Stanford’s Emily Wilder issues “clarification” of her libel of Robert Spencer, keeps the libel intact
Here is the latest development on the latest libel of me in the Leftist propaganda rag/laboratory for budding establishment media “journalists,” the Stanford Daily. The author of the article I discussed here, Emily Wilder, who had written that I was among speakers (the others unnamed) who “subject [Stanford students] to death threats and harassment,” has now appended this to her original article:
An update from Wilder, July 26 at 2 p.m.: I would like to clarify that I am not directly accusing Robert Spencer of issuing death threats to members of community, but rather that members of the community received death threats immediately following the publication of pieces attacking students on his website, Jihad Watch. These death threats were a result of exposure on Spencer’s website.
There are a number of things wrong with this:
1. Wilder asserts, again without providing any evidence, that Stanford students received death threats. There is actually no published indication that this is true. If Wilder can produce police reports regarding these threats, then her claim could be credible. As it stands, there is no evidence that any Stanford student received any death threats at all. Given Wilder’s numerous factually false claims about Israeli “atrocities” in her original piece, there is no reason to take her word for it or trust her on this claim.
2. The statement that “these death threats were a result of exposure on Spencer’s website,” a classic example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, keeps the central libel intact: the implication that I am some kind of thug who goes around menacing innocent people, such that threats and violence follow in my wake. In reality, while I have received hundreds of death threats and there have been two attempts to murder me (one by jihadis and one by a Leftist), I’ve never threatened anyone, or called for any violence, or approved of any violence.
3. Emily Wilder’s claim that Stanford students were threatened with death as a result of my “pieces attacking students” at Jihad Watch strikes at the very heart of what free discourse actually is. What really happened was this: Stanford students attacked me at the Stanford Daily and the Stanford Review. I responded at Jihad Watch, answering their claims point-by-point. This is what Wilder characterizes as “attacking students” — engaging them in rational discourse (which is clearly not just out of fashion, but entirely forgotten at Stanford).
Now she is asserting that Stanford students received death threats because I criticized Stanford students (she doesn’t make it clear whether it was the students I allegedly “attacked” or others that received these supposed threats). So presumably I am not to write anything critical about Stanford students even when they attack me, as that could result in death threats. If one follows Wilder’s “reasoning” to its logical conclusion, no one should ever criticize anything, because the criticized person could get death threats. But then again, she feels free to level wild false accusations against me, because I oppose jihad terror and support Israel, and doesn’t seem in the least concerned that I could be threatened or killed because of her criticisms. So the upshot is: Leftists may speak and criticize those who are not Leftists, but their victims are not allowed to respond or to speak at all.
This is the logic of totalitarianism and oppression. And that is where the Left is tending, both on campus and off.
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