Type of site | Political blog |
---|---|
Available in | English |
Owner | Edward S. May |
URL | gatesofvienna |
Launched | October 2004 |
Gates of Vienna is a far-right blog established in 2004 by Edward S. May and his wife. [1] [2] [3] The website has featured the writings of international hardline anti-Muslim writers such as Fjordman and Paul Weston, and "is a central player in the counter-jihad movement within the United States and across Europe". [1] [2] [4] [5]
The first blog entry was published on Blogspot in January 2003 by Baron Bodissey, a pseudonym used by May, along with his wife who wrote as Dymphna, and was run from Virginia, United States. [1] The name of the blog comes from the 1683 battle of Vienna, in which the alliance of Polish and Austrian armies defeated the invading Turkish Ottomans, framed by the blog as part of a centuries-long war between Christianity and Islam. [1] [2] [3] [4] The blog considers this the beginning of the end of the "second wave" of the "Great Islamic Jihad", while considering the September 11 attacks in 2001 a significant part of the beginning of the "third wave". [4] The website itself was founded in October 2004. [3]
May also writes as Ned May, and describes himself as a "computer programmer with some outlandish right-wing political ideas". [1] May has later participated in several "counter-jihad" conferences, [3] has been on the board of directors of the International Free Press Society, [1] and was the director of the International Civil Liberties Alliance (formerly the 910 Group and the Center for Vigilant Freedom). [7] He wrote articles for Breitbart News around 2011, [1] and was "the principal organizer of the international counter-jihad movement from 2006-2011" according to Hope not Hate. [7] The blog was investigated by the FBI after the 2011 Norway attacks as it was revealed that it was one of the most cited websites in the manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik, [8] a neo-Nazi who exploited counter-jihad writings. [9] May has later said that the attack, which he condemned, has been used to try to "shut down" criticism of Islam and Sharia. [1]
One of the most prominent writers on the site is Fjordman, who presents Muslims as being in an ongoing warfare with Western society, which he claims is being precluded from being recognized by mainstream society by political correctness and Cultural Marxism, and presents multiculturalism as a form of totalitarianism. [3] Another writer is El Inglés, who in contrast to most other writers "more or less directly advocate violence" in extended hypotheticals about future violent confrontations between Muslims and European citizens. [10] Paul Weston has written about an impending civil war with Muslims, [11] while Seneca III is said to promote ideas drawn from within elements of the Nouvelle Droite . [3] The essay "Tet, Take Two: Islam's 2016 European Offensive", written by Matthew Bracken, which likened the 2015 European migrant crisis to the infiltration leading up to the Vietnam War's Tet Offensive, has been noted to have been influential in parts of the American militia movement. [12] [13] Danish psychologist Nicolai Sennels has also written for the site. [14]
In 2015, a group of British Labour Party MPs called for an investigation into the site following what was described as a "training manual for anti-Muslim paramilitaries", amid fears that an upcoming exhibition of cartoons of Muhammad in London was designed to incite Islamist violence. [15]
The website features a banner that promotes the books and activities of counter-jihad figures such as Geert Wilders, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff and Tommy Robinson. [1] The site has also supported far-right activist groups such as the English Defence League and Pegida. [16] In addition, it hosts a news feed with around one hundred weekly news stories of various topics helped by "tipsters". [3]
"Eurabia" is a far-right, anti-Muslim conspiracy theory that posits that globalist entities, led by French and Arab powers, aim to Islamize and Arabize Europe, thereby weakening its existing culture and undermining its previous alliances with the United States and Israel.
Gisèle Littman, better known by her pen name Bat Ye'or, is an Egyptian-born, British-Swiss author and historian, who argues in her writings that Islam, and its perceived anti-Americanism, anti-Christian sentiment and antisemitism hold sway over European culture and politics.
Robert Bruce Spencer is an American anti-Muslim author and blogger, and one of the key figures of the counter-jihad movement. Spencer founded and has directed the blog Jihad Watch since 2003. In 2010 he co-founded the organization Stop Islamization of America with Pamela Geller.
FrontPage Magazine, also known as FrontPageMag.com, is an American right-wing, anti-Islam political website edited by David Horowitz and published by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. The site has also been described by scholars and writers as far-right and Islamophobic.
Jihad Watch is an American far-right Islamophobic blog operated by Robert Spencer. A project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Jihad Watch is the most popular blog within the counter-jihad movement.
The Brussels Journal is a conservative blog, founded by the Flemish journalist Paul Beliën. It is consistently named as one of the counter-jihad movement's main channels. It was founded in 2005, and has both an English language section with various international contributions, and a Dutch section.
