Charles Johnson Versus the Rightosphere

Like the vast majority of progressives, I stopped paying any attention whatsoever to Charles Johnson’s Little Green Footballs blog some time ago. But it had a reputation as the wingnuttiest of right-wing blogs. So much so that it inspired the Little Green Footballs or Late German Fascists? quiz. But Dave Weigel reports that more recently there’s been a schism in the “anti-jihad” movement, as many bloggers have joined forces with racist far-right European political parties and Johnson’s distanced himself from that effort, in turn earning the wrath of his former friends:

“Some people at that summit in Belgium were not people we should have been associated with,” Johnson said, pointing out that since 2007 the terrorism-focused conservative bloggers have become supporters of Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who wants to outlaw Islam in his country. “Some of these people outright want to ban Islam from the United States, which I think is crazy, completely nuts. That’s not something we do in this country. These people will outright defend banning the Koran or deporting Muslims. That’s popular with the Geller/Spencer crowd.”

When they talk about Johnson today, the rest of the terrorism-focused bloggers alternate between anger and regret. He has smeared them, they say, and according to Dymphna he’s “destroyed a lot of networking that was beginning to emerge” between American and European critics of Islamic extremism. “He’s really gone off the deep end,” Geller said, pointing to Johnson’s more and more frequent criticisms of creationists, such as the attack on the anti-evolution, Glenn Beck-inspired event, which made the host angry enough to lash out at LGF on his show. “He’s a leftist blogger now.”

“Leftist” now apparently is identical to belief in uncontroversial scientific facts.