Yesterday a reader in Australia sent us a scan of a print article in a newspaper called The Age. I don’t know much about the paper, but Australians tell me it is a predictably lefty rag, and that sensible people refer to it disparagingly as “The Aged”.
The article, written by Chris Johnston, is entitled “The power of hate: Bendigo mosque a rallying cry”. It’s a hit-piece on the Q Society, which opposes the Islamization of Australia and has been one of the leading groups in the campaign against the proposed mosque in Bendigo. But the reason our reader sent it to us is that the author gives Gates of Vienna an honored place among the “far-right extremists” and “racists” who object to Islamization.
The print article was dated June 28, but there is an online version dated the 27th that differs only slightly in wording.
Our blog is featured in the last few paragraphs of the piece. I’d never heard of the term “switcher” until I read this article. In the excerpt below, the author is referring to and quoting from Prof. Andrew Jakubowicz, “a specialist in multiculturalism from the University of Technology, Sydney”:
Professor Jakubowicz is studying global internet racism. He says he has found solid links between Australian anti-Islam groups, such as the Australian Defence League, with international groups in the US and Europe that he calls “switchers”. These groups compile political information and move it through global networks.
The key switcher in Europe, he says, is called Gates of Vienna, a website named after the battle in 1863 [sic] in which Christians beat Turkish Muslim Ottomans who were trying to capture the Austrian capital.
The Norwegian mass killer of 77 people in 2011, Anders Breivik, wrote in his own manifesto that he read Gates of Vienna. Breivik was rabidly anti-Muslim.
Professor Jakubowicz says, ironically, the way Australian far-right groups can learn from international far-right groups then try to infiltrate communities was similar to jihadism.
“They are looking for places to build communities and draw them into campaigns. In a sense, it is a tamer mirror image of jihadism, the social psychology is not dissimilar. The practice is obviously different but the aim is similar. Activist racists in this country are involved in what I would call community development projects.” [emphasis added]
Well…
Firstly, given where I was born and raised, if the crucial year were 1863, this blog would be called “Gates of Chancellorsville” rather than “Gates of Vienna”. And Mr. Johnston seems to have fallen victim to the common misperception that we’re in Europe. Oh, well — we’re used to that.
Secondly, did you notice the calm, objective tone employed by the author and Professor Jakubowicz when describing the “activist racists” of the Counterjihad? We’re the “mirror image of jihadism”, but at least we’re tamer.
And was Anders Behring Breivik really infected with a lyssavirus? If so, it’s understandable that the Norwegian authorities placed him in solitary confinement.
Thirdly, it’s important that we set the record straight about Anders Behring Breivik and his purported devotion to this blog and the Counterjihad in general.
Yes, it’s true that Mr. Breivik wrote in his “compendium” that he read Gates of Vienna, and especially Fjordman’s essays. Yet that assertion has since been abrogated, as it were.
Earlier this year the Butcher of Utøya sent a letter to a number of media outlets, repudiating his earlier devotion to the Counterjihad and explaining his deliberate deception of gullible media reporters:
The idea was to manipulate the MSM and others so that they would launch a witch-hunt and send their <<media-rape-squads>> against our opponents. It worked quite well.
I was never kicked out of Stormfront. In stead, I attacked them in the compendium in order to protect them, as I knew the authorities would use the fact that I frequented the site, against them, and that an army of leftist journalists otherwise would strike hard…
When the norwegian MSM announced that Fjordman was my role model and idol, they couldnt be more wrong.
I don’t know if the The Age received a copy of Anders Behring Breivik’s letter, but many other non-Scandinavian outlets did. And all of them chose to ignore it. They obviously prefer the official “narrative” about events of July 22, 2011. As do the worthy scribblers at The Aged, who are still promoting it in Australia more than six months after the truth was made public.
So let’s the record straight: Anders Behring Breivik did not gain his inspiration from Gates of Vienna, Fjordman, Jihad Watch, and other Counterjihad sites. He only pretended to, in order to pull the wool over the eyes of ideologues in the media and academia.
In the future, when people use Internet search engines to research this topic, I want them to be at least as likely to run into the truth as they are to read the disinformation being retailed by The Age. That’s why I’m revisiting the controversy here.
If you want to prevent The Lie from gaining ascendancy, I urge you to do the same on your own blog or website.
