I had to go away overnight on Thursday and for much of yesterday, and so missed an additional email from the Web Editor of Standpoint magazine. This message, which I didn’t read until late last night, exceeded the bounds of what I consider tolerable discourse, and I will forego any further correspondence with Standpoint. From my point of view, no useful function could be served by exchanging more emails with the Web Editor or anyone else at the magazine.
I have also discontinued my policy of redacting the Web Editor’s name from my posts, since it is, after all, a matter of public record, and features prominently at the magazine’s website. I had acceded to his request as a professional courtesy, from one colleague to another, and hoped for some sign of reciprocal good feeling. None was forthcoming, so Oliver Wiseman will simply have to accept that his name is now “associated” with a website he finds “repugnant and dangerous”.
Here’s the terse email that arrived from Mr. Wiseman on Thursday, but remained unread until late last night:
What good is removing my name if you simply link to my page on the Standpoint site? Please remove the link and my job title.
This was a bridge too far. I sent Mr. Wiseman the following reply:
Mr. Wiseman,
I apologize for the delayed reply. I was away overnight visiting family.
This absurd business has gone far enough. I will no longer jump through any of your hoops.
You are a public figure. Your photo, name, and email address are available at the Standpoint website. A publicly available webpage is exactly that — public.
I have nothing further to say to you. Any additional comment concerning our exchange of emails will be posted at Gates of Vienna.
I shall continue to link to your archive page whenever I find it convenient and useful to do so — as long as you choose to have it publicly posted on the Standpoint website.
Every attempt that I have made thus far to comply with your requests has been a matter of simple courtesy. But simple courtesy seems to be a one-way street in these exchanges between us, so my half of the correspondence is hereby terminated.
Cordially,
Ned
Despite the recent unpleasantness, my exchange with Standpoint has served a useful function, and provides ample food for thought. It highlights a core problem that exists among those who seek to halt the Islamization of the West.
Standpoint and Gates of Vienna are in basic agreement on the most important issue of our time, and agree on many other issues as well. Both organs should be part of an amicable coalition, together with all the other outlets that share the same general opinion about Islam. Yet no such coalition exists, and based on the evidence of the past few days, it cannot exist.
Why is this?
What consideration is so powerful that it overrides not only our common interests, but the very urge to survive?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
If you take a look around Standpoint magazine, you’ll find a wide range of opinions from a variety of authors. Besides Daniel Johnson (the editor) and Oliver Wiseman (the web editor), there are a number of other contributors, many of whose names are well known. They include:
As you can see, this is no roster of lefties. Standpoint’s escritorial stable includes representatives of the entire political spectrum, from left-liberal to conservative and all points in between.
This broad range of opinion is something I find admirable, and would love to see here at Gates of Vienna. Unfortunately, very few left-of-center writers are willing to be associated with a “repugnant and dangerous” website. A few years ago a Marxist writer contributed a useful piece about jihad in the Hindu Kush, and a while before that an Anarchist wrote a spirited polemic for us against Islamization. Generally speaking, however — and especially since Breivik — only “right-wing extremists” who have already been cast into the Outer Darkness are willing to allow their writings to appear here.
This is especially true in Britain, where the issue is complicated by class differences. Intuition would tell us that Mr. Wiseman’s sudden eruption of heartfelt sentiment — that we are “repugnant and dangerous” — must represent more than a mere distaste for our stance against Islamization.
So what else is going on here?
On the face of the matter, there should be no real issue. Based on the arguments used in his speech at the Oxford Union, Daniel Johnson is in essential agreement with us. If our ideology is in any way “repugnant”, then his should be, too.
Mind you, he does make that fine distinction between “Islam” and “Islamism”, which most of our contributors don’t share. In fact, his stance against “Islamism” is identical with that of Tommy Robinson, the leader of the English Defence League.
If Tommy’s speeches at EDL rallies were delivered with the perfect Oxonian cadences and mellifluous vowels with which Mr. Johnson is so fortunately gifted, his oratory and Tommy’s would be utterly indistinguishable.
Is this perhaps the heart of the problem?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Let’s return to the words “dangerous” and “repugnant”.
