[ April 18, 2024 ]
Here it is: the whole story of how, over the past six months, I worked to get a free speech panel at CPAC — the battles, their ensuing cowardice, and Terry Schilling, a particularly evil liar.
Co-opting my ideas (stealing, really). Terry Schilling’s organization (American Principles Project — the irony) says they’re organizing the panel anyway, without either me or Hoft. In reality, I organized the panel and gave it its focus; the APP had no hand in it. This is the height of irony: a panel on free speech from which not one, but two speakers have been banned. How can they claim to stand for free speech after dropping a speaker because of pressure from the authoritarian left? What value can a free speech panel have when two free speech leaders were banned from that panel?
The panel is now bitterly ironic. Social media censorship discussed in a heavily censored event.
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Geller: CPAC Joins the Leftist Social Media Giants in Censoring Conservatives
With less than a week to go before the event, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) finally agreed to give my organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), a room for a panel discussion on how social media is censoring conservatives.
BY PAMELA GELLER, BREITBART NEWS, February 22, 2018:
This was the culmination of a process that began last September, when I first contacted Matt Schlapp of the American Conservative Union (ACU), CPAC’s sponsoring organization, and asked to become a CPAC sponsor so that I could host an event. I was willing to pay the full price for this sponsorship. CPAC did not allow that, but months later they did finally give me a room – and then put numerous obstacles in my way, finally pulling the plug altogether.
The deal they ultimately offered me came with a number of strings attached. One of their ACU sponsors, the American Principles Project (APP), had a room it was not using and would let us use it. But even then, this would not have been an event sponsored by AFDI. CPAC would not allow that. Instead, they said that my event had to be sponsored by the APP, a group I had never heard of before.
My unfamiliarity with the APP was of no import. The issue of social media censorship was paramount — the most critical issue facing conservatives today. So it was great news. We moved forward.
In nailing down the final details with CPAC, I put up with a great deal. CPAC officials put up one roadblock after another. They gave us a room, but after we announced where the event would be, they told us that room was not available. They moved us from a room for 150 people to a room for 70.
CPAC then told us that the featured speakers at my event would have to buy tickets to get in – and tickets were not cheap, running upwards of $300. Then late Tuesday night, I received a call from Terry Schilling, the ACU board member who runs the APP, demanding that I remove one of the speakers from the panel. I refused.
A panel on free speech is not going to drop a speaker for saying something that offended the left.
It was Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft they wanted banned, because of his post on the Florida shooting, arguing that some of the pro-gun control students who got so much media attention had likely been coached. For that, Hoft was attacked by the likes of Chelsea Clinton and Paul Krugman – and CPAC folded.
Whenever a leftist is attacked, the left circles the wagons and defends its own. Whenever the left attacks a conservative, the establishment right throws that conservative to the wolves.
Yet our panel had generated enormous interest. It was the most talked about panel at CPAC. The announcement on Breitbart had thousands of comments.
Schilling told Breitbart News that the cancellation was “completely Pamela’s call and completely avoidable.”
Yet by banning a speaker, APP effectively canceled the panel. They would not allow the panel without him, and they knew that I would never do the panel without him. They made it unavoidable.
Schilling also said: “I’m scrambling right now to put together a new panel on this, because she sabotaged it.”
What is he talking about? They never had a panel. They had an empty room. That’s how it was offered to me – as an empty room in which I could put a panel discussion. It was a small available space that came with APP’s CPAC sponsorship package. It was offered this past Monday. APP had nothing going on, “no new panel to put together.” I organized the entire event.
The Breitbart article further quoted Schilling: “‘I didn’t want the entire conversation to be about Jim Hoft. And guess what? Now it is.’” Yet the APP signed off on Jim when I sent Schilling the entire speaker list on Monday. Even worse, Breitbart reports that Schilling “acknowledged that Hoft had helped his father, Robert Schilling, in his successful run for Congress in 2010 — notably, by exposing the incumbent Democrat’s lack of regard for the U.S. Constitution — but said that ‘personalities’ should not be the focus of the panel.”
Schilling added: “This has nothing to do with CPAC. This was my call.”
Schilling is CPAC — he is an ACU board member. He and Dan Schneider cobbled together this last minute solution. And it was Schilling who made this all about Hoft, when Tucker Carlson and others have pointed out the same things Hoft has. CPAC is not going to throw Tucker under the bus. But Hoft and me? Sure.
This is just the latest in how CPAC has worked to sabotage true conservatives. Longtime Geller Report and AFDI members are familiar with my decade-long struggle with CPAC. This year’s imbroglio is unlike how the conference has shut me out in previous years. After I hosted wildly successful events there every year from 2008 through 2012, they began to bar me, coming up each year with new excuses. Last year they even told me that I was being denied because of the “negative press coverage” I had previously given them over being barred in the years before that.
It’s ironic. In a conversation last week with Dan Schneider of the ACU, I asked that we bury the hatchet and said that we had to unify and have a “big tent” if we were to defeat our common enemy. I said that of course we won’t agree on all issues, but that’s not who we are – that’s who the left is, marching in collectivist lockstep. I was respectful, deferential even. I was only concerned with the mission — to get this essential message to the grassroots. Those of us who have been at the front of the firing lines in the information battle-space must communicate with like-minded lovers of freedom — we must build an army. What could possibly be the motive of the ACU in blocking that?
Schneider told me that there were four qualifiers for acceptance and I passed them all, except that I had been critical of CPAC within the past year. I said that was a year ago, after the last CPAC. I was a couple of days before the one-year deadline. And it couldn’t be that CPAC did not permit dissent. He said of course it does, but CPAC didn’t like my “choice of words.”
And clearly, with all the roadblocks they constructed to make sure my event this year wouldn’t happen, they still don’t like dissent.
