Gates of Vienna Blog blocked

Earlier this month the Gates of Vienna blog was inaccessible for a time, and yesterday readers were once again denied access. At the time of writing a visit to Gates of Vienna (GOV) was met with the following notice: ‘This blog is under review due to possible Blogger Terms of Service violations and is open to authors only.’

The message is a little cryptic, but the fact that public access to it has been blocked, temporarily or possibly permanently, indicates that Blogger’s owners – Google – are susceptible to pressure to censor opinions that are deemed to upset some people around the globe. Given the content of the blog in question, it does not take a great deal to guess which particular ideological constituency will have demanded that access be blocked: an Islamic lobby group of one sort or another.

Some of the articles published on the GOV I have agreed with, and others I have not, but agreeing or disagreeing with a set of opinions set out on a platform such as a blog is no reason to have them either extolled by all as ‘virtuous’ or condemned and censored for whatever spurious reasons happen to be called forth by way of justification on the part of an ‘offended’ party. After all, to offend someone nothing more is necessary – at least in the case of those who will not brook any dissent from their perspective – than to disagree with their opinion.

Whether or not you happen to agree with the general thrust and tenor of articles published on the GOV is immaterial: the decision to deny public access to the blog strikes me as a violation of freedom of expression, and that in itself is a sinister move on the part of the internet giant. Although those who dislike GOV have attempted to smear it by association with Breivik, who happened to cite it in his largely unread rambling ‘manifesto’, GOV has not called for violence and in no uncertain terms condemned the actions of the psychopath Breivik as soon as his identity became known. The blog appears to be the latest high-profile element of the transnational ‘counterjihad’ movement to have been taken out. In the UK over the past 18 months we have seen Alan Lake/Alan Ayling dismissed from his job at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Chris Knowles sacked from his job with Leeds City Council for holding views deemed to be at variance with its ‘diversity policy’. More recently, EDL founder and leader Stephen Lennon/Tommy Robinson received a prison sentence for gaining entry to the US on someone else’s passport, and a little over a week ago his relative and fellow leading EDL member Kevin Carroll was arrested for what was alleged to be‘inciting racial hatred’.

As perhaps the best known of the ‘Counterjihad’ blogs, taking out GOV strikes a blow against the loose network and movement that it represents. It is a worrying development, for though it may be unpalatable to what is deemed to be acceptable opinion, the concerns that it articulates with respect to the various facets of Islamisation – particularly to the demographic Islamisation of many European societies – are legitimate. Much of what has been written on its platform differs little in its essential thrust from the argument and evidence presented by respected journalist Christopher Caldwell in his book ‘Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West’ published in 2009. Thankfully, unlike ‘Baron Bodissey’, Caldwell has yet to experience the chill winds of censorship, but Google’s latest exercise in apparent censorship poses the question as to how much longer such dissident opinions will be tolerated. In and of itself, the decision to block access to the Gates of Vienna would appear to bear ugly testimony to the blog’s protestation that Islamisation constitutes a genuine danger to the freedom of both speech and expression. We can only hope that Google relents, and allows the blog to once again reach a general readership as it has done over a number of years.

Note: thanks to Ivan Winters for drawing this to my attention.

UPDATE
Immediately after posting this piece I discovered via the Infidel Bloggers Alliance blog that the Gates of Vienna has moved to a new site that can be accessed here.

Gates of Vienna blog banner

Sweden Democrats to make Poll Breakthrough?

The media is abuzz with anticipation that the Sweden Democrats Party may make history in this Sunday’s national elections by breaking through the 4% threshold required to gain representation in Parliament (the Riksdag). This is significant insofar as the party’s strong anti-immigration and anti-Islamisation stance has led it to being classified as ‘far right’ by its detractors which has resulted in predictable attacks from the media and leftist groups. Some of these attacks have not been limited to the written and spoken word, but have taken the form of physical assault and violent protest by leftist demonstrators.