Why is Gates of Vienna dangerous?
Two possibilities suggest themselves. The first is the obvious one: speaking out in the manner commonly seen at this site may result in the loss of employment, official harassment, intimidation, and/or arrest (at the hands of the civil authorities). It may also invite death threats, physical attacks, serious bodily injury, and/or death (at the hands of Muslims or the thugs of UAF and its ilk). So danger lurks on all sides for anyone who decides to publicly oppose the Islamization of Britain.
Yet there is another kind of danger in such activities for those who inhabit the privileged heights of British society: ostracism, loss of status, being dismissed from a lucrative sinecure and forced to take a lesser one, the contempt and mockery of one’s peers, etc. It takes a steel backbone to endure to this sort of treatment and remain upright.
Repugnant, on the other hand, is in the eye of the beholder. Who can argue with something that is entirely a matter of opinion? De gustibus non est disputandum, and our tastes here at Gates of Vienna obviously diverge from those at the offices of Standpoint.
Am I repugnant? Very well then, I am repugnant! I am large; I contain multitudes.
Under these circumstances, “dangerous” and “repugnant” correlate closely with “fear and loathing”: what is dangerous evokes fear, and what is repugnant induces loathing.
So what might be at stake here at Gates of Vienna that could bring on fear and loathing in Oliver Wiseman and his colleagues at Standpoint? The content of our published material — articles, essays, translations, and videos — is obviously not the issue, since it falls within the broad range of opinion considered acceptable in Standpoint’s little corner of the City of Westminster.
A clue may be found in the fact that the EDL linked approvingly to my first post about Standpoint. More than anything else, this must have been what Mr. Wiseman and his fellow editors feared, loathed, and wished to avoid.
Given the convergence between the position of the English Defence League and that of the editor of Standpoint, the only remaining issue that could account for all this fear and loathing is the class difference.
A well-educated man of sartorial distinction stands up at the Oxford Union and lays out the case against Islam with eloquence and verve, employing the distinctive dialect of the upper strata of British society while he makes his arguments.
A less well-educated man wearing a casual shirt and trainers stands up in a public square in Birmingham under dangerous conditions and expresses an identical opinion, using his native Lutonian variant of the English language.
The former is deemed acceptable, and even laudable. The latter is repugnant, and even dangerous. The difference is one of class: nothing else can account for the aversive reaction by the Standpoint cohort to Tommy Robinson and the EDL.
This absolute antipathy towards the lower classes is so deeply rooted that members of the upper middle class seem willing to accept the destruction of the society that sustains them rather than be associated in any way with the ill-spoken badly dressed lower orders.
To be forced to rub elbows with the common ruck is a fate worse than death. Therefore one has no choice but to risk death by the Islamic scimitar rather than express any solidarity whatsoever with the likes of the English Defence League. Even though one is entirely in agreement with the EDL’s public position on Islam.
The absolute disdain of the nobility for the commoner is not mutual. Not that there is no distaste for the upper classes among the stalwarts of the EDL; far from it. But, unlike their “betters”, the members of the EDL are willing to put aside their fear and loathing to present a united front in the common cause against a mortal threat to the ancient British nation. In this they display more flexibility and a healthier sense of social morality than those who look down on them.
How likely are the more refined elements of British society to change their minds and reach the same conclusion? Will they overcome their repugnance and recognize that Islam, and not the EDL, constitutes the greater danger to themselves and all they hold dear?
I wouldn’t count on it. The signs are not auspicious.
One can but hope.
Keep plugging brother, I’m on your side!
In the Netherlands we had some resistance during those days. One of the more known freedom fighters went by the name of H.M. van Randwijk. He was awarded the Kings Medal for Courage in the cause of freedom.
There is this monument for him in Amsterdam. The inscriptions in his honour says this:
“A nation that yields to tyrants, more than life and property losses, then the light goes out.”
( sorry for the slang, my dear Oxford fellows)
I think its about time this Daniel Johnson and his buddies at Standpoint magazine start repeating this very sentence every day. That is. If they have truly understand the meaning of the words: Yielding to tyrants.
