The headline on the Florida Independent on February 15, 2011 blares, “West Meets with Head of Anti-Muslim Group ‘Act for America’” by Virginia Chamlee. The Florida Independent is a liberal blog that glorifies progressive ideology and dismisses perfectly legitimate independent/conservative ideas as "right-wing."
Ms. Chamlee's piece is not even worthy of being called an 'article,' it is really just a hateful, blog posting. First of all, to dismiss "Act for America" as an "anti-Muslim group" is both unprofessional and prejudiced. Act for America is a reputable 501c4 organization, founded by Lebanese counter-terrorism expert and New York Times bestselling author Brigitte Gabriel. Ms. Gabriel has remarkable credentials and has addressed members of the United States Congress, the Pentagon, the Joint Forces Staff College, the U.S. Special Operations Command, the U.S. Asymmetric Warfare group, the FBI and many others. She is a regular guest analyst on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and various radio stations across America.
But according to Ms. Chamlee's blog posting, "[Brigitte] Gabriel's views are unarguably extreme." Here is her explanation: "Shortly after [Act for America] penned a 20-page report accusing him [Dr. Parvez Ahmed] of having ties to Islamic-extremist groups, an area mosque [in Florida] was pipe-bombed. Though no one was hurt, and no suspects were ever identified, many thought that the timing was more than mere coincidence." What? Ms. Chamlee accused a counter-terrorism expert of domestic terrorism. No journalist working at a reputable publication or Website would make such a libelous claim. It is clear that Ms. Chamlee's goal is to attack Ms. Gabriel's legitimacy and brand her as an uneducated, irrelevant loudmouth.
This blog posting is a hit-piece, intended to defame Ms. Gabriel and Act for America, certainly—but it is really directed against Congressman Allen West. The fact that he is meeting with Ms. Gabriel's organization is the article's focus. Ever since his nomination by the Florida Republican Party in 2007, Mr. West has been vocally condemned and slandered by liberal African-American groups; he has even been called racist. Many liberal groups believe that he and other African-American conservatives are illegitimate for taking stances against welfare and affirmative action.
At a Town Hall meeting in Florida on July 16, 2010, Mr. West said, "My father was a lifetime member of the NAACP...the purpose of the NAACP is to improve the conditions within the black community, not to be a political hack-job group, and they have now gotten outside of their own mandates." This statement was in response to the NAACP’s inflammatory, and poorly-written "report" on racism and extremism within the Tea Party—and NAACP President Ben Jealous' subsequent outrageous statements during his media tour. Mr. Jealous frequently accuses conservative groups of racism, then demands that they condemn each other and subsequently spreads rumors about their leadership.
On October 20, 2010, CNN's extremely-liberal poster-boy anchor, Anderson Cooper, famously challenged Mr. Jealous, questioning the NAACP's own biases in calling the Tea Parties 'racist' and 'extremist.' Mr. Cooper also called the NAACP's partner organization, The Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, "clearly a left-wing group," and suggested that they have "a complete liberal agenda that's anti-Tea Party." Mr. Jealous' best retort was insisting that the NAACP and liberal groups were not politically motivated in labeling conservatives as 'racists'...because many of their activists have won awards from liberal institutions. Mr. West responded: "it is this duplicitous hypocrisy which allows me to state that the NAACP is shamefully now a liberal racist enabler. The upcoming mid-term elections have the Democratic Party in certain peril. Therefore, they have turned to their tactic of first and last resort, race baiting."
Mr. West wrote an editorial for Big Government.com on July 19, 2010, in which he stated that "victimization mentality has taken root in the black community resulting in astronomical unemployment rates, high incarceration rates, appalling murder rates, the breakdown of the black family, and embarrassing teen pregnancy rates." The fact of the matter is Mr. West is deeply committed to his country and to civil rights. He is on the same side, when it comes to caring for the welfare of black Americans, as the NAACP and (left-leaning) African American groups. If they could only see beyond their myopic bias against conservatives, they would realize this.
-Ben Sassoon is a student of International Affairs at George Washington University.