Previous posts about Anders Behring Breivik’s letter to the media:
So the Baron and Dymphy are comparable to jihadists. Whooda thunk it!
The Melbourne Age has been referred to disparagingly as “The Spencer Street Soviet” since at least the mid 1980s.
It’s a leftist rag of the reddest water that keeps trying to claim it’s not. Unlike the grauniad, which makes no bones about being leftard, the Age, and it’s stablemate the Sydney Morning Herald, try to play the fishwrapper of record game, but like the fishwrapper of record, anyone with half a brain can work out that where they are coming from, which is somewhere the far side of Trotsky’s left testicle.
Cheers Larry . Or a more contemporary masthead for this patheticly predictable rag is ‘Al Age- ezheera’
Andrew Bolt among others, is often addressing the ‘inconsistencies’ that come out of the collectivist rag known as the Age.
I wondered why you were putting up ‘news feeds’ from that purveyor of lies. Now I know that you didn’t know.
You misunderstand what the news feed is. I don’t place an ideological filter on what I allow to appear in it. People send me things from the Grauniad, Mother Jones, etc. And plenty of stuff at least as far from the center on the other side.
The whole point of the news feed is that I don’t have to evaluate an item myself to determine how worthy it is. I just eyeball it to see that it at least sounds plausible, and isn’t obscene, or too insane, or too hateful. Readers can read it themselves and decide how stupid or paranoid or false it is.
I say this at the top of every news feed: “Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.”
So bring on The Aged! Let a thousand flowers bloom!
Or, as the case may be, weeds.
Baron, you are far more tolerant than I.
I completely understand your logic in putting up articles from the ‘opposition’ it just makes me feel ill whenever I read them.
It still bothers me that there are those who push such illogical claptrap and when confronted with a reasonable argument against what they try to pass off as fact refuse, in most cases, to offer a reasonable argument in return.
To my way of thinking that tells me that any debate with their ‘political enemy’ is now considered counter productive, to which one must then draw the conclusion, that any verbal discourse between both sides of politics is, as far as the Collective in concerned now verboten, and that leaves only one possible way to counter the Collective’s inroads – war!
They are always shooting the messenger. Very much in line with sharia thinking: punished for saying anything negative about islam, even if it’s entirely true.
Breivik is the left’s wet dream; he’s the Messiah they were all waiting for.
Yes, The Age is Marxist dribble, and every poll that has ever been put out shows the vast majority of Australians are opposed to the Bendigo Mosque–and Islam in general.
I guess all us Aussies are sleeper Breiviks.
“Breivik is the left’s wet dream; he’s the Messiah they were all waiting for. ”
And Breivik was also the left’s product.
Aussies are against Islam and rightly so. But Islam has the absolute backing of all western governments so it is impossible to oppose. Western governments are fond of creating Hitlers and Lenins.
The Phage and its company are not doing too well at the moment. What with the internet killing print newspapers, it has the added complication that said internet is also the home away from home of the state-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), which provides its news and current affairs in print form free to all. The pinkos naturally prefer not to have to pay directly, especially when there’s a taxpayer-funded, nasty commercial advertising-free alternative. Why run a leftard newspaper that folk have to pay for when the taxpayer provides your target audience with exactly what it wants?
Can you remember what the so-called cold war was about? In the infinitely wise west they put it in our heads that it was about many things: That there was no freedom of speech or media in the Communist camp, that people were always fearful of their own government, that the citizens had no individual freedom, freedom of assembly. Any discipline in the Soviet Republic was paralleled with destroying any discipline in the west. That’s why western governments were so inimical towards churches and spread the idea that Christians need psychiatrists to disillusion them and make them believe in mosques instead. All the above-mentioned subconsciously tricked the western voters into believing that they were the best. That only the western people had that genius to create the peerless system of democracy. They believed this because they had freedom to commit any vice ( sexual, immoral, perversion, crime …). They established NGO like amnesty, human rights, . . . to undermine and bring down the Eastern bloc. And people capitalized on that and authored books demonizing communists.
Rarely did people author books pointing out how feckless the western government were because no one would believe that and no one would buy them. They wanted to hate the eastern bogey created by the west to distract them from the huge national debt they were accumulating.