I think people like Daniel Johnson and Oliver Wiseman only sees islam as an academic problem and not necessarily a problem that need a solution.
Indeed. The mandarins are in deep philosophical and moral trouble.
I’ll bet they’d have no problem aligning with Prince Charles despite his shallowness and more than a breath of the Quisling about him.
Obviously, the daughters of these men have not been raped.
The knife of Jihad has never been at their necks.
They confound the tradition of class with the larger tradition of Western civilization.
And they will sacrifice Western civilization on the paltry and tin-coated altar of their PRIDE!
As such, they embrace the profane religion and culture of Islam, and refuse to defend those things which have been common to all Britons.
Shame, shame, shame.
A true Christianity is all that will save Britain and the West– because Christians think about what they sacrifice and what they embrace.
Man does not live by bread or class alone, but by the Word.
Dear Baron – Ned!
First of all – I totally support your way of handling this rather tricky – and vital! – business.
But I am still puzzled. Is it possible that Daniel Johnson has no knowledge about his Web Editor’s correspondance with GoV? I would claim no.
“s ducain” gave me a clue: “The impression given is that Johnson has taken fright in the power in his own speech.”
According to my opinion, DJ and Standpoint have a credability problem.
It’s possible that in saying that GoV was “dangerous” Wiseman didn’t mean that it was personally dangerous to himself—at least not in a direct manner (although the two types of danger the Baron outlines could still threaten Wiseman), and not in the immediate future.
He could have meant that it was socially and politically dangerous, as in fomenting rebellion. Although both GoV’s message and Johnson’s are virtually the same, only GoV’s is dangerous, because it has direct links to those who now call for action (in many forms) and not just words. One such group is the EDL—and the rumblings of the pending societal earthquake are easily visible in any arena where the EDL engages. This to Wiseman must appear as dangerous since the whole class structure of Britain is sitting on that fault line.
Oliver Wiseman may very well be thinking along those lines but in doing so he is just shooting the messenger, making the same mistake as those who branded Churchill a warmonger when he warned about Hitler.
Wiseman fails to recognise that the root cause of his fear is not Gates of Vienna or the EDL, but Islam and the pro-islamic policies of the Quislings and dhimmis in Parliament and the EU. Deal with Islam and both Gates of Vienna and the EDL vanish as there would no longer be any need for them in their current form. Remove GoV and the EDL and the islamic threat just grows stronger.
As for “repugnant,” well, GoV is characterized as dangerous by Wiseman, and as we’ve seen the possible dangers are real (although not in any way caused by GoV). From there it’s only a short mental leap to associate this site with the feeling of repugnance, because danger is repugnant.
It’s a variation of “kill the messenger.”
I find Islam dangerous and repugnant.
And 1350 plus years of Mohammad-encouraged mass-murder, patriarchal misogyny, dogmatic intolerance, sanctified plunder, scorched earth policies, laughable Old and New Testament/Gnostic plagiarisms, and a transparent fraud in the imams’ claims of a “perfect” transmission of the Koran (which is the bedrock basis of the Muslim faith, and without this claim being true, the entire faith falls) amply justifies my appraisal of this Death Cult falsely posing as an “Abrahamic” religion.
Critics of this repellent “faith” and its monstrous tenets can expect to meet resistance from the brainwashed mass of Muslims, but why any non-Muslim (who has presumably seen-through this billion member Jim Jones-style collective ) would want to divide the justified Resistance to this militantly Irrationalistic creed ~which glorifies in its ‘divine’ aim to enslave the world and put all humanity into a global theocratic gulag~ is puzzling.
Maybe the score and history of the threat hasn’t been properly appreciated by the weak-kneed analysts of this marching abomination waving The Sword of Allah and praying for a return to the 7th century.
I, for one, will fight against this retrograde “religion” as I would against Nazi-ism or Communism or fascism, primarily since Islam incorporates much of the worse of each of these with the added danger of being theoretically “eternal” and absolved of all humane restrains by its Warrior deity.
Islam is honest about its goals.
Let us be as honest in ours.
