I have often remarked that this blog is very much a group effort. The articles and essays that appear here — as well as the various direct actions carried out by Counterjihad activists in North America, Australia, and Western Europe — depend on intensive teamwork by an ever-growing network of volunteers.
Some of those volunteers are credited here for their work, either by real name or pseudonym, when their tips, translations, essays, and videos are published, and when we report on their direct actions. Others whose work is just as crucial prefer to remain anonymous.
In recognition of the dedicated efforts by both groups — and you all know who you are — the following quote from The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu (Chapter 2) is apropos:
Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness.
All can know good as good only because there is evil.
Therefore having and not having arise together.
Difficult and easy complement each other.
Long and short contrast each other:
High and low rest upon each other;
Voice and sound harmonize each other;
Front and back follow one another.Therefore the sage goes about doing nothing, teaching no-talking.
The ten thousand things rise and fall without cease,
Creating, yet not possessing.
Working, yet not taking credit.
Work is done, then forgotten.
Therefore it lasts forever.
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Back in January the Blogspot version of Gates of Vienna was knocked out of service by Google, with no announcement or explanation and for no apparent reason. It was restored the following day, again with no explanation.
Three days later our blog was removed again, this time for “violating Google’s Terms of Service” by having “malicious code on your blog”. No details about the “malicious code” were ever forthcoming. The blog was restored again three days later, once again without any explanation and without any further communication from Google.
By that time we had established the current WordPress version of the blog under its own domain name, where the writ of Google cannot be enforced. Even though we had been anticipating such a moment, the migration — jocularly referred to by everyone involved as the hijra — was a harrowing process, and not something I wish to repeat.
To be blown out of Blogger twice in less than a week may or may not signify anything. Depending on how conspiracy-minded one wants to be, there are several possible conclusions that may be drawn from what happened:
| 1. | The takedowns were coincidental, just glitches in Blogger that happened to occur twice during the same week. | |
| 2. | The Google authorities found Gates of Vienna problematic, and attempted to annoy us into abandoning the Blogger platform. If this is in fact the case, then they were quite successful. | |
| 3. | Instructions from the political authorities (who? in which country?) were passed down the line to the appropriate personnel at Google, who arranged for the takedown of the blog. |
If the intention was to suppress our message and keep the Counterjihad meme from spreading, it was less than successful, and may have even had the opposite effect. Here’s what one commenter said:
I guess I’ve known about GoV in the dark recesses of my mind but rarely came here. Now the news that Google has exiled you makes it obvious to me that I should have been paying more attention. And so I have added GoV to my “favorites” list and expect to make at least one visit daily until the threat you address has been neutralized.
After the second removal by Blogger, I received a number of email messages from people concerned about the damage that would be done if Gates of Vienna were to disappear permanently. I pointed out to them what I have been saying in this space for the past seven or eight years: if a distributed network forms properly, the removal of a single node has little effect on the network at large, which rapidly forms the connections necessary to route around the missing element, and thus immediately regains its previous functionality.
I say “forms properly” rather than “is constructed properly”, because a truly distributed network is not constructed by any person or group. It arises spontaneously as a part of a process of self-organization by like-minded people, like a skim of ice forming on the entire surface of a pond that has just cooled to the freezing point. Gates of Vienna is not the “boss” of this network; it is simply one of the active nodes. Redundancy is already in place; all of our functions can be immediately assumed by various other people in the network, if required. The possibility that my eye condition may sideline me permanently has prompted me to make sure that anything I do can also can be done by someone else, preferably by several other people. Redundancy is further guaranteed when the network spans numerous countries, so that a crackdown in one jurisdiction does not interrupt activities in the entire network.
This type of network has emerged because it must of necessity remain largely unfunded. Most of the mainstream considers us “racists”, “crypto-fascists”, “neo-Nazis”, and all those other horrifying designations that place us beyond the pale of polite society, where virtually no self-respecting philanthropist would dare to venture.
Lack of funding has obvious downside. However, an unfunded network has its own unique advantages:
- It is flexible and resilient.
- It is relatively resistant to the deleterious effects of economic hard times.
- It can tap into a wide range of talent, experience, and expertise among the like-minded people who choose to become part of it.
- When it acts — that is, when a large proportion of its nodes are in consensus about a particular course of action —it can move with astonishing rapidity.
I’ve been writing about distributed Counterjihad networks for a number of years. When the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence recently discovered some of my posts on the topic (Hi, ICSR! Good to know you’re keeping an eye on us!), it was as though they thought they’d turned up something we considered a secret.
But none of this is secret; it’s all out there in the open. That’s the nature of the network — it’s there for everyone to see, and those with whom the ideas resonate tend to become part of it.
