The Sad Turnaround of Charles Johnson

As those who've read this site over the last seven years know, I was a huge fan of Charles Johnson's site Little Green Footballs. Charles fought the good fight and wasn't afraid to call Islamic terror what it was when a great many cowered due to fear of violence or due to fear of being called bigoted. I have to say that along with Glenn Reynolds and Tim Blair, Charles' blogging style and writing style had the biggest effect on what and how I write.

A year or two ago, Charles took a dark turn. He started writing daily about a Flemish right-wing group and equated them to Nazi's. He went so far as to accuse Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and Pam Geller of Atlas Shrugs of supporting the group because they attended a conference where a bigwig of the Belgian group was spoke--a conference Johnson himself was invited to but declined. From there, it went downhill quickly. Johnson made it a mission--or jihad if you will--to start calling out conservatives and worse still for a blogger, banning numerous commenters from his site. It was ugly to watch his site devolve into a site that no longer commented on events of the day but became one of attacking individuals by name and tarnishing them with a wide brush. It became personal. Those commenters who were loyal to his site but who took a dissenting view were banned and some from even reading the home page of the site. That is Charles' right but it stank of solipsism and self righteousness. Also of extreme arrogance.

He once posted something and I e-mailed rebutting him. He e-mailed me back instantly and was pretty arrogant. I proved to him that he was wrong and it didn't seem to please him too much.

That's about the time I gave up on Charles. I used to have a widget at right showing his posts and linked to him often. Hell, Charles has linked to me numerous times and aside from an Instalanche from Glenn Reynolds, which I've had several times, Charles links led to probably six of the ten biggest traffic days I've ever had. He even commented here once and challenged the left wing to bring it on.

He also went on a rampage against anti-evolution believers and went straight into the ditch. Amazingly, he called them science deniers but has now become a huge advocate for global warming when it's now clear that the "hide the decline" community has destroyed what was "science".

Anyway, I went to his site the other night and it was like I was a guy who walked into a vegan convention gnawing on a turkey leg. The commenter's don't even listen to reason or facts anymore, they seemed...shell-shocked. They are loyal to their leader and anyone who says anything remotely anti-LGF is fair game. It was embarrassing for Charles and he doesn't even see it.

Just something to get off my chest and this piece about Charles in the New York Times reminded me. It goes without saying that if Charles had been a left-winger and moved to the right the Times wouldn't have published this.

This is inside baseball to those who don't follow blogs daily but something that needed to be said.

Exit question: Does anyone get the feeling that Charles went left because he thought the nation was going left and it was a good business move? If so, he was mistaken big time as this glorious week has proven.

The aformentioned Pam Geller responds to the surprisingly even piece in the Times as does Robert Spencer.