THERE’S THE SPIRIT: A French “anti-racism” group is criticizing Oriana Fallaci over her latest book, which suggests that radical Islam is a threat to freedom. She’s responding by threatening to sue them for calling her racist. Bravo.

I’d like to know more about the “Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Between People” that’s after her. Who are they?

UPDATE: Reader Zach Barbera sends this link to a story about their involvement in the effort to censor Nazi material from eBay. He says that’s a sign that they’re not all bad. I would disagree. It’s better to be a nonpartisan censor than a partisan one (of the sort we find on many college campuses) but it’s better not to be a censor at all.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Neal Dodd emails from France with this information:

The MRAP seem to have been keeping interesting company in that link you posted to the Unesco site: I noticed that they had been working with Thierry Meyssan, of the Reseau Voltaire. You might remember Meyssan as the writer of that ludicrous tract claiming that no plane crashed into the Pentagon on September 11th.

There are a few interesting stories on MRAP’s home page: – although it doesn’t seem to have been updated for a few weeks.

While they have a history of fighting anti-Semitism, today they fall very firmly on the Palestinian side; Back in December, they claim that their offices were attacked and their staff threatened by “fascistes pro-israéliens”. That said, they do attempt a certain balance by condemning violence on both sides – their president was interviewed in the leftish daily L’Humanitie recently, and condemned the attacks on synagogues in France, stating that “racism is never the answer”. While he does link the attacks to events in the Middle East, he at least admits that they are racist.

Well, that’s something, I suppose.