To send Islam to the ash heap of history.
Gates of Vienna is “dangerous” because it reaches the common people in a way that Standpoint does not. While the people at Standpoint agree with the people at Gates of Vienna they also realize that the common people don’t know how to behave themselves and can’t be trusted with this information. They might do something stupid as a result of it. The people at Standpoint would never do something stupid as a result of this information.
That, I think, is why this guy labeled Gates of Vienna “dangerous”. It’s pure snobbery. They think that they are equipped intellectually to handle this information but the lower classes are not.
It also tells me that they don’t feel the threat is imminent. If they did I doubt very much that they’d be worrying about this sort of thing.
It doesn’t explain “repugnant” though. I don’t have an explanation for that.
“Lutonian variant of the English language”, does give me the chuckles. Also shows the EDL really is missing its quota of hairy arsed northeners at their demos (linguistically speaking we have even more uncouth accents).
To the matter at hand though – it was an admirably accurate analysis (sorry for the A’s) of the reasoning behind your disagreement with standpoint when you identified social class as being the root cause.
Unfortunately for Britain this is the reason there is such a problem with cultural Islamification. Apparently the only people allowed to identify and solve problems are those with a received pronunciation accent and Oxbridge education. This mindset is, of course a problem in itself and has been the cuase of British malaise for the last century, and not just regarding Islam.
In socially stratified Britain an opinion is not valid unless it has been spoken by an approved person, that has the correct social circle, has attended the right public school and is said in the right accent, at the right time and in the right place.
What a load of [genital-crania], no wonder our ruling elite are so useless.
Oh and by the way I would not consider myself right wing; the defence against global Islamification and another dark age is not about political opinion – its about survival of the “human” species.
Quote:
To be forced to rub elbows with the common ruck is a fate worse than death.
end
But allowing their daughters to be raped is just fine.
Allowing the common ruck to be beaten to death in the streets by “youths” is just fine.
I’d curse the utterers of mellifluous vowels, but seeing that they’re already nine-tenths of the way toward the darkness of the orient and despotism, what’s the point?
Nick was unable to get this comment through, so I’m posting it for him.
————
There are a lot of people in the UK today who spend their time chattering away, attending “meetings” and pretending to be busy. These management types have nice, safe lifestyles – and they hate with a vengeance anyone “on the shop floor” (aka “working class”) who exposes them as incompetent layabouts.
Just look at all those NHS trusts in England that have gone to hell in a handbasket – the medical staff will have been moaning about what’s been going on, because they’re seeing it first hand, but management has let things slide rather than stand up as individuals and actually make tough decisions – and be responsible for the consequences. Safety first for these people – and safety means playing “the gray man”, doing nothing to upset the people around you, and banking that cheque at the end of the month …
People like [he who must not be named] and disappointingly, Melanie Phillips (who has written some great articles over the years & has recently launched an e-publishing platform for other writers) may have fallen into this trap. Safety first – and safety means maintaining their own positions.
It may feel quite daring to them to have a discussion about Islamic doctrines and history over a bottle of wine, or to have a debate at some high-falutin’ University – oh how brave they all are!
But there’s nothing brave or daring about it, if they won’t stand up for what they say they believe. That just makes them intellectual cowards, hypocrites and yes … snobs.
And if that cap fits, [he who must not be named] will just have to wear it.
An alter-nobility that despises all compatriots above and beneath their illicit compact, the pagan ideal of kith and kin and the tenets of christianity demands that power has legitimacy these necessity invites there destruction by a heritical and treacherous class that seeks sanctification in the bloodcurdling practices of their adopted beneficiaries.
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You would seem to have identified the problem, Baron, or a major part of it. I have a particular understanding of this, having once surely had an accent not unlike Tommy Robinson’s: whereas now, an education and the better part of a lifetime later, I probably sound more like Paul Weston.
Bravo! Well said.
