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In the weeks after the horrifying Islamic terrorist attacks of Oct 7, FrontPage Magazine provided compelling commentary, analysis and investigative journalism. We mourned with the people of Israel and the American victims of the attacks, and we maintained our commitment to telling the unflinching truth about the causes and origins of the crisis the way few other magazines would.
After 9/11, David Horowitz led the way in calling Islamic terrorism what it was and taking the fight to college campuses. FrontPage Magazine featured the work of early truthtellers about Islamic terrorism like Robert Spencer, Steven Emerson, Jamie Glazov, Frank Gaffney, Bosch Fawstin, Christine Douglass-Williams, Philip Haney, and many others. And we still do.
Leftist organizations couldn’t disprove us, so instead they tried to cancel us. We were smeared as “Islamophobes” and a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the media.
But never before had we been targeted and smeared by an arm of the government.
That changed after Oct 7.
Last year, the Voice of America ran an article headlined, “Anti-Muslim hate groups in US surge back into spotlight”. The Freedom Center was falsely described as one of those “hate groups”.
The VOA accused the David Horowitz Freedom Center of being a “leading anti-Muslim group” and along with Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch of being part of a “well-funded, close-knit anti-Muslim industry”.
Its evidence for this smear were two of our articles about Oct 7, one from Front Page Magazine and one reprinted on Jihad Watch, “Savages” and “It’s Islam, Stupid”: both written by me.
The VOA article was written by Masood Farivar, an Afghan immigrant whose autobiography ‘Confessions of a Mullah Warrior’ depicts him as “coming of age in a madrassa in Pakistan” before “he returned home to join the jihad, fighting beside not only the Afghan mujahideen but also Arab and Pakistani volunteers.”
In his memoir, Farivar described having viewed the Taliban as a “necessary evil”, called American soldiers in Afghanistan an “occupation force” and had joined the Hezb-i Islami party which fought alongside Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. An arm of the U.S. government had decided to put him in charge of deciding which Americans were “anti-Muslim hate groups”.
Farivar and the VOA could take no issue with any of the facts presented in “It’s Islam, Stupid” which listed horrifying atrocities going back to the days of Mohammed and the Islamic terror attacks that, like Oct 7, took place on Christian, Jewish and Hindu holidays. It could not disprove the evidence showing that Hamas saw Oct 7 as a religious war. So it called us bigots for telling the truth about the bigotry of the Islamic mass murderers in Israel, India, Europe and Africa.
We’ve been libeled as bigots before, but this was different because this time our government was doing it, amplifying smears from the Southern Poverty Law Center that had been previously used to defund and debank us, and forced us to spend heavily on security to protect ourselves.
Smears by an arm of the government threatened Americans with censorship and violence.
The Voice of America looks like any other media site, but it operates under the U.S. Agency for Global Media. Originating from anti-Nazi messages broadcast during WWII, the VOA encouraged Soviet dissidents living under Communism (my mother was among those who tried to illegally catch its broadcasts) and offering hope to millions living under tyranny in Latin America, Communist China and around the world. But even then the VOA’s coverage of domestic issues in the United States was taking on an increasingly partisan slant. The VOA charter signed off on by Eisenhower and Ford was supposed to fix this problem, yet actually made it worse by emphasizing the need for multidimensional coverage of the United States.
Obama toppled the final firewall restricting the VOA from engaging in domestic propaganda by using the National Defense Authorization Act to allow the government arm to push domestic content. And at that point the VOA became a taxpayer-funded government media agency aimed at pushing anti-American leftist agendas. That is how we came to be smeared by an arm of the government.
The assault on the David Horowitz Freedom Center was a violation of the VOA charter that its news will be “accurate, objective, and comprehensive”, that it “will represent America, not any single segment of American society” and present “balanced” and “comprehensive” coverage.
The Voice of America did not reach out to us for comment before slurring us as a “hate group”, and its libelous claim appeared to be based on nothing more than the Southern Poverty Law Center’s characterization of our organization as a “hate group” even though the SPLC’s own leadership fell due to a racism scandal, media stories demonstrated that the SPLC’s ‘hate maps’ were often baseless and the SPLC’s ‘Islamophobia’ lists came from Islamists.
