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Jump to Update: 10/6/08
December, 2007
Hardly anyone knew who Jim Sutter
was when he wrote a long "exposé" on Robert Spencer a few months ago and
began launching attacks on anti-Jihad sites across the Internet.
For that reason, a lot of people took him far more seriously than they
should have at the time, including myself.
In my case, I wrote a 20-page
refutation of Sutter's smear against Spencer. I probably read
Sutter's piece more carefully than anyone had, and gradually became
impressed with his shallowness. (Anyone is free to torture themselves by reading his
original article and my response, just to convince themselves that
Sutter is not to be confused with an academic).
I also discovered that the man calling
himself "Reverend" Jim Sutter is a complete fraud. He has claimed
to be a decorated Navy Seal, earning the
Navy Cross and
four Purple
Hearts over a 26-year career. He says that he earned
three
decorates, including a PhD in Psychology. He has also laid claim
to being a Catholic priest, a
Baptist pastor,
seminary graduate, and a
licensed counselor,
All of these are completely false. In fact,
Jim Sutter is a nobody. He dropped out of the Navy after only 7
months of peacetime training. He never completed college, much less
does he have the five graduate degrees that he claims. His
religious titles are bogus, and he is not a licensed counselor -
although he has advertised for "patients"
using false credentials and bilked one unfortunate couple out of $22,000.
Sutter is actually a troubled
ex-felon
who hasn't worked in 18 years. He is supported by his wife and
American taxpayers like me. Along the way he has pretended to have
various illnesses, including
terminal cancer. These are false
claims that he has used
fraudulently to manipulate others and keep from working. The list
of those he has sought to exploit include rape victims and the disabled,
all taken in by his con game. He has been convicted of at least
two felonies by Federal courts.
Although Sutter claims to run an
"anti-hate" site, he has been caught promoting pedophilia, terrorism and
slavery under Muslim aliases. He has also made anti-Semitic slurs
and e-mailed death threats against Muslims to web site operators.
See Phony Rev, the Con Artist Behind
Hate Watch for more on Jim Sutter.
So, in other words, there is no reason to
take this man seriously enough to spend anymore time writing another
long response in defense of the object of his latest attack, even though
it happens to be me.
Unlike Sutter, who has upwards of a dozen
phony "profiles" in various Internet directories, I am a private person
with no desire to promote myself. I do not even put my name on my
own website.
Still, I wanted to at least set the
record straight in a few areas, particularly since Sutter is alleging
that I am someone I am not. In Spencer's case, Sutter accused him
of being the same person as one of his staffers, Hugh Fitzgerald.
In my case, I don't even know either of the two people that he is
claiming me to be.
MYTH
Sutter alleges that I am a racist.
FACT
He
provides absolutely no proof of this, nor even an indication of which
races he is speaking. I have never made statements alleging that
any race is superior to another. I am actually an anti-racialist,
meaning that I believe it is an artificial classification that merits no
recognition.
Sutter, himself, has a poor history of closet bigotry against Muslims and genuine
racism against African-Americans, so he is simply using the word
"racist" disingenuously for effect (regardless of whatever he is
pretending it means).
The only link that Sutter offers to support this awful slur is to an
article written by a disgruntled Muslim named Nadir Ahmed, who never
actually uses the word "racist," but does call me a ‘Nazi’ because I
would not debate him. The article is two years old. In the
time since, I invited Nadir to debate me and he
backed down after initially agreeing to it (I do not know why Nadir
insists on leaving the old article up).
[UPDATE: Nadir has taken down his post after hearing that it was misused
by Sutter. He apparently did NOT intend for the word, Nazi, to be
interpreted in the way that Sutter is trying to exploit.]
MYTH
Sutter claims, based on his "ability" to hack e-mail servers, that either I am married to a "Parker Shannon" or that I
am that person based on the fact that he received e-mail from someone
with that name and that there is a “Shannon Parker” in the Atlanta phone
book.
FACT
I do not know her (or him), nor do I know anyone else using
either of these names. It's interesting how Sutter claims to have
such impressive journalistic and computer skills while, at the same
time, trying to convince the government that he is unable to do
productive work. For a man whose only job is to pretend that he
can't do anything, he is certainly doing a poor job of it.
MYTH
Sutter claims that I am really "Shaunnan (Sean) Drake." He
then launches into a description of Mr. Drake’s hobbies (including
Dungeons and Dragons) and his alleged child support woes.
FACT
I
do not know anyone with the last name of Drake. I have never
played Dungeons and Dragons. I have no child support obligations
and no children from prior relationships. Neither can I find any
verification of Sutter's claim that a prominent family named Drake lived in the small,
Eskimo village where I grew up. I don't know where
the Phony Rev is getting this.
