John R. Houk
© May 10, 2013
Unless you are following many of my writing heroes correctly labeled Counterjihadists you may not have heard of the person that goes by the pseudonym Fjordman. During the attack the massacre that occurred at the hands of Anders Behring Breivik that occurred in Norway Fjordman had successfully managed to keep his anonymity.
Breivik slaughtered 77 men, women and children as well as wounding hundreds of more on July 22, 2011. Breivik’s demented reasoning was something akin to thinking that went like this: Start social chaos by violence then the native Europeans would rise up to change the European social order which in turn lead to the expulsion of Muslims out of Europe and perhaps eventually a confrontation against Muslim lands. That is probably unjust summary of Breivik’s intentions, but you can read for yourself in his Internet released Manifesto.
Counterjihad writers were beginning to gain a voice even in Left slanted Europe. People were willing to stand up and risk prosecution by being accused of hate-speech for criticizing or exposing the darker side of Islam. There is only conditional Free Speech in Europe as defined by Multicultural sentiments even if that Multiculturalism leads to cultural suicide. Then Breivik comes and slaughters people and his Manifesto shows that his inspiration comes from Counterjihad writers including Fjordman.
Breivik is Norwegian. Fjordman is Norwegian. The Left oriented Norwegian government began to investigate Fjordman as the master planner of Breivik’s massacre. Of course the Norwegian authorities could not prove Fjordman had anything to do with massacre because the notion was a load crap.
Now the propaganda campaign has begun. As is typical of Leftists governments (Norway and EU) a smear campaign of lies and misinformation against Counterjihad writers because they rock the multiculturalist boat with the truth about Islam.
In the spirit of Leftist smearing author Simen Sætre wrote a biography of Fjordman that is full outright lies and disinformation to paint Fjordman as a Right Wing troublemaker that stirs up hatred toward Muslims and thus incite violence against Muslims.
Below is Fjordman’s defense against the lies at the Gates of Vienna. You should really read the following comments at GV. I am going to include one comment by a GV contributor Dymphna.
JRH 5/10/13
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The Media Myths
Posted by Baron Bodissey
Posted: April 29, 2013 8:40 PM
The following newspaper article by Fjordman has been translated from the Norwegian, and includes an introduction (in English) by the author.
This essay was originally published online by the Oslo-based Aftenposten, Norway’s largest-circulation newspaper, on April 25, 2013.
The paper had come very, very close to libel-suit territory a few days earlier, when they published a big photo of me on the front page of the print edition, claiming that I am being funded by “right-wing extremists” in the USA. This was a reference to the fact that I had received a grant via the think tank The Middle East Forum, which I had stated quite publicly at Gates of Vienna.
I also told the newspaper openly when asked about this that I had received help with my legal bills (and only that) from the Middle East Forum’s Legal Project in relation to the Breivik case, following a kind offer from Daniel Pipes and competent aid from Ann Snyder and Sam Nunberg. All of this was already public and not a secret.
So Norway’s largest newspaper labeled the Middle East Forum as “right-wing extremists” on their front page. They quickly published an apology afterwards, however, possibly fearing a lawsuit from the MEF — and rightly so.
The same newspaper also published several long and negative articles in reference to a Norwegian biography of me that was published in April 2013 by the author Simen Sætre. One of my most notorious (and dishonest) critics, the professional Breivik-opportunist Øyvind Strømmen, published a “review” of this book in Aftenposten that was essentially one long hit piece against my person. After all of this, within a few days, I sent an email to Aftenposten’s political editor Harald Stanghelle, their debate editor Knut Olav Åmås as well as editor-in-chief Hilde Haugsgjerd and quite simply demanded that I be allowed to publish a full-length essay in their newspaper in response to this smear campaign.
The result is the essay below.
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Translated by The Observer
In the last few days, dozens of articles about how irrelevant people like me supposedly are have been published in the newspapers. Those who work in the Norwegian mass media apparently lack a sense of irony.
In his review of Simen Sætre’s uneven biography about me, the writer Øyvind Strømmen describes my views on Islam as “strange,” despite the fact that opinion polls in many European countries show that large parts of the population are deeply skeptical of Islam. In France, more than 70 percent of those surveyed expressed doubts about Islam’s ability to adapt to their society. Similar figures may be found in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands.