The situation in the US is severe, in Britain it is dire. The people of Britain, and particularly England, are waking up to the fact that they have been, and are being, shafted. it helps to understand also that economically Britain is very vulnerable; 70% of British GDP comes from financial spivvery conducted in the City of London. The rest is held up by debt, employment in the UK is largely provided by Govt. English people particularly are becoming aware that the political elite have decided to get themselves a new people, thus the mass immigration into England of some of the most backward third world scum imaginable. There are reasons for this agenda that may be the subject of another post, suffice to say there is anger in England and justifiably so.
People like Daniel Johnson and Melanie Philips are word warriors, the EDL are street warriors, and it is in the streets that this will finally be decided. We see the UAF chanting “If it wasn’t for the coppers you’d be dead” at EDL marches, there will be street violence reminiscent of the street violence that brought Hitler to power in Germany. I think Melanie Philips has seen this, she has thought about it and had a vision of the abyss. God knows where this is going to end but the process will not be pretty, nor will the result.
You have hit the nail right on the head Baron but I would say there is one more aspect to the class analysis and that is the credibility that colour gives.
Whilst I have many friends who are worried about my ‘extreme’ and ‘crazy’ views on Islam ,even though I am a very well educated white skilled manual worker ,they cannot bring themselves to support what I say.
However it was interesting to note that when a twelve year old Arab boy comes out and is critical of the brotherhood and aspects of Islam, then the same people say ‘clever kid’, ‘brave’. Talks a lot of sense’,etc.
These same friends are the same people who feel guilty for being white.If Barak Obama stood up (it will never happen) and stated that there is a real problem with Islam they would jump with joy and say how wise of him. Makes me sick to tell the truth but at the very least they have taken note of someone critical of Islam I suppose.
Yes! “They” are allowed to criticize us loudly and stupidly – for causing the problems that they cause for themselves here, there, and everywhere and revel in the causing, but “we” are NOT allowed to criticize them. In fact, “we” are NOT allowed to be “we” unless “we” are being criticized by “them” and handing them unlimited amounts of underserved power and money….
correction: undeserved
> If Barak Obama stood up (it will never happen) and stated that there is a real problem with Islam
Barak Obama is with a certain likelihood a closeted Muslim who pretended to be a Christian solely to succeed in american politics because american politics requires Christianity. He is a taqiyya master, a long con artist. If a half of your family are Muslims, especially your fathers side, how non-Muslim can you be? Even if you dont believe in Islam, half of your heart still has to beat for them, solely by a family connection.
If your father is Irish and your mother French, and you spent a significant part of your early life in Irleand, you never would claim that youre fully French anyway and that you feel no connection to Irealnd whatsoever, and even if you claimed it, nobody would believe you.
But everybody fell for Obama’s “My fathers side of the family is Muslim, I’ve spent my childhood in a Muslim country, I went to a Muslim school, but I dont feel anything special for all these people, dont consider them to be my kin and would never ever abuse my position as the president of the US to aid them. I’m as Christian American as it gets. Allahuak.. oops.. God bless America!”
As a Brit, falling between Messrs Johnson and Robinson on the social scale (!), I wonder if you’re attributing too much importance to this aspect? The class system in the UK is much weakened since the 60s; the EDL’s poor image has, I believe, more to do with a perception of thuggery, even if undeserved; they do expel the bad apples, and the (ironically-named) Unite Against Fascism’s propensity for violence and intimidation may rub off on their EDL opponents.
I do so agree that we should try to avoid unnecessary division. As a secularist, I bite my tongue at posters, mainly on JihadWatch, who argue for Christianity as a solution, and mostly manage not to react to critics of socialism (which is not a dirty word here!)
I’m proudly of the Left on most issues but Islam, and wish I lived in Brighton so I could vote for Anne Marie Waters!
Mark —
I’m willing to consider other explanations. What do you think accounts for it?
The reactions are totally irrational, and often verge on the hysterical. This particular one was not prompted the EDL, but by Gates of Vienna, which unlike the EDL has no “form”.
What’s the issue?
Johnson’s opinions were expressed in an academic
forum, which is non-threatening to the Establishment position, whereas the EDL’s
identical viewpoint was expressed by someone
leading a march/demonstration, which is much more threatening to the boys in control. The Powers That Be have seen the Middle Eastern
street protests that have had regime-changing
effect in a few cases, they are worried that this could happen in our sleepy little backwater here
in the UK. Or look at what sprung up seemingly
overnight in Greece, Golden Dawn. The Establishment elites would be mortified if the UK went thataway.