MYTH
Sutter claims that I am a hypocrite for accepting donations after
refusing to take them for four years.
FACT
This is a particularly inappropriate accusation for Sutter to make,
given that he has served time in
prison for multiple felony convictions that involved cheating
people out of money at the same time that he claimed
to be a "Christian minister."
My site's change in donation policy in late 2005 is noted elsewhere and
has to do with the increasing amount of time that I found myself
devoting to the site (which led me to make a career sacrifice)
and the desire of others to contribute.
Other than an occasional “thank-you” note, I do not follow-up with donors for future
contributions and make very little effort to raise funding for the
site's operations.
MYTH
Sutter claims that I am dependent on donations and have told him that I
am on the verge of bankruptcy.
FACT
I
have never had any conversations about my finances with Jim Sutter,
written or otherwise. (For the record, I have absolutely no debt and have
never been charged interest by any credit card company in my entire
life).
Neither have I made any claims about my occupation or job skills to this
man. He knows nothing about me.
Sutter himself is quite comfortable living off of other people's money,
be it that of his wife or of ordinary taxpayers. This is one
reason why he is so unhappy with himself and his limited options in the
final years of his wasted life. He has only himself to blame for his misery.
I took a different path.
MYTH
Sutter has invented an entire tale around two domain registration
records, and claims that I used to work for a company that lost its
government contracts in 2002 because I was running a “racist” website on
one of their servers.
FACT
The two companies that Sutter mentions, GoDaddy and CI2.com are both
ISPs, which means they provide Internet services (such as IP addresses,
protocol access, e-mail storage, and domain registrations) to clients,
including the one for which I used to work. I have never been
fired by GoDaddy.com, CI2.com, nor the company for which I was actually
employed at that time.
I
cannot find any mention on the Web of any company in the United States
that has lost government contracts over a racist website. Neither
have I ever had anything to do with a racist website or a company that
had any such problem. Sutter provides no evidence for any of his
claims. The only link that he offers is to a general AboutUs.org
page that does not make mention of any of of this.
MYTH
Sutter claims that my site, TROP, lumps all Muslims together as
terrorists and makes no distinction between them.
FACT
We
have said exactly the opposite in so many places that even Sutter can’t
help but quote us.
Case in point (Sutter quoting from my site):
“CAIR may be the epitome of selfish indifference
towards those outside one's own race or religion, but that doesn't
mean that your Muslim neighbor or co-worker shares their
narcissism... so please don't be an ass. The Muslims that you
know in your private life mean you no harm and deserve no abuse from
you, verbal or otherwise.
Islam is interpreted in different ways and
followed to different degrees. No Muslim should be harassed or harmed
anywhere in the world because of his or her religion. Every Muslim
should be treated as an individual and judged only by his or her own
words and deeds”.
This has always been our policy. We also expound on
the subject of stereotyping Muslims
here,
here,
here and in many other places on TheReligionofPeace.com. We
criticize the elements of Islam with which we disagree (such as the
inferior status of women) and the effect that it has on those who
believe. Whatever sophistry Sutter employs to pursue a personal
grudge will not
change this truth.
MYTH
Sutter claims that the list of attacks on TROP includes any act of
violence committed by a Muslim for any reason.
FACT
This is absolutely untrue. We do not record an incident unless it
can be reasonably inferred that religion played a role in the violence.
We do not include deranged mosque shootings in Yemen, for example, political
shootings in Pakistan (such as the recent
political killings), clan violence, or acts of terror by either the
Balochistan Liberation Army or the PKK in Turkey.
From a list of over 10,000 items, Sutter provides only four examples of
what he says are attacks that shouldn’t be there. In fact, he does
no other research into these beyond merely looking at my description.
Each of the four attacks that he cites was committed by Kashmiri
militants, who are supported by Pakistan and have charters that specify
Islamic goals. They are therefore Muslim terror attacks.
MYTH
Sutter claims that the National Counter-Terrorism Center refutes my
claim that Muslims commit the majority of deadly religious terror
attacks.
FACT
Sutter apparently overlooks the word ‘deadly.’ I do not count an
attack unless it results in loss of life. If one uses the NCTC’s
advanced
search page to compare terror attacks with at least one death
committed by the world’s major religions, they will find that NCTC
records 2,379 deadly attacks by members of Islamic extremist groups and
only 68 committed by all other religions combined.