There is so little substance to be found in Strømmen’s text that it is strange that he managed to get it published in Aftenposten at all. The only trick he has up his sleeve is to label certain individuals “fascists”. The fact that this is sufficient to secure him a nice career as a social commentator with virtually free access to the press says a lot about the social climate in Norway today.
It is also worth mentioning that the media have recently written about an ethnic Norwegian convert to Islam who sympathizes with the Jihadists of al-Qaida, and who may himself have undergone terrorist training in Yemen. Up until recently he was standing as a member of Miljøpartiet De Grønne (the Green Party of Norway). This is the same political party that Mr. Strømmen, Professor Thomas Hylland Eriksen, and Shoaib Sultan of the Islamic Council of Norway — now of the Anti-Racist Centre — represent. The terrorist might be a lone wolf, but he comes from Øyvind Strømmen’s flock.
On April 17, 2013, Aftenposten by a “mistake” published a large photo of me at the top of the front page of the paper edition, claiming that I am being paid by “right-wing extremists” in the USA. With such war headlines, one might be tempted to think that I’m sitting deep inside a bunker, brooding over plans to invade Poland almost single-handedly by beating my opponents over the head with Islamophobic texts until they surrender. The truth, however, is that I had simply received a grant from a conservative think tank that was so secretive that I had publicly announced this myself on an earlier occasion.
Fortunately, Aftenposten quickly apologized for this “mistake,” which had allegedly happened by accident. Personally, I’m a somewhat unsure as to how such mistakes occur. Maybe someone tripped over a pencil and spilled coffee on a computer, making the computer accidentally publish a large photo of a particular person on the front page, right next to the words “right-wing extremist.” And by yet another sheer mistake, someone sent this front page off to stores across the country. The irony here is that the very same newspaper has previously criticized independent Internet sites for publishing claims they cannot document.
A journalist from Aftenposten then proceeded to question whether I am a dangerous “public enemy.” This not very objective or neutral question was clearly intended to make the readers reach a highly negative conclusion. The newspaper’s article about me was perhaps not quite a “Wanted, Dead or Alive” poster from the Wild West, but it wasn’t very far from that, either.
As usual, hardly any attempts were made to delve into the substance of my arguments, nor examine the major problems associated with Islamization and mass immigration that I write about.
The suggestion that those who are critical of Islam are “right-wing extremists” corresponds well with what Hilde Haugsgjerd, the editor-in-chief of Aftenposten, said in her testimony regarding alleged press censorship during the trial of Anders Behring Breivik. In her testimony Haugsgjerd went a long way towards in suggesting a link between Islam-critical attitudes and the “far Right.”
This is not correct. One of Europe’s best-known critics on issues related to Muslim immigration, Thilo Sarrazin, is a member of Germany’s SPD, the Social Democratic German equivalent of the Norwegian Labour Party.
Personally, I have great doubts as to whether Islam can be reformed. The Christian (Protestant) Reformation lasted many generations and was at times a rather bloody affair. If Islam cannot be reformed, this will cause serious and long-lasting conflicts in European cities. If, however, Islam against all odds can be reformed, then this will probably also create serious and long-lasting conflicts in Western cities since we are now importing Islamic culture here. In Norway, the hardline organization the Prophet’s Ummah has praised the Jihadist terrorists from Boston.
Even non-Muslim immigration can pose a problem with the millions of migrants we’re seeing at the moment, which is gradually turning the native populations in much of Europe into a minority in their own countries. Yet despite this, we continue with the mass importation of possible future conflicts, at the same time as we are discussing what the weather could be like in the year 2089. This is absurd. Just as in H.C. Andersen’s famous fairy tale, someone will have to point out the obvious truth: That the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.
The independent website Document.no took screenshots of the readers’ comments on a newspaper article that was highly critical of me. To the embarrassment of Aftenposten’s management, a significant proportion of their own readers either partly agreed with me or at least thought that the smear campaign against me was going too far. And just as has happened in other similar incidents, these readers’ comments were then soon removed by the newspaper.
