| Jihad Jane Attacks Frontpage Writer |  |
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 10, 2005
Posted on 05/10/2005 5:39:00 AM PDT by SJackson
Prof. Jane Christensen and her disciples are furious I questioned her conspiracy theories about 9/11.
My Frontpagemag article about Prof. Jane Christensen's course at N.C. Wesleyan College, which uses conspiracy mongers' websites to argue that the U.S. government attacked its own citizens Sept. 11, brought upon me the most extreme--and telling--denouncements imaginable from the professor, her websites and their acolytes. I have been accused of everything from lying to collaborating with the CIA or the Bush administration, and not above suspicion of communism, of Trotskyism, of being a "neo-con," of neo-Nazism, of Zionism. Less measured critics assured me that I was going to hell.
To be sure, not all my e-mail messages have been so vicious. A very few were supportive, and a very few disagreed with me respectfully. I hope they understand I'm not talking about them here. They were, however, a distinct minority, which, not coincidentally, does not include the professor herself.
Christensen now calls me a "neo-Nazi" on her website. That's an interesting invective coming from someone who calls the Holocaust "the greatest hoax of all," who blames world ills on "Zionism," whose course readings includes a chapter by a man who was "a major influence on Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh," and whose website urges people to "JOIN The International Solidarity Movement" and includes links to "Up Against Israel's Apartheid Wall," "Israeli Terrorism," "Israeli Spies in US," "Israelis Planning Targetted [sic] Kills in US," "US Arms Israel with NUKES," and a quotation supposedly by Ariel Sharon that "WE CONTROL AMERICA." When she originally changed her web page to say it was "under constant surveillance by political extremists and neo-Nazis," I had merely assumed the professor was highlighting her readership.
In an April 25 article in the Durham (N.C.) Herald-Sun, Christensen said criticism of her course was "a war by the extreme right wing motivated by the Zionists to quash academic freedom on campus." Note that Christensen immediately suspected a Zionist conspiracy. Apparently, there can be no legitimate criticism of academia from anyone concerned about its state.
In her response to this writer, Christensen wrote from the same perspective as the others accusing me of "hiding the truth." She wrote:
"Why didn't you mention the stuff about NORAD standing down? Or the article detailing the breakfast meeting in the Capitol between Porter Goss, Bob Graham, and Pakistan's Chief of Intelligence who just happened to have delivered the money to Mohamed Atta? What about the Jews from JINSA article? Don't you want you [sic] readers to know who's callaing [sic] the shots inside the Beltline?"
Sampling from each website wasn't good enough for her--there had to be a Zionist-driven reason for every link on those sites I didn't report on. (Well, two can play that game -- what about the omitted links that she didn't question me about? What could she be trying to hide in not wanting me to write about them?)
Like Christensen, my other correspondents tended to confirm rather than counter my charge of "kooky conspiracy-mongering." It had seemed to me upon viewing Christensen's recommended sites that reporting on Sept. 11 was being done enthymematically, with the unstated assumption being, All things related to Sept. 11 occurred because of the Bush administration/Zionists/Global elite's quest for world domination. Take this unstated assumption A with any story B, and one arrives at conclusion C: B is related to Sept. 11; therefore, B is a part of the Bush administration/Zionists/Global elite's quest for world domination.
Accusing me, as so many did, of willful collaboration with the CIA fit my initial impression of Christensen and her admirers. In reading my article, they started from the conclusion that I wrote it as part of the Bush administration/Zionists/Global elite's quest for world domination. Similarly, those asking me whether I knew I was helping the CIA or the powers that be seemed to be asking instead whether I knew the unstated premise above. Those accusing me of Trotskyism, being a neo-con, treason, etc. are essentially accusing me of collaboration, given their beliefs expressed on those websites and frequently in e-mail about those groups' ties to Bush, the Zionists et al.
For some reason, others' former or imagined communism seemed far more offensive to them than Christensen's links to the Stalinist front group International A.N.S.W.E.R., her recommended daily reading of the World Socialist website, and her listing of "Marx (everything)" among her "Best Reads."
Christensen and my vociferous correspondents proclaim they know the "truth" about Sept. 11. Surprisingly, however, their tack of making bizarre, unfounded accusations to me about myself has not persuaded me that they are in possession of the truth about anything. If they cannot reason their way to the truth about me, a subject upon which I am perhaps the world's leading expert, but instead wind up 180 degrees out of phase with reality in that particular matter, then I am exceedingly doubtful they would be trustworthy at all as guides into any other subject matter. Call it a hunch.
My article, meanwhile, made its way to Christensen's favorite websites for ritual denouncement. Libertythink.org's response included an illustration of me as a pen-chomping Trotsky. Alex Jones of infowars.com and prisonplanet.com had several criticisms of my piece. For example, Jones wrote that prisonplanet.com did "not exactly" say that, as I wrote, "the election of 2004 was obviously 'staged,'" because the U.S. is a "'dictatorship' where people are 'slaves.'" Nevertheless, the site still hocks Jones' documentary entitled "American Dictators: Documenting the Staged Election of 2004," whose advertisement opens with "In a dictatorship there is no choice, the elections are controlled, the police are the military, fear equals control, speech is suppressed, the economy is looted, the people are slaves." Considering that the title presumes a dictatorship and controlled elections, the implication that people are slaves is quite clear.