Even this last figure is deceptive because 63 of the 68 attacks are by
the Lord’s Resistance Army, which is not a Christian
organization. The leader of the group is Joseph Kony, a Ugandan
madman who invented his own religion by borrowing ritual elements from
both the Bible and the Qur’an. Kony also claims to be Jesus
himself, which means that he is no more a Christian than would be a
"Muslim" who declared himself the prophet Muhammad.
This actually leaves five deadly attacks by all other religions,
compared to the 2,379 by Muslim organizations, meaning that Muslims
are responsible for 99.8% of the violence that NCTC puts into this
category. Draw your own conclusions as to whether or not there is
something different about Islam.
MYTH
Sutter also says that the NCTC refutes the TROP claim that all 10,000
attacks on our list are motivated by religion, since the center ascribes
the majority of the attacks in their own database to other factors.
FACT
In
the first place, NCTC is reluctant to classify attacks by individuals as
terror attacks unless they are determined to belong to an official
terrorist organization.
Secondly, NCTC will usually disregard
religion as a primary motive if there are other possibilities to choose
from (they only classify each under a single category).
Here are three examples in which NCTC and TROP may have reached
different conclusions as to primary motive:
An Iranian
woman is planted in the ground and pelted with stones because she
was accused of adultery. NCTC might consider this to be a
judicial matter. TROP looks at it from the perspective of the
victim, who is wrongfully and violently put to death by those who
think they are following Allah's will with regard to a law laid down
explicitly by Muhammad.
A
group of Sunni radicals shoot a dozen Iraqi policemen to death in cold
blood while shouting, “Allah Akbar!” NCTC might consider this a
political statement. TROP relies on the audio.
Three Christian employees of a Bible publisher are kidnapped by Muslim
extremists, tortured for three hours and then brutally slain. NCTC
notes that they were members of an ultra-Nationalist group and calls it
a "nationalist" attack. TROP notes that Turkey is already a
nation, and that Turkish Christians (the victims) are targeted there because they are not
Muslim. In this case, the killers, members of the Nurcu Muslim
sect, said they intended to "protect
Islam from lies."
We
do not claim that Islam is the only motive for each attack on our list,
but we have taken pains to explain how the terrorists themselves
appeal to it as their justification.
We
have nothing but respect for NCTC, but they have their process and we
have ours.
Each of our attacks is available for review, complete with date,
location and description. We have always been open to considering
objections to any specific entry on our list. We have made any
corrections that have been proven necessary.
MYTH
Sutter claims that TROP's list of attacks is “top-heavy with US
combat deaths.”
FACT
Since Sutter provides no examples, and he apparently has a very poor
grasp of what
“combat” actually means. The only attacks on US troops that we have recorded are
those in which a soldier might have been attacked while standing guard,
eating mess, or traveling on a non-military mission, such as providing
medical care to Iraqis. Though recording a handful of these
attacks early on, there are not very many on the list, certainly well
under one tenth of 1%.
Is
less than one tenth of 1% really "top-heavy?" It's difficult to tell because
Sutter doesn't provide any actual numbers. This is because he
didn't do any actual research. All we know for sure is that
the man who masquerades as a decorated military veteran thinks it is
wrong to include American victims of Islamic terror on our list if they
happen to be in uniform at the time.
Despite the fact that every single one of our items is available in a
tabular format that can be easily loaded into a database for analysis
(see my own
IBC article for an example), Sutter was too lazy to do even this.
He is a charlatan, not a journalist.
MYTH
Sutter claims that TROP site traffic has dropped by 8% in the last three
months and that this is proof of readers "realizing that TROP is a
hate site."
FACT
The
drop in traffic can be traced directly to Sutter himself. Last
August he contacted me and threatened to have my site blocked by the
Web's largest censorware providers, such as SonicWall and Secure
Computing if I didn't adopt his political and theological positions.
He also campaigned against other anti-Jihad sites.
I
declined to yield to his bullying, and he made good on his word by
writing letters to these companies using aliases. It surprised me
that they listened to him, but I still feel that I made the right choice
by not letting him intimidate me.
Sutter is free to brag about his own negative impact on my work, but he
shouldn’t try to delude others into believing that he represents anyone
other than himself.
[UPDATE: According to Alexa, the company that Sutter uses as a
reference, his own blog traffic has dropped 87%. This
coincides with his having been exposed as a fraud on
Phony Rev.]
MYTH
Sutter claims that my book, Age of Tolerance, “shows" my
"racism.”
FACT
Despite the fact that it only cost $8.95, Sutter never bothered to read
my book, which is a good thing, since it should make it that much harder
for anyone to mistake him for a serious journalist.