When it came to smearing us as ‘Islamophobes’ and ‘hate groups’, the SPLC’s work has been flagrantly dishonest in ways that go beyond media bias and into the realm of shameless fraud.
The Southern Poverty Law Center had previously listed my single-author blog as a ‘hate group’ along with a sign outside a Pennsylvania bar on K-Mart Plaza. The SPLC not only couldn’t define “hate”, but it couldn’t even define “group” or tell a bar sign from an organization.
Freedom Center Investigates previously demonstrated the SPLC’s fraudulent faking of an ‘Islamophobia crisis’, falsely claiming that the “number of anti-Muslim hate groups increased almost three-fold in 2016” inflated the numbers by counting different chapters separately. A year later, the SPLC was forced to pay out millions when, under the influence of Islamists, it listed a Muslim as an “anti-Muslim extremist”. A Politico story described how the SPLC put a town on its ‘hate map’ over a ‘racist book club’ that never actually met there and another town on the list over a KKK chapter that never actually existed. The SPLC had a history of such malicious lies.
Despite this publicly available knowledge, yet the VOA took the SPLC’s word for its smear.
Our experiences with Voice of America show why major changes need to come to the organization. What was once a means of conveying America’s message to the world has become a platform for an ex-Islamist Jihadist to smear Americans fighting against Islamic terror.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
President Trump’s appointments of Brent Bozell to head the U.S. Agency for Global Media and Kari Lake to serve as the director of Voice of America is a promising start. But there is a lot of work to be done before the VOA returns to its founding mission of promoting American interests.
President John F. Kennedy had told Voice of America staffers that their mission was to “paint us ‘with all our blemishes and warts,’ all those things about us that may not be immediately attractive.” Taxpayers should not be paying to have an arm of the government telling the rest of the world that America is a terrible place. And certainly not sending that message to Americans.
No American patriot should ever have to fear being smeared by a government media agency.
The VOA should cease all operations that are aimed at Americans or that depict America negatively. It should certainly not be in the business of making partisan attacks on Americans.
The Voice of America should be America’s voice, not that of Islamists or the anti-American Left.
the VOA only want the voices they choose , that being the left including the dems. and sycophants for the terrorist group commonly called islam . all others are enemies of the state . once they complete the task of doge can they then flush any and all that get funding for anti american propaganda including t.v. and civic scams masquerading as american mouthpieces and there are myriads . pbs, npr, abc , the list is endless . think of the trillions given to these wastrels all the while they are being bankrolled by the taxpayers they hate .
I(f only for the jazz, keep it!! Let’s use this strong network to help ourselves, especially after so much has been invested by our forebears. It is a great organ that we can use to make nice.
Perhaps it could just be jazz – a truly fantastic American music, and all the “making the world safe for democracy” could be dropped. Democracy is a terrible form of government and the US should stop trying to fashion the world into same liberal hellhole that has almost destroyed us.
Agreed.
That said, the only way to ‘fix’ VOA is to fire everyone, and start over.
And that only will only serve until the Left recovers.
The best thing to do is to delete the agency altogether.
Agreed ….but first, a moment of silence for the VOA Jazz Hour. …
Indeed!
The VOA Jazz Hour Moment of Silence was duly observed here.
It will be missed and fondly remembered by many old geezers like myself.
Cheers.
…shit. relegated to old geezer status, and condemned to witness the downfall of institutions which had value …..but back in the day.
•••
You don’t sound like an old geezer to me. You always sound like you’ve been condemned to be a perpetual teenager for eternity. That’s one of the major problems with America since the 1950s, nobody wants to grow up and be a grownup. It’s the Rock and Roll generation, a generation of being a teenager forever.
I saw some photos of Grace Slick lately and as old as she is she still goes around giving the middle finger to photographers like “Oh my, that’s soooo bad ass COOL!” What a teenager mentality, it doesn’t look cool at all on an old lady.
