Fox News host Megyn Kelly contradicted herself in an NPR interview by defending Pamela Geller's right to hold the 2015 "Draw Muhammad" contest, while at the same time calling Geller "hateful" and a "provocateur," contends the event's co-organizer and co-sponsor, Robert Spencer.
On his Jihad Watch site, Spencer said that what Kelly characterized as "hateful" in the interview Wednesday is "precisely the defense of the freedom of speech that she says is justified."
Kelly, stating Donald Trump and the First Amendment are "not a beautiful match," noted she criticized the real estate billionaire when he condemned the May 3, 2015, event in Garland, Texas, which was covered on location by WND.
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"And, I mean, I called him out on this back before he even declared his candidacy because he was going after Pam Geller, who there's no question is a hateful person, who held this Draw Muhammad contest down in Texas," Kelly said.
"Remember this? And they got attacked by two terrorists," she continued. "Now she's a provocateur, and she's not a fan of anyone who's Muslim from the sound of what she says; but this is America and she has the right to say those things. And she has the right to have a contest like that. And he was one of the ones out there arguing she invited her own attempted murder."
Spencer noted Geller's point "wasn't about drawing Muhammad at all but about defending the freedom of speech and standing up against violent intimidation."
Yet, he said, Kelly "says she is 'hateful' and a 'provocateur.'”
"One may say that Kelly is simply defending Geller’s freedom of speech while disapproving of how she did it, in line with the old adage 'I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,'" Spencer said.
He said that applies in the case of Westboro Baptist Church and its calls, for example, to “Pray For More Dead Soldiers,” but it doesn’t apply in Geller's case.
Spencer said Kelly "isn’t just disagreeing with what Geller says; she is contradicting herself by simultaneously defending and excoriating Geller for the same action."
"For Kelly, drawing Muhammad makes one a hateful provocateur, and drawing Muhammad also makes one a defender of the freedom of speech. She doesn’t realize that she has already internalized the stigma upon this activity that Islamic jihadists and supremacists have placed upon it by their threats. She is already halfway to Sharia compliance."
Geller responds
Geller, in a column Thursday for Breitbart, wrote that in "smearing me as 'hateful,' [Kelly] demonstrates that she doesn’t really know what was at stake when Islamic jihadis attacked our free speech event in Garland."
"Why am I hateful for standing for the First Amendment? Is she copying the tactics of Islamic propagandists, smearing as 'hateful' those of us who refuse to submit to the most brutal and extreme ideology on the face of the earth?" Geller asked.
To the charge that she's a “provocateur," Geller said the Garland attack "was part of a longstanding jihad war against the freedom of speech."
"Those who say I provoked the jihadis don’t remember, or care to remember, that as jihadis were killing the Muhammad cartoonists in Paris, their accomplice was murdering Jews in a nearby kosher supermarket," she said. "Were the Jews 'hateful'? Did they 'provoke' the jihadis?"
She noted that she held the event in the same venue where Muslim leaders held a conference shortly after the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris that effectively challenged the First Amendment,
"Was that provocative? Should we submit to the devout Muslims who use violence to impose the speech laws under the sharia?"
Geller pointed out that being Jewish also is offensive to Islamic jihadists,
"How much accommodation of any kind should we give to murderous savagery? To kowtow to violent intimidation will only encourage more of it," she said. "Megyn Kelly should know that."