There is probably legitimate criticism to be made against the book (which is
a first effort on my part), but racism is clearly not one of them.
For Sutter to so casually use the most horrible of slurs in such
groundless fashion speaks poorly of his character.
In
fact, the book is plainly anti-racialist, which is
impossible for anyone who has read it to have missed. If I
remember correctly, the four most positive characters in the story are
from four different races (and three religions, including Islam).
In keeping with my personal beliefs, one of the more prominent themes is
the absurdity of categorizing people by race (as this
excerpt from the book makes
obvious).
UPDATE 10/6/08
The main point that
PhonyRev.com has tried to get across about the bogus "Reverend" Sutter
is that he disingenuously abuses the very serious issues of hate and
racism as a platform for attacking his personal enemies with
over-the-top lies on his "Chasing Evil" blog. In other words, he
is an insincere, petty man who is not worth taking seriously.
Sutter could not
possibly have provided better proof of this than he when he decided to
put together an October 2nd, 2008 blog posting titled, "Update on
Glen Reinsford." He writes:
"Reinsford is an
indicted co-conspirator of Jeanette Runyon, on charges of conspiracy,
forgery, cyberstalking, money laundering, wire fraud, theft of a social
security number, and using interstate communications to make personal
threats."
At the same time that
he is claiming to be privy to so many of these serious federal charges,
Sutter is also making it known that he is
not even sure that Glen Reinsford is my real name, and offers up
the same lame speculation that I am actually "Sean Drake."
Obviously the feds do
not indict people without naming them, so even Sutter's two groupies
should be able to see through this weak fiction, particularly given that
he is also claiming to be "scheduled to testify" as a witness for
the prosecution!
This is what Sutter
does, of course. He invents horrible lies about other people, and
then pushes them under the guise of legitimacy, thus demeaning serious
social issues merely for the purpose of personal gain. He feels
that he is free to libel others because he has no assets to his name.
At 53, his bank account is as worthless as his character.
In this case, Sutter is
not being terribly bright. His tactics are so crude, in fact, that
they are downright clownish. (For the record, I am
obviously not under any sort of indictment or investigation. I
have no criminal history at all, in fact. My only "brush with the
law" was an incident in college in which I paid a $20 fine for
fishing without a license).
The bumbling Sutter also alleges:
"Neo-Nazi Glen
Reinsford, who used to run the horrifically anti-Islamic site of
www.cairbaby.com, had his site taken down, as his hosting company has
restrictions against racism."
The use of the word
"Nazi" is a desperate tactic that Sutter commonly employs against many
other undeserving persons as well. In my case, it is stunningly
inappropriate because I have a family member who personally suffered at
the hands of true Nazis in a concentration camp during the war.
(Ironically, one of Sutter's own "editors" is a brazen, gun-toting
anti-Semite with a very interesting German lineage).
Far from being a racist
website, CAIRBaby.com openly championed the cause of African villagers
against racial genocide and took CAIR to task for its refusal to do the
same. As editor, I also spoke out against the exploitation of American civil
rights icon Rosa Parks. These may been the reasons that Sutter
himself kept trying to have the site taken down, given his very real
history of aggression toward people of color.
As far as I know, there
were no other complaints lodged against CAIR Baby, even by CAIR
itself. I gradually disassembled the site after determining that it wasn't
an effective use of my time. The articles and points made on
CAIRBaby have been incorporated into TheReligionofPeace.com, which is
hosted by the same vendor.
One does not cure
damaged credibility with new lies. In Sutter's case, his
reputation is so hopelessly unsalvageable that he seems to have given
up altogether. The latest tantrum happened as a result of the
impact that the Phony
Rev site is having on his social life there in Cleveland,
even though it was entirely his choice to have it go on-line in
the first place. (Guess he wanted the attention).
If Sutter has changed
his mind about Phony Rev, then he has merely to ask that it be taken
down (and promise to behave himself). To my
knowledge, nothing contained there is untrue and Sutter has
always had an open invitation to have anything challenged and
removed. So far, his only real protest has been over critical
details of his Navy record,
which is why instructions have been posted
here for anyone to easily test the credibility of PhonyRev.com
against "Reverend Jim's" wild tales of combat medals and Jack Bauer-like
fantasies.
But there is a reason
why Sutter is the spectacular failure that he is, and after a lifetime
of extremely poor decisions, which have left him bankrupt, obese and
powerless, it is extremely unlikely that the Internet's biggest laughing
stock will start doing the right thing anytime soon - even if it is in
his best interest.
See
Phony Rev, the Con Artist Behind Hate Watch for more about
"Reverend" Jim Sutter.
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