Read Diana West’s “The Death of the Grownup: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization”
THX thinks you seem like a kid. The guy with the juvenile fixation on that dead sociopath, Ayn Rand.
Reply to Victor, ‘old geezers’
I started listening to Jazz Hour 65+ years ago!
That led to hearing many good programs.
But, as in The Death of King Arthur:
‘The old order changeth, giving way to new,
lest one good custom should corrupt the world.’
So, unless cleaned out, VoA has to go.
When it comes to jazz I need MORE than a moment of silence. I may not understand why so many people enjoy that noise but I know you do. I can enjoy a bit of Chet Baker and John Coltrane but except for some Dixieland jazz, which is considered heresy by most jazz aficionados, I’ll give syncopated music played discordantly a pass. “Improvisation” really means the musicians don’t remember the notes. With the amount of heroin so many of them mainlined, I can understand why. I’d commit suicide if I had to listen to Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk or Kenny G for more than five minutes. Of course, everybody hates Kenny G, especially jazz aficionados. 😛
I must disagree with you about this.
Miles Davis’s “Butches Brew” is way ahead of Pink Floyd’s “Meddle” for example. There are many cases of Jazz masters beating R&B and Blues and Rock masters to the draw. …..and Charlie Watts was a Jazz drummer who held the Jagger-Ruchards-Jones tug-of-war together, as another example of the many times modern pop music has leaned heavily on Jazz players’ ability to hold two or more musical ideas in their heads at one time.
Some people like jazz and some people don’t. There isn’t much middle ground. It’s just one of those things.
And the way things are going they might change the name back to Radio Free Europe and broadcast tihe REAL news to UK, Germany, France etc.
Well, we DO hate …….THEM ~
😏
Almost as much as they hate us.
Dennis Prager has a 5 minute video of a liberal chick who had been warned against going to a MAGA rally. She was told by many she’d need mace, as she would certainly be accosted.
However: she found she was treated warmly, and was stunned by the diverse crowd.
She went on record to describe the event as a festive tail-gate party atmosphere & how it changed her opinion of conservatives.
(The Jan 6th rally was also festive – until the DC thugs began gratuitously firing rubber bullets & tear gas.)
I saw that chick on TV. She may be a lefty but least she’s capable of perceiving reality.
The DC thugs also shot real bullets at Ashli Babbit and beat Rosanne Boyland to death with real clubs. And one man was murdered by a tear gas canister shot into one of his eyeballs and the other by a rubber bullet, if I remember correctly.
Public executions of innocent MAGA supporters provided by the Dirtbagocrat party.
You’re quite right.
Kevin Greeson was the 1st one killed. When his eye was hit, it induced a fatal heart attack.
Also note that 5 patriots were driven to suicide afterwards – reported with glee by the press.
One thing I’m sick of, are radio hosts whe feel required to incant the statement . . .
“Every Jan 6th protester that engaged in violence, should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law!”
That number is ZERO, as they were entrapped & set up.
(They weren’t rioting per se. They were responding in self defense to DC instigators like chickenshit Dunn.)
Yes, those suicides left behind grieving family and friends along with their lives. The Dirtbagocrats responsible for the J-6 set-up are responsible for all the lives lost and political prisoners who were tortured. It was all illegal, which should go without saying but it seems we have to.
And yes, fuck the dipshits who “feel required to incant the statement . . .
‘Every Jan 6th protester that engaged in violence, should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law!’” They should be beaten to the fullest extent of their asses. No peaceful MAGA supporters fought against the D-Bag Capitol Police until they were attacked.
One of Americas most Foremost Hate Group is the Southern Poverty Law Center or SPLC then there’s the DNC and their Partners in Crime the M.S. Media
Good work Daniel !!!
Thank you, sir. I didn’t realize the VOA was still an active program.
The weeds are rooted deep; I hope the new administration will wield a long-bladed root-slayer shovel.
An Afghan terrorist working for the American government?
Sorry I forgot, diversity is your strength.
Rimshot! 🥁
That was a good one 👍
Cocktail-circuit General Casey was more concerned about “our diversity becoming a casualty” after DEI major Nidal Hasan used his diversity to shoot up Fort Hood.