I understand Jones' question of why I said Christensen was "dressed as a masked terrorist" on her website. When I wrote that comment, Christensen's site had a picture of masked people in black holding guns, under which she had "Jane T. Christensen (on the left)." She has since removed the comment, but here is a screenshot of her page before the change. I told Jones about this, but to the best of my knowledge he has not acknowledged that change or my defense.
To Jones' apparent surprise, I accepted an invitation to defend my column on his radio show. Just before my introduction on the show, Jones made a crack about being "CIA funded, like some of these writers are." While on the show I twice sought from Jones whether he had any problem with the factual matter of my column, and he had none other than my juxtaposition of his site with the other sites listed in Christensen's syllabus. Jones accused me of trying to make his site look bad by lumping it in with the others. I tried unsuccessfully to explain to him that it was Christensen who had made the objectionable associations; I had reported only on what I found in her syllabus. Jones said I was using a typical mainstream media ploy against him, used by such outfits as Vanity Fair and several others -- that is, lumping me in with them as part of an alleged mainstream media conspiracy against him.
Despite my explanations that the main focus of the article obviously wasn't him or his site, Jones continued to press the point that I was attempting to tar him by association with websites that write about fluoride and UFOs and the like. I did ask him why that day his site had an article headlined "Bigfoot caught on video?" to which he responded in a somewhat calmer tone that sometimes his site carries articles from the popular press (and this was from WorldNetDaily, I think).
Jones also struggled with a reference I made in my article to a character on "The Simpsons." I compared Christensen's syllabus' comment that the course "is outside the scope of traditional 'political science' in many ways" and "is 'unscientific' in that it relies much on eyewitness accounts and speculation" to the character Brad Goodman's comment in favor of his work as a self-help guru, "I don't have any credentials -- or training." I saw a similarity between the Christensen and Goodman proclaiming their lack of professional standards as a badge of honor. Since the Simpsons' charlatan had gone on to say "but I have a Ph.D. in pain," I wrote that Christensen's course "doesn't have political science -- or a scientific approach -- but it has a Ph.D. in kooky conspiracy mongering."
Jones, however, presented the Simpsons reference to his listeners and readers as the only source I used in my article. Of course I had clearly presented my sources (Christensen's web page, her syllabus, each individual site she listed and samples of what was viewable on them April 4, 2005, etc.).
Jones was adamant about two points: First, that everything his sites carry is from mainstream news outlets. As far as I know, apart from popular-press excursions into possible Bigfoot sightings, that is true. Again, however, each of those constitutes only one leg of the syllogism--the other, of course, being the assumed grand conspiracy.
Second, that he had the better argument. Almost from the start of the interview and continuing throughout, he declared unquestionable victory over me. This despite the fact that he admitted finding no factual errors in my article. Such chest-thumping played well with his audience, of course -- much more so than my mentioning Ockham's Razor, the limitations of post hoc reasoning, the well-known statistician's caution that correlation isn't necessarily causation, the ancient English concept of coincidence, the non sequitur, and other tools of healthy skepticism (I wish I had remembered to add the Procrustean bed). Instead, Jones twisted my advocacy for skepticism into his charge that I was a sucker of the New World Order.
And that, at bottom, is the problem with Jones, Christensen and their ilk. Their worldview makes no allowance for initial misreporting in the confusion in the midst of a national disaster, none for simple human error, none for short-sighted human planning out of everyday self-interest, none for the manifold obvious alternative interests striving for power in the halls of government that would publicize any scandalous behavior for their own gain, none for mere correlation, none for the possibility that some things could be unrelated, none for a person's politics to change over time, and none for a skeptic to be intellectually honest. Certainly it makes no allowance whatsoever for skepticism toward what would have to be history's greatest coordination of governments, individual government actors, media, militaries, opposition parties, citizens, and even nominal enemies. No, there is only sensational plot-hatching. It is all conspiracy, all the time.
When it comes to these Manichean conspiracy peddlers, you’re wither with them or against them: Either you believe that there's a grand conspiracy of global domination, as manifested by the massive, U.S.-and-Israel-orchestrated hoax called 9/11. Or you’re a part of it. One can of course disagree with this fanatical typology. But be prepared. Hell hath no fury like far-leftist conspiracy mongers scorned.
This isn't the same college Hillary went to, is it??
I never understood why insane sociopaths were allowed to teach.
The Reign of Jane has Churchill Looking Sane--Jihad Jane and the Jews
Web site stirs up criticism [Jihad Jane of NC Wesleyan]
Jihad Jane and the Jews (looney lefty of the day alert)
Courtesy of JWinNC
President of Wesleyan College, Ian D.C. Newbould -- INewbould@ncwc.edu
Board of Trustees 2004 - 2005:
Thomas A. Betts, Jr., Chairman, tbetts@centura.com
David Oettinger, Jr., Secretary, doettinger@docpa.com
Edward F. Hill, II, nedhill@nccumc.org
BTTT
The only thing that will impact the crazies on campuses, is the donor base - much as the left claims to be above asking for money, their hands are out (while their mouths continue to insult the givers and everyone who doesn't subscribe to their kooky ideas).
Can only offer that for those that contribute to this Alma Mater and others, where this treasonous and schizo radicalism is shared. . .listen up; and close your checkbook.
5.56mm
Hillary went to Wellesley, best known today as a producer of angry lesbians. (Although even in that measure it takes a back seat to Smith).
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
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