Those books were filled with 1% facts and 99% fabricated lies: BIG LIES about the Bloc. And no matter how BIG THE LIES were, people never used their little wit and sense they had to weigh those lies. They never discovered that they were lies. So when Bush and Blair lies about Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yugoslavia, and other Benghazis, people with fossilized brain did not discover they were lies. They followed the Pied Piper blindly. When it was discovered it was too late.
Lenin and Stalin killed a few millions for ideology, and he thought he was doing it to prevent them from being useful idiots. Lenin himself was trained and given money by the British. Saddam was given money and a meeting with USA officials in Cairo in 1956 a picture is proof. The west is killing whole countries, nay, three continents + New Zealand for the sake of Islam. Who is more cruel? Any vice the west blamed the Soviets for is today committed in the west tenfold and shamelessly.
In the west we cannot defend ourselves against the crescent invaders because of the hellish collusion between our treacherous governments and Islam. They consider islam a perfect ideology, but still they hate the Soviet ideology, although the soviet ideology did not bring down the twin Towers or bombed the TUBE.
How could these governments promote import invaders, impose sharia, tread on their own citizens, not even Stalin did that, put them in gulags, frame them up, fire them, surrender their schools to Islam. And they talk and talk and talk. They don’t dare take an action. Does democracy mean anything? And still these “educated voters, who appreciate democracy, go and vote for the dirty, spineless trembling jellyfish liars. Muslims tell us day and night what their intentions are and our coward, stupid politicians ignore those warnings. And still we vote for them. Are we better than communists? Don’t our politicians have ideology worse that soviets plus some genies to tell them how to lie through cowardice.
Speaking as somebody who actually saw what communist Czechoslovakia was like in the 1950’s with my own two eyes, I find it very difficult to express my opinion of you libelous screed with out using some very foul language. However, given the general incoherence of your post, I probably should let you off on grounds of suspected insanity.
Marinka: I am glad this site has no place for foul language. Also remember if your house is made of glass…
Instead you should give some enlightening examples, anecdote, events, stories of horrible things that happened under communism. Also remember that I did not praise communism. I was comparing the recent conditions in the west under the yoke of muslims/islam to the bad conditions under communism. It just hurts me to see these powerful countries (which suffered so much in world wars, and without learning a lesson) to see them without honor and voluntarily enslave themselves to islam. What hurts is the horrible attitudes adopted by these countries towards islam, their invaders.
Also remember how many Russian lives were lost in WWII. And Russia and Serbia were the west’s allies. We know how Serbia was rewarded recently for standing with the west. And when the WWII was over the west and Germany were one against their former ally.
My writing is only discernible to normal people.
Well, yes, the Soviets did become our allies, sort of, after Hitler broke the non-aggression pact with Stalin that had enabled him to go after Poland. However, a lot of the Russian lives were lost due to such things as sending troops out to face the Germans with one rifle for every ten men. Not to mention the slaughter of so many of the most capable members of the Soviet officer corps during the purges of the thirties. In fact, Ivan Ivanovich was so unwilling to fight for the commissars that Stalin, who was no speech maker, unlike Trotsky, was reduced to a weeping appeal over the radio, in his thick Georgian accent, to “my brothers and sisters, save Mother Russia.” One of his hearers is said to have remarked, “the boss must be in one h___ of a pickle if he’s calling us brothers and sisters”. In any case, it was the Nazi brutality, that convinced Ivan that maybe it was better to have more-or-less native tyrants than complete foreigners. The Soviets were not all Russians, after all, Stalin was a Georgian, Trotsky (nee Bronson) was of Jewish ancestry, and Khruschev (though he came into prominence later) was a Ukrainian.
I don’t see why I should go into more detail about Soviet crimes against their own people, because as you say, there are a raft of books out there that do that. It happens that I believe the books because they were consistent with what I actually saw in Czechoslovakia.
As for the west doing everything the Soviets did, what about the Gulag? or are you calling Solzhenitszyn a liar?
That’s much better.
Quote: “That’s why western governments were so inimical towards churches and spread the idea that Christians need psychiatrists to disillusion them and make them believe in mosques instead”.
Murad, I could believe this of some extreme atheists, but governments? Evidence, please.
Unfortunately, dear Mark, not every thing in life can be shown with a proof. Different people see things differently and sense them differently. Some people have empathy some have zero empathy.
Just look around and see how Islam and mosques are treated. How USA military are given a brochure to train them about handling the Koran and show respect to islam.