This process is hard for leftists to understand. They are almost completely unfamiliar with unfunded distributed organizations — ever since 1917, radical socialists all over the world have been generously funded. When the U.S.S.R. dropped into the dustbin of history in 1991, their income did not dry up, but was replaced by the child-processes of the Socialist International, including New World Order enthusiasts, hard-left private foundations, and state funding from socialist governments. The Left is awash in cash.
Not to mention petrodollars — the Unholy Alliance of the Left and the Ummah has access to almost unlimited funding. Money pours into leftist operations from the European Union, from George Soros, from the Saudis, from Qatar, and from many other sources. Those are the folks who pay the piper, so they call the tune.
Thus it’s all but impossible for lefty outfits to conceptualize an operation that isn’t run in a top-down hierarchical fashion by a person or small group controlling the flow of money. They project their own structures onto the Counterjihad when they look at us, hypothesizing that there must be a Dr. Evil hidden behind us, pulling all the strings. We have been variously identified as agents of the Mossad, or CIA operatives, or tools of American Zionist neocons, or representatives of other sinister forces.
The fact that the situation could be exactly as it is openly described here seems incomprehensible to the well-funded think tanks tasked with discerning the true story behind the Transatlantic Counterjihad. How could we possibly manage to do what we do without being funded and directed by the forces of International Reaction?
There’s a purloined letter out there somewhere, fellows! Keep looking for it!
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If the meme propagated by our enemies is more appealing than our own, then they are stronger than we are, and we will lose anyway. If their meme is weak — which I believe to be the case — then they are weak, despite having their hands on the levers controlling an unimaginable amount of money and political power.
The case is similar with Islam. It is actually a collection of memes, all of which are weak. Their virulence has only been maintained through the “death to apostates” meme — which, as acknowledged by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, is the sole reason that Islam did not die in its infancy.
Islam cannot survive the mass exposure of its essential weakness. Our job is not to keep haring after needless distractions, but to patiently propagate our own memes, which are strong.
It’s more important to build on our “shadow” culture, to present our own ideas and values. They are powerful and durable, and will succeed in the end, despite the horror that must precede them during the chaos after the Collapse arrives.
To quote Wretchard once again:
There must be hundreds of sites out there saying I’m a jerk. So what? This blog is just a meme, that’s all. I am nothing. I don’t even have a name. There must be zillions out there who disagree with my ideas. But so what? If my ideas are wrong they’ll die. If they are right, not even I can stop them. Scary when you think of it.
Or Lao Tzu:
Work is done, then forgotten.
Therefore it lasts forever.
Your current format is, IMHO, the strongest you’ve ever had.
I dislike the Google format that I well remember from your early work.
Thank you for your powerful and inspirational words, Ned. This is why I signed up for Gates of Vienna more than seven years ago, and this is why I am still here.
I read many on the network. I read GOV first and always check GOV last. There are great stories told here. There are great writers and great humility. Even if there are detractors working to bring America down there are many non-Americans who love the amazing adventure America is.
America is founded on simple principles that empower the humble and imbue the common man. America will survive. It must survive. It will survive because of the Baron’s and Dymphna’s who cherish her and preserve her. Thank you both agus go n’eirigh an bothair leat.
Dance as if no one were watching. Sing as if no one were listening. And Live every day. As if it were your last. Max.
Beautifully written; Gates of Vienna endures. Thank you.
I admit, reluctantly for embarrassment, I also was inspired instantly by rumor heard of blogger’s censoring algorithms seeking GoV’s non-personhood. And, yes, the result was to seek it out and then to add the same to my rss platform fed by 218 streams. That application informs me GoV is now in the top five most referenced of those feeds. Before that, only happenstance, together with what seemed to me a strange allure of the meme found here, would only find our paths crossing every week or so. So, we were entangled.
Other than that, having appreciated meditated on this post in particular, this evening, I have only to add some caution regarding the weak, for you are correct in presuming the mass movement known as Islam is weak, as all mass movements thrive on (in the words of Eric Hoffer) “instilling in their followers self annihilation and a propensity for self-sacrifice.” It is interchangeable with all other mass movements finding new followers among the same body of people, whom Hoffer described perfectly in his work “The True Believer” (1950).
The weak, and those who perceive themselves hopelessly weak, are largely underestimated in their potential power, not collectively so much as from necessity. The Nazis were, essentially, of the same kind of weakness, and thus capable of shaking Earth and making for much destruction before being overcome and destroyed; though, ultimately, they would have failed regardless because their ideology was not in league with truth.
The role of the weak is a neglected subject. Hoffer may have said all Geo. W. Bush needed to know about the nature of mass movements and their followers a half century before the flailing response to 911. I highly recommend that work of his mentioned above.
They make the best pioneers, and were definitely a vital part of the mix of people immigrating to the New World. People who are strong in the world where they live do not pick up stakes and head of into the wilderness.