Jihadism is a neologism for militant Islamic movements that seek to base the state on Islamic principles. In a narrower sense, it refers to the belief held by some Muslims that armed confrontation with political rivals is an efficient and theologically legitimate method of socio-political change. It is a form of religious violence and has been applied to various insurgent Islamic extremist, militant Islamist, and terrorist individuals and organizations whose ideologies are based on the Islamic notion of lesser jihad from the classical interpretation of Islam. It has also been applied to various Islamic empires in history, such as the Rashidun and Umayyad caliphates of the early Muslim conquests, and the Ottoman Empire. There were also the Fula jihads in West Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Peder Are Nøstvold Jensen is a Norwegian far-right counter-jihad blogger who writes under the pseudonym Fjordman. Jensen wrote anonymously as Fjordman starting in 2005, until he disclosed his identity in 2011. He has been active in the counter-jihad movement, which argues that multiculturalism, particularly Muslim mass immigration, poses an existential threat to Western civilization. He has promoted this belief in a self-published book titled Defeating Eurabia, and stated that "Islam, and all those who practice it, must be totally and physically removed from the entire Western world".
Terrorism in the United Kingdom, according to the Home Office, poses a significant threat to the state. There have been various causes of terrorism in the UK. Before the 2000s, most attacks were linked to the Northern Ireland conflict. In the late 20th century there were also attacks by Islamic terrorist groups. Since 1970, there have been at least 3,395 terrorist-related deaths in the UK, the highest in western Europe. The vast majority of the deaths were linked to the Northern Ireland conflict and happened in Northern Ireland. In mainland Great Britain, there were 430 terrorist-related deaths between 1971 and 2001. Of these, 125 deaths were linked to the Northern Ireland conflict, and 305 deaths were linked to other causes, including 270 in the Lockerbie bombing. Since 2001, there have been almost 100 terrorist-related deaths in Great Britain.
Ali Sina is the pseudonym of an Iranian-born Canadian ex-Muslim activist and critic of Islam. Sina is the founder of the anti-Muslim website WikiIslam and maintains a number of websites promoting what he refers to as "the truth" about Islam. He is associated with the counter-jihad movement.
The English Defence League (EDL) was a far-right, Islamophobic organisation active in England from 2009 until the mid-late 2010s. A social movement and pressure group that employed street demonstrations as its main tactic, the EDL presented itself as a single-issue movement opposed to Islamism and Islamic extremism, although its rhetoric and actions targeted Islam and Muslims more widely.
Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), also known as the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), is an anti-Muslim, pro-Israel American counter-jihad organization known primarily for its controversial, Islamophobic advertising campaigns. The group has been described as extremist and far-right. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) lists SIOA as an anti-Muslim hate group.
Document.no is a Norwegian far-right anti-immigration online newspaper. Academics have identified Document.no as an anti-Muslim website permeated by the Eurabia conspiracy theory. The website received global media attention in connection with the 2011 Norway attacks due to its association with perpetrator Anders Behring Breivik, a former comment section poster on the website.
Pamela Geller is an American anti-Muslim, far-right political activist, blogger and commentator. Geller promoted birther conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama, saying that he was born in Kenya and that he is a Muslim.
Counter-jihad, also known as the counter-jihad movement, is a self-titled political current loosely consisting of authors, bloggers, think tanks, street movements and so on linked by beliefs that view Islam not as a religion but as an ideology that constitutes an existential threat to Western civilization. Consequently, counter-jihadists consider all Muslims as a potential threat, especially when they are already living within Western boundaries. Western Muslims accordingly are portrayed as a "fifth column", collectively seeking to destabilize Western nations' identity and values for the benefit of an international Islamic movement intent on the establishment of a caliphate in Western countries. The counter-jihad movement has been variously described as anti-Islamic, Islamophobic, inciting hatred against Muslims, and far-right. Influential figures in the movement include the bloggers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer in the US, and Geert Wilders and Tommy Robinson in Europe.
Alan Ayling, known by the pseudonym Alan Lake, is a computer expert from Highgate, London, who was involved in the English Defence League (EDL). Until 2011, he was a director of Pacific Capital Investment Management.
Anders Gravers Pedersen is a Danish anti-Islam activist. He is the chairman and founder of Stop Islamisation of Denmark (SIAD), and leader of Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE). He also established transatlantic connections with Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) and Stop Islamization of Nations (SION).
The counter-jihad movement in France consists of various organisations and individuals such as Riposte Laïque and Republican Resistance, led by Pierre Cassen and Christine Tasin respectively, Observatory on Islamisation, and other groups such as those founded by Alain Wagner. The movement has cooperated with the Bloc Identitaire, Daniel Pipes and the Middle East Forum, Stop Islamisation of Europe, and has organised events such as the "Apéro Géant: saucisson et pinard", a happy hour gathering of wine and deli meat cold cuts whose ingredients include pork.
The Citizens' Movement Pax Europa is a German anti-Islam, counter-jihad organisation. It was formed in 2008 from the merger of two previous groups, the Federal Association of Citizens' Movements formed in 2003, and Pax Europa formed in 2006.
The International Civil Liberties Alliance (ICLA) is an international counter-jihad organization that was originally founded in 2006, and which has spanned over twenty countries. Central to the organization has been Edward S. May of the Gates of Vienna blog, Alain Wagner and Christine Brim.