Hi Baron,
I’m flattered you should ask my opinion, but can’t think of anything clever to add to your analysis, though s ducain, here has a good point. Maybe anti-Americanism (far too common here), or Churchill’s crocodile (we have an excess of Chamberlains!)
Baron,
You are too modest.
Standpoint is a hollow GoV imitator, one that can not washout the cultural relativism stain of academic indoctrination.
The danger referenced is in part sympathising with a purge of that academic indoctrination that will make the hollow imitators redundant.
They think your website and similar others are dangerous because they are afraid of more and more people starting to learn the facts about the state of Britain and its islamization. They are also afraid of muslims feeling offended and provoked by the truth, as they are not used to being questioned or criticized by the inferior kuffar. Knowledge will eventually lead to countermeasures by the indigenous people and the muslims, which mostly believe islam has to conquer the West, will fight back. All this will eventually lead to civil war. I firmly believe this development is inevitable as demographic studies all show that the muslim population will sharply increase over the next 15 years, leading to eve more conflict. It is just a numbers game and all one needs to do is extrapolate the current trends. Not that I am looking forward to a war, but this is the only way we will get our country back and I am don’t consider myself an extremist or violent at all. Keep your powder dry.
A very uncivil war called the Balkans 2.0 on steroids is not 10-15 years off, it is here and now. Look at what the muslims are doing in France, they are pushing the authorities and the useful idiots call for dialogue and understanding instead of Napoleons favorite, a whiff of grapeshot. Mark my words, this will kick off as a sudden and very violent thing and spread from there.
I will venture to hazard a guess about motives that may be correlated to class but run much deeper.
As I’ve mentioned on another thread, there is a common theme among the various plans being laid to reshape the global situation of humanity in the coming century. It is unlikely that those who have advanced educations an a place in the upper class of any modern society are entirely unaware of the so-called “population problem”…the problem being that the human population is much too large to be properly controlled and exploited and should therefore be reduced considerably.
The exact nature of the future utopia that the various contributers to Standpoint envision is not perfectly clear, but I am fairly certain that it does not include plans for the survival of rabble like Tommy Robinson and the EDL. That they do not envisage Islam being a significant part of their planned society does not mean that they would welcome increasing the political power of another class of people they are planning to eliminate.
The population of most first world European countries was slowing and in some cases starting to decrease before mass immigration from muslim countries.
This trend is also true world-wide, it has only emerged a little earlier in the more developed countries. But the truth of population dynamics isn’t really the issue. The attitude that it is acceptable to exterminate a substantial portion of humanity for the benefit of one’s own class is more of an emotional and moral commitment than an intellectual one. Whether ‘science’ ever really justified such plans, the fact of having already assented to them is more important than the evidence.
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Baron, that makes sense to me.
I live in South Australia, so those same snobs would look down on me too, as a mere “colonial”. I care not for their good opinion, so that’s OK.
If they choose to cling to some imaginary “class” superiority, instead of fighting the real enemy, they become irrelevant and a hindrance to the counterjihad. I lost all respect for Melanie Phillips when I learned that she distanced herself from the EDL, for example.
What is going on here??
Fear, which is exactly what Islam wants you to feel. Look at Mr Johnson’s Oxford Union introduction: “I have four children, I nearly did not come here…”
This is how Islam wins, and subjugates entire nations. They use threats of violence and kill a few people, so that educated, articulated and reasonable people will not put their head over the parapet and speak out. They then take over.
Theo van Gough? Salman Rushdie affair? Remember that as a consequence of the Satanic Verses protest, 36 people were burned alive in Sivas, in eastern Turkey. Look up the Sivas massacre.
This is how Islam controls entire nations – it is a Protection Racket, no more, no less. Exactly the same as Al Capone and the Chicago mob – same methodology, same parasitical existence. “Do as we say, otherwise your leaders are threatened and eliminated, one by one.”