Have you ever seen a brochure about how to handle the Bible or how respect Christians?
Mental signals that are received in life, and to connect dots, do not lend themselves to proofs. That’s the tragedy of the human beings: Different brains; different experiences: different views. Never converge. Constant wars and misunderstanding.
In a recent TV interview I heard Prof Jakubowicz claim that Muslim violence was a reaction to anti-Muslim prejudices, he did not, at any time, suggest that Islamic ideology itself might be the motivation. As a committed multi-cultist what else could he say?
Ah you see. That’s correct. How can you give evidence? And so-called Prof Jakubowicz is not alone. It is impossible to convince them that they are wrong. Why Prof Jakubowicz can’t see what’s happening around him is puzzling.
You don’t think the drone murder campaign and stuff like that might have something to do with it? Desire for revenge? It was the US that threw away the rule book, and began simply assassinating people without even the pretense of judicial process, without even knowing for sure who they were blowing up. Three thousand victims so far, more than were killed on 9/11. The invasion of Iraq left a huge legacy of hatred for westerners–and yes I have experienced it personally, from an Iraqi refugee. Muslims have seen that westerners will happily slaughter them like cattle with the most advanced weaponry, while giving the Israelis a free pass every time. I am actually on the counterjihad side, and want Islamic immigration into Europe stopped and rolled back, but it is foolish to ignore the fact that the west has brought this disaster on itself by lowering itself to “terrorist” standards. Drone murders are just as much “terrorism” as Al Qaeda bombs–the only difference is the means of delivery.
I do not share the counterjihad’s worship of Israel. The creation of this new European-US Jewish colony on Arab land was a historic mistake that has poured fuel on the fire of Muslim resentment for decades. The west has no business in the modern Middle East, should never have got involved, and should wash its hands of it now. This is going to go down badly wtih the regulars at GoV–but let’s just get out of the Middle East and AfPak, leave the nuclear-armed Israelis to it, and pull up the drawbridge while we can.
Anonymous, most of what you have put up I agree with to a point, however, your reference about Israel being a created state I must argue with. You may wish to avail yourself with some research of your own. I put to you some historical facts that must be considered, such as:
The Present state of Israel occupies most of the land that was originally Jewish to begin with, well for much of BC history anyway – the Romans called it Judea, and it was the Romans who following the Jewish revolt of 70AD against their rule, sacked Jerusalem and banished the Jews to the four corners of the Earth.
Know anything about the events at Masada?
Following the inception of Islam around 650AD, the Arabs/Muslims set out to conquer what remained of Judea and the Roman Empire decimating what remained of Roman civilization from all the Mediterranean lands and claiming Jerusalem and Judea as their own. They slowly destroyed over the centuries what remained of the Roman and Jewish civilizations and their agricultural methods to the point that famine became a recurring problem.
The Arabs come from Saudi Arabia. Those people they call the Palestinians today are in fact Arabs whose ancestors can be traced back to the first Great Jihad. The term Palestine was a British name given to the land that the British carved up when Colonial occupiers and has been used to describe those people who live in the Gaza area and who in 1947 refused to muck in with the Jews and the new state of Israel preferring instead to wage a continuous war against Israel.
You see, it is in the Qu’ran that all good Muslims must kill the Jews.
The Jewish diaspora was a people without a country to call their own for nearly 1900 years who were subject to the religious fanaticism over the centuries of the rulers of those lands they found themselves in.
If there were still such a people on the Earth wandering from country to country because the land they once occupied was no longer theirs would you deny them a country somewhere, and most preferably their original land?
Your sarcasm in equating the inalienable right of the Jew to their own homeland to being one of ‘worshiping’ by those who express such empathy, I find deplorable.
I am sorry, if you base territorial claims on what happened 2,000 years ago, the Welsh would be entitled to half of north England, the Ainu to half of north Japan, the Friesians to chunks of Germany and so on. It is irrelevant who was on a patch of land 2000 years ago. The Arabs occupied Palestine for over a millenium. It’s theirs, as England is ours if you are English. If you take the bible seriously on this, you are bound to take the koran seriously too.
Your very narrow view of history in regard to territorial claims is only exceeded by your lack of appreciation for what it is to be a people without a homeland.