This issue — the suppression of the freedom of speech on social media — affects all of us on the right. In fact, it is the most critical issue of the day: if we are stripped of the means to communicate with one another, it’s all over. It was free people speaking freely on social media, outside of the reach of the media establishment, that got Donald Trump elected President of the United States.
The Democrats were onto the power of social media with Obama’s 2008 election, and here we are ten years later and the RINOs are still fighting not against the left, but against the most effective leaders on the right. The work my organization and I do is critical and singular. It addresses the most serious issues of our time. CPAC should be inviting us, not banning us.
We cannot accept the silencing of our colleagues. We can disagree, of course, and debate. But banning and shutting us down? No, that’s what the left does. That is not who we are.
Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of The Geller Report and author of the bestselling book, FATWA: Hunted in America, as well as The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook.
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18 Comments
D
6 years ago
Thanks Pamela.
6 years ago
They are RINO’s no different than dems.
Did you know Like facebook , twitter, even Google has joined Islamofascist gang http://tinyurl.com/lgp28rs
They are either funded(muslims holding stake in their company) or paid Millions to shill for Islam and run down/smear those who oppose Islam.
To censor conservative and Anti-jihadi news to push the islamisation agenda of the Left/Liberal/jihadis funded by saudi/qataris.
6 years ago
Will they be discussing how great it is to raise the debt ceiling, explode the deficit, and increase gas taxes to try to stop it? There are no more conservatives. They are all afraid to speak out on anything Trump.
D
6 years ago
Is Grover Norquist head of CPAC? As a supporter of Islamic terror with a pali wife, grover Norquist would have a strong incentive to silence Pamela.
6 years ago
I think I can understand, and even respect, Pamela’s outrage at having “her baby” sabotaged in the manner it has been, particularly given that people for whom she has no respect are now raising “her baby” and taking credit for it. However, I strongly suspect she would vociferously object to having her name associated with the panel as it is presently constituted, as it has been re-shaped from how she, the fountainhead behind it, envisioned it.
Nevertheless, I think I can understand the motive behind CPAC’s desire to remove Jim Hoft from the panel. If his very presence could have become a distraction from the important issue being raised, I find it easy to understand why CPAC would have wanted him to be disinvited. Suppose, for example, one of the panel members had come under attack for sexual harassment, such as using that time-honored technique of the “casting couch” for employment purposes. Pretty sleazy, I would say (hat tip Tippi Hedren, aka “Marni”), but it would not have direct bearing on the person’s expertise on the matter of freedom of speech. An unfortunate situation all around, one for which I don’t have a completely satisfying answer.
ATTN Goon Squad: Don’t bother to respond to this.
6 years ago
Apparently, they ARE the left.
6 years ago
People who run these groups are power hungry control freaks who get off on petty disputes. Used to see this in objectivist circles and libertarian groups back when. They are usually not focused on the problem but on control and making money out of people. Making a problem where there was none allows them to feel important and that they are doing something. They have to do something or they are not exercising power.
6 years ago
CPAC and their FOX monkeyboys have been the LEFT for a long time
6 years ago
I sense a lack of willingness to confront opposition from the opposition. If Chelsea Clinton, and others, can sway CPAC to abandon a guest, they seem to be sympathetic to the wrong ears.
6 years ago
The Conservative movement has gone far left, lead by Libertarian infiltrators, to appease the masses. True Conservatives are now called bigots, racist and worse for being pro-life, pro-family, pro-marriage, defining ‘marriage’ as between one man and one woman, acknowledging your genes and anatomy decide if you are male or female, etc.
6 years ago
THEY do not want the TRUTH to be known. They have NO DESIRE for it. It will ruin their plans for the New World Odor coming from TURD world countries.
Understand this. They have NO DESIRE to help the TURD world immigrants. NO, their SOLE purpose is to BRING your countries down.
They are very WICKED people you are dealing with. How they manage to control your government, your MSM, your schools, I will never figure it out.
Only to say, lieberalism has made you unable to discern right from wrong, good from evil and NO, they are NOT like us (speaking of TURD world immigants).
D
6 years ago
For that, Hoft was attacked by the likes of Chelsea Clinton….
Who is that?
NOBODY.
Am I supposed to believe that there are more CLINTONS in my future?
NO WAY
And Grugman is poop.
D
6 years ago
Wondering what Pamela thinks about the censoring of Brian Camencker from participating at CPAC ?
6 years ago
This is a continuation of the power struggle going on in our society on both sides.
Both the “Conservatives” and “Progressives” have factions that are fighting for control of the message each side wants to be heard and it all comes down to who will be offended or in support of the message. (Read how will the money train be affected, will someone we don’t agree with 100 % gain recognition, or he/she “dissed” me once so I will silence them.
Thank God for the alternative media and the internet were people like me can get access to every side of the conversation imaginable and use my own “critical thinking skills” to decide who/what to believe and support if I wish to do so.
Keep up the fight Pam!
Never give in–never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
Sir Winston Churchill
6 years ago
As a long and dedicated reader of Pamella Geller I am confused about Tim Holt and his relationship with Pamela.
Pamela is often the sole source of Truth regarding muslim atrocities and the danger they poise to America and Freedom.
From all I can find on Tim he is at best a poorly regarded blogger, and I thought CPAAC came off rather well.
Someone please help me here.
On the subject of the leftist Miss Sheppie Smith, B. Bauer, and especially comrade jaun willym&ms Fox should laterally transfer them to CN&N.
6 years ago
Those panels are useless. Even social media is useless. People aren’t stupid and have already decided which way to vote. So the key is to get everyone out to vote.
6 years ago
Is there any such thing as directing the Repubs any more? Today I am looking at the Omnibus spending package. Out of conrol people. Out of our control government.
