Hello,
I am a regular reader of your (mostly) excellent blog, as I am very worried about the inroads of radical Islam in the UK.
But I have one severe criticism to make. I rate Jihad Watch higher than Gates of Vienna because it has focus, which you are in danger of losing. Your blog is ostensibly devoted to Muslim mayhem, but at the moment you are galloping off in an entirely new direction.
Maybe some or many of your readers are preoccupied with how US healthcare is to be funded, but, to put it bluntly, it is not a Muslim thing, is it? It is not on my radar at all, as I reckon it is a purely internal matter of US politics.
I’m sure I’m not alone in this respect. I’m genuinely curious to know how you reckon this subject fits in. And my advice is to take a leaf out of the book of the excellent Robert Spencer, and to keep on topic.
I got to the email first this morning, so I happened to be the one who responded to our British reader. Here’s what I told him:
Jihad Watch is and always has been a better blog than Gates of Vienna. That’s fine with me. Cream rises to the top!- - - - - - - - -The primary concern of Jihad Watch is — duh — jihad. But Gates of Vienna is about the gates of Vienna — that is, the portals that guard Western culture from forces that would destroy it.
Our major concern is Islam, but it is not our only concern. In fact, the disease which is killing us is socialism, transnational Marxism, Leftism — call it what you will. Islam is just a symptom, a virus of opportunity that has invaded our debilitated body politic.
So the healthcare bill, being a major socialist coup, is definitely “Marxist mayhem”. It’s significant, and, yes, we will post about it from time to time.
And sometimes we post about other things that interest us. I particularly like to write essays about history and poetry. Many readers have emailed me to say how much they enjoy and appreciate such posts, and that these essays are part of what makes our blog exceptional. It’s unfortunate for you that you are unable to experience them in the same way.
Blogs have their specialties. No one can beat Jihad Watch for breadth of information about the Islamic danger. On the other hand, Jihad Watch cannot subtitle videos in Czech nor rapidly obtain expert translations from Dutch, Finnish, or Norwegian. That’s one of the niches that we just happen to occupy.
Our specialty remains our own peculiar specialty, and it attracts fewer readers than Jihad Watch or View From the Right.
My goal, however, is not to gain more readers — readers will arrive in whatever numbers are appropriate to the interest our material stimulates. If I simply wanted more readers, my best bet would be to post photos of naked celebrities — that would really bring ’em in!
My goal is to tell the truth about what seems important to me, and at the same time to build an extensive and resilient transatlantic network of like-minded anti-jihad people. I aim to do this with virtually no money, so that when the real crash comes, the network will survive relatively intact — when everyone else is losing funding, we will have no funding to lose.
In other words, I have no interest in becoming rich, famous, prominent, or widely-read. My reasons for doing what I do are different.
Thanks for sharing.
Baron Bodissey
Gates of Vienna
This reminds me of the old days, when I was a poverty-stricken landscape artist. People who observed my plight would sometimes want to know why I didn’t paint subjects that were more marketable.
One time an acquaintance asked me, “Why don’t you paint waterfalls and lighthouses, things like that? People would really want to buy them.”
I retorted: “Why don’t you f*** people for money?”
It may well be that our modus operandi at Gates of Vienna is not the most effective course of action. It’s certainly not in our own best personal interests. However, the prospect of trying to make this blog more “marketable” fills me with revulsion — I can’t do it, anymore than I could paint pictures of woeful kittens with huge plaintive eyes.
If readers find anything useful here, that’s good. If not, Jihad Watch and many other excellent Counterjihad websites are out there, and they will certainly be able to meet your needs.
24 comments:
Baron,
On my list, your blog is amongst the best ones. Ever.
The quality of the articles and commentators is unmatched.
Period.
Your blog is my second favorite on the entire internet (moon battery's van helsing just slays me with his devastating commentaries that accompany the daily droppings of moonbat gold-- and so he will always be my number one, lol ;)
BUT:
Gates of Vienna is much more than a blog to me. You and Dymphna both are gifted writers as well as being about 20 times smarter than I will ever be. Your blog is like a school with a LOT of courses presented on it.
