Charles Johnson

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Charles Johnson (blogger)

Charles Foster Johnson (born April 1953) is a programmer, jazz musician and the editor and founder[1] of the right-wing political blog Little Green Footballs. Johnson also co-founded Pajamas Media in 2005[2] but was reportedly fired in 2007.[1] He is credited with producing flak that has undermined journalists or their accounts and widely criticized for producing "hate-speech"[3] that is mostly directed at Islam, Muslims and Arabs (all of which he regularly categorized under an umbrella of "Islamic extremism."[3] Following the Israeli war against Lebanon, when Johnson disseminated flak to undermine the credibility of news accounts about Israeli massacres, Johnson was bestowed a prize for "promoting Israel and Zionism."[4] Israel National News (Arutz Sheva) has referred to Johnson as a "Righteous Gentile" (he isn't Jewish) because of his support for Israel (see Ronen).[5] In 2009 Johnson publicly declared that he was abandoning his extremist right-wing views because "The American right wing has gone off the rails, into the bushes, and off the cliff. I won’t be going over the cliff with them."[6]

Descriptions of Johnson

  • Johnson's blog has been described as follows by Brendan Bernhard, an author and contributor to the right-wing blog aggregator Pajamas Media which Johnson co-founded:[7]
Although it tilts right politically, it provides a cornucopia of information about radical Islam here and abroad that ought to be of use to anyone with an interest in the subject, and Mr. Johnson edits it with intelligence and wit. ("Religion of Peace Kills 14,Wounds 3," is one of his characteristically cutting headlines.) If you believe that the war on terror is necessary, that the occupation of Iraq is ultimately generous in intent, and that the level of Muslim immigration to the West poses a serious threat, then this is surely a Web site for you.[8]
  • American-Jewish political analyst and prominent progressive blogger Richard Silverstein writes:
Charles Johnson was the epitome of the pro-Israel neocon. He could always be counted on to bash Islam and Arabs. He’s even smeared me one or two times. I saw him not as the intellectual leader of the movement, but more as the tough drill sergeant fighting the good neocon fight in the trenches.[9]
  • Following a public declaration that Johnson was parting with his extremist views, he was described as follows in the New York Times:"
By virtue of his willingness to do and share research, his personal embrace of a hawkish, populist anger and his extraordinary Web savvy, Johnson quickly turned Little Green Footballs (or L.G.F., as it is commonly known) into one of the most popular personal sites on the Web, and himself — the very model of a Los Angeles bohemian — into an avatar of the American right wing. With a daily audience in the hundreds of thousands, the career sideman had moved to the center of the stage.[3]

Little Green Footballs

According to Jonathan Dee, "A NUMBER OF SO-CALLED warblogs were born out of the post-9/11 moment"[3]and Little Green Footballs (LGF) came into being the day after 9/11 when Johnson transformed his former tech-oriented blog into a political weblog:[3]

By virtue of his willingness to do and share research, his personal embrace of a hawkish, populist anger and his extraordinary Web savvy, Johnson quickly turned Little Green Footballs (or L.G.F., as it is commonly known) into one of the most popular personal sites on the Web, and himself — the very model of a Los Angeles bohemian — into an avatar of the American right wing. With a daily audience in the hundreds of thousands, the career sideman had moved to the center of the stage.[3]

Parting with the Right

In November 2009 Johnson published a post on LGF titled "Why I Parted Ways With The Right." In it he listed 10 reasons why he no longer wanted to be affiliated with the American right including: "1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.)," "9. Anti-Islamic bigotry that goes far beyond simply criticizing radical Islam, into support for fascism, violence, and genocide (see: Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.)" and "10. Hatred for President Obama that goes far beyond simply criticizing his policies, into racism, hate speech, and bizarre conspiracy theories..."[6] Johnson's decision was welcomed by some progressives but also criticized by progressives and the Right.

Chapters

Sinking Dan Rather

From the New York Sun article:

Mr. Johnson's biggest coup so far came when, together with some other bloggers, he exposed the forged documents with which CBS's 60 Minutes sought to undermine President Bush’s claim to have served honourably in the Texas National Guard during the Vietnam War. It was Mr. Johnson who, copying the forgery from a PDF file CBS posted on its Web site, retyped the memo using Microsoft Word’s standard settings, and found that his version was identical in every detail to the one Dan Rather claimed had been typed on a manual typewriter some three decades earlier.
As he typed the first sentences and found that the lines were all breaking the same way, Mr. Johnson said he felt chills running down his spine. "In a way it’s bigger than Watergate, because Watergate wasn’t an attempt to influence an election," he told me, adding that he is still stunned by CBS’s gullibility and ineptness."It shows you the amount of desperation at work. It overrode all of their journalistic impulses. They lost all their ethics. That’s the big story -- they did it because they wanted Bush not to be elected."[8]

Undermining news about Israeli massacres in Lebanon

After the Israeli attack on Qana that killed many civilians (mostly women and children) a pernicious story about fake photographs was spread via blogs -- by LittleGreenFootballs and by Richard North in Europe. The intention of these stories was undermining the credibility of news accounts about the Israeli massacres and other depredations. For his efforts, Johnson received an award for "promoting Israel and Zionism".[10]

Affiliations

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Richard Silverstein, "CHARLES JOHNSON AXED FROM PAJAMAS MEDIA MANAGEMENT", Tikun Olam, 3 December 2007
  2. ↑ Pajamas Media, "About Us", Pajamas Media, accessed on 27 October 2010
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 JONATHAN DEE, "Right-Wing Flame War!", New York Times, 21 January 2010, accessed on 27 October 2010
  4. ↑ Israel ups the stakes in the propaganda war, Stuart Purvis, The Guardian, 20 November 2006
  5. ↑ Gil Ronen At Israel's Right Arutz Sheva, IsraelNationalNews.com, 11 May 2004, accessed 24 August 2010
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Charles Johnson, "Why I Parted Ways With The Right", Little Green Footballs, 9 November 2009, accessed on 27 October 2010
  7. ↑ Pajama's Media, Author:Brendan Bernhard", Pajamas Media, accessed on 27 October 2010
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Brendan Bernhard, The Blogger Who Helped to Dislodge Dan Rather: Little Green Footballs Was an Innocuous Web-Design Site — Then Came September 11, New York Sun, 3 February 2005. Accessed 24 August 2010 Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "Dan" defined multiple times with different content
  9. ↑ Richard Silverstein, "CHARLES JOHNSON, POLITICAL BAAL TESHUVA?", Tikun Olam, 2 December 2009
  10. ↑ Israel ups the stakes in the propaganda war, Stuart Purvis, The Guardian, 20 November 2006
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