Hasan had telegraphed his jihadist intentions loudly, but Casey valued “diversity” uber alles; so, 14 American solders lost their lives.
If that blind fool Casey is still in power, I hope he gets sacked by President Trump (hopefully in the name of diversity 🤨)
Bareback Hasbeen Osama still refers to Hasan’s jihad at an Air Base as “workplace violence.”
“Rational is an abstraction. Man is not rational, he rationalizes.” – Daniel Greenfield
Why do you even care Mr. Greenfield? Why do you bother? You’re convinced that man isn’t rational, he rationalizes. Therefore there is no point in trying to enlighten a creature that is doomed to war, irrationality, and rationalization.
So I guess we should abolish all standards of behavior and laws? We should all be selfish psychopaths like Ayn Rand?
Ayn Rand was not a psychopath, but that is NOT the point of my comment. The point of my comment is that if man is indeed an irrational creature, doomed to irrationality, there would be no point in pursuing, freedom, liberty, and happiness. It would actually be impossible; irrational creatures can never achieve peace and happiness.
Ayn Rand was not a psychopath. She’s not! She’s not! She’s not! She’s not! She’s not! She’s not!
Sniff Sniff — — — Wa Wa wa Whahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Wahaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As a failed totalitarian, when have you ever achieved your own peace and happiness, considering all of the misery that you project each and everyday.
God forbid anyone disparage the “Queen”
Your opinion. Thanks for sharing.
“There is a name for those who hold that the only proper moral consideration is the happiness of the self; for those who view empathy and compassion as weakness; who view selfishness as the only virtue: Psychopaths.”
And the hypocrite lived off welfare and Social Security at the end of her failed and loveless life.
I may or may not go out poor but chicks are going to cry over me.
“Irrational creatures can never achieve peace and happiness.”
Category error: Only reason / rationality can give peace and happiness.
Even animals can know peace and happiness. Ask anyone who has rescued an animal.
If there is no point perhaps you should take your own advice and STFU. Perhaps it is you that isn’t rational and reasoned
Frankly I have never seen any evidence that you possess either of those qualities.
One would think that, through all of the downvotes you accrue, you would finally get the message.
From your earler post: “You don’t sound like an old geezer to me. You always sound like you’ve been condemned to be a perpetual teenager for eternity. That’s one of the major problems with America since the 1950s, nobody wants to grow up and be a grownup. It’s the Rock and Roll generation, a generation of being a teenager forever.”
Too bad you never warmed up to Rock. Or Beethoven, Mozart and their “pre-music”. You can’t even muster up your own opinions about anything. Amazingly enough you definitely sound like an old miserable geezer to me. And truly bitter one at that. And pompous, arrogant, uninformed, childish, self-involved and, possibly, the most intolerant excuse for a person on the planet. A true know nothing.
Thank God Objectivism died with the psychopathic hag and her butt-boy familiar.
Your over-broad categories of thinking ironically prevent your own clear reasoning. The mistake you make is defining “reason” as “man’s mind.” Can you not see the plain error of your presupposition? Your category error is in play here again.
Mr. Greenfield does not say man cannot BE rational, but that “rational” does not DEFINE man (or, as you believe, “man’s mind”). He assaults the core tenet of your faith, but also gently reveals your category error.
Some months ago, I argued to you that reason can be used to do evil, and gave a PragerU video about the issue. This also assaulted your core tenet because your category for “reason” also slops over into the a moral category for “good.”
Your commitment to Ayn Rand and objectivism truly makes you the most religious person commenting on this forum. And I am defining “religion” as you do: a belief in [a] god without evidence. When objectivism steps into the arena of the transcendentals, this is what happens:
Reality — that which exists — has no alternatives, no competitors, nothing “transcending” it. To embrace existence is to reject all notions of the supernatural and the mystical, including God. Ayn Rand
One can rationally attempt to understand reality, however, implied in her assumption is that man has the capability of determining all of what reality includes and there is plenty of objective evidence that this is not true.
