So the UK Daily Telegraph’s Damian “Latin Mass Debate” Thompson who published the claim that Muslim hordes had laid siege to Liverpool Hospital has subsequently recanted. He writes:
Actually, Islamic radicalism is growing in Australia – but that doesn’t make the Dhimmi Watch story true. Why have no doctors, nurses or patients from the hospital come forward with eyewitness accounts?
Come on, Damian. Don’t give up so easily. You have to do better than that if you want to be taken seriously as one of the brave bloggers confronting the “global campaign of fundamentalist Muslims”. Why not try something like this:
Actually, Islamic radicalism is growing in Australia. Why have no doctors, nurses, police, office staff, cleaners, security guards, orderlies, ambulance drivers, taxi drivers, journalists, politicians, passing motorists or patients from the hospital come forward with eyewitness accounts? Because the majority of the Australian population has succumbed to dhimmitude, that’s why.
That’s the sort of quality commentary we expect to see from you in the future, Thompson.
Instead, he concedes that what he posted is almost certainly a load of piffle; although it’s the fault of the intertubes and the ‘dynamics’ of the blogosphere:
The dynamics of blogging are different from those of newspapers; stories circulate faster and the passing on of rumour unearths scandals that are indeed ignored by “msm”, to use the internet’s smug shorthand for mainstream media. But untrue rumours can poison the public domain. I’ve just published a book arguing that point, and on this occasion I didn’t practise what I preached.
Interestingly, Robert Spencer’s Dhimmi Watch — Thompson’s source — have completely removed the article from their website (but here’s the archive from Google’s cache). However, sadly, no retraction yet from the prestigious and universally trusted Assyrian International News Agency who recast the anonymous rant as a news report.
So where did this silly story of a horde of Muslims and tattooed non-Muslims led by an Egyptian taxi driver come from? Well, it seems it originates with our old friend Darrin Hodges who, having made Dhimmi Watch look like dhummies and led Thompson to spread “counterknowledge”, has hastily edited his post from January 25 to include the following:
I will be contacting my source to query them over apparent factual error in regards to the timing with Ramadan.
This particularly sordid episode is instructive because, as Bertrand Russell famously noted, “what a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index to his desires.” And the willingness of many of these figures to publish and promote the myth of the so-called “siege of Liverpool hospital” without even bothering to consider its veracity provides a useful insight into their real desires and motivations.