I won't be at CPAC this year. Every year AFDI organizes a must-see event, addressing issues that the Grover Norquist/Suhail Khan cabal refuse to address (jihad, sharia, the war on freedom in the West).
This year, I applied to speak and was ignored. I tried to get a room for an AFDI event, "The War on Free Speech," and was ignored. So, for the first time in five years, I won't be at CPAC. Last year Suhail Khan bragged out loud that he (and his other operatives) had successfully kept Robert Spencer and me from being invited to speak. He went so far as to warn people not to attend our events or read our books.
In several articles I took on Grover Norquist and his powerful influence over CPAC, most notably here and here. As soon as I published my Newsmax column concerning his perfidious influence at CPAC, my Newsmax column was taken down and my name and picture were removed from the Newsmax page..... it was two slots away from Grover's. My weekly column never appeared at Newsmax again. It was axed.
Now this. I might add, every AFDI event at CPAC was standing room only. We turned people away every year.
Check out this Breitbart article -- and read the comments.
"CPAC Turns Away Pamela Geller" Breitbart, March 2, 2013
For the last four years, Pamela Geller of AtlasShrugs.com and the American Freedom Defense Initiative have held events at CPAC featuring guests she invites to discuss the influence of Islamism on America. But this year, the American Conservative Union (ACU) has no room for Geller or her message.
In 2009, she brought Geert Wilders, who is the head of the third largest party in the Netherlands and has spoken out against the Islamization of his country.
In 2010 she held an event that her organization, The American Freedom Defense Initiative, hosted, titled "Jihad: The Political Third Rail", with speakers like Allen West, Wafa Sultan, Simon Deng, Anders Gravers, and Steve Coughlin.
In 2011, she hosted an event discussing the Ground Zero Mosque with 9/11 families. In 2012, the event was titled "Islamic Law in America."
In years past, the events were standing room only thanks to their popularity, but that apparently was not enough to counter pressure brought to bear from somewhere to exclude Geller’s message.
Geller and her coworkers recently won a court battle allowing them to post ads that countered the #Myjihad ad campaign that posited that jihad was a peaceful word. Yet despite the law's defense of her rights, the ACU will not stand up for her against critics.
Geller explained the intention of her advertisements in a statement to Breitbart News:
Hamas-CAIR's ad campaign is a psyop.“#MyJihad” is a cynical, misleading, and deceptive campaign designed to distract from and obscure the true meaning of jihad that Muslims the world over understand and all too many act upon. They're attempting to fool Americans into thinking that jihad is about getting in your exercise and making friends.
My ads, in contrast, tell the truth about the jihad that too many Muslims believe in and act upon, and the only jihad that Americans need to be concerned about. They're designed to tell the truth about jihad and lay bare CAIR's deceptions and lies.
There have been over 20,000 jihad attacks since 9/11, each one with the imprimatur of a Muslim cleric. And so I created a jihad campaign speaking about the true meaning of jihad. Our new campaign focuses on how jihadists really use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism. It uses actual quotes by jihadis and Islamic supremacists, including Osama bin Laden and Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as well as statements from Hamas TV and one of the victims of the Fort Hood jihad massacre.
One ad depicts Osama bin Laden and the burning Twin Towers along with a bin Laden quote explaining why he took down the Twin Towers: “The first thing we are calling you to is Islam.” Another quotes an eyewitness to the jihad mass murders of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, noting that he was shouting “Allahu akbar” as he murdered 13 Americans at Fort Hood. Another quotes a Hamas TV music video including the lyric, “Killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah.” A fourth quotes Times Square jihad car bomber Faisal Shahzad saying that jihad involving “weaponry” was “an obligation and duty in Islam on every Muslim.”
This usage of jihad as killing non-Muslims is much more influential and widespread among Muslims worldwide than the benign and whitewashed understanding of it being pushed by Hamas-CAIR. Also, the fact that some Muslims don’t think of jihad as involving violence does not cancel out the fact that many do. Our AFDI campaign shines the light of truth to break through the fog of CAIR’s deceptions.
UPDATE: Donald Douglas has a great piece on this here.
These events were the freakin' pinnacle of the conference. Sheesh. What is wrong with this world? Now Pamela's banned? Unbe-freakin'-lievable.
Freedom Post decries CPAC for "closing the door on Geller" here.
UPDATE: Theo Spark asks, "Pamela's events were the freakin' pinnacle of the conference. Sheesh. What is wrong with this world? Now Pamela's banned?"
BRAND NEW Geller E-Book Available Now! Freedom or Submission: On the Dangers of Islamic Extremism & American Complacency - Get it!