While man views reality to the extent possible, he is neither the determinant factor of all that reality is, nor can man be the source of an inclusive, existential, rational perception of it. We continue to see man’s rational understanding of reality eclipsed by numerous factors that have and do exist in reality but are not understood by man within reality. In other words the objectivist definition of “reality is” acts a postulate of limiting reality without rationally understanding exactly what reality actually is. How is that not subjective?
Our ability to rationalize using our facilities extends out only to the edges of our intelligent capabilities to do so and we have numerous examples of intelligent mankind’s limitations and objective understanding being usurped by elements in reality we cannot fathom.
If reality is, where did reality come from? If reality has always been, then it can be defined as eternal and what first cause would there be for reality that has always existed but objectivist man cannot define?
You guys are unbelievably courageous
Just more evidence of cutural Marxism’s creep through the institutions.
VOA is now headed by Trump 47 pick Kari Lake who, like President Trump 45 had the 2022 election rigged and stolen against her to a complete idiot stooge puppet whore KKK Katie Hobbs, a twice convicted racist.
I did not say much against izzylam until after 10-7-2023 – then the tsunami of antisemitism and anti-Israel that has become fashionable and vogue
myzzylam or izzylam is a hate group and bloody murderous demonaics who will rue the day when their human body is killed in battle or die of natural causes and they end up in hell awaiting YHVH’S JUDGEMENT – unless YHVH’S JUDGEMENT occurs while racist haters are still in their human body – either way, they will not see eternity let along not have 72 virgins with them in hell!
The Commie Leftists have long been trying to make sure their dupes and useful idiots only get into the cattle cars marked for the gaslighting destination.
Their methods and successes has been remarkable – like them or not their ability to seize the minds of citizens of the wealthiest, most privileged, and safest society in the world to turn them against it amazes me.
All it takes is focusing on the tiniest grudge and expanding it using emotional manipulation, something the dupes have no defense against. We’re going on generations of people whose very identities are inextricably tied to the voice of the enemies of the USA.
David Horowitz knows it, I experienced it as well … they’re just NOT thinking.
sad but true I am well aware of this within my family. Last December I came out the back door of the family gathering just in time to hear my sister holding court with 3-4 people, nieces, nephews, other sister and saying — and she didn’t see me (the Trump) voter) coming…– she said, Anyone who voted for Trump is a racist.
All they needed was Tom Hankie Pants. Their minds are unable to think any more outside of the party program they trust. Painful within a family. Hoping and praying for change.
And yet the TDS morons who hate peace and prosperity can never say how President Trump is supposedly a racist without repeating a stupid lie they heard from the Minitrue Media or heard on “The View.” It’s like the reasons they state for their hatred of him. None of them are true. Of course every negative thing said about the D-Bags is irrefutably true.
Yes, the D-Bags and their woketards always appeal to people’s emotions rather than reason. “Hope and Change” from Brokeback Hussein Osama. “Joy” from joyless Heels Up Harris. “I just shit my pants” from Alzheimer Joe. “Don’t think. Vote!”
“Charges” of Islamophobia should be met with hearty agreement. Anyone in their right mind that doesn’t feel there is plenty wrong with Islam has not been paying attention. Which “religion” has the most violent new converts on the planet? Islam. This says volumes about what new converts are being exposed to. Certainly not peace.
When a Christian or a Jew so much as utters a rude word in public, there are outcries from co-religionists. Yet the media has to range far and wide to dig up a Muslim who is willing to condemn the atrocities that are clearly performed in the name of Islam.
Why would anyone trust a Muslim when we know they are considered virtuous when they lie to non-Muslims to promote the “faith”?
Yet, bizarrely, we have plenty of reason to distrust and wish not to have Muslims in our society when they openly admit they wish to murder us and establish a world-wide caliphate. Just recently I watched young children being interviewed in Gaza who told the reporter they longed to see all Westerners dead.
Islamophobia is self-preservation.
US taxpayers paying for VOA broadcasts is like handing them a hammer and then asking them to hit you in the head. Only the most demented left wing masochists would ever want that.
Since Trump was elected, he has chosen Kari Lake to lead VOA.
Change is a commin’!