Juan Cole, a professor of history at the University of Michigan, claims right-wing Jews and an “Islampohobic network” were “a key influence” to Dylann Roof’s rampage that killed nine people at a black church in Charleston, S.C.
“The Muslim-hatred of the Geert Wilders and Marine LePens in Europe, for which Daniel Pipes, and Pamela Geller, and the whole Islamophobic network are cheerleaders and enablers, was a key influence on Dylann Roof, according to his manifesto,” Cole writes on his popular blog, Informed Comment.
But as The College Fix points out, and one commenter noted, Roof’s manifesto makes no mention of Pipes, Geller, Wilders, Muslims, or Islam.
Cole then pivots to where Roof would have found “that white Europeans are being victimized by immigrants,” citing one of his older posts about Anders Breivik, who killed 77 youths in Norway in a 2011 attack, as The College Fix reports.
“Breivik’s passions were whipped up, according to his diary, by reading anti-Muslim hatemongers such as Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller and Daniel Pipes (whose “Campus Watch” is an Israeli settler-oriented attempt to deny tenure to American academics critical of Israel’s oppression of the stateless Palestinians, and to harass more senior professors with character assassination),” Cole wrote.
“It was apparently similar writings and web sites that made Roof ‘completely racially aware,'” he continues, citing a Fear, Inc., database project of the Center for American Progress, which, according to the ultra-progressive think tank, tracks organizations which contribute to Islamophobia.
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“Ironically, some groups connected to the Islamophic Network are, like Geller and Pipes, Jewish. But their anti-immigrant, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim rhetoric backfired on them in Roof’s case, since he went on heartily to hate Jews, as well,” Cole writes. “Many American Jews, he held, are pro-African-American, and so he abhorred them, as well.”
Cole responded to an email from The Daily Caller after publishing.
“I said that the kind of sentiments Roof posted about European white people being overwhelmed by non-whites were typical of the line of Marine LePen (Catholic) and Geert Wilders (born Roman Catholic, now unchurched.),” Cole said, when asked to further explain the connection between Storm, right-wing Jews and Islamophobia. “I then noted the paradox that Pamela Geller and Daniel Pipes are cheerleaders for this anti-immigrant white nationalist narrative.”
Previously, Cole has written on his blog arguing that recognizing Israel as a Jewish State is racist.