While England is most definitely English and has come about due to the many invasions and integration of the invaders over the centuries, the Arabs have systematically taken land during their three Great Jihads while giving none back in return, and it has only been by armed ejection due to the locals evicting them, that those countries once invaded by the Muslims are now back in native hands. The Arabs special hatred for the Jew is a product of Mohammed’s personal sleight from the Jews who refused to join his merry band of war loving Muslims.
So if it is irrelevant who was on a patch of land 2000 years ago, would it be just as irrelevant if you left your house to go on a world tour only to come back and find it ‘occupied’ by a bunch of squatters?
It does happen you know, and more frequently than people realize.
At what point does the relevance of time come into your thinking for the legal possession of land, especially land your own people were evicted from just over 1900 years ago?
Should white Australians now be evicted as having no claim to the nation they built because some Aborigines have become so materialistic and racially militant?
Arabs have their own lands they have continually historically occupied for millennia, at what point in time if they were occupied and evicted would you consider their land no longer theirs?
And If you cannot argue your points of contention with reasonable responses, why do you bother arguing at all?
Anonymous: You want muslim immigration stopped. But you can’t do that. Many people have decries that over the last 60 years but were unsuccessful because voters and citizens are not able to prevent any vice or enforce any good. Voters give a blank check, a mandate to the elected to be anointed dictators. The fact that western “democracies” have installed themselves in a position to go around the world and smash dictators in the name of humanity is a distraction and throwing sand in the eyes of the voters not to see their government’s horrible dictatorial acts.
As about Israel: Where are they going to go? Every country in the world slaughtered them. They were in Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Europe … everywhere they were tortured to death literally. Just look at France, Belgium, Sweden, Britain, . . . and see how they are treated and killed and rarely a voice is dared to be raised against the criminals.
Do anything you like to a church, nothing happens. Throw a piece of meat at a mosque you will get 12-month prison sentence.
Do people without religion/ faith become their own enemies?
“Every country in the world slaughtered them.”
NOT the USA. In fact, with their 70-80% funding of the Democrat Party, they are arguably in charge of current American policy making.
Murad,
“Every country in the world slaughtered them”
Drivel, NOT Australia either.
To egghead and Old man: I am deeply sorry for that generalization. Yes many other countries did not slaughter Jews because they did not have any living amongst them. During WWII a ship filled with jews left Germany, went to Canada, was refused, went to Haifa, Israel the British refused to dock. Returned to Germany. Yes Germany. Please correct me if this is wrong.
Murad,
You still haven’t actually retracted your statement, there were and still are incidents of anti-Semitism in Australia, however, definitely no pogroms.
Australia after WW2, had one of the highest proportions of Holocaust survivors in its total Jewish population. Do you think that they would have immigrated to Australia if the country had a reputation for virulent anti-Semitism?
One of those Holocaust survivors living in Australia is a favorite reader/donor. She doesn’t comment, but she does send me emails about our content. Obviously, given that she’s still alive, our Holocaust survivor – let’s call her “Ruth” – arrived in Oz as a child. Now retired Ruth lives on a very limited income, but insists her generosity to us is important in order to keep the Gates open; we are her hope.
Over time we have become friends and she has mentioned her memories of Europe in a dark time. Sadly “Ruth” was old enough to have retained scary, somber remembrances of Belgium and other places her family stayed as they made their way out or Europe. Vienna is also one of her memories.
Old Man, I missed the comment from Murad, but I will certainly ask “Ruth” about her personal experience of being Jewish in Australia. It is her *home* and she’s glad to be there. As an observant Jew, she would also know the stories from her synagogue.
http://www.vaniercollege.qc.ca/events/holocaust04/st_louis.html
Those were real refugees who needed help not today’s invaders. Who would have thought that invaders in today would be treated royally, but not real refugees. Just imagine 2 or three months confined in a ship. Did sanctimonious Canada refuse them?
While admittedly tragic, the example that you give is NOT unique to Jews.
The situation today is EXACTLY the same for Christian refugees from Muslim countries. With the USA having ceded its control to identify refugees to Muslims, Muslims refuse to label Christians as refugees who are being persecuted by Muslims.
So, the United States is being overwhelmed with Muslim refugees from Muslim sectarian violence – all the while denying entry to real Christian victims of Muslim violence.
So, if we want to be fair, then we MUST examine WHO is in charge of policy-making in the USA if we want to help real Christian refugees….