Conservative Bloggers Fight for Free Speech | The Brussels Journal

Conservative Bloggers Fight for Free Speech | The Brussels Journal

Conservative Bloggers Fight for Free Speech

From the desk of Fjordman on Fri, 2007-05-04 09:17

It has been documented countless times that journalists in Denmark (and many other countries) to a very large degree vote for parties to the left of the center. But a totally different picture emerges when looking at their non-professional colleagues in cyberspace. The weekly Mandag Morgen has published a survey which labels 19 out of the 20 most visited Danish political bloggers as conservative or leaning towards the political Right. To Kim Møller, who runs the most popular blog in this survey, Uriasposten.net, the result comes as no surprise, but is a natural result of the grossly lopsided coverage in the traditional media. "If you want a conservative view on developments in society, you won't find it there," he says to the new, conservative online newspaper 180Grader.dk.

Uriasposten was, to my knowledge, the first blog to republish the now famous Muhammad cartoons, immediately after they appeared in the newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The story was later introduced in English by me and had, unsurprisingly, been debated for months in the blogosphere on websites such as Jihad Watch and The Brussels Journal before the major international media took notice. Møller's blog is, alongside Snaphanen, Document.no, Honest Thinking and a few others, among the leading Scandinavian blogs.

Naser Khader, a Member of Parliament in Denmark and founder of the group Democratic Muslims, writes in his book Khader.dk about Westerners who passionately hate Christianity, but are willing to make excuses for absolutely everything Muslims do. Attempts to question mass immigration are met with claims that "we have a duty to help people in need" or accusations of "racism." He dubs these people, who are predominantly from the political Left, "halal hippies." These individuals politicize everything. Following the logic that the goal justifies the means, they ruthlessly harass dissenters and purposefully sabotage the public debate: "Uncomfortable results are suppressed, and researchers who either have a political viewpoint to the right of the center or simply do not belong to 'the right' network, are consistently silenced by the propaganda of the halal hippies."

Halal hippies seem to have gained powerful positions in the media and academia throughout the Western world, partly as a result of the Western Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 70s. The New York Times or Newsweek are only marginally better than European media, and even newspapers in Australia, one of the least politically correct nations in the West, are willing to make excuses for advocates of the global Jihad against non-Muslims.

Daniel Pipes notes that "Significant elements in several Western countries – especially the United States , Great Britain, and Israel – believe their own governments to be repositories of evil, and see terrorism as just punishment for past sins. This 'we have met the enemy and he is us' attitude replaces an effective response with appeasement, including a readiness to give up traditions and achievements. Osama bin Laden celebrates by name such leftists as Robert Fisk and William Blum. Self-hating Westerners have an out-sized importance due to their prominent role as shapers of opinion in universities, the media, religious institutions, and the arts. They serve as the Islamists' auxiliary mujahideen."

In France during the Muslim riots in 2005, several journalists stated openly that they downplayed the problems caused by immigrants in order not to boost the support for "right-wing parties," and in Britain, leading figures from the BBC readily admitted that they actively champion Multiculturalism in their coverage. Even British Prime Minister Tony Blair, himself from the Labour Party, complained in the January 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs about relations with Muslims that "the extremists play our own media with a shrewdness that would be the envy of many a political party." Then again, they probably didn't face too much resistance in their efforts.

Perhaps the most shameful and embarrassing aspect of the history of Eurabia is how the supposedly critical and independent European media has allowed itself to be corrupted or deceived by the Eurabians. Many of the documents about the Euro-Arab Dialogue place particular emphasis on working with the media, and the Eurabians have played the European media like a Stradivarius. Aided by a pre-existing anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism, European media have been willing to demonize the United States and Israel while remaining largely silent on the merger of their continent with the Islamic world.

Professional harassment, boycott and defamation punish those who dare to openly challenge the politically correct discourse. According to Bat Ye'or, this has led to the development of a type of "resistance press" as if Europe were under the "occupation" of its own governments. As Europe turns more and more totalitarian under the EU, this could become increasingly true. This free press on the Internet has brought some changes, including the rejection of the EU Constitution in 2005. Despite overwhelming support for it by the governments in France and the Netherlands and a massive media campaign in both countries, voters rejected it. Blogs played a significant part in achieving this. Only a few months later, European Union authorities lined up together with authoritarian regimes such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and the Chinese Communist Party in favor of "more international control with" (read: censorship of) the Internet. This basically says all you ever need to know about the EU.