As one would expect, the UK’s Guardian newspaper is alarmed not by the Islamisation of Sweden, which it is intent upon portraying in glowing terms (echoing Orwell’s characterisation of England in its description of Malmö’s suburb of Rosengård with its 'well-signposted cycle paths on which stately middle-aged women in headscarves pedal their groceries home'), but by the rise of the Sweden Democrats. The tone of the Guardian’s Andrew Brown belies the newspaper’s actual lack of tolerance and respect for individual freedoms and personal safety in its casual and offhand description of a violent leftist attack upon a Sweden Democrats member:

Last Friday two masked men attacked David von Arnold, a party candidate in Malmö, outside his flat and carved a swastika into his forehead. The respectable media largely ignored this as it ignores the party as a whole.

In this passage Brown thus implies that it is ‘respectable’ to ignore acts of extreme political violence if such acts enforce the multicultural dogma that the biens-pensants of the Guardian see as being the only one to which people should subscribe. To deviate from this ideology of decadent ‘liberal’ self-hatred is deemed beyond the bounds of decency by the Guardian. It is a million miles away from the self-assured, self-respecting, pro-Western liberalism espoused by Geert Wilders whom the Guardian deliberately misrepresents as some sort of neo-Nazi.

Other articles in the New York Times, the Economist and the EU Observer ponder the rise of the Sweden Democrats and see it as a sign of growing dissatisfaction with some of the less savoury aspects of the country’s long-established model of social democracy amongst a section of the Swedish electorate. As in other European countries, Sweden has witnessed a large influx of Muslim immigrants in recent decades, many entering as refugees and asylum seekers, and as elsewhere they have adhered to their Muslim identity which they see as being superior to the culture of their host society. Muslim rape of indigenous Swedish women has become an issue, and certain areas of Malmö have become Muslim enclaves where non-Muslims would rather not set foot. Even Swedish ambulances won’t enter such areas without police escort. These problems are illustrated in the two videos below, the first of which is a Fox News report on Islamisation in Sweden (it starts in Swedish but switches to English after 15 seconds) whereas the second contains footage of the Muslim riots that hit Malmö in December 2008 (this starts off as a series of stills, but moves onto video footage just after a minute in).





The Sweden Democrats under the leadership of the youthful Jimmie Åkesson (he is only 31) wish to tackle such problems by cutting immigration by 90% and rejecting multiculturalism in favour of strong assimilationist policies. Opinion polls are currently showing that the party enjoys the support of more than 4% of the Swedish electorate, but Åkesson is bullish and thinks that the party could win as much as 8% of the vote tomorrow.

Speaking to the New York Times, Finance Minister Anders Borg of the Moderate Party echoes the contemptuous attitude of mainstream politicians for the views of ordinary indigenous peoples across Europe by failing to address the issues of Islamisation and the negative impact of multiculturalism by instead attacking the Sweden Democrats: “These kinds of parties, they thrive on uncertainty and political crises. They need to create turmoil and chaos, so we will push hard to their voters: is this really a responsible choice?”

Are the Sweden Democrats responsible for the Muslim rapewave perpetrated against indigenous Swedish women? No. Are the Sweden Democrats responsible for Muslim riots and no-go areas in Swedish cities? No. Have the Sweden Democrats been behind the soft asylum laws, pro-mass immigration and multiculturalist policies that have facilitated Islamisation and the marginalisation of Swedish indigenous interests? No. Have the Moderate Party and other Swedish parties that have formed governments in recent years supported and facilitated all of the above? Yes. So, who has created real “turmoil and chaos”: the Sweden Democrats or the country’s mainstream political parties including the Moderate Party? The responsibility clearly lies with the latter. The Sweden Democrats wish to deal with the problems created by Islamisation and multiculturalism, whereas their opponents pretend that such problems are a fiction created by unprincipled ‘far-right’ populists for their own putative nefarious political objectives.

The Sweden Democrats have managed to further offend the multiculturalist sensibilities of the Swedish Establishment by producing an imaginative election broadcast depicting burqa-clad mothers racing for benefits ahead of an indigenous Swedish pensioner. Despite it being a fair representation of an unpleasant reality in contemporary Sweden, the broadcast was banned. View it below and see what you think. Let’s hope that tomorrow the multiculturalist consensus in Sweden lies in tatters as the Sweden Democrats return members to the Riksdag.



Readers may also be interested in an enlightening article entitled 'Sweden: Banana Monarchy or Kretinostan?' written by a Swedish pensioner and posted at the Gates of Vienna blog.