I think that reply you sent ought to cause the questioner to really step back and allow what you said to sink in. How can anyone NOT see how the healthcare takeover by that cretin Obama ties in with what you present here???? He needs to wake up.
Everything you guys post has been useful in pointing me towards a bigger picture, and has inspired me to 'counter-jihad' action I might otherwise never have taken.
This is a GREAT blog, I read you every single day.
I read jihad-watch about once a week or so, depending on what is going on. Don't get me wrong, I know he runs a great blog too, but in my estimation, Gates of Vienna is in a different class altogether.
God bless yaz,
M.
"the disease which is killing us is socialism, transnational Marxism, Leftism — call it what you will. Islam is just a symptom, a virus of opportunity that has invaded our debilitated body politic."
precisely
Although I admit there are periods of time when there'll be a series of posts here that are simply of no interest to me whatsoever. At such times I go elsewhere.
Excellent response Baron.
Methinks that a lot of Europeans are pro Nationalized or Universal Health Care with the governments hands all over it. While a significant number get that these socialist structures and institutions weaken them and make them vulnerable to Islamic invasion and subjugation.... most of them love their welfare states and think that they can just address Islam and Muslims seperately.
Baron,
'Gates' is fine just as it and it's a far more interesting site than 'Jihad Watch' and I agree, Islamization is a symptom of the decline of the West, not the primary cause. Any intelligent physician treats the cause of a disease as well as alleviating the symptoms.
There are a hundred versions of Jihad Watch on the Net, we don't need any more.
FYI,the network is wider than just 'transatlantic'.
"...pictures of naked celebrities." Whoo, boy! Is that a promise, a suggestion, or merely a teaser?
I've my bib on and am waiting impatiently. Nothing better illustrates the unique limitations and propensity to violence of Islam than pictures of "nekid" celebrities. Please, one of Khadija, if you have it.
Otherwise, I heartily second the comments of *antara.* What a succint and heartfelt, honest compliment he/she has offered.
Baron, you were a painter? I didn't know that. Can I see some of your paintings? :)
Since I happen to publish at both of these websites I can inform the reader that they have different profiles which sometimes, but not always, overlap. I don't see why that should be a problem. Besides, I have consistently said for years that Islam, as bad as it is, is a secondary infection. Yes, we should look at Islam, but we should also study closely what it was that broke down our immune system to begin with.
"Our major concern is Islam, but it is not our only concern. In fact, the disease which is killing us is socialism, transnational Marxism, Leftism — call it what you will. Islam is just a symptom, a virus of opportunity that has invaded our debilitated body politic."
Exactly. Islam would be nothing were in not for the self-murder of the Western nations.
I have to admit, GoV is one of the best blogs here and a real eye opener. Sometimes specializing is a bad thing, and the fact that the posters here are part of a wider mission is very impressive. I can only hope to one day accomplish something as great as this. Keep up the good work.
Many thanks to everyone for the encouragement. I've got to say that the friendlies outnumber the trolls here by at least fifty to one. I really appreciate the support.
I've been banned from Jihad Watch for pointing out (on a couple of occasions) that motivations other than jihad exist.
This place is better.
The ability of Islam to carry out a lot of the destruction that it has wrought in recent years was actually made possible by Western backing--see this latest essay on my blog for one example of many.
I love both Gates of Vienna and Jihad Watch. Baron Bodissey, Dymphna, and Robert are all people who I admire and respect very much. A huge debt will be owed to all three (and others as well) if Western civilization is saved from destruction.
I love the Gates of Vienna site. It has a wonderful feeling that I appreciate. I love both the essays and the news feeds here.
IMO, the real enemy is a small band of powerful people who are seeking a New World Order. This unnamed group (sometimes called the Bilderberger Group) is merely using Muslim immigration to de-stabilize Western governments whose people are more educated and less enslaved than current third-worlders. Their aim is to keep us all so busy fighting each other that we fail to fight them. Then, they will RFID chip everyone, forbid all religion except pseudo-science used to justify extensive tax hikes (cap-and-trade is next), and effectively enslave the citizens of the world in perpetuity via advanced technology.
Socialized health care is the excuse that they will use to RFID chip everyone. Obama has said it would be great if everyone had one location for all of their medical records. Well, what could be better than a chip in your body?