The best counter to a mass movement, Hoffer claimed, was a counter movement, particularly since all such Hofferian Mass Movements derive their followers from the same pool of personality types, among whom is greater variety than there is room to explore here.
Or as Christ told Paul, “my strength is perfected in weakness.” And Robert Fulton, “necessity is the mother of innovation.” The strong are not experiencing necessity.
Good meditation in this post. There is strength, and then there is strength that has no need of the trappings for its proof. – Best to you.
Cave of Worms —
There’s no denying that weak ideologies can kill millions of people and even destroy entire civilizations, since this is what Islam has been doing for the past 1,400 years. But only because of the “death to apostates” rule, without which the Religion of Peace would have been consigned to the dumpster of history before the end of the 7th century.
Islam gains its staying power by killing (or threatening to kill) those who attempt to leave it, and by forbidding all critical examination of anything else inside itself — also on pain of death. Throw in the practice of taqiyya — sacred lying — and you have a hermetically sealed protective cordon. The combination of these three memes is what gives Islam its apparent strength, and allows it to roll across the landscape like a cloud of ravening locusts, consuming everything in its path.
Too much of the Counterjihad spends too much of its time being horrified by what Islam does rather than looking at what Islam is. We waste our energies focusing constantly on the murderous brutalities committed in the name of Allah. Yes, these things are important to examine, but they should not absorb all our attention.
A preoccupation with the atrocities of Islam enhances its reputation as an invincible juggernaut, both among its own adherents and among those targeted by it. In fact, our focus on deadly Islamic violence may even be counterproductive — by inducing a sense of fatalism into those closest to the “bloody borders”, our hysteria over the ghastly realities accompanying Islamic expansion may hasten that expansion by encouraging potential victims to convert without further resistance and be absorbed into the Ummah.
A better strategy is to highlight the inherent weakness of Islamic doctrine. As I wrote a number of years ago, the three memes that protect Islam — “death to apostates”, “no critical examination of Islamic doctrine”, and “lying for the sake of the faith” — act together to produce what is known in evolutionary biology as an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ESS). An ESS is powerful, but brittle: it is vulnerable to slight changes in the environment of the organism (or information system) that employs it.
These protective memes form the hard, resistant shell that encases Islam. The interior memes that define its ideology are laughably weak. Absent the threat of death, they are merely ludicrous and worthy of constant mockery — which Vlad has noticed and made into his particular specialty.
This is why we need to concentrate on exposing the internal ideology of Islam (its content) and not the violence (its process). Its content cannot stand up to anything resembling rational scrutiny, and will implode if it is denied the ability to wield its murderous techniques for enforcement.
To implement the above strategy, the preservation of our right to free speech is paramount. That’s why I concentrate so much on civil liberties: if enough articulate, reasonable people are able speak out and expose the inherent ideological absurdity of Islam, it will collapse.
Denied that ability, we are all lost.
I think you are being just a tad paranoid about Blogspot. I would bet it’s just pure economics. The money you pay or ad revenue you bring in is probably just not worth the cost of fending off DOS attacks, or losing access to some islamic country.
Corporations do not care about right or wrong or anything else. They only care about money.
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Hi Ned, I fully support everything you are saying here in this fine article. This kind of topic is where I think you shine the most, and you shine a lot. Please let me gibber on your reading of Tao Teh Ching though, which is a bit off kilter. Thanks for the inspiration.
This is the view of Tao Teh Ching/Lao Tzu:
What the sage “does” doesn’t really last forever, in terms of conventional doing! The sage “doing” is esoteric here. Rather than ordinary people who promote improvement or displacement of Tao (see GOV article on the anti-religion movement), the sage takes the narrow path and returns to Tao. Not even memes about Tao (religions), much less political memes, can be maintained (can be permanent). In the end it’s only Tao, and the sage who was in the ancient beginning with Tao. The sage doesn’t cling to anything, even to Tao ideas; he does without doing — he is one with Tao: “it lasts forever.”
70
My words are easy to understand and easy to perform,
Yet no man under heaven knows them or practices them.
My words have ancient beginnings.
My actions are disciplined.
Because men do not understand, they have no knowledge of me.
Those that know me are few;
Those that abuse me are honored.
Therefore the sage wears rough clothing and holds the jewel in his heart.
(Feng/English)
My take on Blogspot is one that I have arrived at concerning the entire left/liberal alliance. They have a cohesive narrative that they all subscribe to. With that as a guide they can act as if they are colluding, when all they are doing is acting according to the narrative. I think Blogspot took out GoV consistent with their alliance to the left and jihad. After all, AlGore is in the pocket of the Arabs, and he is on the board of Google, which owns Blogger. Though my own episode with Blogger that led to my migration to my own domain, may have been simply a requirement that I open my system to any and all cookies (which I refuse to do), it is still is part of the larger process.