I have to say I'm far less surprised by Little Green Footballs reactionary blogger Charles Johnson's denunciation of the American right than, say, Pam Spaulding is. First off, as Steve Benen notes, Johnson has been denouncing the tea party movement for some time now, and broke with bloggers even more fervently Islamophobic than himself, like Robert Spencer, long ago.
More important, though, Johnson was never a movement conservative. Take a look at the Little Green Footballs archives from August 2001. It's largely a blog about Web design and photography. The most political it gets is a post denouncing Iranian torture. September, however, saw Charles Johnson break into the kind of anti-Muslim, terrorism-obsessed style that earned him his reputation. The idea of 9/11 breaking writers into a different ideological posture is overused, but Johnson was not even primarily a writer before the attacks. In a manner almost reminiscent of Joe the Plumber, he saw an event larger than himself and turned it into a career as a right-wing ideologue, despite being previously apolitical.
So it's more than a little ironic that the rise of a new generation of right-wing, know-nothing everymen has finally driven Johnson away from the movement. Particularly, coming from a blogger who loves to mock Islam by referring to it as "the Religion of Peace" while crediting it with suicide bombings, a condemnation of those whose "anti-Islamic bigotry ... goes far beyond simply criticizing radical Islam" sounds mighty rich indeed. But if nothing else, Johnson's case should serve as a warning to the right about relying on people like Johnson who are motivated less by deeply held political beliefs than by an apparent epiphany, capable of being reversed at any time. Apart from his sudden, belligerent reaction to the events of September 11, 2001, Johnson had no strong political philosophy to spread. When that reaction gave way to a clearheaded assessment of the movement he had joined, his value to the right dissipated almost immediately.
--Dylan Matthews