Read the non-fiction book Spychips by Albrecht and McIntyre for actual patent info about RFID chips. Scary stuff!
Related, here is a brief (22 ½ minutes) documentary on the origins of Political Correctness.
I recognize quite a few things I've read in my youth, stuff that satisfied an appetite that Conservative forces were not there to fill. This is going to cause us no end of trouble...
Henrik R Clausen,
that is a damn good documentary. I first stumbled into it a few years ago while helping a friend on her graduation paper on Erich Fromm's concept of alienation, and I basicaly changed the whole idea of her work 180 degrees :D
A few years ago this short documentary was very obscure (at leas this is how it seemed to me), but now more and more people know it and talk about it. The same as with Yuri Bezmenov.
EV nailed it:
"Excellent response Baron.
Methinks that a lot of Europeans are pro Nationalized or Universal Health Care with the governments hands all over it. While a significant number get that these socialist structures and institutions weaken them and make them vulnerable to Islamic invasion and subjugation.... most of them love their welfare states and think that they can just address Islam and Muslims seperately."
Your response, Baron, was excellent, and Europe is in the situation it is in - and we aren't far behind them - precisely because we are all trying to separate things that are related.
Scientifically, we need to separate them to study them, but fixing our society requires this holistic approach.
Baron & Dymphna, yours is a blog par excellence, really second-to-none, and the two of you are proof that when great evils befall us, greater heroes will arise.
God bless you and your work!
Vienna was a cultural capital of Europe, rivaled only by Paris. It was one of the two centres of Catholicism (what with it having been the Seat of the Holy Roman Emperor), and has produced some of the most marvelous works of all Western culture (Mozart, Salieri, and many more I am unaware of).
To demand that you focus solely on jihad is to rather narrow the focus. As others have said, jihad is a symptom of the malaise, but the cause is home-grown. It is the parasite of communism, that has managed to ingratiate itself into the political class in what must be the greatest crisis of confidence a civilisation has ever endured (for we are always told our past is something to be ashamed of. While our ancestors were not always as upstanding as we might expect, why should we bear their sins? And have we not achieved so much? There's a reason a who's who of science, philosophy, music, writing and art reads as a list of mostly white European men, you know).
It's a personal experiance - one can send an email and actually reasonably expect a reply. It's like those boutique shops. Oh sure, if they just became a franchise or something, they'd be a lot bigger. But they'd lose their core.
I don't mind your focus on American politics. You are American. How could I expect any less? Having a focus broader than just politics is actually fun. It's half the reason I love to read The Monarchist and The Mad Monarchist. They don't just post on monarchy - they post on famous battles, being a proper gentleman, honour systems and knighthoods, and so much else besides. It's almost a pastiche, but I love it even more for it.
You have your theme, and you run with it.
Oh, and Baron, so what if your paintings were out of fashion. It doesn't matter one bit what anyone else thinks, so long as you felt that you were being true to yourself.
To quote from JRR Tolkein, not all those who wander are lost.
Yes, Erich Fromm...
I still have two or three of his books somewhere in my basement.
Reading Liberalism by Ludwig von Mises would probably have changed my world view in a considerably different direction. But back then, we had no Internet, no blog debates, and I had only obscure book catalogues to go from. Catalogues that peddled this Frankfurter-stuff endlessly...
Keep on with what you are doing.
The whole PURPOSE of this "health care" garbage is to weaken and destroy the US for the benefit of its enemies. The Obaminator and his supporters are doing exactly what George Soros is paying them to do, and it's exactly what the jihadis want.
An excellent response Baron. Jihad Watch is a more focused blog, while GOV is a more general interest blog. But in my view GOV is every bit as important as JW.
Rober Spencer's blog is all about Islam, and God bless him for his good work. GOV is one of his allies in the fight, and a damn valuable one if I do say so myself.
In hoc signo vinces
GoV has as opened so many doors with articles on western culture - some of the subjects having not been put in my path before, first hand accounts and opinions of American and Continental European politics while at the same time reporting on the global counter-jihad.
GoV is an excellent site.
Thanks for the hard work all.
1389: "The Obaminator"
Never saw that one before. That's pretty funny.
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