC!

Still, I did address his attack on my atheism in my post,  having begun one of the seven questions with the sentence, “You attack me as an atheist.” Douglas, meanwhile, spent an entire paragraph on the subject including a link to further reading and followed up by a big screenshot proving the non-secret that I am director of communications for the PAC in question – which is to say that Douglas brought up the topic of my atheism, I responded with a single sentence to the topic that he brought up, and then Douglas goes on to criticize me for not “delving into the real issues involved” because I briefly responded to a topic he himself had brought up after having spent the rest of my post delving into the issues that Douglas claims I was not delving into. Say what you will about Stacy McCain, but at least he’s not as transparently incompetent as this ridiculous mediocrity.

Ah, the answers to my questions! Let’s take a look at how he’s managed to deal with them:

1. Why do you think McCain chose the name “Dabney” for his alter ego?

Obviously the name refers to Robert Lewis Dabney, a Confederate Army chaplain. Dabney’s wife was a first cousin to Confederate General Stonewall Jackson. Dabney defended the South after the Civil War, including the theological support for slavery. I do not know why McCain chose him, except that perhaps he was a prolific defender of the Confederate cause after the war.

2.What is it about Robert Lewis Dabney that McCain admires, in your opinion?

I do not know for sure. Possible reasons: Dabney was a Confederate and McCain is a Confederate descendant; Dabney was a Christian and so is McCain; Dabney was a prolific defender of the South and so is McCain. I am absolutely sure, however, that it is not because McCain wants to restore slavery to the Southern states. The truth is, you are merely searching for a “gotcha,” a smoking gun that will enable you to finally label McCain and file him away in the ideological filing cabinet of your mind.

3. Are you aware that Dabney is known today almost exclusively for his theological defense of slavery?

I am aware of that. The Bible does indeed provide a defense of slavery. Slavery was largely unquestioned for 3,000 years and only started to be questioned with the advent of democracy. Socrates and many other past philosophers, theologians and politicians believed that slavery was part of the natural order of things. Even Jesus accepted it (indeed, there was no other paradigm from which to refer), as did Abraham and many other Biblical characters.

So what are you implying? That the Biblical defenses of slavery do not exist, or should be repudiated, or that people of prior generations with different social mores, cultures, beliefs and situations should be denounced for not holding 21st century views, even though they never lived in modern times?

4. Are you familiar with the publication American Renaissance?

Yes. I used to subscribe to it.

5. Do you consider the publication to be white supremacist in nature?

Not entirely. Any “white supremacy” may be implied but I never saw it overtly expressed. There are white supremacists who take the publication because they like the discussion about race and crime. The founder of that publication does not believe that whites are “superior” to Asians, as Asians have a provably higher IQ than whites. He once asked if that made him a “yellow supremacist.” The publication was generally objective and useful in discussing race and crime, political correctness, IQ and other factors as they vary by race. I stopped taking it, however, when I became aware that neo-Nazis love the publication and when it began running selected stories about non-white crime, which I felt were not really representative and had no purpose other than to stoke race prejudice. The short answer is that I do not recommend American Renaissance.

6. What do you think it says about McCain that he wrote an article for that publication in which he warns about white “race suicide” and did so under a pen name inspired by a fellow who is known almost exclusively for his theological defense of slavery?

I haven’t read the article and have no reason to believe that McCain did any such thing. Where is your proof?

7. You attack me for being an atheist. Is it better to ascribe to the Old Testament, which explains that one may beat one’s slave so long as the slave does not die within a few days afterwards?

I don’t know which Old Testament scripture you refer to, so cannot honestly respond. In any case, the Old Testament does not apply to Christians. However, I can observe that atheism as practiced by Nazis and Communists led the way to genocide of millions simply because the Nazis and Communists felt they would never be held accountable by a just God.

Most of these answers will necessitate a more thorough response that I can give now, as I was yesterday asked to give a lecture at Rutgers tomorrow morning and am obligated to prepare for that today in addition to a few other things that need doing, but for now I will note that Douglas here writes that he has not read McCain’s article for American Renaissance and has “no reason to believe that McCain did any such thing.” But a few weeks ago, Douglas wrote the following:

And let me disabuse Barret [sic] Brown of his notion that “the totality of the evidence” that he’s offered “unambiguously” convicts Robert Stacy McCain as “a white supremacist with significant past ties to the neo-Nazi community.” It does nothing of the sort. I’ve looked through everything he’s linked. I’ve visited American Renaissance, and I long ago dismissed those of the Southern Poverty Law Center and Michelangelo Signorile as race and sexual-orientation shakedown artists who’d make Jesse Jackson proud.

I’ve added italics for emphasis, as dishonesty merits particular attention. If Douglas had actually looked through everything to which I’ve linked, he would not be presently mystified at being told that McCain wrote the “race suicide” article for American Renaissance – as I have linked to it here and here, for instance, and mentioned it in many of my other pieces for both True/Slant and Huffington Post, usually linking back to one of my other articles which in turn link directly to McCain’s notorious article, which he does not deny writing and which he of course signed with his “Dabney” pen name.

Either Douglas was lying when he claimed to have gone through all of my pieces on McCain and clicked on all of the links, or he somehow managed to read all of these articles while apparently failing to understand at least half a dozen easily-understandable references to an incident of which he now claims to be entirely unaware – and even to have actually clicked through to the article in question at least twice without having been quite up to the challenge of figuring out exactly what all of these words mean and how they might all fit together.

Douglas – You are either a liar or incapable of assessing basic information when it’s right in front of your face. If it’s the latter, you might want to stop accusing people such as myself as not being able to “read well” or “comprehend sophisticated racial dialogue.” Either way, please refrain from wasting my time in the future by debating me without having done even basic preparation beforehand. My schedule doesn’t allow for me to hold your  hand through things that you’ve either lied about having read or simply don’t understand because great portions of your mind are engaged solely in thinking about gay people and how their legitimate aspirations may be confounded.

As for your disingenuous little line about how I responded to your essay “about a month later,”  which you put between dashes for emphasis as if this were indicative of something, you know perfectly well – or perhaps you don’t, since this information was written in a prominent location in my essay and you appear to have problems taking in the substance of my work, even when such substance is repeated or linked to some dozen fucking times – that my delay in responding to you was due to my obligation to finish my book. As you may be aware, one chapter deals with your buddy Robert Stacy McCain; I’m sure you’ll enjoy it, even if you don’t manage to retain anything you read therein.

I will note one more time, especially for you, Donald, that Robert Stacy McCain wrote an article for American Renaissance in 2002 and under his little pen name inspired by a slavery-adoring little fascist. I will get to the rest of your answers later in the week after I’ve – QUICK, WHO WAS IT THAT WROTE AN ARTICLE FOR AMERICAN RENAISSANCE IN 2002 WARNING AGAINST “RACE SUICIDE” AMONG WHITES? Look, I’m just trying to help. You might also make some flash cards in the meantime.

Update

Incidentally, I’m aware that the conservative commentator Doug Hagin has just challenged me to a debate in the most flamboyant language possible:

So, the challenge is there Mr. Brown, an honest, open debate. Bring it on! You want to bash the South? And Stacy McCain and others who defend it? BRING IT ON!

YEAH! BRING IT ON! THROW DOWN! CAN YOU SMELL WHAT THE ROCK IS COOKING?!

I’ll debate you on Wednesday via e-mail exchange, you exuberant  fellow, you. You can start perhaps by pointing out the specific historical errors you claim I have made. Perhaps you could even quote them. I look forward to seeing these non-existent things.