Many of Aftenposten’s own readers are obviously not entirely positively disposed towards Islamization and mass immigration, despite the newspaper’s many attempts to label opposition to such ideas as “right-wing extremism.” There are limits on how far a commercial enterprise can harass its own readers. Some of them might otherwise be tempted to cancel their subscriptions.
This is not really about stigmatizing a particular person, but rather about stigmatizing certain opinions which the ruling elites don’t like. You then make an example out of certain individuals in order to intimidate others into silence. In this particular case, the strategy doesn’t work as well as intended because the target — in this case me — has no intentions whatsoever of succumbing to media pressure or withdrawing statements that I believe to be accurate.
Unfortunately, it’s not always the case that the majority opinion is based on common sense, but in this case, those who are critical of Islamization and mass immigration represent both the majority of the population as well as common sense. We will no longer allow ourselves to be bullied by a radical minority that unfortunately directs much of the propaganda flow through the mass media.
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Poor Norway. A whited, benighted sepulcher if ever there was one.
I feel such sadness for those who cannot in good conscience continue to spout the increasingly ludicrous party line about the joys of multiculturalism. It must be painful to be forced to wait in silence as the damning evidence against this myth continues to mount and to watch the bodies of the victims of this farce continue to be shoved under the rug.
The elites – who never, ever have to live with the results of their pie-in-the-sky poisoned apple meddling – continue to pedal harder to avoid having it all topple on them. From the outside it’s hard to tell whether they’re –
(1) genuine patsies who swallowed the Kool Aid and thus are able to mindlessly maintain the gears on the Big Lie machine or if, on the other hand,
(2) they’re actually fully culpable pushers of this dictatorial horror — that falsetto “now-be-sure-to-play-nicely-boys” tyranny tricked out to look like a democracy. Feh.
Fjordman says:
There are limits on how far a commercial enterprise can harass its own readers.
But I would ask if a state-supported ‘business’ can be termed a commercial enterprise at all? Is it not instead a state-controlled mouthpiece? And in that respect does it differ in substance from the old Pravda? Do those readers have any real choice? Perhaps in socialist tyrannies – as exemplified by Norway – the idea of genuine entrepreneurs in media entities doesn’t actually exist?
For those of us who live outside such strictures, the notion of citizens’ taxes going to support media is repugnant UNLESS it supports all points of view – from the socialist greenies on one end of the spectrum to the Kirkian conservatives on the other.
Here in the US those pushing back with mounting indignation will win their fight to stop taxes being used to shore up the biased and often downright spurious ‘news’ emanating from the leftist National Public Radio. NPR’s claims about having “commercial free radio” are risible. If you’ve ever heard their breaks between segments, you know how incredibly fast those announcers have to speak to tell you about the financial support they get from lefty orgs, making sure to enunciate the creepy mottoes of the Agribiz conglomerates. But don’t you dare call their spiels commercials – nope, they’re just ‘announcements’. And those announcers aren’t paid shills, they’re real jornolists (sic). (And I have a lovely home with its own sinkhole in Florida for sale..)
But while we are – at the moment – forced to put up with the ugly fact of NPR’s welfare payments, we also maintain (via advertising) a wide and varied and vigorous press. Yes, the left dominates, but it can’t silence the opposition. The shame tactics in force in Europe don’t work here, though heaven knows the elitists try their damnedest to make that shame stick. Instead, the cordons sanitaires the left cobbles together to hide things they don’t want known eventually crumble and sometimes they’re even forced to eat the pieces. It was wonderful, for example, to watch CNN hastily backtracking on its silence about the Gosnell butchery, claiming later their silence was a figment of the right’s imagination. Sure it was/is.
Speech, real true freedom of speech, is under fire in this country. But it hasn’t been criminalized as it has been in Europe. Not yet, anyway.
They hide their deeply intrinsic unfairness in Norway by giving Fjordman his five minutes to talk and point to that as ‘fairness’. Then it’s back to the same old lies and the same tired bromides and same old covering the truth of the comments. World-wide, the left is shameless.
But at least Gates of Vienna is a vibrant channel beaming out the truth on Radio Free Norway. And we have the hate mail to prove it 
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Countering the Smear against Fjordman
John R. Houk
© May 10, 2013
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The Media Myths
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