I have heard several observers state their new-found respect for the ancient Greek philosopher Plato's Allegory of The Cave, where people have been chained in a cave all their lives, and the only reality they know is represented by shadows of images on the cave wall. If they leave the cave, they will at first be blinded by the sunlight, and will only gradually be able to comprehend what they see. Many will be scared and will resist if others want them to leave the cave and get into the real world.

The differences, particularly on issues related to Jihad and immigration, between the information reported in blogs and the information presented to us by the established media are so great that it shocks many ordinary citizens once it dawns upon them just how much censorship and propaganda we are spoon-fed every day. This experience has shattered the myth of free, critical and independent Western media. Here's how this process is described by a British blog reader:

"That the BBC does not allow a link to LGF [anti-Jihad blog Little Green Footballs] will come as little surprise to those of us familiar with the BBC's output and editorial tone. What has come as a surprise to me, a relative newcomer to the 'blogosphere', is the degree to which the news the BBC chooses to present to us is filtered and censored. Whole stories that cause a sensation on the blogosphere and are of undoubted public interest are either mentioned in passing or not mentioned at all by the BBC."

Just as Nicolaus Copernicus in the 16th century demonstrated that the sun does not revolve around the earth, so too the traditional media outlets are slowly discovering that the information society no longer revolves around their editorial policies. It's interesting that The Jerusalem Post recently quoted an essay at the Gates of Vienna blog by English writer Paul Weston, warning about the increasing likelihood of civil wars in Europe due to Muslim immigration. The cutting edge of debates has been transferred to independent websites. Iranian ex-Muslim Ali Sina's website Faith Freedom International is one of the few openly stating that Islam cannot be reformed, which is probably true.

The Jerusalem Post is one of the better Western newspapers, probably because it is published in Israel, a front line state for the Islamic Jihad. Their columnist Caroline Glick praises the blogosphere and states that: "The responsibility of protecting our nations and societies from internal disintegration has passed to the hands of individuals, often working alone, who refuse to accept the degradation of their societies and so fight with the innovative tools of liberty to protect our way of life."

Bruce Bawer, author of the book While Europe Slept, has noticed this, too:

"Thank God for the [Inter]Net. I tremble at the thought of all the things that have happened during the past years that I would never have known about without it. The bloggers have in some cases reported about things that the mainstream media has left out, and in other cases pointed out omissions and distortions in the media coverage. Frequently, the mass media has felt compelled by the bloggers to pay attention to stories they would otherwise have ignored. The blogosphere is a fantastic way to spread news. If an important event has been reported in just a single, insignificant local paper, one blogger somewhere will have written about it, other bloggers will have linked to him etc. so that the news story is passed on to blog readers around the world. If Europe is saved, it will be because of the Internet."

In the view of blogger Richard Landes, the media play a critical role in the global Jihad's success. The major media outlets "are the eyes and ears of modern civil societies. Without them we cannot know what is going on outside of our personal sphere, with them we can make our democratic choices in elections, assess foreign policy, intervene humanely in the suffering around the globe. But as any paleontologist will tell you, any creature whose eyes and ears misinform it about the environment, will not long survive."

This can be compared to being attacked by an angry and hungry polar bear, while your eyes and ears, the media, tell you that it's a cute koala bear who just wants to be cuddled. Meanwhile, your brain has been indoctrinated to think happy thoughts about diversity and smile to all creatures, regardless of their nature or intentions. This is pretty much how the entire West is today. The heavy anti-Western bias of our media and our education system constitutes a very real threat to our survival.

Pessimists claim that this is merely the "wild West" period of the Internet, which will eventually become censored, controlled and boring just like all other media. That is certainly a possibility, but even if this turns out to be true, it has still been of great importance in generating resistance to Islamization during its first generation as a mass medium. Only future historians will be able to determine its full significance, but it is conceivable that the network of independent websites could tip the scales in favor of our cultural survival. Helen Szamuely of British blog EU Referendum believes that the Internet has empowered "more people faster than anything has done since the invention of printing." Gutenberg's printing press helped fuel the Renaissance in 15th century Europe. With some luck, the Internet could yet turn to be the catalyst for a new Western Renaissance.